If It Is April

by Edward A. Stabler

  The sound of water splattering into the canal grew louder as a curtain of rain emerged from the darkness ahead. It was seepage from one of the two shafts that had been sunk from the hilltop, so the tunnelers could dig against four surfaces at once. Jake sheltered the candle and stepped through the brief shower, entering the inner third of the tunnel. April followed with the tackle box, sliding through with her back to the curving bricks.

  A few minutes later Jake came to a break in the railing. Holding the candle aloft, he saw the towpath slumping into the canal a few paces ahead. The platform that held it was missing for at least a hundred feet, probably torn from the tunnel wall by a clot of debris during the flood. Whatever logs or branches had damaged it had been removed, and two parallel lines of pilings stretched into the blackness, looking symmetrical and stripped.

  Floating in the canal within leaping distance from the towpath was a wooden raft, a stout rope emerging from the water and looping around the last railing post to hold it fast. That must be the rope that was tied to the railing at the entrance, he thought. It would allow the repair workers to pull the raft up the tunnel or drift it down, then anchor it wherever they were working. The raft appeared to hold a pile of bricks, a few buckets, and a stack of posts or planks.

  Jake looked up and down the tunnel. The daylight moon ahead looked a bit larger than the one they’d left behind. April stood beside him, eyes on the rope.

  “End of the line,” Jake said. “I guess this is where we grow our claws.”

  He handed her the candle and they knelt on the towpath to prepare the flash. In the uneven light Jake tapped out a cone of powder about twice the size of its predecessor and embedded two strips of touch paper for the fuse.

  “Light them both in case one goes out,” he said. “How much candle is left?”

  “Half.”

  He took it from her and dripped wax on the railing, then fixed the candle in place. Six feet behind the candle, he carefully set the flash tray on the rail, aiming it straight along the axis. He put the handle down on the towpath, propped against the tunnel wall.

  “If he comes straight for the tackle box, you can light it from the rail. If you need to move, use the handle.”

  Then he pulled out the pack of matches and closed the tackle box. He handed April the matches and set the box on the rail, a foot in front of the candle.

  “If he has a lamp, you’ll see him. If he doesn’t, you’ll hear him. Light the candle when you know he’s coming. He won’t see you if you stand back behind the flash tray.”

  “He can see me with his eyes closed.”

  “He won’t. He’ll be focused on the box – that’s what he came for. When he gets close, hold a match ready. As he reaches for it, strike the match and light the paper. He’ll pull the box off the rail before he looks up. Just as the flash goes off.”

  “He’ll see everything and then nothing.”

  Jake furrowed his brow. He wanted April to visualize the coming encounter with Cole, but she seemed to be elsewhere again.

  “The flash should make him wobbly. He’ll probably grab the railing for balance. He might drop the box, maybe into the water. Blow out the candle, then crouch low and dash past him along the wall. Come all the way out. Move as fast as you can in the dark. You can keep a hand on the rail.” Jake put his hands on her shoulders and looked her in the eyes. They were steady, looking through or beyond him. “Can you do that?”

  April nodded. “Soon.”

  “It should take him a minute or two to get his bearings and come after you. He’ll probably open the tackle box and throw it away. He might start shooting, but he won’t have a target. When he comes out, I’ll be ready for him.”

  Hands still on her shoulders, Jake stopped again to read her reaction. She’d leveled her eyes on the base of his throat, but now she raised them to his and offered the trace of a smile.

  “No more stingers or beekeepers after today,” he said.

  “This is the last one.”

  He kissed her tightly on the lips, gave her a long hug, and released her.

  “OK. It shouldn’t be too long now. Light the candle when you know he’s coming.” Remembering something he’d thought about earlier, he pulled out his pocketknife. “And don’t use this unless you have to,” he said, pressing the knife into her hand and closing her fingers around it. Then he blew out the flame and hurried off into the dark.

  ***

  Feeling his way out of the tunnel, Jake thought about Cole. If he got the message from Linus and Floyd at noon, the fastest way he could get here from Pennyfield would be driving out on the Maryland side. West to Frederick, over South Mountain to Hagerstown, west again to Hancock. Then halfway to Cumberland before turning south along Green Ridge to the river. Cole would probably drive past Bertie and Gladys before parking near the bridge over the canal. Jake hoped he’d be too preoccupied to recognize the mules, or too time-pressed to do them harm. Even with clear roads, Cole would have to drive steady to reach the Paw Paw Tunnel by five.

  So how should he handle the encounter? Cole wanted the toolbox, but Jake would insist he release Pete first. After Jake told him where the toolbox was, Cole probably wouldn’t want the boy to accompany him into the tunnel. Or Jake. Even with a gun, Cole would be at risk trying to control two adversaries in the dark. Maybe three, if he suspected April was waiting inside. Cole would be sacrificing an arm if he carried a lamp. And he couldn’t trust Jake or Pete to reliably light the way for him. So Jake thought Cole would turn Pete loose and enter alone, trusting his undivided wits and his pistol.

  He’d probably be cautious in the tunnel, so it might be ten minutes before he saw the lit candle perched on the railing. Then a minute for April to ignite the flash and eight more for her to reach the entrance. If Cole regained his sight quickly, recognized the box was a fake, and launched a pursuit, he might be only a minute behind her. So even if everything went according to plan, Jake might have less than twenty minutes to prepare a trap.

  He’d decided to use the loose bricks he’d seen stacked on the towpath near the entrance. If he carried them up to the granite walkway over the tunnel, he and April could tip them onto the towpath as Cole emerged. The towpath was narrow enough that their target would likely be no more than a foot from its center. If they could knock Cole to the ground with a shower of eighty bricks, then they could stand directly above him and throw down the dozen that would finish him off. Sprawled on the dirt and trying to aim through a rain of bricks at the assailants above him, Cole would stand no chance of firing a damaging shot. When he succumbed, they could roll the battered moonshiner into the canal.

  Which Jake sensed had started to flow faster since he and April entered the tunnel. It was too dark to see the water level, but he could hear an occasional lapping of the current against the opposite wall. Ten paces from the entrance, blackness melted to twilight and Jake confirmed his impression; the canal was filling and flowing.

  Emerging into daylight he immediately checked the time. Four thirty. He jogged up the stone stairs that flanked the towpath and surveyed the walkway over the tunnel. A thigh-high parapet wall with a wide slab top ensured visitors wouldn’t take a false step and tumble into the canal. That parapet wall would be perfect for staging the bricks, Jake thought. But set against the granite façade of the tunnel, a pile of red bricks on top of the wall would catch the eye of anyone approaching on the towpath. Jake would have to hide them behind the parapet wall while he waited, then raise them into tipping position after Cole entered the tunnel.

  That meant Jake needed to move all the bricks up to the walkway now, because Cole was due in less than half an hour. He shed his jacket, shuffled down the stairs, and got to work.

  Chapter 43

  Bricks

  Sunday, May 11, 1924

  “Upstream end of the Paw Paw Tunnel,” Cole said, raising his voice against the wind as the truck flew downhill toward Hagerstown. “How many ways to get there?”

  “Easiest is from
upstream,” Zimmerman said. “Park where the Paw Paw - Oldtown Road goes over the canal and walk half a mile down the towpath. That’s where they’ll be looking for you.

  “Second way is from Lock 61. Come a mile and a half up the towpath, then keep going through the tunnel.

  “Third is same as the second, but when you get to the tunnel, take the trail over the hill. It’s two miles and drops straight onto the upstream end.”

  Cole nodded. “Can you get us to Lock 61?”

  “It’s off the road to Oldtown from Little Orleans. Closer than the easy way, but the last ten miles is hill-country driving so it won’t save you no time.”

  Cole glanced back at the flatbed, where Pete was sitting on a folded mattress with his back to the cab, hair streaming in the crosswind through the slat walls. “Good thing we strapped him in,” he said, turning to Zimmerman with a smirk. “You never really seen me drive.”

  ***

  Cole got out and stretched his legs on the puddled dirt road. The whitewashed stone lockhouse at Lock 61 was visible through the trees. Admiring his mud-splattered fenders and chassis, he swung the door closed and climbed onto the flatbed to unstrap Pete, who had sunk into a fetal position, anchored at the waist with the mattress-top folded over him. When Cole barked at him, he opened his eyes. It didn’t look like the ride had made him upchuck. Cole pulled the boy out of the truck and turned to Zimmerman, who was slowly rotating his left shoulder to loosen the healing wound.

  “Got your gun?”

  Zimmerman extracted the pistol from his jacket pocket.

  “Good,” Cole said. “Take Pete up to the tunnel. You got time, but none to waste. When you get there don’t go in and don’t turn him loose to nobody. Just wait for me.”

  “You taking the tunnel or the trail?”

  “I ain’t decided yet,” Cole said, smiling enough to bare his canine teeth. He tucked his own Colt against the small of his back and set off running at the deer-tracking pace he used with his coonhound.

  Lock 61 disappeared behind him as the canal and towpath came out of a c-curve and began a long approach to the Paw Paw Bends. The canal was knee-deep on this level and starting to flow, he noticed. Probably runoff from the steep hillside that flanked it. Entering the straightaway, the apron narrowed steadily and Cole got his first view of the river. It had that chocolate-milk color of a steep creek after a downpour, he thought – if a few thousand creeks was put together. He watched the river fold and kick, realizing that it might keep rising for a while after all that rain. Then he turned his back on it, following the towpath and canal as they swung a right angle into the shallow ravine.

  Clots of twigs, grass, and dead vines hung eight feet above the towpath, wrapped around the trunks of scrawny trees that clung to the angled shale walls. All the loose ends pointed downstream. That’s how high the canal was running during the flood, he thought. Some of the water came down from the hills on either side, but most of it probably ran through the tunnel. With three locks just ahead lifting the canal to the tunnel level, the ravine had some pitch to it, so the flood barreling down it must have been a hell of a sight.

  Cole felt the low burn in his chest swell higher as the towpath ramped alongside Lock 63. The gates looked intact, with the downstream pair closed and wickets opened, but the lock chamber was a tangle of driftwood. The ravine’s three locks were spaced at five-hundred-foot intervals, and the next two looked much the same. Beyond them he was halfway up to the tunnel, and the shale walls steepened. Cole started to appreciate how isolated this stretch of the canal really was. It was no wonder that repair workers hadn’t gotten around to clearing these locks yet. The flood debris couldn’t just be tossed onto the berm and carted away; it would have to be dragged to the mouth of the ravine. Or washed there, he thought, if the river keeps rising.

  A half-dozen draws ran perpendicularly into the ravine, bearing runoff down from the ridges on either side. When he was within a thousand feet of the tunnel, Cole passed the left-hand drainage that carried the Tunnel Hill Trail. He kept running and the towpath became a boardwalk fixed to the ravine wall. The tunnel entrance emerged from behind the steep-pitched shale.

  He slowed to a walk for the last few hundred feet, assessing the portal. The granite blocks of its arch, abutments, and stairs formed a modest testament to civilization and symmetry, posed below the scarred and faceted box canyon walls. What caught his eye was just outside the tunnel entrance: an enormous mound of broken and sawn-off planks, stringers, and railing occupied the center of the canal. Driftwood and two severed trunks were knitted into the mix, and the thigh-deep water in the canal flowed through and around the piled wreckage.

  Cole stopped to interpret the scene. Segments eight or ten feet long were still nailed together. They must have been shorn from the towpath. Maybe the flood had wedged the tree trunks somewhere inside the tunnel and pried the framework apart. To rebuild it, repair workers must have decided to cut all the broken pieces loose and drag them out. Maybe they planned to boat the debris down to the river after the canal was fixed and watered.

  He studied the towpath leading into the tunnel. It looked inviting: dirt path undamaged, original railing and posts in place. But if the wrecked portion inside hadn’t been replaced yet, traversing the tunnel would mean wading into the canal. He was close enough now to see the disk of daylight at the upstream end, so he knew the passage wasn’t blocked, but it might be a struggle to get through. He turned and ran back to the Tunnel Hill trailhead. It followed a draw up an easy grade before curving toward a gap in the ridgeline. He filled his lungs and started running.

  The clouds were beading up, letting sunshine strike the trail, and Cole felt sweat forming at the base of his neck and rolling past the pistol at the small of his back. Hot weather wasn’t far off, and he wanted to finish this cat-and-mouse game before it arrived. Eliza had cajoled him to drive her up the Shenandoah to a spot he’d mentioned once, where there was a rope swing from a high rock into the river. Cole found himself picturing her ten times a day now, and he knew she was starting to carry a torch for him. He had to get back to Jefferson County, get the business running steady again. That would be a lot easier once he had the Emorys’ money and ledger in hand.

  And that better happen today. He couldn’t reckon why Jake and the Elgin girl had changed the location on him, but it made him edgy. They obviously didn’t want to let him plan anything ahead of time. Wanted to make sure they got here first. Cole would have liked to arrive early and catch them off guard. He’d shown up at Pennyfield an hour early today and the darkie boys had flagged him down on his way to the lock. So he’d been on the road west with Zimmerman and Pete before noon. If the trail was a mile up and a mile down, like Zimmerman said, he still might reach the upstream entrance fifteen or twenty minutes early. Probably wouldn’t signify, he thought, but you take every edge they don’t grab for themselves.

  The draw forked and the trail went right, wrapping around a knob and then ascending the ridge at a saddle point. Cole was going home with what he came for, he vowed as he quick-stepped up the last part of the climb. If the Elgin girl didn’t deliver the toolbox with everything in it, she’d lose a kneecap or two today. Maybe that would send her crawling back to her family with a sense of purpose. Pete could stay with the Coles while the Elgins convinced Katie to cough up the Emorys money and ledger so they could get their son back. And if Jake Reed kept interfering, he might need to get buried underwater in the tunnel.

  He crested the ridge and started downhill, crossing a dirt road that was reverting to grass. The trail descended gradually along the wooded hilltop, then fell faster on a long slant toward the river. After a switchback he got his first view of rolling water, down through the trees. Another switchback and the trail leveled off, following a bench sixty feet above the shoreline. When the vegetation on his right yielded to a slope of knobby gray rock, Cole knew he was close to the tunnel entrance. He slowed to a fast walk and drew the pistol from his waistband.

 
The trail bent left into the last few switchbacks but Cole veered right, over trampled dirt between scrawny trees. He quietly crested a mound and looked down. Twenty feet away, down a grade too steep to climb, he saw the stone walkway and slab wall that presided over the tunnel entrance. Below them, the granite arch and a slice of blackness for the mouth. And kneeling on the walkway above the entrance, with his back to Cole, was a hatless young man with thick, untended hair arranging a pile of bricks.

  Cole extended his arm, sighted along the pistol barrel, and fired. The bullet struck the slope above the man, showering him with a plume of powdered rock as the roar hovered and echoed in the space between them. The man froze in his kneeling position, one hand on the rock face and one on the parapet wall.

  “Stand up slow,” Cole ordered.

  The man stood up, elbows bent and hands raised.

  “Keep ‘em up, and turn around.”

  The man pivoted to face Cole. It was Jake Reed.

  “Where’s the girl?” Cole demanded, lowering the gun to waist level but keeping it pointed at Jake.

  “She doesn’t need to be here. I’ll handle things. Where’s Pete Elgin?”

  “Keeping company,” Cole said. “He’s all yours when I get what his sister stole. Where’s the box?”

  Jake tried to lower his hands slowly, but raised them again when Cole swung the pistol up and cocked the trigger. “In the tunnel,” Jake said. “You can’t miss it.”

  Cole smiled. “Is that right? You want me to go in there and get it?”

  “I don’t know what’s in it,” Jake said. “But that’s why you came here. It’s the box you been looking for.”

  “A tunnel ain’t a good place to look for something. I was ready for a straight swap at Pennyfield, the boy for the box. When the pickaninnies give me the note I figured you got something crooked planned at the tunnel. So that’s where I got Pete now, hogtied in the dark and a gun to his head. Anything happens to me and he ain’t coming out of there alive.”