If It Is April

by Edward A. Stabler

  Pete shook his head. “I didn’t go in the kitchen. I looked out the front door. The river was almost up to the towpath, so I ran back upstairs to get dressed. Then I fetched the mules and left.”

  Cole sliced the heel off the bread, bit it in half, and chewed his way to a verdict. “You done good, Pete. More than I can say for your brother and sister. One of ‘em took the box, and I got to get it back. I think Katie knows where it is.”

  “Was there money in it?”

  “A little. The main thing was names and numbers. For the family business.” He swallowed the rest of the heel and looked Pete in the eyes, placing a hand on his shoulder.

  “There’s two kinds of people in this world, Pete. Makers and takers. Makers build things by the sweat of their brow. Takers wait around and try to steal a piece, like the government. Suck blood out of somebody else, that’s how takers survive. The Cole family is makers, same for the Emorys. We don’t know no other way. We got to keep doing what we do.

  “We need to show Katie this ain’t a game, Pete. That’s why I came to get you. So she’ll know I’m serious. When she gives me back the box, you can go home.”

  “But what if she don’t have it?”

  “Then she better find it. She got the best idea about where to look.”

  Chapter 32

  Shots in the Dark

  Monday, April 28, 1924

  April pulled her elbows to her sides and buttoned the top buttons on her cardigan, so Jake slipped his arm around her shoulders. They were sitting with their backs against a huge rotting tree trunk, watching shallow water descend rock-strewn Broad Run. A light breeze had arisen as the sun slipped behind clouds on its descent toward the horizon. She scrunched down and slumped into him a little. He rubbed the top of her thigh with his other hand to warm her up.

  He wore a worn flannel shirt with no jacket, but was impervious to the chill himself. During three nights of travel since their night in the cave, he’d felt a warmth in his chest whenever he looked at April. Two weeks ago, convinced that they weren’t safe from Cole at Edwards Ferry, they’d set out with the mules for Emmert’s farm in Sharpsburg, and Jake had felt anxious during most of the ride. Would his parents believe April’s story? Would they undermine his decision to shield her from the people pursuing Katie Elgin?

  But when he and April had woken in the cave Friday morning, cocooned in blankets after a night of making love on the cool sand floor, he acknowledged to himself that something had been gnawing at him on a deeper, unspoken level since… when? Since he’d let her slip into Cole’s hands, then found himself staring at her folded clothes on the stripped bed, feeling like the world had gone quiet and hollow? No, it was earlier. The night of the bonfire behind the lockhouse – he’d already been falling for her then. But he’d had no sense of how she felt. Now the uncertainty was over, he could see it in her expression. The way her eyes lingered when she glanced at him, how the corner of her mouth bent into a sly smile.

  In one sense nothing had changed. After riding all the way back to Edwards Ferry, which was only a mile down the towpath from here, they’d failed to shake Cole. Jake had guided Bertie within a hundred yards earlier in the afternoon and seen the inescapable truck parked at the end of the road. But he was done with questioning what was best for April. He couldn’t contemplate giving her up. Instead he would solve the Cole problem, one way or another. He’d turned Bertie around and rejoined April at Broad Run, where the creek bordered a meadow between the canal and River Road. They could graze and water the mules and figure out what to do about their relentless pursuer. The safest solution was the one they’d been unable to accomplish so far: find the toolbox and let him have it.

  April’s memories were like puzzle pieces, and in his mind he laid them on a table, starting with the most recently revealed shards.

  Two sets of ten fingers on the rail of the scow.

  Barefoot at the sandy cove while Lee Fisher told her about finding a bayonet in the woods on Blockhouse Point.

  Two men snoring on a boat deck, hats over their eyes.

  A stack of pole-hooks on the front porch of what turned out to be Pennyfield House.

  He started reciting them aloud for April to confirm or disavow.

  “You saw the toolbox fall into a half-drained lock, and it had a metal chain through its handle.

  “Before that, the letter Cole showed us, from the Elgin mother. It had the symbol on the back that you said belonged to you. You carved it in the sand that night in the cave.”

  “I remembered riding on the towpath at night,” April said. “I got off and went to check on the mules, with a pair of shackles in my hand.”

  “And the one you told me at breakfast that first morning. You were standing on top of a rocky ridge, looking down at the river. You said it had swallowed everything. So that must have been during the flood.”

  “It was.”

  “Which means all the other memories were of earlier things.”

  “Right.”

  “While you were standing on the rock, did you have the toolbox with you?”

  April didn’t answer. Jake lifted his arm back onto the log and watched her almost-imperceptible breathing, her eyes focused far away.

  “No.”

  “You folded a piece of paper into an airplane and threw it out toward the water.”

  “Yes.”

  “Let it fly back into your hand.”

  Moments passed and he wasn’t sure she’d heard him, but then she said, “I’m holding it.”

  “Unfold the paper and read what’s on it.”

  Her voice seemed to come from a distance. “It’s not my writing. March 29. Charlie, Welcome home. I left your drill in the shed, behind the marked plank. Lee.”

  They sat quietly for several minutes. Jake wasn’t sure if she was still standing on the ridge above the floodwaters, or whether other memories would surface, so he didn’t try to reel her in. Instead he thought about what those recovered words could mean. Lee must be Lee Fisher. According to Cole, April had slashed his throat before he drowned. Jake’s temples chilled. Could Cole be right? Was that why she possessed his note?

  Who was Charlie, and where was Lee welcoming him home to? Must be a place that April had visited along the canal. Not Swains Lock, since Jess Swain lived there. Pennyfield Lock came next; was Charlie Pennyfield the locktender? Jake couldn’t remember all the names, but that one sounded familiar. He didn’t think there was a Charlie Violette or Charlie Riley.

  Maybe Lee Fisher was minding Pennyfield Lock for Charlie and had borrowed his drill. But then why write a note about putting it in the shed, when it would have been just as easy to leave the drill in the house, if that’s where Charlie kept it? If the shed had a workbench, maybe the drill belonged there, so why put it behind a marked plank in the floor or the ceiling or the wall? The note seemed odd, like it might have a second meaning.

  April had spoken the date a few minutes ago – March 29. He counted backward by weeks. That was Saturday, the day the flood started. It couldn’t have been later, he realized, since Lee washed up dead during the flood. If the note was real, and if April was reciting it truthfully, it wasn’t just a piece of old, discarded paper she’d found and picked up. It was a note Lee Fisher wrote on the last day of his life, the day before April threw it into the river. And maybe she’d walked off with it before Charlie had a chance to see it.

  They’d spent an hour earlier this afternoon thinking about places around Edwards Ferry where April might have hidden the toolbox. Jake was convinced it wasn’t in the lockhouse basement, the smokehouse, or the privy. April said she found Jarboe’s Store spooky and had never explored its perimeter. Had she buried the toolbox in the backyard? They hadn’t noticed freshly turned earth.

  But wait, he thought, she just said she didn’t have the box while she was standing on the ridge, and Jake was pretty sure that ridge was between Swains and Rileys Lock. Probably near Pennyfield. That was about twelve miles downstream from here �
�� another reason it made sense. Why carry the heavy toolbox all the way from Swains to Edwards Ferry?

  “What does it mean?” April said. Her eyes were back in the present, focused on him.

  “I don’t know. But it makes me want to visit Pennyfield again, and look for a shed with a marked plank.”

  They decided to sneak past Edwards Ferry in the middle of the night. Jake built a small fire and they ate smoked turtle with jam on the last crusts of their bread. They unrolled their blankets and curled up beside the warm stones of the fire ring. The third time Jake woke up, the embers had gone dark and there was still no hint of dawn in the sky. Time to go. He let April sleep a few more minutes while he retrieved and saddled the mules.

  “Maybe we’re ghosts,” April said as they paced Gladys and Bertie side by side toward Edwards Ferry. “Nobody sees us during the day, and we haunt the towpath at night.”

  Jake couldn’t think of a convincing rebuttal. It was true that they hadn’t spoken to anyone since leaving Sharpsburg four days ago. “Maybe,” he said. “But if so, we’re wasting our time worrying about nothing. I still think we’re the hunted, not the haunters.”

  The woods of the apron thinned and the whitewashed stone lockhouse came into view, glowing as pale as an albino mule in the ambient light, with the looming silhouette of Jarboe’s as a backdrop. Jake guided Bertie to the fringe of the towpath and signaled April to fall in behind. The mules didn’t snort or whinny, but even the soft, reassuring sound of their hoofbeats on dirt seemed to reverberate against the stillness of the night. Jake fixed his eyes on the clearing at the end of Edwards Ferry Road. When he passed the lockhouse and drew even with it, he raised a hand and halted Bertie, then stared hard until he was sure. Cole’s truck was gone. He waved April up alongside him.

  “Maybe he was just dropping by this afternoon to check on the place,” he whispered. “Looks like he’s not here now.”

  April lowered her eyebrows and whispered in reply. “What if he comes back? I thought we were going down to Pennyfield.”

  “We are. But let’s stop in for a few minutes. We need more candles and matches. There might be some in the kitchen.”

  He turned Bertie onto the dirt road to the boat ramp, then down into the backyard of the lockhouse. Bertie brayed once, maybe in recognition of the setting, as Jake was hitching him to the corral rail. April dismounted, hitched Gladys, and followed Jake to the basement door. It was locked from the inside. They circled to the front door and saw the broken window and the glass shards littering the ground beside the landing. No reason to lock the door when you could reach through the window to open it.

  They stepped inside. It was darker than it had been outdoors, but Jake could have navigated the lockhouse blindfolded. He left April in the entryway and returned a minute later holding a lit candle that cast his giant shadow on the wall. The light revealed a piece of writing paper on the floor. Another message from Cole, he felt sure.

  Katie –

  I missed you in Sharpsburg. Went to see your family next, took Pete Elgin and I got him now. Leave the toolbox and whats inside under the stairs and hang something on the line when you done it. When I got it I’ll let Pete go. If you still cant remember where it is, I’ll trade him for you. Time is running out. Don’t make Pete pay for what you done. If I got to sink him in the river, sure as hell your next. Jake too.

  Cole

  PS: Too bad about Jakes father.

  “Your father!” April said. “What did that bastard do?”

  Jake was asking himself the same thing, derailed from the message’s main track by that suggestive last line. Then he realized it was probably just Cole’s attempt to unnerve him.

  “Remember who he is. He lies about everything. Let’s sit down and think for a minute.”

  He led her back to the kitchen, noting to himself that her first reaction was concern for his father, not for Pete or the Elgins. So while April probably is Katie Elgin, he thought, she’s not play-acting; if she remembered her family, she would have focused on Cole’s claim that he’d abducted Pete.

  “We’re not trading you,” Jake said, fixing the candle to the table with a drop of wax, “so don’t even think about that. Cole might be lying about kidnapping Pete, just trying to lure you close enough to grab.”

  “Do you think the parents saw Cole? Wouldn’t they tell the sheriff? Maybe the law is already coming after him.”

  “He could have told them to keep quiet, because he knew where Katie was. If they don’t do what he says, maybe they lose both children. He fooled the Elgins about the letter, so I’d guess he could fool ‘em into not telling the sheriff.”

  “I hope he doesn’t have the boy tied…”

  Jake raised a hand and April stopped mid-sentence when they both heard a noise from outside. It sounded like someone yelling in a shrill distant voice. The sound paused, then started again. Jake strode to the window, wrenched it open, and leaned toward the night air as the sound resolved into words hollered by a boy.

  “Katie! He’s coming! Look out! Katie! He has a gun!”

  “That must be Pete!” Jake said, rushing back to the table. “Close by. Sounded like it was coming from Jarboe’s!” He blew out the candle and shoved it in his coat pocket.

  “Cole must have heard us,” April whispered, as their eyes adjusted to the dark.

  “Let’s go out through the basement,” Jake whispered back, taking her hand and shuffling quickly out of the kitchen and down the hall. They quietly opened and closed the door and were halfway down the stairs when they heard footsteps in the entryway. Then the steps veered away above them.

  “He’s checking the kitchen,” Jake said softly as they tiptoed the remaining risers. “Must have smelled the candle.”

  The basement was ink-dark and Jake didn’t dare relight the candle. April held the back of his coat and followed as he worked his way toward the outside door, bumping first into a table and then into a stack of boxes. The footsteps upstairs grew louder again, accelerating down the hall toward the stairway door. The door opened and yellow light seeped into the room as Jake and April scrambled the remaining distance.

  “Stop or I’ll shoot!” said the voice descending the stairs, but Jake was holding the door open as April ducked out. Jake recognized the voice instantly, even though he’d only heard it during their initial encounter with Cole at Edwards Ferry. As he yanked the door closed, a percussive roar followed him out. Splinters flew from the edge of the door at chest height. It would just take Cole a few seconds to reach and cross the basement floor. Jake looked around frantically for something to bar the door.

  The rain barrel! Almost within arm’s reach!

  “Get the mules!” he called out. April was already doing that.

  The barrel was half full, but Jake was able to tip it onto its rim and wheel it against the door just as Cole tried to open it. He pulled himself sideways as another shot exploded and sent wood fragments flying. If Cole had enough bullets, Jake thought, he could shoot the door to pieces. He turned to find April, who was now astride Gladys in the center of the backyard. He ran over and mounted Bertie.

  “Which way?” she said.

  “Follow me.” He prodded Bertie toward the trees at the edge of the yard beyond the corral, where a path led into the woods of the apron. It was a short trail, leading only to a fishing hole a hundred paces upriver, but its other end connected to the towpath. There wasn’t enough light to ask the mules to trot. At least Cole wouldn’t know this path.

  “Is he following us?” April said as they reached the river and swung onto the upper half of the trail.

  “He probably went out the front door,” Jake said, “and he won’t see us right away on the towpath. He might think we crossed the lock and went up the road.”

  “But his truck must be up the road somewhere.”

  “Maybe he parked out of view of the lock.”

  “So if it’s up there and we noticed it, we’d get off the road, because the truck could catch u
s.”

  “You’re right,” Jake said. “So he might guess we didn’t come from that direction.” They reached the trailhead and he urged Bertie up onto the towpath, then wheeled around to check on April.

  “There he is!” she cried, looking down the towpath as Gladys stepped up to level ground.

  Jake turned to see a dark figure bobbing toward them, less than a hundred paces away.

  “He spotted us!” Jake said. “Let’s go! He slapped Bertie’s haunch and spurred him forward. Looking over his shoulder he saw April do the same. She can really ride, he thought, and Gladys knows how to follow a pace horse. He felt something rip through space a few inches from his right ear, then heard the gunshot. Two more shots sounded but he couldn’t sense the bullets. Hard to run and shoot straight at the same time. Maybe Cole’s pistol was empty now.

  Jake looked back again and April was still right behind him, head tucked close to Gladys’ mane. The towpath was bending slowly with the canal and river, and he couldn’t make out their pursuer anymore. He looked ahead and pushed Bertie hard for five more strides, then slacked off and let Gladys come alongside. Breathing hard, the mules slowed to a trot and then a walk.

  “I guess he’s willing to shoot us now,” Jake said.

  “Maybe he was trying to shoot the mules.”

  “That makes more sense. He thinks you’ll deliver the toolbox to him, so why would he kill you?”

  “I guess he would have caught us by surprise in the kitchen if it wasn’t for Pete.”

  “Katie Elgin’s younger brother is a brave boy, sounding the alarm. I hope Cole doesn’t treat him the way he treated you on the scow.”

  “Me too.”

  “Did you recognize his voice?”

  “Pete’s? No. But he was yelling, not talking. I still can’t picture him.”

  “Cole must have broken into Jarboe’s. Good view of everything from the second floor. Maybe he has Pete tied up in there.”

  “We’re lucky he wasn’t gagged. And he must have been near a window.”

  “I guess we woke ‘em up, and Pete knew Cole was coming to get us.”