SWAINS LOCK (The River Trilogy, book 1) (18 page)

Across the water on the towpath stood a
girl, staring at him. Her eyes were lapis lazuli embers and her
hair fell in glowing green and gold braids like the tails of
fireworks. She wore a long-sleeved top and a simple skirt above
calf-high boots. A bracelet of thin bands circled each wrist and a
glowing red feather trailed from each bracelet. Her face was in
shadow, but he could see her lips part and her white teeth emerge
as she started walking straight toward him, across the towpath,
down the bank to the water, and across the surface of the
canal.

When Vin woke up again he was screaming.
Nicky came running into the bedroom, and he rose up through his
fever and pain to embrace her.

Part Two
Chapter
14
Locking Through

Monday, March 24, 1924

Two fallen red-maple blossoms drifted slowly
with the current toward Pennyfield Lock. On the towpath, the young
man stood transfixed watching them. One was closer to the berm, and
it was drawn inexorably away from its partner and into the
breakaway current descending the flume. The blossom bounced and
accelerated down the stone ramp before vanishing into the chute,
where it was swept to the cataract that tumbled into the next level
of the canal. Its companion curved idly into the eddy above the
closed gates of the lock.

For Lee Fisher on this sunny Monday
afternoon in early spring, everything was a metaphor for his future
with Katie. The blossoms were pulled apart so he forgot them and
got back to work, alert for the next harbinger of fortune or loss.
If he was going do some drilling in the shed, he needed to reset
the lock for a loaded boat. He leaned against the end of the beam
to swing the gate; when it met its counterpart in the center of the
lock, the downstream gates were closed.

He stepped onto the walkway on the upstream
gates and swung the first lock-key. Water flooded through the
square wicket below him and kicked up a gushing fountain of
whitewater in the lock. She loves me. He sidestepped to turn the
second paddle. She loves me not. He continued across, opening the
wickets on the berm-side gate. Four surging fountains reveled below
him; he dismounted to the lock wall as the water rose.

He checked his pocket watch and wound the
stem. It was 3:15, and the canal had been running at Pennyfield
since early Saturday. Over two days now since they opened the guard
lock up at mile 22 and started watering the canal from the feeder
at Dam 2. So by now it was a clean run from Seneca Creek down to
Georgetown. With three straight days of mild weather, the winter’s
heavy snow and ice should be gone out to Harpers Ferry and further
west. If the canal company also opened the feeder at Dam 3 on
Saturday, his cousins should have been able to get their scow
moving early Sunday morning, since they tied up for the winter just
below the feeder level at mile 62.

Knowing them Emorys, they’d be driving a
single team of mules, with no sensible schedule for work and rest.
They’d just boat along until the mules or the driver didn’t want to
walk no more, then tie up, put out the feed trough, and take a nap.
And since the canal wasn’t officially open yet, some of the
locktenders wouldn't be at their locks. So his cousins might have
to set some of the locks themselves. Even allowing for all that,
they should have been able to make twenty miles from Harpers Ferry
yesterday, easy. Another twenty miles would get them here to
Pennyfield. So they might be here late this afternoon.

Lee watched the upwelling fountains subside
into swirls as the water in the lock reached the level of the canal
upstream. When the swirls dissolved, he criss-crossed the lock to
open the upstream gates. Set for a loaded boat.

He headed for Charlie’s house across the
meadow. The house was quiet, since the Pennyfields were still in
Baltimore visiting with Louise’s family. Lee was staying in the
lockhouse and keeping an eye on the big house for Charlie.
Everything looked proper. On the side porch were two piles of the
pine poles that Charlie used to make the pole-hooks he sold to
boatmen. The larger pile was the raw poles and the smaller pile the
ones Lee had drilled already – two holes for the clevis pin that
held the hook. He collected ten undrilled poles and headed up the
hillside to the shed. Entering the woods, he noticed the fingertips
of branches were tinged red with the warming blood of spring, the
season he’d been waiting for.

Inside the shed was a solid wooden workbench
that Charlie had outfitted with a vise. He propped the ends of the
poles on the bench, laid one inside the vise so that six inches
were protruding, and spun the screw to hold it tight. The
eggbeater-style hand drill was on the bench and he examined it
again before resuming work. Charlie would be happy with it. A gear
tooth on his old drill had broken a few weeks ago and he had left
Lee instructions to buy a new drill in Georgetown, along with money
and permission to use the bicycle Charlie kept in the shed to get
there. Bicycles were outlawed on the towpath during boating season
because they scared the mules, but Lee had been able to ride to
Weaver’s Hardware and back on Friday, before the repair scows
started running. Riding along the towpath, the sensation of speed
was intoxicating. The best part was the locks, since the towpath
had a little downhill slope at each one, and you could fly down
those hills and gather speed. Of course, it was the opposite coming
back upstream.

Since then he’d managed to sneak in a ride
on the towpath every day. The only way to do it was to keep the
bicycle down at the lockhouse rather than in the shed. It looked
almost new and Lee would hate to lose it, so he knew he needed a
lock. Things that weren’t nailed down had a way of disappearing on
the canal. Luckily there was a war surplus store near Weaver’s, and
he had found a pair of old leg-irons there for sixty-five cents.
The cuffs were adjustable out to a four-inch diameter and had a key
lock, so he could use them to lock the bicycle to a thin tree or a
railing. Katie would be back from Alexandria on Friday and they had
plans to meet that evening for a picnic at Pennyfield. Maybe he’d
be able to convince her to go for a spin with him. That would be
the cat’s meow. He put the drill down and used the pencil and ruler
to mark spots on the pole for the pin holes. The bit was tight in
the chuck, so he started the outer hole.

The work was simple – measure, mark, drill
the first hole, rotate the pole in the vise, drill the second hole
– and he soon found himself revisiting his encounters with Katie
Elgin. Until two days ago, he hadn’t seen her since the canal
stopped running last fall. She’d come down from Williamsport the
Saturday after Thanksgiving to help her brother Cy close up his
boat after a hard freeze hit out west and the company drawed the
water off the whole canal. Cy was captaining the number 41 back
from Georgetown to Williamsport after his last run of the season
and he got stuck on the White Oak Springs level, just above Swains
Lock, when the canal closed for the winter. When that happened you
just had to lock up your boat and leave it there until they
refilled the canal in the spring. All the boat captains knew that
was the risk you took when you tried to squeeze in one last run to
Georgetown that late in the year.

Cy’s younger brother Pete was on the canal
with him, but Pete was only ten, just a mule driver. Them two
colored boys that Cy took on as hands last season disappeared the
night they drawed the water off the canal. That was strange. Maybe
they figured they’d already been paid in Georgetown for the last
trip and Cy wasn’t likely to pay them again. So Katie had come down
to help get the boat squared away and take Pete back to
Williamsport to be in school for the winter.

Lee had already finished his season boating
with Ben Myers on the number 9 and had made his way down to his
family’s farm near Seneca after Ben tied up for the winter in
Hancock. As far as Lee could tell, Ben Myers and Cy Elgin didn’t
have much use for each other. Cy looked to be in his late twenties,
seven or eight years older than Lee, and even though Cy had only
been a captain for one season, he didn’t seem too impressed with
the other boat captains on the canal – not even the captains with
decades of experience like Ben Myers. Cy seemed either aloof or
surly; Lee wasn’t sure which. He and Cy had crossed paths once or
twice while boating last season, so they recognized each other but
had never actually met.

All the same, when Lee heard Cy’s 41 boat
was stuck in the drained canal just six miles from Seneca, he’d
gone down the Sunday after Thanksgiving and climbed the plank up to
the stranded barge to ask if Cy wanted help with his mules. They
was company mules but two good teams, and Lee told Cy that he could
take all four up to a farm near Seneca that occasionally took on
mules for the winter, and then bring ‘em down to Cy’s boat again in
the spring. That way Cy wouldn’t have to take them almost fifty
miles out to the canal company’s main winter farm in Sharpsburg.
That Sharpsburg farmer practically starved the mules all winter
anyway, cutting straw into their feed, and in the spring they could
barely walk, much less pull, until you fattened them up on corn and
hay. Lee’s farmer friend in Seneca knew Mr. Nicolson, the manager
of the canal, so Lee was sure his friend could get the company to
pay for wintering the mules.

Standing on the deck and leaning back
against the windowless forward wall of the cabin, Cy hadn’t
answered Lee right away. Instead he looked him over like he was
trying to decide whether Lee was working some kind of angle. It
turned out Cy was right, but Lee didn’t know it yet, since he first
met Katie a few minutes later! She came walking up the towpath from
Swains, and Cy saw her approach from over Lee’s shoulder. A young
boy followed a ways back, scavenging rocks that he could toss
toward the scattered puddles at the bottom of the drained canal.
Without saying anything, Cy walked past Lee and stepped onto the
fall-board. Lee followed and they descended to the thawing mud on
the bank below the towpath, then climbed up to meet her. Lee
noticed that Cy walked with a slight limp on his left side, so
maybe the surliness came from physical pain.

It was the last day of November, opaque and
dingy, but whatever sunlight managed to slant through the clouds
seemed to get tied up in Katie’s face and hair as she approached.
She was wearing a wool coat but no hat, and her wavy hair glinted
in the gray light. Lee felt a strange current run through his
chest. He tugged the brim of his flat cap down, pushed his hands
deep into his coat pockets and kicked self-consciously at a lump of
mud on the side of his boot. Katie stopped when she reached them
and smiled at Lee before turning to Cy.

“Did you find Jess Swain?” Cy asked.

“Cyrus, don’t be rude. Aren’t you going to
introduce me to your friend before you interrogate me?”

Cy grunted and turned toward Lee, and Lee
saw the dark depressions beneath his eyes that he hadn’t noticed
from further away. “My little sister Katie Elgin.” The towheaded
boy came trotting up next to her, stealing glances up at Lee and
Cy, who ignored him. “And our kid brother, Pete.” Cy looked back at
Katie. “This is Lee from Captain Myers’ boat.”

“Lee Fisher,” he said, removing his cap with
a smile and extending his hand toward Katie. “I’m pleased to meet
you.” And the skin on the inside of his wrist had been singed when
she touched it softly with her index finger.

Katie studied Lee for an instant through
hazel eyes, then turned to Cy and confirmed that Jess Swain had
offered to give her and Pete a lift to the railroad station on
Monday in time to catch the afternoon train to Williamsport. So
they had the rest of the day and tomorrow morning to get Cy’s boat
squared away. And Katie had convinced Cy that he would be a fool
not to accept Lee’s offer to take the mules to the Seneca farm,
since with Pete and the mules taken care of, Cy would be free to
pursue the unspecified business he claimed to have in Georgetown.
Lee could meet them tomorrow morning at Swains Lock and accompany
Cy to the stable on River Road, where Cy had been given permission
to keep the mules for the weekend.

And so Lee had seen Katie on the following
morning as well. By which point he’d already decided to take care
of the mules at his family’s farm over the winter. He arrived at
Swains early, hoping Katie might be there early as well, and she
was. And Cy was late, coming not from his stranded boat, but from
down the towpath toward Great Falls. Lee and Katie sat at the
picnic table behind the lockhouse and talked for half an hour while
Pete darted around finding stones to throw at a rotting tree.
During their conversation Lee collected a fistful of gems to
meditate on through the coming winter. Among them was that she
would probably return in the spring to drop Pete off again and help
Cy prepare the boat for the 1924 season.

Then Jess Swain had come down from the main
house in his Model T to collect Katie and Pete. Lee watched them
leave for the train station and felt a warm rush when Katie glanced
back at him as the car pulled away. Cy limped into the backyard ten
minutes later, unshaven and bloodshot, and nodded curtly toward
Lee. They walked up Swains Lock Road to the stable on River Road,
where they fed and watered the mules and harnessed them into a team
of four. Then Lee mounted Jewel and set out for Seneca with Ed,
Belle, and Lila following.

That had been December 1, he thought, as he
loosened the vise screw and laid another drilled pole on the floor.
And when he’d seen her again two days ago, it was as if no time had
passed at all. On Saturday morning, he’d driven Cy’s mules down
from his family’s farm in Seneca. He was proud of the team, since
they were well-fed and groomed sleek after a winter under his care.
He walked the mules down Swains Lock Road to the canal and tied
them to a hitching rail. When he circled to the front of the
lockhouse, there she was, coming out the front door on her way to
Cy’s boat.