SWAINS LOCK (The River Trilogy, book 1) (20 page)

Kevin chuckled and spat a stream onto the
towpath. “After every trip…whether they need it or not!” He wiped
juice from his lower lip, then continued in a confiding voice.
“Mike and Bess are a good team. They don’t call for much special
attention.”

“My stomach is calling for a little special
attention,” Tom said. He had pulled his knife from its sheath and
was using the tip to explore the undersides of his fingernails.

“You speak for us all, my brother,” Kevin
said. “Lee, how about you join us for a bite of supper while we
rest the mules?”

Lee’s stomach growled at the mention of
food. He’d made himself a stack of pancakes for breakfast but
overlooked lunch. “I guess I’m hungry enough,” he said.

“Well we have some commendable bean soup we
can offer you, courtesy of my faithful Ellie,” Kevin said. “Tom and
I were savoring it last night when we both realized that it might
benefit from a little added smokiness. Maybe a few slices of smoked
beef or pork.”

Tom flipped his knife in the air and caught
it by the handle in mid-rotation. “Fresh turtle’d be better still,
if you got one. Slice him up and stew him. We got a stove of hot
coals going in the galley.”

Lee exhaled in resignation. “I ain’t caught
no turtles this year. Hardly even seen one yet. But I got a quarter
leg of cured ham in the lockhouse. My mother sent it with me when
she heard I might be down at Pennyfield for a week. I’ll take a few
cuts and bring ‘em on board.”

“We’ll take care of the libations,” Kevin
said.

Lee walked back to the lockhouse and hacked
three slices out of the ham leg in the kitchen. He carried a diced
plateful back out to the scow. Kevin and Tom had raised hatch
number five and were tossing aside the top layer of firewood
beneath it to reveal a large wooden barrel, lying on its side. They
struggled to raise one end of the barrel a few inches, and Tom
pushed a log underneath to keep it tilted. Kevin held a ceramic jug
under a tap on the opposite end. He twisted the tap open and a
clear liquid flowed from the barrel. When the jug was half full,
Kevin shut off the tap and they put the barrel, the cord-wood and
the hatch back in place.

“I think you’ll find that Washington County
moonshine brings out the flavor in that ham,” Kevin said to Lee. He
spat the remainder of his chaw into the canal and gestured for Lee
to follow him to the stern cabin. “And Ellie’s bean soup just seems
a little lost without it.” The cabin was six feet long and ten feet
wide – two feet narrower than the scow – with a square window on
each side. Lee ducked his head as he shuffled down the three narrow
steps and through the door. The first thing he saw was a
coal-burning stove in the right-front corner. Tom was already using
a long spoon to stir the contents of a stew pot on the burner. Lee
gave him the plate of ham chunks and Tom grunted an acknowledgement
as he dumped the ham into the pot. The warmth from the stove
permeated the cabin and for Lee was a welcome change from the cool
late-afternoon air outside.

To the left of the stove on the forward wall
was a freestanding cupboard that held assorted plates, bowls, cups
and utensils in its lower shelves and the limited provisions of the
Emorys’ kitchen behind its single door. Beans, a few eggs, five or
six potatoes, flour, Crisco, coffee, and sugar. Below the window to
Lee’s left, two narrow bunks were built into the wall, one above
the other. To the immediate left of the entryway, a small drop-leaf
table was anchored to the aft wall, its free end projecting into
the room. Two wooden stools stood alongside it.

“Welcome to Emory’s house of fine dining,”
Kevin said, extending the table to its full length and pushing one
of the stools toward Lee with his boot. He retrieved three
mismatched tin cups and two glazed-clay bowls from the cupboard and
put them on the table. Not finding another bowl, he settled on a
small frying pan and put that on the table as well, along with
banged-up metal spoons. “With no woman on board, meals are a little
less elegant than we like them to be.” He splashed a few fingers of
moonshine from the jug into each of the cups. At the stove, Tom
ladled overflowing spoonfuls of bean soup into the bowls and frying
pan, then ferried them to the table. Kevin collected his cup and
the frying pan and sat back on the lower bunk, facing Lee across
the table. Tom took the stool to Lee’s right.

Lee salivated as the smell of hot soup rose
to his nostrils. He put a spoonful in his mouth and the soup’s heat
warmed his whole body. Navy beans, large chunks of softened
potatoes, stewed tomatoes that had almost dissolved, and a bit of
onion. And Kevin was right that the ham made a difference. He
greedily took another spoonful.

Lee watched Kevin tilt his cup back and
close his eyes while not swallowing, just letting the raw whiskey
massage his lips and trickle into his mouth. Kevin opened his eyes
and inhaled sharply. “Now that, cousin, is the taste of money.
Thanks to our friends in Washington, D.C.” Tom snorted
contemptuously between slurped spoonfuls, then threw back a slug of
whiskey without taking his eyes off his bowl.

Lee stared at the three fingers of moonshine
in his own cup, and the alcohol vapors made his eyes water. He
emulated Kevin, taking a slow sip and holding it in his mouth. The
heat was round and almost palpable but the whiskey had very little
taste. When he swallowed, it sent a warm kick into his chest that
briefly expelled the air from his lungs. He lowered the cup and
slurped air as his eyes teared up. “It may be money,” he said,
turning back to his soup, “but it sure ain’t legal tender. How much
are you hauling?”

“Two barrels for a customer in Georgetown,”
Kevin said, digging back into the soup. “Fifty-three gallons each.”
He belched and wiped his lips on his hand. “And another barrel to
sell by the gallon along the canal. We got customers at a few of
the locks and stores. And some fixing to be middlemen, like your
friend who got stuck down at the end of this level.”

“You mean the captain on number 41?” Lee
said, caught off-guard. “Cy Elgin?”

“The same,” Kevin said. “We met him near the
end of last season and did a little business. He sent word he
wanted to catch us on the first run of the year. Said he’d be
starting out from a stuck boat above Swains, and a young feller
from Seneca who boated with Ben Myers was bringing his mules down
from winter quarters.” Kevin stopped for another drawn-out sip of
moonshine. “That’s how we knowed you’d be down on this part of the
canal. So we figured you could boat with us back up to Harpers
Ferry on our way home.”

Tom finished scraping puddles from the
bottom of his bowl and leaned away from the table. “Always good to
get another pair of hands on board,” he said, belching and looking
at Lee with expressionless eyes.

“And a third set of legs on the towpath,”
Kevin said with a wink. “One trick on, two tricks off. Allows for
family conversation at the tiller.” He pushed the empty frying pan
onto the table before knocking back the rest of his whiskey with a
wrist tilt, then put the cup down and rubbed his reddish-brown
mustache. “So we was wondering, cousin,” he said, “how you got tied
up with Cyrus Elgin in the first place. He don’t really seem like
your type.” Tom had pulled his knife from its sheath and was
holding it a few inches above the table, then dropping its point to
the wooden slab. When the stuck knife stopped wobbling, he repeated
the process.

Lee explained that when he heard Cy was
stranded on the drained White Oak Springs level, he’d offered to
find a winter farm for Cy’s mules. Lee was going to give his farmer
friend in Seneca the chance to earn a few dollars but had decided
to take care of the mules himself instead. He was planning to
request the standard fee from the canal company, since the company
generally paid to have its mules wintered. “I never got an opinion
of Cy from last season,” he added. “Just saw him coming and going a
few times. Didn’t seem like a real friendly guy, but I never heard
of him causing trouble neither.”

“You might want to keep an eye in the back
of your head when he’s around,” Kevin said. “Based on what we heard
last fall, he ain’t your typical ditch runner.”

Lee nodded, remembering Cy’s bloodshot
arrival at Swains last December, too late to see off Katie and
Pete. “I know he growed up boating out of Williamsport, then moved
away to Philadelphia during the war,” Lee said. “Worked as a welder
in the Navy boatyard there. His sister told me he fell off a
scaffold and broke his hip.”

Tom left his knife wobbling in the impaled
table as he leered at Kevin, who leaned toward Lee with a slowly
spreading grin. “You met his sister?”

“I met her last season, when she come down
to help Cy close up the boat,” Lee said warily. “Seen her a few
times, I guess.”

“She’s a looker,” Kevin said. “Short blond
hair, kind of flirty. Going on twenty or twenty-one, maybe?”

Lee flushed and stared at the moonshine in
his cup. “That don’t sound exactly like Katie,” he said. “She’s
only eighteen. Could be you met her sister.”

Kevin chuckled and shook his head. He bent
forward to snare the jug from the table, then poured himself a
refill and sat back on the bunk. “Oh, I think we met the same girl.
She was with Cy when we did a little business with him in
Williamsport last fall. We was doing a run upstream and he was home
for a few days between trips.”

Lee looked at Kevin in surprise. It stung
him a little that his cousins knew Katie, and he bought time with
another slow sip of whiskey. That Cy would associate with the
Emorys didn’t surprise him, but Katie – whose fingers had singed
his wrist, and who had worn her Sunday dress to walk with him out
to Great Falls yesterday – that felt like a minor injustice. When
Lee lowered his cup, Tom had resumed dropping his knife into the
table. Kevin ran a meaty hand through his streaked hair and gave
Lee a sincere look.

“I’d keep an eye on her as well, cousin,” he
said. “She strikes me as the kind of girl that can make a man see
whatever he wants to see.”

Lee felt the skin around his temples burn.
He focused on the knife stabbing the table. Tom plucked it free
with a flourish, sheathed it, and looked at Kevin. “Still got six
miles of boating to Widewater, and we got to get through Swains and
Six Locks first.”

“Quite true, my brother,” Kevin said. He put
his hands on his knees and rose heavily from the bunk. “Cousin Lee,
thanks for joining us at Emory’s house of fine dining.” He dug into
his hip pouch for a plug of tobacco, which he crammed into the side
of his mouth and worked into place with his tongue. “We’ll look for
you here in a few days,” he said, spitting stained saliva into the
empty frying pan, “for the trip upstream.”

After subduing his tobacco, Kevin went on to
explain that they planned to tie up at Widewater, below Great
Falls. From there they could make Georgetown by mid-afternoon
tomorrow and meet with their customer tomorrow night. They planned
to spend the following two days in Georgetown before heading back
upstream on Friday. That should get them back to Pennyfield
sometime after noon on Saturday. Lee could boat with them to the
Harpers Ferry level, then find passage up to Hancock to meet Ben
Myers on the number 9 boat. By then the canal should be running all
the way down from Cumberland.

Lee retrieved the ham-plate and followed the
Emorys back up to the deck of the scow, where Tom put the feed
trough away while Lee helped Kevin harness the mules. When they had
the towline rigged, Kevin took the tiller. Tom drove the mules
forward to drain the slack while Lee untied the mooring lines and
tossed them onto the scow. Since the boat was already a hundred
feet out on the next level, the current from the flume provided a
push. “Up now! Git on, Mike!” Tom called out, slapping the mule in
the haunch. Mike and Bess strained against their harnesses and the
scow started moving downstream.

Chapter 15
Paying for Ten

Monday, March 24, 1924

Almost an hour later the scow approached a
company coal barge tied to the berm. Must be Cy Elgin’s number 41,
Kevin thought. He steered a course between the boat and the
towpath. Tom slowed the mules and paused to inspect something on
the bank. “Nobody on board!” he yelled back to Kevin. He kicked at
the long plank as Kevin nodded and held his course.

Around the next shallow bend he saw the
whitewashed face of a lockhouse a thousand feet downstream. It was
partly obscured by something moving, and he realized that a small
boat was heading upstream from the lock. Tom saw it too, because he
blew five quick blasts on the tin horn. As the boats drew closer,
Kevin recognized the familiar lines of a company repair scow. Its
low deck was painted gray and littered with wheelbarrows and bags
of gravel and cement. Two workers sat with their backs against the
cabin wall. In deference to a loaded boat, the repair scow steered
to the berm side of the canal while its mule driver guided his team
to a stop on the outer fringe of the towpath. The repair scow’s
towline slackened, fell into the canal, and slipped beneath the
surface of the water.

Tom guided Mike and Bess forward, and they
stepped carefully over the downed towline as they passed the repair
scow’s team. Even after you’d been on the canal for years, passing
a boat going in the opposite direction was something that made you
pay attention, since there was a half-dozen ways to muck it up.
Kevin doffed his hat as the Emorys’ scow slid over the sunken
towline. “Much obliged, gentlemen!” The dozing workers ignored him.
The captain nodded and the driver restarted his team.

Kevin looked ahead toward Swains Lock, which
he now knew was set for a loaded boat. When Tom blew a series of
blasts, Kevin saw a figure emerge from the lockhouse, traverse the
lock, and proceed haltingly toward the upstream gates. He’s going
to snub us, Kevin thought, as he watched Cy exchange a few words
with Tom. Very accommodating of you, Cy.