If It Is April

by Edward A. Stabler

  IF IT IS APRIL

  Edward A. Stabler

  Kindle Edition

  Copyright 2013 Edward A. Stabler. All Rights Reserved.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your online retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  IF IT IS APRIL is a work of fiction and its characters are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance of these characters to actual persons living or dead is unintended and coincidental.

  Larger versions of the maps below are available on the author’s website, at http://khola.com

  *****

  For Martha,

  and for the men who struggled to build the Paw Paw Tunnel.

  *****

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter 1 – Revisiting

  Chapter 2 – Kinsmen

  Chapter 3 – Ice House

  Chapter 4 – Breakfast

  Chapter 5 – Lunch

  Chapter 6 – House Call

  Chapter 7 – Dinner

  Chapter 8 – Poolesville

  Chapter 9 – Legwork

  Chapter 10 – Bonfire

  Chapter 11 – Williamsport

  Chapter 12 – Glencarlyn

  Chapter 13 – Pointers

  Chapter 14 – Handoff

  Chapter 15 – Reconsidering

  Chapter 16 – Character Reference

  Chapter 17 – Bit Parts

  Chapter 18 – Up and Out

  Chapter 19 – Impressions

  Chapter 20 – Passing Thoughts

  Chapter 21 – Lock Fishing

  Chapter 22 – Postscript

  Chapter 23 – Vapors

  Chapter 24 – Bluffs

  Chapter 25 – Fogland

  Chapter 26 – Shepherdstown

  Chapter 27 – Sharpsburg

  Chapter 28 – Candlelight

  Chapter 29 – Table for Two

  Chapter 30 – Bedrooms

  Chapter 31 – Makers

  Chapter 32 – Shots in the Dark

  Chapter 33 – Circling

  Chapter 34 – Blood-Drop Trail

  Chapter 35 – Backyard Flag

  Chapter 36 – Healing

  Chapter 37 – Riverside Flag

  Chapter 38 – Catfish Talk

  Chapter 39 – Setting Out

  Chapter 40 – Bird Dog

  Chapter 41 – Down the Road

  Chapter 42 – Into the Dark

  Chapter 43 – Bricks

  Chapter 44 – Hand Over Hand

  Chapter 45 – Stones

  Chapter 46 – Five Claws

  Chapter 47 – Flotsam

  Chapter 48 – Tracks

  Chapter 1

  Revisiting

  Friday, April 4, 1924

  Jake dropped his travel bag on the last patch of gravel and squinted at the familiar ditch. As the Packard sputtered away behind him up Edwards Ferry Road, he advanced warily onto the caked silt of the berm to assess the damage.

  The C&O Canal was empty on both sides of the lock, its prism a lifeless artery of puddles and mud. The gates were closed but the lock had mostly drained through a cracked wicket. Five days after Jake’s father abandoned Edwards Ferry when the river rose to engulf the canal, a fabric of flood debris – twigs and trash, decaying leaves and vines – still coated the faces of the swing beams. To Jake it looked like a mocking reminder, a Cheshire-Cat smile of the flood. At the base of the gates was a pile of trapped deadfall that had collapsed as the canal waters ebbed. Now the lock Emmert Reed had tended for a dozen years was useless until this tangle of logs and branches could be dismembered and cleared.

  To Jake Reed it looked ripe for a bonfire instead. Douse it with kerosene and send it up, along with the beams and gates. Call it quits for the canal era. It had been dying a slow death anyway, and you couldn’t blame the floods for that, since the last one was in 1889. Thirty-five years without being wrecked was a long reprieve for the C&O, so Jake guessed it was due. Maybe being ruined was the same for canals and people. Sooner or later it happens.

  Jake knew the dispiriting reality: the canal would probably be repaired again. Resuscitated just enough to hobble onward, so the railroad could keep killing it by degrees. And some of the repair work at Edwards Ferry might fall to him now, if only because he’d been dispatched here by his father, to the drifting levels he’d traversed on Emmert’s canal boat as a young boy. He was eleven when his father gave up boating, and through his mid-teens Jake had helped Emmert tend this lock when he wasn’t in school. Now at twenty-two he was back again, with no occupation or dependents or friends. Out of prison with time on his hands.

  He studied the lockhouse across the canal. Mud stains at the base of the whitewashed façade showed that floodwaters had reached the level of the front porch, peaking just short of the doorsill. So the main floor should have been spared. But since the house was built on a slope, with a door and windows opening onto the backyard, the basement might have flooded to the ceiling.

  A stone’s throw left, across the dirt road to the boat ramp, stood an empty building with two red-brick stories, a raised first floor, and a stepped roofline. Jarboe’s Store had closed a few years before Jake was born, but it still seemed to preside over the lockhouse. The only other structures at Edwards Ferry were smaller outbuildings, all constructed close to the towpath and reinforced with stones at the base. A defense against high water, learned the hard way by prior generations. And tucked into a strip of woods between the canal and River Road was a small corral, built for these circumstances, Jake figured. It was a short walk upstream along the berm, and that was where he headed first.

  Bertie and Gladys seemed pleased to see him, shaking their heads, braying tentatively, and walking slowly to greet him at the gate. Christ, at this point the mules would have been happy to see anyone. Five days alone in the corral, their hay gone, not much water in the trough. And when was the last time they’d seen Jake? Over a year ago, before he began serving his term. Probably the previous winter, when he’d come home for Christmas and the mules were up at the Sharpsburg farm. That was before his trial, but by then it was already obvious that things were going to hell.

  Bertie maneuvered in front of Gladys, and Jake reached to stroke his muzzle. The mule had red scratches on his nose and forehead, mostly minor but one of them wide and attended by flies. At least it seemed to be scabbing normally. Maybe the river got too close after Emmert left, and Bertie had scraped his face trying to escape the corral.

  Jake sidestepped along the fence for a look at Gladys, his father’s well-known albino mule. She approached with her head lower than usual, her self-confidence apparently deflated. When Jake extended his arm she took a lame step backward and presented the left side of her neck, an uncharacteristic gesture. He gently grasped her bridle and pulled her head forward and across his line of vision, guessing she was hiding something. It was a dark, crusted wound at the base of her neck, near her right shoulder.

  “Goddammit, Gladys!” he said, trying to keep the anger out of his voice. “Did somebody stab you?”

  Gladys shuffled awkwardly and lifted her pale eyes to his for the first time. He checked her legs, pulling her browband slowly along the fence until he’d scanned all four. She seemed to be favoring her right front leg, but he couldn’t see any cuts or bruises. Could the lameness be related to her wound? She smacked her lips expectantly and worked her jaw, so Jake decided to feed them first. Walking back to the lock, he noti
ced the clouds had filled in and grown darker. His mood blackened along with the sky as he realized it might rain. That was the last thing he needed. The mud was everywhere already.

  If Gladys had a deep puncture wound, or if something had broken off inside it, Jake would need to get a doctor from Poolesville to see her, and he’d be lucky to get that done by Monday. If the wound wasn’t too bad he could treat it himself, but she wasn’t going to be ready for a forty-mile walk to Sharpsburg early next week, like he’d planned.

  Taking the mules back to Emmert’s farm was the main reason Jake was here. If the canal was going to be out of commission for two or three months, his father wouldn’t be needed at Edwards Ferry, and Emmert always liked having Bertie and Gladys around when he was in Sharpsburg – even though the farm was only five acres, just a low-slung house with a garden, two chicken coops, and a pig pen. Now it might be a week or two before Gladys could walk the towpath to Sharpsburg, even with Bertie pulling the cart the whole way. And that was if everything went well.

  Jake retrieved his bag and walked to the lock. The crossing planks on the upstream gates had broken off and fallen into the pile of driftwood. Something else to fix. He crossed on the downstream gates, pulled the lockhouse key from his pocket, and opened the front door.

  No sign of the flood. The floor in the center hallway was dry, the walls unstained. He dropped his bag at the foot of the stairs and strode to the basement door at the end of the hall. It opened to the smell of drying river mud on the walls. He descended most of the way, counting the risers. All were visible, so the dark water on the floor couldn’t be more than two inches deep. Deciding he’d rather enter from the backyard, he reversed course, and as he stepped up into the hallway he caught a flash of motion near the front door.

  Whatever it was receded silently up the stairs and out of view. Jake was unarmed, so he scanned the sideboard. It held nothing that could pass for a weapon. He slipped his belt off and wrapped its tongue a few times around his fist, letting the buckled half hang free, a tactic he’d heard about in prison. Keeping his eyes on the stairway, he advanced quietly toward the door.

  When he was within reach, he snatched his bag and raised it as a shield, then spun toward the threat, holding the belt in his right hand like a whip.

  It was a girl, maybe eighteen or nineteen years old, standing just beyond reach. She flinched for an instant as if she might retreat up the stairs, but held her ground.

  “Who are you?” Jake demanded, “and why did you follow me in?”

  “I didn’t,” she said, glancing at the brandished bag and belt in turn.

  “What do you mean?” he said, self-consciously lowering his weapons. “This is company property. And the door was locked.”

  “There’s another downstairs.”

  Jake rolled his eyes. His father had left the basement door unlocked. That made sense, as he thought about it, because with the basement flooding there would have been little reason to venture downstairs to lock it. The girl’s alarmed expression softened and Jake thought he saw her suppress a smile. She had hazel eyes and hair the color of ashwood that fell halfway down her neck in lazy waves. Jake realized now that she’d probably been trying to escape from upstairs, after she heard him enter and descend to the basement.

  “How long have you been here?” he asked, squinting again.

  “I don’t know. A few days.”

  “Since right after the flood?”

  She nodded.

  “Did you lose your house? Your boat? You needed shelter?”

  “I guess. Mainly I was hungry.”

  Jake remembered his father’s other avocation. Before sending him here, Emmert mentioned that he’d transferred a few racks of pork and turtle from his smokehouse to the slightly higher elevation of the lockhouse kitchen. And since Emmert had been getting ready to start the canal season, he’d probably stocked the kitchen cupboards. The girl must have been eating well.

  Jake dropped his bag and stuffed his belt in a pocket. “Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you,” he said, forcing a smile. “I’m Jake Reed. What’s your name?”

  The girl shook her head briefly, then pushed a stray curl away from her eye. “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Where’s your family?”

  She shook her head again.

  “Where are you from?”

  “This is the only place I know.”

  Jake bit his lower lip and stared at her accusingly. “Don’t lie to me.”

  “It’s true,” she said.

  He pushed back. “What else do you know?”

  “There’s a man looking for me. He’ll try to kill me.”

  “Is that why you were sneaking out?”

  She nodded.

  “Who’s trying to kill you?”

  “I don’t know his name, but I can picture him sometimes. It’s not you.”

  “You feel sure about that, now that you’ve seen my weapons?”

  This time she couldn’t entirely restrain a smile. Jake didn’t want to let her off the hook so easily.

  “What day is it?” he asked, lowering his eyebrows and scowling.

  She shook her head.

  “What month?”

  She shrugged but said nothing.

  “What year?”

  “1924?”

  “Maybe there’s some hope for you,” he said sarcastically. “What season?”

  She brightened. “Springtime.”

  “That’s right,” Jake said. “It’s April. And until you decide to level with me, I’m going to have to call you something. It might as well be that.”

  Chapter 2

  Kinsmen

  Friday, April 4, 1924

  Standing in the cabin of the scow, Billy Emory stared at the pile of blankets and pillows on the bottom bunk. The upper bunk was missing its pillow and stripped to a single sheet. He turned toward his brother Tyler, who had opened the cupboard on the forward wall and was studying the jumble of cups and pans inside it.

  “Looks like only one person was sleeping here,” Billy said. “Don’t know how long ago. Could of been before the flood or after. Can’t tell if it was Kevin or Tom.”

  “Or maybe somebody else,” Tyler said, opening the coal stove’s blackened firebox and peering inside. “I guess whoever it was got the money, ‘cause there ain’t no sign of it here.”

  “Let’s check the hatches,” Billy said.

  They went back up to the deck and looked under each of the six gray hatch covers that spanned the ten-foot width of the scow to form the deck. In hatch 5 they found a large oak barrel barely concealed under a pile of cord-wood, so they set the hatch cover aside. Opening the other hatches revealed nothing but shards of split wood and bark on the floor of the empty hold.

  “Looks like they got their business done in Georgetown,” Billy said.

  They stood staring at the pyramid of cord-wood on the floor of the scow.

  “If they changed eight hundred in bills for hard money,” Tyler said, “that’s a slug of gold and silver to be carrying around. But it don’t seem like that toolbox is on board.”

  “Once that box got heavy, Kevin wasn’t going to let it out of his sight,” Billy said.

  He hopped down onto the logs and pushed aside the layers covering the barrel, which was lying on its side, tap facing up. Tyler jumped down alongside him and together they tugged the top end of the barrel.

  “Feels like about twenty gallons left,” Billy said. “So I reckon they sold some casks along the canal.”

  “Maybe,” Tyler said, gesturing toward a five-gallon cask he’d just noticed near the base of the pile. He dug it free but it was empty. “Guess they was planning to fill at least one more.”

  “Probably for a customer somewhere upriver. If it wasn’t for the flood, all the locktenders would of been working on the trip home. Coal boats was supposed to be running down from Cumberland by now.”

  Billy lifted his Stetson momentarily and wiped the sweat from his wide forehead, then ho
isted himself back up to the deck.

  “We ain’t checked up front yet,” he said. Tyler followed him to the windowless shed that spanned the bow of the washed-up boat and protruded a few feet above the deck. It had been designed as a mule stable, but Kevin and Tom Emory kept their mules out at night and used it as a hay-house. A short ramp descended to the entrance. Billy flipped the latch and opened the double doors.

  The hay-house was almost empty. Just a capsized feed trough against the front wall, with spare tack and a coiled towline hanging above it. Straw a couple inches deep on the floor. Against the starboard wall, another empty five-gallon cask and a knee-high pile of moldy hay that wouldn’t feed the Emorys’ two-mule team for a day. And lying on the straw in the center, as if tossed there carelessly, two faded and weathered fedoras, one black and one gray. The sight made Billy’s stomach turn sour.

  “Wherever them two gone, they done it without their hats,” he said.

  “You think they just tied up and made for high ground when the flood came? Rode off bare-headed and left their hats behind?” Tyler asked. “Maybe they got new hats,” he added, plucking the fedoras from the straw and studying their interiors. “Spent some of that moonshine money on a better style.”

  “You know that’s wrong,” Billy said. “That ain’t like Kevin or Tom.”

  “The cheatin’ or the stylin’?”

  Tyler said that with a smile, but his brother wrinkled his fleshy nose as if he’d smelled something rotten, so Tyler adopted a more thoughtful expression. He pushed his hat back on his head and pulled on his babyish lower lip.

  “It ain’t right,” Billy said. “No sign of ‘em since the flood, then their hats turn up in the hay-house. Something must of gone bad.”

  “What do you reckon we should do?”

  Billy thrust out his jaw and lowered his gaze, staring hard at the ground near his brother’s feet. Tyler was younger and taller, with fair hair and a friendly demeanor, so Billy occasionally needed to assert his greater sophistication and judgment. Sometimes it helped to stop talking and let Tyler watch him think for a minute.

  “That short feller sweeping dirt back at the last lock,” Billy said, “where we parked. Let’s go back and see what he has to say.”