If It Is April

by Edward A. Stabler

  After almost an hour the church door opened and a tall, slim boy, maybe twelve or thirteen but already possessed of a slight swagger, shuffled down the steps and scanned the perimeter. He flashed a smile when he saw Jake and trotted over.

  “You should of told me you was coming Mr. Jake!” Linus said. “Then we’s cutting school and gone fishing. Got a couple of big ones holed up I been waiting on.”

  Boys and girls of different ages had followed Linus out the door, and Jake saw one of them, shorter and stouter than Linus, plowing over to join them.

  “Hi, Floyd,” Jake said. “I got another job for both of you.”

  “We going hooting on the t-t-towpath again?” Floyd managed, breathing hard after his short run.

  Linus rolled his eyes. “You heared Betty,” he said. “Mr. Jake looking for a catfish. Big one for real this time.”

  Jake pulled four quarters out of his pocket and gave two to each boy. “The biggest catfish you ever seen. Over six foot, with long hair and black whiskers. Same one you hooked for me last time.”

  “That man we called off the washed-up boat, saying somebody stealing his mules?”

  “That boat done burned,” Floyd said. “He cain’t be staying on it now.”

  “No,” Jake said. “He’s not. But he’s coming down to Pennyfield Lock on Sunday. He expects to meet me there at noon, but I can’t make it. I need you to walk up to him and give him this.” He pulled the note from the lining pocket of his jacket. It was folded in half, with the message on the inside. Jake held it before them so they could read the name written on the out-facing front, as if the note were an invitation.

  “Delmond Cole,” Linus said. “That man ain’t gone be happy seeing me again.”

  “He won’t hurt you,” Jake said. “He’ll have too many other things to think about. He might not even recognize you, and he never met Floyd.”

  Linus sucked in a breath through his teeth. “I don’t know. How much more we gone get for hooking this cat again?”

  “Another dollar,” Jake said. “But I’ll have to pay you sometime next week.”

  He waited briefly while Linus thought about it, then turned the note over to avoid getting sidetracked into negotiations. April’s mark caught their eyes, and Jake gave them a few moments to study it.

  “Either of you ever seen this before?” he asked. “Maybe carved on a plank in a shed down at Pennyfield?”

  “M-m-mason’s mark,” Floyd said. “I seen it before but cain’t think of where.”

  Linus stared at the mark a little longer, then jerked his eyes up in recognition. “Bear Island,” he said. “Near the top of Widewater. That mark carved on the stop-gate in the woods.”

  Jake thought for a second, trying to visualize the location. Widewater was an old river channel below Great Falls that had been incorporated into the canal. If there was a stop-gate in the Bear Island woods, it was probably built to block a drainage across the island during floods. What would such an obscure location have to do with April?

  “Seen it anywhere else?”

  “Mostly them marks is on lock stones,” Floyd said.

  “Some locks got one mark, some two, and some don’t got none,” Linus said. “Most of ‘em is lines and crosses, but that one got a curve. I only seen it on Bear Island.”

  Jake solemnly offered the note to Linus. “This is the bait that will hook our fish,” he said. “All you need to do is hand it to him. Do that and you’ve earned another dollar.”

  “He coming Sunday at noon?” Floyd said.

  “That’s right,” Jake said. “At Pennyfield Lock. And if I can reel him in at the tunnel, I’ll fry up some catfish for you when I come back.”

  After watching Linus and Floyd dash back to the church, Jake turned and left Tobytown. It was a little past nine. Passing the collection of outbuildings on his way back to Pennyfield Lock, he stopped again at the shed with the fishing gear and looked around. No one was watching. He ducked inside and emerged seconds later with the tackle box, leaving its contents dumped on the shelf. When he reached the lock and crossed over to the towpath, he figured he was beyond suspicion. He could return or replace the box later, but on Sunday it might be a useful stand-in for the Emorys’ toolbox.

  Starting the long upstream walk, he exhaled in resignation. The tackle box he carried felt like a hollow consolation prize. His hunch hadn’t borne fruit and there was no time left to look for a different shed, or to reinterpret the meaning of Lee Fisher’s message to Charlie Pennyfield. He caught himself – the name on the note had just been Charlie. He’d assumed that meant Charlie Pennyfield.

  For that matter, he’d never seen Lee’s note. He’d only heard April recite it, when he’d asked her to unfold the paper airplane in her mind and read what was written on it. How trustworthy were the random shards of April’s memory? The only one he’d been able to verify was her vision of a pile of pole-hooks on the porch of the Pennyfield house.

  The other recollections – riding a bicycle down the towpath at night and dismounting with shackles in her hand; watching two men sleep on the deck of a boat with their hats over their eyes; seeing twenty fingers slip from the rail, leaving only a pair of hats on a silent deck – were just fragments of a jigsaw puzzle that was missing essential pieces. But the pieces in hand were enough to hint at the color and meaning of the full image, and the picture was alarming.

  The main reason to find the missing toolbox was to get Cole off their backs. If they could accomplish that at the Paw Paw Tunnel, maybe it was better if the box remained missing. April’s next recovered memory might help them find it, but what if it also confirmed that she’d slashed Lee Fisher’s throat? What if it implicated her in the deaths of the Emory brothers?

  On the long walk back to the Goose Creek river lock, Jake tried to dismiss all the questions and focus on the steps ahead. By now April should have grazed and watered the mules. They just needed to saddle Gladys, hitch Bertie to the cart, and load their minimal supplies: blankets, a little food, water bottles, and the bin from the lockhouse basement with his father’s photography equipment. They could set out this evening, cover eight or ten miles to the west side of Leesburg, then find a pasture and sleep the rest of the night. And tomorrow they could start traveling by day and sleeping by night. No one seemed to be looking for April in Virginia, and they’d be heading west, further away from Swains Lock, the place he’d come to associate with whatever happened to the Emorys, Cy Elgin, Lee Fisher, and April. A twist in his stomach and a momentary lightheadedness made Jake realize he was both hungry and tired. Before they got underway, he needed food and a nap.

  He reached the Goose Creek river lock a little after noon, pulled his canoe down to the bank, and pushed off, paddling eddy to eddy up the Maryland shore. Passing the boat ramp at Edwards Ferry he looked straight ahead in case anyone was watching. He’d already noticed that the pillowcase flag was still hanging from a high branch. He paddled up to the fishing hole and rested a minute before crossing the river. There were no islands here, so he could see a mile or more of undulating green water rolling down toward him from the northwest. To the southwest, high cirrus clouds were starting to appear. That might mean rain tomorrow, not the weather he’d hoped for during a long ride.

  But Bertie and Gladys were rested and well fed now, so a little rain shouldn’t slow them down much. If they covered some ground tonight, they’d have less than seventy miles left to the Paw Paw Tunnel, with two and a half days to get there. They just needed to arrive by mid-afternoon on Sunday, since Cole would be hard pressed to get there by five.

  Jake felt another pang and smiled at how different it felt from the ones that had plagued him over the last year. He missed April, even though he’d been away from her for less than twenty-four hours. He swung his bow across the eddy line and started his ferry back to the Virginia shore.

  Chapter 39

  Setting Out

  Thursday, May 8, 1924

  “What would you do,” April said, “if I
woke up tomorrow and remembered everything?”

  Jake turned to look at the pale shape of her face rolling gently through the night, suspended above Gladys. April was wearing his flat cap and her cardigan again, but her hair had grown long enough to imply her gender.

  “I guess it would depend on who you remembered being. And what you remembered doing.”

  “You mean whether I really slashed Lee Fisher’s neck, like Cole says?”

  “I can’t believe you’d remember doing that,” Jake said, sidestepping the question.

  “I can’t either.”

  “What if I had nothing to do with Lee Fisher getting killed or the Emory brothers and their toolbox? What if I was just plain-vanilla Katie Elgin? Or plain-vanilla someone else?”

  Jake flicked the reins to keep Bertie alert. They’d passed through Leesburg half an hour ago, swinging onto the road to Purcellville, Winchester, and points further west. Now they’d reached the foot of a mile-long slope to a grassy ridge, so a roadside meadow ahead might be the place to stop for the night. With minimal light from the sliver of moon, it was too dark for Jake to read his pocket watch, but he guessed it was almost eleven.

  “Then it would depend on what you wanted to do. Start over or go back to your old life. You might have to convince the sheriff you were innocent. And Cole probably wouldn’t believe you.”

  “But we won’t have to worry about him anymore after Sunday, right?”

  “That’s the idea, anyway,” Jake said.

  “No more stingers or beekeepers,” she said, sounding relieved.

  “And while we’re at it, let’s get rid of the older man with a funny first name who wants to kill you. Since you told me once you weren’t sure it was Delmond Cole.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it is. Delmond is kind of a funny name. Like a mixed-up lemon squeezed by Ds.”

  Jake laughed. “That might explain his sour nature.”

  They reached the meadow and Jake dismounted to lead Bertie carefully across a shallow ditch and into the damp knee-high grass. The cart creaked and rattled but held together. They unhitched it, turned the mules out to graze, and laid their blankets between the wheels, using the cart as a lean-to.

  “So if I wanted to go back to being whoever I was, you’d help me do that?”

  “I don’t think you’d need my help. Your family would welcome you back.”

  “What if I wanted your help? To connect my old life to my new life.”

  Jake felt a little flare in his chest. Lying back on the blanket beside her, he used his interlaced fingers as a pillow and took a deep breath. “Your old life might not approve of my old life.”

  “Unless you forgot about it somehow,” April said, with a smile Jake couldn’t see but could tell was present from her voice.

  “There are plenty of people who would remind me.”

  “I could help you forget.”

  “That’s true,” Jake said, rolling onto his side to face her. Her mouth was slightly open, teeth a pale glow. “That’s your specialty.”

  “I’m doing it right now,” she said, tracing two fingers from the base of his throat down toward his breastbone.

  “And if there are too many reminders, I guess I could try to make a new start in Texas. Maybe you’d want to come with me.”

  “If your new life approves of my old life.”

  Jake rolled over to frame her shoulders with his forearms and looked down at the blurry shining smile on her face.

  “I like your new life just fine,” he said, lowering his lips toward hers as the first raindrops began to fall. “Maybe that’s all that matters.”

  Chapter 40

  Bird Dog

  Friday, May 9, 1924

  Sitting on the side of his bed, Zimmerman stared out the window at wet leaves tilting in the soft afternoon rain, each flinch and sliding drop recording an invisible impact. It made him want to shoot something. He walked over to the dresser where he’d stashed the bullets Cole had given him yesterday, after it was clear he was strong enough to stay on his feet.

  “You paid a price for that Colt you took off the scow,” Cole had said, handing him the box of cartridges. “Might as well get to know it. You might need to return the favor sometime.”

  Zimmerman pulled the pistol out of a drawer and loaded the magazine and firing chamber. Cole had been gone all day stripping logs up the mountain, but the boys were around somewhere. He found them in the barn, harvesting darts from a board and arguing about a score. Pete lowered his gaze and fell silent when he saw Zimmerman standing in the open doorway. Skeeter collected his darts and strode back to the line, ready to throw.

  “Hey, Skeeter. Nobody listens to a man holding a dart. Grab your .22 and a box of rounds and let’s do some shooting.”

  “Shooting what?” Skeeter said, flinging a dart. “Ain’t too many squirrels out in the rain.”

  “We can play a game we used to call Sitting Duck. I know a good spot for it.”

  Skeeter flung his last two darts without aiming and veered over to the gun rack.

  “Put them darts down, Pete,” Zimmerman said. “You got a spot in this game, too. You won’t need a gun.”

  Zimmerman chose two pieces of firewood with clean-cut ends from the pile against the wall, handed one to Pete, and led the boys outside, wrapping around to the windowless side of the barn. Halfway along the wall he came to a stop under the eaves. Thirty feet away, across a tractor path, the massive stump of a sawed-off chestnut tree stood rotting in the meadow grass, waist-high and six feet across.

  “Follow me, Pete,” he said, stepping out in the rain. He walked to the stump, leaned over it, and stood the log on end near its center. “Now climb on up and put your log on top, cross-wise.”

  Pete was too small to mount the stump while holding his log, so he set it down and scrambled up awkwardly, clawing at the seam between the rotting bark and slippery wood.

  “Go ahead, set that log on top like a T. Don’t knock ‘em over.”

  Pete balanced the second log horizontally on top of the first and took his hands away carefully.

  “That’s your sitting duck!” Zimmerman called out, addressing himself to Skeeter. “Now hop on down, Pete.” Pete slid down from the stump and started following Zimmerman back to the barn wall. Zimmerman turned and raised his hand in a stop gesture.

  “No, you ain’t a shooter in this game. You’re what we call the bird dog. When a log gets knocked over, you fetch it and set ‘em back up, just like they look now. Then you jump clear before the lead starts flying. Unless you want to get pecked full of holes.”

  Standing on the tractor path in the rain, Pete bit his lip as Zimmerman rejoined Skeeter. They stood with their backs to the barn wall, shielded from the drizzle by the eaves. Zimmerman gestured for Skeeter to load a round, then pulled out and inspected his pistol.

  “Clear out!” he yelled to Pete. “Not this way, over there!” He gestured along the tractor path with the gun.

  “Here’s how you play,” he said to Skeeter, drawing aim unhurriedly on the stacked logs as Pete backed away and squinted against the raindrops trickling into his eyes. “The first man shoots one bullet. Knock over a log and that’s one point. Two logs is two points. No logs is nothing. Then the next feller shoots and the scoring works the same. Keep taking turns until both logs is down, then the bird dog sets ‘em back up and we shoot some more.”

  “I’ll start,” he said, squeezing the trigger. The Colt belted out a hollow metallic roar as the barrel kicked back and splinters flew from the front of the stump. Neither log moved. The smell of gunsmoke drifted under the eaves. “Damn. Tracking low, almost a foot! Your shot, Skeeter.”

  Skeeter took aim at the vertical log, exhaled slowly, fired and missed.

  Zimmerman extended his arm, raised his hand a fraction, and shot again. The top log spun clockwise and tumbled off, sending the vertical log into a wobble that tipped it over.

  “Two points,” Zimmerman said with a smile. “Bird dog!” />
  Pete walked tentatively toward the stump.

  “Get on up there! Run!”

  Pete clawed his way onto the stump and fumbled with the wet logs, failing to balance them on his first attempt.

  “I’ll count down from five and you shoot when I hit zero,” Zimmerman said to Skeeter. “Five! Four! Three! Two!”

  Skeeter raised his rifle as Pete set the top log. “He ain’t clear yet,” he said, sighting down the barrel.

  “Bird dog, clear out! One!”

  Pete leapt off the stump and tumbled forward as Skeeter shot and both logs fell.

  “Got him!” Skeeter said. “Bulls eye!”

  “That’s fine shooting, Skeeter. Two points. Bird dog!”

  Pete got to his feet and wiped grass debris from his face with his sleeve. Grimacing, he shambled back to the stump, pulled himself up, and reset the logs as Zimmerman started another countdown.

  “Three! Two! One!” Zimmerman fired as Pete jumped back to the grass and rolled onto his side. Another miss.

  Skeeter fired without waiting and clipped the top log, bringing it down while the bottom log stood.

  “One point,” Zimmerman said. He took aim, fired, and felled the standing log. “Bird dog!”

  Pete staggered back to the stump and tried to push himself up, but sank back when his foot slipped.

  “We got a lame bird dog, Skeeter. Get on up there, bird dog!”

  Pete tried again and got his chest onto the stump, then wriggled his way up.

  “Five! Four! Three!”

  Pete dropped the upper log as he was trying to balance it, then knocked the standing log over as he hurriedly tried again.

  “Two! One! Now go fetch that toolbox, bird dog!” Zimmerman raised his pistol and shot ten feet above the stump as Pete panicked and dove to the grass, where he lay on his stomach, drenched and muddy, head cradled in his arms and torso heaving with sobs.