SWAINS LOCK (The River Trilogy, book 1) (25 page)

“Cyrus, aren’t you feeling well? You’re
bundled up like you’re going to the North Pole!”

“Never mind that,” he grumbled. “You know
which way the crow flies. I’m headed down to Great Falls, so count
me out for dinner.” He adjusted the contours of his hat and put it
on. “You feed the mules?”

Katie nodded. “Take Jewel. I saddled her for
you.”

He limped around to the small corral near
the backyard, then led Jewel back toward the lock, where Katie took
the reins to guide her across. Jewel was a good one, Cy thought, a
veteran canal mule. The walkway didn’t scare her. He shuffled
across, put a hand on the pommel, and bit his lip as he mounted the
mule.

“Keep an eye on the lock,” he said, turning
Jewel down the towpath. “And don’t wait up for me. I’ll be
late.”

***

After Cy and Jewel disappeared down the
towpath, Katie headed for the berm above the entrance to the lock.
Pete was kneeling in a floating green canoe that was tied to a tree
and served as a platform from which he could launch a parade of
broken sticks into the lazy current. They drifted toward the mouth
of the flume, crossed the threshold, and accelerated down the ramp
toward the next level of the canal.

“Pete! Doesn’t that canoe have a leak in
it?”

Pete looked up from his stick-launching
position. “It’s OK. The hole is way above the water. Even when Cy
and me was both in it, it didn’t leak.”

Katie looked at the rack of canoes nearby.
“Still, can’t you use one of the good canoes?”

“Nope,” Pete said. “Cause of the cable.
They’s all locked to the rack.” He selected more sticks from his
collection and leaned back over the gunwale.

“Pete,” Katie said. “I’m going to set out
soup and cornbread for you in the kitchen. After that, I need to
visit a friend for a few hours. Cy wants you to stay near the house
while I’m gone, in case any boats need help locking through. Five
more minutes, then it’s dinnertime.”

She headed for the lockhouse kitchen. After
heating up Pete’s dinner, she assessed the cask on the table. When
she pushed lightly against the rim, it felt almost full. Good. She
counted Cy’s empty pint flasks in the crate. Forty-four was the
kind of number he would remember – better not take one. His
personal flask was lying on the table. She could return it before
he missed it. She unscrewed the cap and as she filled the flask her
eyes fell on the name inscribed on the holster. “C. F. Elgin.” The
leather was worn smooth from years of encounters with his
hands.

She slipped it into the pocket of her coat
on the rack and retreated to the bathroom, where she examined
herself in the mirror. She straightened the collar on her dress,
smiled at herself, and ran both hands through her wavy hair,
letting it fall against her neck. Her smile drained into an
expression of resolve and her eyes sought out the eyes in the
mirror for reassurance. She was being guided now by something
inapprehensible in those hazel eyes, and whatever it was left no
room for uncertainty or fear. Her fingers idly stroked the pendant
necklace before falling to smooth the wrinkles on her dress.

Remembering the photo, she climbed the
stairs to her bedroom and retrieved a stiff paper folder. She
opened it and looked at the image inside. They both looked so
solemn! It was a beautiful picture, framed by rocks and water on
all sides, but it couldn’t capture the essence of Great Falls. The
motion, the power, the endlessness – all were missing. She carried
the folder downstairs. By now it was past 5:00 so she took her coat
and left the lockhouse.

“Pete!” she called toward the green canoe,
“get out and go in for dinner! Now!”

“OK, OK!” Pete said, scowling at his
sister’s intransigence as he climbed out.

Folder and photograph in hand, Katie set off
for Pennyfield.

***

Cy tied Jewel to a tree near Lock 20. The
sun hadn’t set but the outdoor lights of the Tavern were lit. Near
the entrance, half a dozen cars were parked in the dirt lot at the
end of the driveway. Two Fords, a Packard, and three he couldn’t
identify. He crossed over the lock.

Three round tables were set up on the bricks
under the portico, two empty and the third occupied by men he
didn’t recognize. He passed the tables and rounded the corner to
the tall facade of the T-shaped building. Standing near the
entrance was skinny Billy Walters, whom Cy had seen in the same
position the past two nights. His jacket was buttoned almost to his
collar, revealing only the knot of his necktie.

“Good evenin’, Mr. Cy.”

“Evenin’, Billy.” Cy buried his hands in his
overcoat and jerked his head toward the nearby cars at the end of
the driveway. “How’s business tonight?”

“Oh, passable… passable for a Friday.” Billy
looked out at the cars and pushed his hands into his own pockets as
if the cooling air were slowly penetrating his bones. “Should be a
few more parties coming in through the evening. Getting warmer now
in the city, some of them folks want to motor out to the Falls and
take the night air.”

“That’s good,” Cy said. “Anyone here you
think I should meet?”

Billy’s brow furrowed before a smile flashed
across his face. “Could be,” he said. “There was two English gents
staying at the Inn. They left a while ago but said they would be
back for dinner. They was in a new Chandler Six.”

Cy pulled two quarters from his pocket and
handed them to Billy. “I’ll be at my table,” he said. “Send them
over if they sound interested. Anyone else looks thirsty, you can
do the same.”

“Happy to do it, Mr. Cy.” Billy nodded and
shifted his weight from foot to foot, hands again stuffed in his
pockets.

Cy turned back toward the patio. Standing
still after riding had tightened the ligaments of his hip, and the
cords awoke with a jarring throb. He clenched his teeth as he
limped back around the corner. The two far tables were still empty
and he opted for most distant. It was past six now, so the walkway
out to the Falls was closed. Twilight meant that sightseers on the
towpath would find their way back to the Tavern. And some of the
crew from the repair scows should be milling around as well. He sat
down in a chair that gave him a view back up along the patio and
across Lock 20 to the towpath. Suddenly tired, he rubbed the
gray-blond stubble on his cheeks while stifling a yawn. It would be
a long night. He placed his index fingers against the bridge of his
nose and slowly pulled them apart, tightening the sagging skin
beneath his eyes.

***

“I’m slipping off!”, Katie screeched, her
laughter extending the last syllable into vibrato.

“I got you,” Lee said earnestly. He stood on
the pedals and supported her back with his shoulder while gripping
the handles and pedaling hard to maintain momentum. She braced
against his shoulder while trying to balance her thighs diagonally
across the bars. The wheels crossed a fallen stick on the towpath
that set the bike wobbling, and his foot slipped off the pedal when
Katie’s weight shifted. It was no use. He squeezed the brake and
brought the bike to a stop, planted a leg on the towpath, and
lowered the frame until her feet reached the ground.

She straightened her coat and dress. “Is
that the end of my ride?” she asked with unconvincing indignation.
“We barely made a quarter mile!”

Lee shook his head apologetically and
smiled. “I guess I need more practice before I join the
circus.”

“I’d say so,” Katie admonished. “I think
circus riders can cross a tightrope on a bicycle.”

“But they don’t have a pretty girl
distracting them,” he said, heart pounding both from exertion and
the exposure of its intent.

Katie looked away. “I think they have a
balance pole. You might try one of those.”

Lee conjured this circus image to avoid
parsing her response. “How could they hold the pole and the
handlebars at the same time? Maybe you meant a unicycle.”

She looked at the empty stretch of towpath
ahead. “So what about your plan to watch the sunset?”

“The spot’s only a mile away. We can walk.”
He leaned the bike against a young tree, then opened the tool
compartment and pulled out the leg-irons he used as a lock.

“Who are you planning to arrest with those?
They look like they fell off a chain gang.”

“I found ‘em at the war surplus store in
Georgetown,” he said. “They work OK as a lock.” Both cuffs were
open, so he clamped one around the top tube and the other around
the tree. They fit with an inch or two to spare. He tugged the
chain to make sure both cuffs were locked and propped the bike
against the far side of the tree. “It’s Charlie’s bike, so I need
to make sure some towpath drifter don’t ride off with it. I reckon
we’ll be back before anyone decides to cut down that tree. You
ready to walk?”

“The sunset won’t wait.”

He thought about offering Katie his hand but
decided to wait. It was better to build up to that. They walked
side by side through the slanting rays of early evening. He asked
about her visit to the Glen Echo amusement park with Pete and her
friend. The season was just starting and the roller coaster wasn’t
open yet, but they rode the Carousel and tried the bumper cars on
the new Skooter ride. And Pete had loved the Hall of Mirrors.

Alexandria was nice, Katie said, but not as
interesting as Georgetown. One of the things she’d liked best was
crossing the river from Georgetown to Rosslyn on the new Key
Bridge. It seemed like the roadway was a hundred feet above the
water, and you could see the Washington Monument and the Capitol
presiding over the D.C. skyline to the east. Looking west you saw
the tiny Three Sisters islands poking up from the middle of the
river, and beyond them the tree-lined banks and the broad Potomac
receding into the distance upstream.

When she occasionally boated with her father
growing up, she said she always looked forward to the days they
spent unloading in Georgetown. After visiting the paymaster’s
office, her father would give Katie and her brother George two
dollars each as payment for the run from Cumberland to Georgetown.
Then Katie and George would go up to M Street, to the Candy
Kitchen. Mostly they bought caramels and black licorice, but when
it was really hot they bought ice cream and banana splits. That was
when she was ten. After that Katie stopped boating so she wouldn’t
miss school in the spring and fall. Cy and George quit school after
eighth grade and worked on the canal during the season and around
Williamsport during the winters.

Shortly after the towpath began to curve,
Lee pointed to a narrow seam that carried a small spring down to
the canal from the steepening berm. Past the drainage, the berm
rose into wooded cliffs that looked out over the canal, the
towpath, and river to their left through the trees.

“That little creek comes down the hill from
Blockhouse Point,” he said. “So the 21-mile marker should be just
ahead.” When they reached it, the apron of woods between the
towpath and the river was only thirty feet wide. Lee helped Katie
down onto the path to a cove-like eddy fringed by a sandy beach and
thick sycamores leaning out over the water. The sun had fallen
below the horizon and pale pink and orange streaks were emerging in
the sky.

Shallow whitewater twisted through a field
of low rocks in the center of the river. Lee pointed upstream past
the rocks and a narrow island. “If you listen hard,” he said, “you
can hear the rapids above that island. That’s Seneca Falls, though
it ain’t really much of a falls. Just fast, shallow water. Above
Seneca Falls is Dam 2, where the feeder comes in at Violettes Lock.
And Seneca Creek, where I growed up, is less than a mile past
Violettes.”

“I remember seeing rowboats and kids
swimming when our boat crossed over Seneca Creek on the aqueduct,”
Katie said. She sat down on a fallen trunk at the near end of the
cove, facing the sunset with her feet on the sand. She gestured for
Lee to join her and a little surge of pride rippled through his
chest as he walked over.

“Did you do all your boating and fishing in
the creek, or did you get out onto the river?”

“We’d do both,” he said. “Fish in the creek
sometimes, or take canoes out under the aqueduct into the river.
Come downstream and explore. We could pick our way through the
rapids along the Maryland shore, then paddle home on the canal.
There was a rope swing into the river from a tree just down the
shore, near where that creek come down from Blockhouse Point. Or
sometimes we’d pull our canoes up on this beach and carry ‘em up to
the canal. We’d paddle to that gulch, leave the canoes on the berm,
and follow the creek uphill into the woods. Climb up to the cliffs
and look out at the river.”

He turned to look at Katie. She was staring
at the colors of sunset over the water upstream, seemingly lost in
thought. He waited for her to say something but she just turned
toward him and smiled, which encouraged him to finish his
story.

“The Union Army used to scout the river from
these cliffs during the Civil War,” he said, looking back at the
steep slope of the berm. “They’d try to stop the rebels from
fording the river and raiding the canal. If the rebels could split
the towpath and drain a level, that would cut the supply lines to
Washington. So the Union built a blockhouse camp up there in the
woods. Once my friend Raymond and me went exploring up there and
found some old foundation walls near the creek. Raymond found a
medicine bottle and I found a bayonet blade. I took it home and I
still have it.” He turned toward Katie again and exhaled, happy to
have shared his reminiscence. She was idly toeing an eyebrow-shaped
arc in the sand.

“Did you ever find something as a kid that
you kept and still have?” he asked.

She turned as if pulled back from a distance
and her hand floated to the reddish sandstone pendant that hung
against her breastbone. “I found this necklace on the riverbank
when I was nine,” she said, her hazel eyes focusing intently on Lee
for a second before drifting again. “I had never seen anything like
it before. I remember thinking that it must be very old.”