If It Is April

by Edward A. Stabler

  “You going back to Jarboe’s?”

  “Soon as I get a little taste of that stew and put Pete to bed. Don’t forget the onions.”

  ***

  Jake woke up when a transient breeze blew a tree blossom onto his face. April rolled onto an elbow to face him, her sleep-skewed hair obscuring one eye. She walked two fingers up his chest to the base of his neck.

  “We’re at Goose Creek now,” she said. “Does that mean we have a plan?”

  Jake reached for his knees and rolled into a sitting position. From the height of the sun, he guessed it was about five in the afternoon. Better to scout while the light was still good.

  “Let’s go take a look.”

  He led her down the path toward the mouth of Goose Creek, which met the Potomac at a right angle with trees running all the way to the confluence. The path turned upstream along the steep riverbank and quickly reached what was left of the boat ramp at Edwards Ferry. The dirt and gravel ramp at the end of the road had been pitted and scoured by high water hundreds of times since the ferry stopped running, but its width and shallow grade were still intact. They walked to the center of the ramp and looked out at the river. A man and a boy were fishing from a red canoe halfway across, aglow in the slanting sunlight.

  “I bet they keep that canoe here,” Jake said, “probably just up the road. Maybe the paddles too. The fishing’s pretty good and the ramp makes it easy to launch. We might have our pick of canoes.”

  “Is that our plan? To borrow a canoe and go fishing?”

  “Look further across. No islands, so we have a clear line of sight to Maryland. There’s the boat ramp, and you can just make out the roofline of Jarboe’s to the right.”

  “But aside from that, it’s just trees. We can’t see the lockhouse, or the towpath, or the rest of Jarboe’s. Even if we could, the river’s a quarter-mile wide, so we couldn’t recognize anyone from here.”

  “All we need to see is a flag flying from a tree next to the boat ramp. After Cole sets it.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Because we’re going to tell him to. He seems to like giving us instructions, but now it’s our turn to call the shots.”

  ***

  When Zimmerman woke from his after-dinner nap, orange sunlight was streaking into the cabin through the dirty port-side window. He checked his pocket watch: just past seven. Tom Owens was due at eight. He climbed the cabin stairs and pissed over the starboard rail. No sign of anyone on the towpath. Fishing the padlock key from his pocket, he walked the race plank to the foredeck and descended the ramp to the stable, where he unlocked and opened the door.

  Indirect light washing into the room showed a blinking Pete Elgin lying on his side in a pile of straw. He was still gagged and hog-tied, the way Cole and Zimmerman had left him over an hour ago. The boy turned his head to look at Zimmerman.

  “I got company coming over tonight,” Zimmerman said, “so you might hear somebody climbing on board or talking to me. It ain’t going to be your sister or anyone that knows you, so there’s no use hollering or banging on walls.”

  He pulled a folding stag-handled knife from the pocket of his vest, flicked it open, and angled the blade toward Pete. “You better be quiet as a church-mouse tonight. You need to piss, do it in your pants. I hear you make any sound at all – I don’t care if it’s yelling or singing or crying or banging – I’m going to come back at midnight and cut off your fingers, just like this.” He showed Pete the severed ring finger on his left hand. “Only I ain’t going to stop at one, I’ll cut off all ten and feed ‘em to snakes and turtles. And when they’re done with your fingers, I’ll feed ‘em your dick.”

  Pete rolled his head back toward the straw and closed his eyes, so Zimmerman turned and left. He closed and padlocked the stable door, pocketed his knife, and made his way back to the cabin to wait. It was always good to handle a buy on a full stomach and a little rest. With new customers you never knowed what to expect.

  Chapter 34

  Blood-Drop Trail

  Wednesday, April 30, 1924

  Cole parked his truck next to Zimmerman’s roadster at Swains as the sun was rising clear of the trees. He rubbed his eyes, yawned, and scanned the area around the lock in search of the goose. Maybe today he should wring its neck. He could roast it on a spit behind the lockhouse at Edwards Ferry. Later, he thought, after I get a decent nap. He’d been up until an hour before dawn, watching the lockhouse from Jarboe’s and waiting for Jake and April to try whatever they were up to again. They hadn’t showed up.

  Now he was looking forward to a few hours of sleep on the scow. Relieve Zimmerman, who’d said he had business this morning in Georgetown, throw some breakfast at Pete, let him stretch his legs and piss, then lock him up in the stable again and hit the cabin bunk. Starting down the towpath, he kept an eye on the lockhouse yard. No sign of the goose or that tubby little turd-farmer Jess Swain.

  On the mile-long walk to the scow he started thinking about Eliza again, something he did when he was tired. It had been ten days since he’d stopped by her father’s house in Jefferson County and pinned her shoulders to the trunk of a giant beech tree beyond the backyard, her fingers in his hair and legs wrapped around his waist.

  “You’re going to ruin me,” she’d teased.

  If I don’t someone else will, he’d thought, dropping his hands to lift her thighs and kissing her on the mouth.

  He wanted to visit again soon, both to see Eliza and to check on the family business. The customer side couldn’t get entirely fixed without Kevin Emory’s ledger, but things could still get worse without Cole’s attention. More reason to finish this cat-and-mouse game with Katie Elgin, recover the toolbox with the money and ledger intact, and get back to Jefferson County. Repair work was more visible now, so the canal might be watered by mid-summer. Abel Emory could send his grandsons downriver to collect the scow and the mule team Cole had been keeping at Swains.

  Shortly after that musing he came within sight of the scow, but all he could see was the bow half of the boat, with its blue-painted stable rising over the gray hull and deck. The stern was a blackened ruin: the roof and aft wall of the cabin gone; hull and transom charred and broken; a thin pillar of gray smoke rising from something still burning on or below the cabin floor. Maybe the coal bin. Cole inhaled a sharp breath. His fatigue vanished and he quickened his pace.

  As he drew closer he saw a few colored boys milling around the scow. Probably looking for something to steal. Zimmerman’s car was parked at Swains – had he been killed in the fire? If so, had his heroin and money gone up in smoke as well? Or maybe these kids had already looted everything that survived the flames. Cole loped down the bank, across the prism, and up onto the berm.

  The boys were laughing and jabbering. He yelled to attract their attention. There were three of them and one looked familiar. He pulled the Colt from his coat pocket and pointed it at the pillar of smoke to assert his authority.

  “We ain’t done it!” the tallest boy said.

  “It was burnt before we seen it!” said another.

  Cole waggled his gun barrel at them as he studied the contents of the cabin through a gap in the transom. There appeared to be no one on board. The only thing that looked salvageable was the stove. Something had burned a hole in the floor, and the pillar of smoke was rising through it. Maybe cordwood smoldering under one of the hatches. Near the hole the floor was stained with what looked like blood. He circled around the starboard side as the boys scrambled out of his way. The stable showed no evidence of fire and its door was hanging open. He turned back toward the boys, who had stopped talking and were staring at him with apprehensive expressions.

  “When did you get here?” he demanded.

  “Just now, just before you come,” said the second boy. The tall boy was letting his friend do the talking, and Cole recognized him as the boy who’d lied to him about the theft of his mules from Swains. Jake must have put him up to it.

  “Did
you see anybody on board? Anybody hurt?”

  “No sir.”

  “That old man living here, he gone!” piped up the smallest boy.

  “We seen the locktender when we was walking by,” said the second boy. “Mister Swain. He been looking at the boat and told us to stay off ‘cause it still burning and we cain’t be trespassing. So we’s just looking. He said he going to Great Falls and call the sheriff.”

  Cole nodded. Part of him wanted to whip the tall boy to teach him and his friends a lesson, but if the sheriff was coming that would have to wait.

  “Get on out of here before I change my mind,” he said, waving the boys away with his gun.

  The hull was undamaged where it was pinned against the sycamore, so he used the notched trunk to climb on deck. He noticed drops of dried blood on the rail. More drops led to or from the stable, where the door was ajar with the opened padlock hanging from the latch. The interior hadn’t burned but smelled like smoke, which might still be wafting up through the floorboards. Pete was gone, along with the rope Cole had used to tie him up. Cole turned back to the blood drops that led to the rail. Who did they belong to? Zimmerman’s customer from last night would have had no reason to visit the stable and no key to the padlock. So the bleeder was probably Zimmerman or Pete.

  Cole hopped down and searched for more blood. The ground leading back to the canal had been trampled, but heading away from it he found drops on a knee-high paw paw leaf, twigs broken by footsteps, and then blood on another green leaf. Someone bleeding had made his way into the woods. That would make sense if the bleeder was Zimmerman or Pete, Cole thought. If Zimmerman had taken the towpath back to Swains instead, he would have reached his car and driven away, so Cole wouldn’t have seen it this morning. He doubted Zimmerman would have risked taking Pete down to Great Falls, where the boy could have raised a ruckus and attracted attention.

  If the scow was on fire, the best way for Zimmerman to escape unseen was to climb the wide, wooded hillside that ascended over the span of a mile to River Road. That was the route Jake must have chosen after springing Katie Elgin from the scow. Zimmerman had informed him later that there was a trail through the woods a short distance upstream from the scow, and it followed a little creek up to the end of Sandy Landing Road, one of several unmarked spurs that branched off River Road.

  Cole followed the treeline until he reached the drainage, then turned uphill along the trickling creek and found the trail. A few steps further he noticed more drops of blood. Not far ahead he spotted a small figure sitting with its back to a tree and head hanging forward against bent knees. It was Pete, and his wrists were lashed together behind the trunk. He didn’t react as Cole approached, but Cole couldn’t see any bloodstains or obvious wounds.

  “Pete!” he said, squatting to shake the boy’s shoulder, and as Pete stirred from sleep Cole heard the disconcerting ratchet of a hammer clicking into the cocked position. He pivoted to see a grimacing Zimmerman pointing a pistol at him from ten feet away. His legs were splayed on the ground before him and his lower back was braced against a mossy bank, but he’d managed to raise his grimy head and arms enough to draw a bead. From neck to left shoulder and halfway down his ribs, his shirt was soaked in blood and stuck to his skin.

  Zimmerman grinned and pulled the trigger; Cole heard the metallic slap of hammer on firing pin hang in the air, unaccompanied by a flying bullet or loud report. Zimmerman dropped his hands to his sides and slumped back against the sloping ground.

  Cole took the pistol from his partner’s pliant hand and examined it quickly. He aimed into the trees and pulled the trigger a few times.

  “Colt 1911, same as mine,” he said. “Action seems good. You should try using bullets.”

  “That feller last night used one on me,” Zimmerman said, drawing shallow breaths through his mouth. “Wasted the rest before I took his gun. He get burned up?”

  “Don’t know. Wasn’t nobody on board, alive or dead.”

  Zimmerman winced. “Water. Pete got a can…”

  Cole nodded and turned back to the boy, who was awake now and eyeing him with an expression that looked like relief. Cole tapped Pete’s coat pockets and found the almost empty can of pork and beans. He dumped its contents in the creek, filled it halfway in the current, and brought it back to Zimmerman, who took small sips after Cole pulled him into a sitting position.

  “You said you was meeting a new customer last night. He start the fire?”

  “The lamp broke. And there was lit coals. When we got to fighting.”

  “Was it a set up?”

  Zimmerman nodded, saving his breath.

  “Somebody coming after Pete?”

  Zimmerman shook his head. “Never knowed he was there.”

  “Some feller looking for payback?”

  “He was looking for somebody else. Got the wrong man. Could of killed me.”

  “You ain’t out of the woods yet.”

  Zimmerman managed a smile and handed him the empty can, so Cole refilled it and brought it back.

  “My left arm ain’t worth much, so maybe I broke something. And I lost some oil. But one bullet to the collarbone ain’t going to kill me.”

  “Don’t know how you managed to lash Pete to that tree.”

  “Ran a mule team in the Yukon. Ain’t a knot I can’t tie with one hand.”

  When Zimmerman had finished drinking, Cole unbuttoned the top of his shirt to check the damage. The entry wound was purple, swollen, and blood-caked, but the bleeding had stopped. The exit wound wasn’t much bigger and was congealing into a jellied well of torn muscle, fat, and blood. Given the angles, the shooter must have been firing up at Zimmerman, who’d been lucky the bullet hadn’t broken into fragments or sliced a vein.

  “If you don’t want me to bury you here, better try to walk some more.”

  He helped Zimmerman rise slowly to his feet and prop himself against a nearby boulder with his good arm. Then Cole untied the knot that bound Pete’s wrists behind the tree trunk. He lifted the boy upright by the armpits.

  “I reckon Henry saved your life,” he said, retying Pete’s wrists and dropping a loop of rope around his chest, so Cole could hold the free end like a leash. “You’d be burnt like a fried onion if he left you in that stable.”

  “I bet it was him that lit the fire.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Pete. Henry was watching over that boat. For friends of mine that own it. When they find out who done it, I wouldn’t want to be in that man’s shoes.”

  “Owen Thompson,” Zimmerman hissed. “If he’s alive, it won’t be for long.”

  “You ain’t going after him or anyone else looking like that,” Cole said. “How far to the road from here?”

  “Half a mile or less,” Zimmerman said. “Gimme an arm to lean on and I’ll make it.”

  “We can take it slow. When we get there I’ll set you down with Pete and head back to Swains for my truck. Then we’re going someplace we can eat hot food and sleep in beds while Henry heals up.”

  “You going to jail?” Pete said.

  Cole laughed and yanked Pete’s leash, so the boy was jerked back into his raised knee. “You got a good sense of humor, Pete. Folks like that in Jefferson County. That’s where we’re going, and you’re coming with us.”

  Chapter 35

  Backyard Flag

  Wednesday, April 30, 1924

  Jake and April rode back into town on Wednesday morning, where Jake sent his parents a telegram from the Western Union office that read:

  CAMPED SAFE LEESBURG WITH APRIL STOP WILL DUMP COAL SOON STOP PLEASE WIRE ONE HUNDRED SOONEST STOP HOME IN WEEK OR TWO

  He hoped the vague reference “too bad about Jakes father” in Cole’s note was a groundless taunt, but if Cole had hurt Emmert, Jake would make retribution his sole purpose. More likely, he thought, his parents were OK and would send the money straightaway. So he and April visited a grocery store and spent the last of his money on sausages, pickles, cheese, jam, bread, and a bag
of live worms.

  “I guess we’re going fishing today,” April said.

  “On and off the water.”

  Riding back to Goose Creek they cut off the road into an adjacent pasture, unsaddled the mules at its far edge, and turned them out to graze. Backs to the woods, they sat on a fallen tree-trunk eating slices of cheese with jam.

  “I’m happy to hear we’re about to dump our burden of coal,” April said. “How are we planning to do that?”

  “I haven’t figured out all the details yet, but I got an idea. He wants to trade Pete for the toolbox, so that’s what we need to do. Maybe we’ll find the box in a shed at Pennyfield Lock and maybe we won’t. If we do, great. If not, we can still pretend we got it.”

  “You mean give him some other box and try to fool him? He’ll catch on as soon as he tries to open it. He might know just by looking at it.”

  “Not if he can’t see it.”

  “We’re going to make the box invisible?”

  “We’ll give it to him in a very dark place.”

  “Then he’ll probably be carrying a lamp.”

  “Even if he does, it will be dark enough.”

  “Dark enough for what?”

  “To blind him.”

  “You mean throw acid in his face?”

  April said that so serenely that Jake recalled her memory of standing above the two men sleeping on a boat deck with hats over their faces, her shadow cast across their legs, shackles in her hand. The Emory brothers on their scow – he was persuaded of that now. Shortly before their twenty fingers slipped from the rail.

  “That’s too risky. We just need to blind him long enough to get a jump on him.”

  “How?”

  “Flash powder. From my father’s photography bin. There’s a box of it in the basement.”