The Cypress House Read Free Page B

were getting scarcer, and the idea of laboring outdoors
instead of down in a coal mine or inside a foundry sounded mighty fine.
        In
the end he'd signed on in Alabama as what they called a local experienced man.
It was CCC labor, same as any else, but he didn't have to join up with one of
the veteran companies. Instead, he was tasked with providing instruction to a
bunch of boys from New York and Jersey, city kids who'd never swung an ax or
handled a saw. Was the sort of thing that could try some men's patience, but
Arlen didn't mind teaching, and just about anyone could be shown how to drive a
nail or square an edge.
        Paul
Brickhill, though . . . he was something special. The closest thing to a
mechanical genius Arlen had ever seen. A tall, dark- haired boy with serious
eyes and an underfed frame, same as almost all the rest of them, he had not the
first bit of experience with carpentry, but what he did have was the mind. The
first thing that caught Arlen's attention was how quickly the boy learned. In
all those early days of instruction, Arlen never repeated himself to Brickhill.
Not once. You said it, he absorbed it and applied it. Still, he'd appeared
little more than a reliable boy and a quick study until they got to work
building a shelter house. They'd laid masonry from foundation to windowsill and
Arlen was checking over the rounded logs they'd set above the stone when he
caught Brickhill changing his measurements for the framing of the roof.
        He'd
been ready to light the boy up—took some first-class ignorance to dare pick up
a pencil and fool with Arlen's numbers, make a change that could set them back
days—when he looked down and studied the sketch and saw that the boy was right.
Arlen had the angle off on the beams. He would've discovered it himself once
they got to laying boards, but he hadn't seen it in his measurements.
        "How'd
you know that?" he asked.
        Brickhill
opened his mouth and closed it, frowned, then steepled his hands in the shape
of a roof and then flattened them out and said, "I just . . . saw it,
that's all."
        It
wasn't the sort of thing a boy who'd never built a roof should see. Not a
fifteen-degree difference without a single board set.
        They
got to talking a bit after that. Arlen had been in the habit of telling the
juniors only what was needed — cut here, nail there — but Brickhill wanted to
know more, and Arlen told him what he could. Didn't take long to see that the
boy's innate understanding of building was such that Arlen's experience didn't
seem all that impressive. A few months later it was at Brickhill's suggestion
that Arlen approached the camp foreman with the idea of constructing a
three-hundred-foot-long chute to get concrete down to a dam they were building.
The chute worked, and saved them who knew how many days.
        It
was getting on toward the end of summer and things were winding down at Flagg
Mountain when Brickhill's six-month hitch finished up. He intended to
reenlist—expected he'd continue to for some time, long as they'd let him, he
told Arlen — but he didn't want to stay with his company, which was set for a
transfer from Alabama to Nevada.
        "I
got something else in mind," Brickhill said. "But I figure it's going
to take your help to get me there."
        The
boy proceeded to inform him, in exorbitant detail, of a new CCC project in the
Florida Keys. They were building a highway bridge that would conquer the ocean,
same grand thing that Henry Flagler had done with the railroad. Labor for the
project was being provided by the Veterans Work Program, but the CCC had just
taken over the management. As they didn't have a junior camp down there, it was
going to take a bit of work for Paul to join up. Considering how Arlen was an
ex-Marine, same as the local officer in charge of enlistment, and might have
some pull, Paul was looking for help.
        Arlen
agreed to it, and what he told the