The Cypress House Read Online Free PDF Page A

between Pearl and her name was that she was
round. Plenty round. Looked to go every bit of three hundred pounds, in fact,
and to call her an ugly woman would be an offense to the word — woman or ugly. She
was in the midst of a profane shouting match. The argument sounded harsh but
didn't seem to stir much true heat from anyone in the bar, including the
participants. She cut it off fast when Walt Sorenson flagged her down and told
her that the gentlemen with him would need a room for the night.
        Arlen
got some dollars out, and Paul started to reach in his own pocket but Arlen
waved him off. He wasn't sure how much money Paul had on him, but it couldn't
be much; the juniors in the CCC were required to send twenty-five of the thirty
dollars they made each month directly home to help their parents. Pearl
wouldn't even accept Arlen's money, though.
        "Friend
of Walt's," she said.
        "Lady,
we just met him ten minutes ago. Nobody owes us anything."
        "Friend
of Walt's," she repeated.
        Paul
was gawking around the bar. It was a rough-looking crowd. One man wore a long
knife in a sheath at his belt, and another had a raw red gash down the length
of one finger, the sort of thing that could be left behind by a tooth. It
wasn't an old injury. At a table just inside the door, a man with a cigar
pinched in the corner of his mouth was talking to a woman in a green dress that
was cut so low the tops of her large white breasts were exposed completely. She
had red hair and bored eyes.
        Pearl
led them up a set of stairs so narrow that she had to turn sideways to wedge
her way along. She jerked open the first door they came to, then lit an oil
lamp and waved her fat hand out over the two cots.
        "Privy's
outdoors," she said. "Wasn't the Astor family that built this, you
might have noticed."
        "It'll
do fine," Arlen said.
        She
clomped back out the door and down the hall, and they could hear her let out a
grunt as she started down the stairs. Paul caught Arlen's eye and grinned.
        "Don't
be getting any ideas," Arlen said. "She's too old for you."
        "Oh,
go on."
        "I'm
going downstairs to buy that fellow a drink. Thank him for the ride. You get
some shut-eye."
        Paul
nodded at the wall and said, "Hear that? It's raining."
        Yes,
it was. Coming down soft but steady, would've soaked them to the bone if they'd
still been out walking on the dark highway.
        "Good
thing we caught that ride," Paul said.
        "Sure."
Arlen pulled his bag up onto his bed and sorted through it until he found his
canteen, unscrewed the cap, and shook the contents down, tugged a few bills
out. He had $367 in it, savings accrued over the past twenty months. No
fortune, but in this driven-to-its-knees economy, where men bartered heirlooms
for bread, it felt close.
        Outside,
the rain gathered intensity.
         Yes, Arlen thought , it was a good thing we caught that ride .
        
        
        The
bar was dim and dusty, with a crowd of men Arlen could smell easier than he
could see bunched at one end, keeping conversation with Pearl. The guitar
player had given up for the night, but the redheaded woman in the green dress
was still at the table with her cigar-smoking companion, and Walt Sorenson sat
alone at the far end of the bar, counting out small white balls with black
numbers and placing them into a burlap bag. Arlen dropped onto a stool beside
him and said, "Mind telling me what you're doing?"
        Sorenson
smiled. "You ever heard of bolita?"
        "I
have not," Arlen said. The woman in the green dress stood up and walked to
the bar, her breasts wriggling like something come alive. Her hips matched the
act, but the eyes stayed empty. She disappeared up the stairs, never casting a
look back at the man with the cigar who followed her.
        "Bolita,"
Sorenson said, "is a game of wagering. You should put in a dime, Mr. . . .
what's your