SWAINS LOCK (The River Trilogy, book 1) (6 page)

Kelsey leaned forward to drop below the
windows, then flicked the lighter and played it over the pipe bowl,
drawing steadily. The flame drew down toward the bottom of the bowl
as an encircling orange glow rose toward the surface. When the glow
subsided, she exhaled and passed the ensemble to Miles.

He tapped the pipe against his boot to empty
it, then ducked down to refill it for a long hit. A bud caught fire
and he nodded in approval, exhaling with a cough as he passed the
pipe to Des. “That’s good shit,” he croaked. Des dropped down and
Miles popped up, eyeing their perimeter. No one was watching. A
small cloud of smoke was forming in the car and drifting toward the
tops of the windows and the open tailgate window. He looked out
over the water upstream. They were halfway across the river.

Des surfaced, gave him a conspiratorial
look, and handed him the dugout, pipe, and lighter again. He
forwarded them to Kelsey but she pressed them back, and in the
exchange the pipe fell to the floor and skidded under the seat.
Miles rocked forward into a crouch and twisted to reach for it, and
his back pushed the beams closer to the steering column. “Got it,”
he said, thrusting his arm further under the seat and grasping the
pipe. And instantly the car lurched, then started rolling
backward.

“Shit, we’re in reverse!” Des said.

“Shift back!” Miles said, but the gearshift
arm was pinned against the beams. He reached around them and tried
to pull them away from the steering column as Des leaned into them
from the driver’s side.

“Hit the brakes!” Kelsey said.

Des stomped her foot onto the pedal and the
car accelerated backward. “Shit!” she yelled. She shifted her foot,
stomped again, and missed both pedals as the wagon crashed into the
gate behind them. The gate held for a split-second before the
gate-post sheared in two at a rusty spot near its base. Carrying
the snapped-off post with it, the gate swung wide over the water.
The wagon’s rear wheels powered clear of the ferry and its
undercarriage dropped quickly to the deck. Momentum kept the front
wheels turning for another foot before the wagon stopped for an
instant, its fulcrum defined. The paving stones prevailed, and the
wagon’s tail fell with a powerful splash into the churning water
behind the ferry. A wave coursed over the tailgate and into the
car. The ferry’s transom scraped forward along the wagon’s
undercarriage, hit and spun the front tires, gave a parting smack
to the underside of the front bumper, and then left the wagon
half-submerged in its swirling wake. The car’s front end tilted
skyward as its tail sunk quickly under the weight of the stones.
Water surged up to and over the dashboard.

“Windows!” Miles yelled, reaching past
Kelsey to claw at the passenger door. Kelsey groped through the
chest-high water until she found the handle, then spun the window
open. The river poured in, knocking her back toward Miles. Her left
temple struck the edge of a floating beam, and Miles saw a stream
of blood flow across her cheekbone. Only a sliver of air remained
between the car’s ceiling and the rising tide. Heart pounding,
Miles tilted his head to capture a breath from the vanishing air
pocket as water shot to the ceiling. It tasted like smoke. A
counter-wave from his left pushed the beams into his ribs and he
felt an arm against his lower leg, then a biting pain in his ankle.
Underwater now, he twisted blindly toward the window and spread his
arms. His right hand brushed Kelsey and found the frame of the
submerged window. He opened his eyes and saw brown water, his own
pale arm, the window frame, and Kelsey’s legs receding. Past the
windshield, he saw the front end of the wagon drop below the
surface.

He gripped the edges of the frame with both
hands and pulled his head through the window. When his shoulders
reached the opening he looked up to see light refracting through
water, and he realized the wagon was sinking tail-first toward the
bottom of the river. Fuck! He tried to pull himself past the frame
but something held his ankle. He kicked with both legs and his
chest began to burn. He could move his left foot a few inches, but
whatever held his ankle would not let go. The water grew colder and
darker.

He let himself float for a second and felt
the chilled water flow past his chest and forehead as he stared
upward at the receding light and the pressure mounted in his ears.
His upper arms flexed violently against the window frame as his
legs flailed. Three seconds. Four. Five. Rest. Can’t rest. Lungs
burning. Motherfucker! He pulled his head back into the car and
twisted toward his ankle, which felt like it was trapped somewhere
under the front seat. All of the beams were askew now, floating
randomly inside the falling wagon. Two of them were wedged against
the underside of the dash, and he drove his shoulder into them as
he groped downward to find what was holding his leg. Rest for an
instant. Reach around the beams! No use. He twisted back to grab
the window frame, then yanked fiercely against the vise that
gripped his leg. Once. Again. Again! Goddammit! Lungs on fire.
Exploding now. Hold. One. Two… release. The fire subsided as he
exhaled a shower of bubbles. Don’t blow through your straw, Miles.
He almost giggled when he realized he’d accidentally drawn a small
stream of water into his mouth. He swallowed it, then instinctively
took a full breath, and the river filled his lungs. I’m dying. The
dugout floated across his field of vision, a strange symbol on its
face. One last trickle of bubbles, then a crushing pain he could
not expel. Waiting for the bus and Carlin said cry me a river. The
tension on his ankle slackened momentarily as the wagon’s tail
found the ancient riverbed. I said unchain my heart. His irises
relaxed and his fingers unfolded toward the fading light.

Chapter 4
Candles

Sunday, October 22, 1995

Vin examined the bottles on the medicine
rack in the pantry. “Doxycycline. Ivermectin. Diazepam.” Then
“Gentamicin. Nicky Hayes, DVM. Spray affected area twice per day
for 7-10 days. 04/19/96.” He shook the bottle to feel its contents
slosh around – over half full. Must be part of Nicky’s stash from
her residency at Tufts. He took the bottle back to the foyer.

Kelsey had stepped further into the room
during his absence, and she smiled weakly at his approach. From a
discreet distance she’d been studying the photo of Lee and K. Elgin
on the table top. “That looks like an old shot of Great Falls,” she
said. “Could I take a closer look?”

Her voice sounded thinner, almost strained.
“Sure,” Vin said, handing it to her. “I found it behind some planks
in an old wall.” He felt a transient annoyance that he’d left it
lying face up on the table. Why does that bother me, he wondered.
Was he already feeling attached to Lee and the girl? Or was it
because he knew nothing about this woman standing in his house?

“This is interesting,” Kelsey said, her
normal voice returning. “I’m a photographer and I’ve taken lots of
pictures of the Falls. You can tell that this wasn’t shot from the
observation deck on the Maryland side. It has a slightly different
vantage point.” Vin stepped around to her shoulder as she centered
the photograph and focused intently. “This must have been taken
from the end of the old path across Olmsted Island.”

“We just moved here, and we haven’t been out
to Great Falls yet,” he admitted. “We’ve started biking the towpath
on Saturday afternoons, so maybe next weekend...” He gently took
the photo from her and returned it to the table, feeling strangely
relieved that she hadn’t flipped it over to read the names on the
back.

“You should take the walkway out to the
observation deck,” she said. “It’s spectacular.”

Trying to redirect the conversation, he held
out the Gentamicin. “I think this is what Nicky wanted me to give
you.” As she scanned the label, he processed her previous words.
“Are you a professional photographer?”

She glanced up and nodded, then told him
that most of her work involved events like weddings, graduations,
and Bar Mitzvahs. When Vin said he and Nicky were getting married
in the D.C. area next fall and needed a photographer, she asked if
they’d chosen a date. He shook his head; both the date and place
were still up in the air. But they wanted to be married outdoors,
at a venue where they could hold both the wedding and the
reception. Kelsey told him popular venues were booked a year in
advance, and photographers were quickly slotted into those dates.
She already had a few weddings booked for next fall.

“Right,” he said glumly, realizing how much
remained unplanned. “Do you have a card?” She had one in the car,
so he walked her out to the driveway and watched her retrieve her
purse from a charcoal-gray Audi with dark tinted glass. She fished
out a business-card holder and handed him a card, telling him to
schedule a visit to her studio. He waved as she drove off, then
looked at the card in his hand. The address was a listing on River
Road, like practically every other business in the small suburb of
Potomac… maybe in the same strip mall as the hardware store he’d
visited today. In the corner, he read “Kelsey Ainge, Partner.” The
studio name was printed in white reversed on forest green. “Thomas,
Ainge Photography.” He read the tagline below it twice to make sure
he’d read it correctly. It said “Today Made Timeless.”

***

By the time Nicky’s car pulled into the
driveway a little after four, Vin had drilled the required holes
and connected the limbs of the driftwood letters with bolts.

“Gimme an N!”, he said, holding up the N
with both hands as she emerged from the car.

Nicky laughed. “Looks like you already got
one.” He could hear the fatigue in her voice as she approached.

“Welcome home,” he said, kissing her lightly
on the lips. “Long day, considering you were expecting a day
off.”

She exhaled and told him that her day had
started off with a cat with a compound fracture, and the pace had
accelerated from there. She felt lucky to escape by four. How was
his day? “Kind of interesting.” He told her about his visit to the
old shed on the hillside and his discovery of the drill and
photograph behind the planks. They walked inside and headed for the
living-room couch. Vin let Randy in from the deck as Nicky read Lee
Fisher’s note.

“Swains Lock. We were there yesterday,” she
said. “And ‘I may be buried along with the others’? What a creepy
thought.” She examined the photo, turning it over to read the
notation on the back. “K. Elgin is the girl?”

“That’s my guess. Assuming the guy is Lee
Fisher.”

“She reminds me of someone, but I can’t
think who.”

“I forgot to mention…the dog-fight lady came
by this afternoon to pick up the meds. Turns out she’s a
professional photographer. Kelsey Ainge. She handles weddings and
events. I got her card, for what it’s worth.”

“Hmm,” Nicky said. “You never know.”

Vin put his legs up on the table and asked
when they were due at the Tuckermans. “Seven,” Nicky said, rocking
back into the cushion beside him, “but first we can open your
presents and nap for a bit. Then you get to meet the natives.”

***

Sitting on a bone-colored leather couch, Vin
watched Doug Tuckerman lean forward in his armchair to carefully
balance a slab of soft cheese on an overmatched cracker. Doug
interrupted his sermon to wash the cracker down with scotch on the
rocks. He’d been expounding on the obstacles his firm faced in its
efforts to convert idled farmland on the periphery of the city into
condominiums and office parks. Doug’s wife Abby said something
about schools and Nicky asked what she thought. No one wanted to
send their kids to public schools in D.C., Abby said. Only the
lobbyists and the lawyers needed to work downtown, and they could
afford to live in Georgetown and underwrite the city’s blue-blood
private schools.

Vin liked Abby right away. She had an open,
earnest manner and an animated mien. Brown eyes and light brown
hair that swayed and caught the light and made him think of horses.
Her husband was representative of the forty-something parents Vin
saw prowling around Potomac – large-boned and a bit jowly, with a
helmet of dark hair turning gray at the temples. His sprawling
belly was held in check by a blue oxford shirt tucked into pleated
linen pants. Doug swirled the cubes in his scotch glass with stubby
fingers while Abby tried to draw Vin into the conversation by
asking how he and Nicky had met.

“It was at the end of last summer, on Cape
Cod,” he said. “Some mutual friends of ours were having a party at
their summer house in West Falmouth over Labor Day weekend.” It had
been foggy on Sunday morning, Vin remembered, and he and Randy had
caught up to a group of friends heading out along the beach to go
clamming in the marsh. Nicky was with them, wearing a cotton
sweater and shorts. She had long legs and a quick smile, and her
eyes were bluer than the slate-blue water.

Nicky picked up the thread. “I was just
starting the last year of my residency at Tufts, so I didn’t have
much free time, but he was persistent.” She smirked at Vin, who
deflected the expression with open palms and addressed Abby.

“I was smitten. We dated while Nicky took
her exams and finished up her residency, and then we spent six
weeks in late summer hiking in Wyoming and Montana.” Nicky
mentioned that they’d gotten engaged on a hike in Glacier National
Park. “Sitting on a rock outcropping with our feet dangling over a
six-hundred-foot drop,” Vin added. “I told her I would jump if she
said no.”

“You did not.”

“When’s the wedding?” Doug asked.

Vin looked at Nicky and she raised her
eyebrows, allowing him to answer. “Sometime next fall,” he said.
“We still need to pick a date and a place, but we’ll get married
here. My parents are in Maine, Nicky’s folks live in Arizona now,
and our friends and siblings are scattered around, so the D.C. area
seems like as good a place as anywhere.”