SWAINS LOCK (The River Trilogy, book 1) (13 page)

“Hey Magellan. You seem to have lost your
compass.”

“From the map back there,” he said, “I think
this is the path to the climbing rocks.” He snowshoed downhill
through young trees, across a lumpy vein of rocks, and then left
around the thumb-knuckle of an emerging rocky fist. The trail
traversed a shelf a few feet above the river’s edge. Seen from this
angle, the fist was a series of near-vertical rock faces rising
forty feet overhead. Vin walked along the base looking up at the
cliffs. Snow had collected in the crevices but the faces held only
a dusting. The path ended a hundred steps ahead where the fist
angled into the river. He took pictures of the rock faces and trees
against the snow.

“What do you think? Should we take a
climbing lesson here this summer?”

“I guess we could,” Nicky said. Sensing
motion above, Vin looked up to see a squirrel scamper across the
cliff-top and dislodge a wedge of snow, triggering a miniature
avalanche that tumbled into the space between Vin and Nicky. “Or if
that’s an omen, maybe we shouldn’t!” They retraced their steps to
the fork, then followed the blazes onto the main trail.

As they walked, Vin surveyed the trees ahead
of him, looking for the joined sycamores that Kelsey Ainge had
mentioned at the party. “Just downstream from Carderock,” she’d
said, with those flickering gray-green eyes locking onto his own.
Sycamores were plentiful, but he didn’t see any that were joined at
the base. He wondered again how she could have known what was in
Lee Fisher’s note. And if there was some form of treasure or truth
buried beneath the sycamores, why hadn’t she unearthed it
herself?

The trail pushed toward the river and
undulated along its snowy bank, five to fifteen feet above the
water. It was late morning now and Vin grew warm from the exertion
of walking through unbroken snow. He stopped to take off his gloves
and look back at Nicky. She was ten paces back, stealing glances
out at the river, which was studded with snow-capped rocks and
little rapids glittering blue in the sunshine. He turned back
toward the blazes.

As the trail traversed the sloping, wooded
riverbank, they slid down into shallow drainages on their
snowshoes, then struggled to ascend the far sides. Vin would climb
out first, then take Nicky’s poles and offer her a handhold as she
followed. They both removed their scarves and unzipped their
jackets. Vin became skeptical that the trail led to a clearing.

And then he noticed a line of indentations
along the trail in front of him, like tracks made a day or two ago
and covered by a layer of drifting snow. The old tracks descended
from a treeless cut up the slope to his left, which had a
noticeable lip and blue sky beyond it. The glimpse of sky told him
that there was level ground up there, only fifty feet above. There
was even an improvised railing made from a two-by-four nailed to
two trees near the top of the slope. He waited for Nicky to catch
up.

“Can I have a drink of water?” she asked.
Vin took off his gloves and daypack and pulled out one of the water
bottles. They both removed their hats and drank, and he felt the
cold water reinfuse his entire body. They were breathing hard and
steam rose from their heads and Vin’s hands. He put the water away
and took out his camera.

“I just want to see what's above that little
ridge there,” he said. “It looks like some kind of clearing.”

“This wouldn’t have anything to do with
1924, would it? I thought maybe the treasure hunt had petered
out.”

“Just a quick look.” He stashed the camera
in his pocket, put his gloves back on, and set his snowshoe teeth
into the hillside. When he reached the two-by-four railing, he
thought he felt stairs beneath the snow underfoot. Driving his
hands forward, he crested the ridge.

It was more than a clearing; he stood at the
edge of a wide field. To his left was a pavilion with buried picnic
tables and barbecue grills. Straight across the field were signs
suggesting an adjacent parking lot, and the tracks came from that
direction. Feeling sheepish, he realized that this was the
recreational field he’d seen on the map, and that the
three-quarters of a mile they’d traveled had skirted the string of
parking lots and wooded picnic areas that comprised the park.

He stopped to catch his breath, leaning back
against the tree that anchored the railing. Looking right he saw
that another two-by-four, perpendicular to the first, connected
this tree to a third. The connected railings formed an L shape –
probably to funnel walkers onto the path he’d ascended, which must
be a sanctioned route to the Billy Goat Trail. The Park Service was
always trying to steer hikers to designated trails.

It dawned on him that the tree to his right
was a sycamore. He tilted his head back to look up and saw another
sycamore. Don’t tell me, he thought, as he turned to look down the
slope. The lower end of the railing was nailed to a third sycamore.
Three joined sycamores. His pulse quickened, then fell back as
exhilaration was undermined by doubt. He looked at the sycamores in
turn. Could these trees be over seventy years old? He’d learned
that sycamores lived for hundreds of years, so maybe all three
dated back to 1924. But if they’d been large enough to support a
railing then, shouldn’t they be massive now?

And could this have been what Lee meant by
“joined”? Both two-by-fours were stained and dirty beneath a crown
of snow, but the boards couldn’t be seventy years old. Maybe they
were replacement boards. He swept away snow near their juncture on
the center tree. They were solid, unrotted, no more than ten years
old. Just a few scratches on the top edge of the horizontal board.
The scratches caught the snow, so he brushed over them again with
his glove.

With the surrounding snow gone, he saw that
the scratches formed a word. Incised with careless writing,
probably with an awl or a screwdriver. And written in white, since
his glove had driven snow into the etched letters. “Killers.” Vin
inhaled sharply, staring at the inscription, then snowshoed to the
board’s opposite end. He brushed the snow from the railing where it
met the tree and found another inscription. Just a single white
symbol: “$”. He sighed and retraced his steps, sweeping the snow
from the middle of the two-by-four but finding no additional
words.

He stepped back and took a picture of each
tree, then put his camera away and started down the slope, sweeping
snow from the descending railing. Halfway down he found more
snow-filled words. “Why are you here?” He exhaled hard and the
steam from his breath rose like smoke. A vague anxiety welled up
and he pressed along the railing with his glove to clear the board
down to the third sycamore. Where the railing was nailed to the
tree, the final white inscription was what he expected. “Dead.”

He snowshoed back down toward the Billy Goat
Trail. “Why are you here?” Was the question addressed to him? If
so, was he someone’s puppet? And what exactly did “here” mean? And
the blatant reference to Lee Fisher’s note:

“One tree leads to the money, the second
leads to the killers and the third leads to the dead.”

Clearly Kelsey had steered him here. Was
this her work? Maybe this was a great joke played on newcomers like
Vin and Nicky, a joke about Swains Lock and 1924 that everyone else
in Potomac was in on. He tried to calm himself by breathing with
his lower abdomen as he slid down to the trail. Nicky was waiting,
stepping absently from one foot to the other and back. She’d put
her scarf and hat back on and re-zipped her jacket.

“I’m getting cold,” she said. “Let’s get
moving.” Vin noticed that a cloud was screening the sun for the
first time all morning. He felt too embarrassed and frustrated to
describe the inscriptions on the railings.

“You’re right. We shouldn’t stand around for
too long after sweating.” He put his hat and daypack on and started
forward along the trail. Soon it curved left, following a bend in
the river bank. The bright sunshine returned. To their right a
funnel of innocent rapids emerged in the center of the
thousand-foot-wide river, and the oscillating wave crests shone
against patches of blue water like diamonds on sapphires. The
indentations of the old tracks in the snow led onward. Continuing
to assess the terrain above him, Vin spotted another opening in the
trees and a wedge of sky above it. This time there were no
descending tracks, but he couldn’t resist his impulse to take a
look. Maybe the previous trees were a diversion; maybe the real
sycamores were here.

Nicky shook her head when he mentioned a
quick detour – she didn't want to get cold again. “Do what you need
to do, but I’m going to keep moving.” She added that since she’d
have to break trail, it would be easy for him to catch up.

At the top he was annoyed to discover that
he was now standing on an annex of the same field he’d visited
earlier; it was screened from the main field by a row of trees. He
realized that the curve of the trail meant that they’d been walking
around and below the field. There were no sycamores nearby. He slid
back down and followed Nicky’s tracks along the Billy Goat Trail.
They should be only a half-mile or so from its downstream trailhead
on the towpath. He crossed a ditch, noticing from Nicky’s tracks
that it had taken her more than one attempt to climb out.

“Why are you here?” Why indeed, he wondered.
Now he felt guilty about his preoccupation with Lee Fisher’s note
to Charlie Pennyfield. Why wasn’t it enough to snowshoe in the
woods with Nicky on a beautiful snowy day? She had alluded to his
attempt to solve the implicit riddle of Lee’s note as a “treasure
hunt”. Was she right? Was that all it was? If so, why was he
deliberately inserting it between them? Why, he knew she wondered,
wasn’t he focused on planning their wedding or finding a full-time
job? Good questions, he thought.

He snowshoed over a mound and saw a gulley
in front of him, steep-sided and eight or ten feet deep. It was a
frozen streambed buried by snowdrifts. The trail veered left along
the rim of the gulley, then crossed it on a narrow snow-covered
footbridge. The entrance to the bridge was flanked by two wooden
posts and Nicky was slumped awkwardly on her side just beyond them
– one leg skewed under the other, a snowshoe-tail flipped away from
her boot, propped on an elbow with her hands still in the
pole-straps. He hurried toward her.

“Nicky! Are you OK?” The snow around her on
the bridge was disturbed and he wondered if she’d tried
unsuccessfully to stand up.

“I’m alright,” she said. Her voice was airy
and soft and she only turned part way toward him. He knelt to help
her up and she took several breaths before continuing. “I guess I
must have tripped. I don’t really remember. I was kind of lost in
thought, and then all of a sudden I was lying here. Almost like I
blacked out for a minute.”

Vin brushed the snow from her jacket and
helped remove her pole-straps. “Probably low blood sugar,” he said.
“We should get some calories into you before you stand up.”

“OK,” she said weakly, looking at him now.
Vin pulled the cookies from his daypack. He watched Nicky drink
water and eat a few fig bars, then ate and drank a bit himself.

“Ready to get up?”

“Ready.”

He reached over to realign her snowshoe with
her boot, then stood up and supported her hands as she got to her
feet. “How do you feel?”

“Better,” she said. “I think the sugar
helped a lot. I feel OK now.”

He handed Nicky her poles and started
forward along the bridge. As he slung his pack over his shoulder
and stepped, his right leg met no resistance and he plunged through
the bridge into the gulley below. He’d lowered his shoulder toward
the strap, and when his leg dropped his body tilted downhill along
the axis of the gulley. This is surreal, he thought, falling
head-first toward the drift. I feel like a cartoon character duped
into stepping off a cliff. He twisted to get his hands beneath him
and braced for a collision with a rocky streambed.

Instead he felt a cushiony deceleration as
soft snow enveloped him. Blowing snow had filled the gulley more
than six feet deep, and his gloved hands pushed down into the
drift. The press of freezing snow against his face and head was
shocking and made him skip a breath. He extended his arms deeper
into the snow to press against the streambed for support but
couldn’t find it. His snowshoes held near the surface, so his legs
and feet were above his buried upper body.

He opened his eyes and saw that the bright
light outside had faded to a dim glow. He twisted his head to
create free space that he could breathe from, but his exhaled
breath froze instantly, and he felt a cradle of ice forming around
his face. His heart was racing and electric shivers of energy
coursed through his arms and legs. Adrenaline. Jesus! A lifetime in
the snow and he’d never fallen into a ridiculous position like
this! He kicked his feet to free them of loose snow, then tried to
bend his knees and pry his torso up against them. His knees pushed
deeper into the drift. He tried to lift his head, but the snow
above it felt like a frozen hand holding him down.

He rested, breathing shallowly against the
ice cradling his face. I’m not getting enough air, he thought. He
could hear Nicky calling his name and the sound of rhythmic motion
through snow. She’s digging toward me. Not enough air. My arms, he
thought, twisting his torso a few degrees. If I can pull my arms
back to my chest, there will be air from the arm holes. On his
third attempt he was able to pull an arm out of its tunnel in the
snow and bend it up underneath his chest. He swiveled his head and
inhaled, trying to draw air from the vacated hole.

“Vin!” Nicky’s voice was louder now and the
sound of digging had grown more frantic.