The Cypress House by Michael Koryta Page A

two lanterns, and around nine that evening, when the wind dangers
seemed past, she lit them both and handed one to Paul and kept the other herself,
and they all went outside.
        The
yard was littered with pieces of siding and porch rails and shingles. The back
porch was in shambles, but the roof had held; the widow's walk deck hadn't
fared so well.
        Rebecca
Cady looked everything over without comment and then said she wanted to go to
the boathouse. She led the way, holding the lantern out in front of her body,
picking over branches and planks and other debris. There was a narrow path that
led north from the house and into the palms. It curved away from the Gulf, then
opened up on an inlet that appeared to wind back into ever deeper undergrowth.
The boathouse stood before them, little more than a tall shed built out onto
the dock. Most of its roof was gone. Rebecca walked to the edge of the dock and
lifted the lantern high. A third of the floor planks were missing, but the
pilings that supported them were intact.
        "You
have anything in that boathouse ?" Arlen asked.
        "It
was moved," she said shortly, and then turned and started back to the
house. "Let's look at the generator."
        "We
might be able to get it running again tonight," Paul said, full of forced
optimism.
        That
idea lasted for the amount of time it took them to get back to the house. The
generator was in an enclosure that had been constructed on the north side of
the building. Where it had once stood, nothing was visible but tangled
branches. A tree of at least forty feet in length — it was some sort of coastal
pine whose branches and needles had been pruned away by the storm — had blown
directly into the side of the building, crushing the shed. The smell of fuel
hung in the air, and when Paul leaned over the tree and lifted his lantern, a
piece of an engine became visible.
        "It's
ruined," Rebecca Cady said. "Destroyed."
        Paul
set his lantern on the ground and tried to heave the tree off the generator.
After watching him struggle for a few seconds, Arlen fell in to help, and they
rolled the tree back enough to see the damage more clearly. It looked to Arlen
to be catastrophic — the generator had been broken into pieces and was now
covered with wet sand. He could see a metal plate with the words "Delco-
Light" stamped onto the side. Arlen was a damn fine carpenter, but he was
no mechanic, and even a great one wouldn't be able to put this wreck back
together.
        "Going
to need a new one," he said.
        "I
can't afford one." She looked up from the ruined generator and out at the
rest of her property — shanks of damaged siding littered the yard, pieces of
the back porch lay half buried in the sandy hill above the inn, the bed rails
from her truck had been ripped off and deposited somewhere in the darkness.
        "We'll
get it cleaned up," Paul said, and Arlen looked at him with wide eyes. The
hell they would. They were leaving.
        "I
can take care of it," she said.
        "No,
you can't. You going to rebuild that porch?" He shook his head. "We
won't leave until it's cleaned up."
        Arlen
said, "Have you lost your senses?"
        "We
have to stay long enough to help —"
        "We
don't have to stay long enough for anything! I don't recall that we invited the
hurricane here, and I'll be damned if I take any sense of neighborly kindness
at a place where I was jailed and robbed. We're leaving in the morning."
        Paul
shook his head, and Arlen wanted to knock it right off his shoulders.
        "We
came in together," Paul said. "That doesn't mean we have to leave
together. I'm staying at least long enough to help her get this place cleaned
up."
        They
stood there for a while in the lantern light and the soft rain, looking out at
the inn that was now bound by darkness.
        "Come
on," Arlen said at last. "Won't be able to do anything out here till
daylight,