If It Is April

by Edward A. Stabler

  A man emerged from the blind spot against the ravine wall and cut across the towpath, angling toward the pile. He wore a faded jacket and no hat, with only a few wisps of grayish hair stretching back across his age-spotted scalp. His left arm hung stiff and motionless when he walked, but he held a pistol with his right. That could be Zimmerman, Jake thought, based on the description he’d heard from Jess Swain. The man put his hands and gun on the rail and studied the pile for a few seconds as Jake pulled stones from his pocket and chose one.

  The man seemed to survey the far wall of the ravine, then circle his attention to the rock face over the tunnel and around to the wall above the towpath. Jake took aim and threw hard, and his first stone glanced off the man’s hip.

  “Motherfucker!” the man snarled as Jake threw a second stone. This one missed, striking the railing with a knocking sound and skipping across the canal to the berm. Now the man had spotted Jake, who was throwing again. The man lunged to his right, raised his pistol, and fired as Jake’s third stone flew over the railing and into the canal.

  Jake heard the bullet rip the air above his head as he ducked and dug into his pockets for more stones.

  “Run, Pete!” he yelled, standing halfway and taking aim again. “The trail up the hill! Go!” As he threw he saw two flashes from Zimmerman’s gun and felt a hammer strike his left arm above the elbow. Along with the sound of gunfire he’d heard a dull thump and a yowl of pain. Clasping his hand over the ragged hole in his jacket sleeve, he looked up enough to see Zimmerman bent at the waist, his free hand tucked to his rib cage.

  “Pete, run!” Jake yelled again, and to his relief he saw the boy scramble to his feet, scan the ravine wall long enough to catch his eye, then take off down the towpath. Zimmerman saw it too.

  “Get back here, bird-dog!” he growled.

  Jake let go of his bleeding arm and snatched two stones from his pocket. As Zimmerman drew a bead on the running boy, he cast one after another. Zimmerman flinched and fired. Neither rock struck, but Zimmerman missed his shot and swung his barrel back toward the hilltop. Jake ducked as the gun went off, then stood enough to throw another stone and draw two more shots, one of which kicked up moss a few inches from his boot.

  How many shots was that, he thought. Six? He shifted downstream a few feet, popped up, threw, and ducked as Zimmerman fired his seventh shot too late. Now he’ll probably have to reload, Jake thought, clasping his hand on the wound again. Pete should be out of range. Jake raised his head enough to see most of the towpath. Zimmerman was gone. Was he running after Pete? No, first things first – he’s probably reloading against the wall. Zimmerman wouldn’t venture down the towpath or onto the trail unarmed.

  Backing away from the ravine wall, Jake made a fist on his left arm, opened it, and raked the moss with his fingers. The arm felt dead but the feeling in his fingertips was still there. He pulled it out of his jacket and looked at the spreading crimson stain on his shirt and the welling mulberry-colored wound at its center. Peeling back the torn shirt sleeve, he saw two holes on the upper surface of his arm, one clean and one ragged. So maybe the bullet had cut through him, missing the artery and bone. But his arm felt like it had been hit by a mallet, and it was still bleeding. He needed to bandage it before he tried to catch Pete on the trail.

  Lowering his head, he used his teeth to snare the bloodstained sleeve above the wound. He gripped the sleeve below the hole and ripped sideways, grimacing at the pain as his torn muscle flexed. A deep breath, two more rips, and the sleeve was hanging by a thread.

  A peripheral swing of foliage made him look up and dig into his pocket for another stone. He dropped it as Pete pushed aside a paw paw branch and scrambled up through the pricker bushes to the rock where Jake had braced his arm. Pete was wide-eyed and breathing hard, hair and pant legs wet from bushwhacking, but he looked more exhilarated than scared. His eyes were drawn immediately to Jake’s wound.

  “You hurt bad, mister?”

  “Call me Jake. It ain’t much. Help me rip this sleeve off.”

  Pete tore the hanging sleeve and helped Jake wrap it around his wound and knot it.

  “Was that Zimmerman watching you?”

  Pete nodded. “There’s two of ‘em that brung me out here.”

  “I know. I already ran into Cole.”

  “Are you the feller with Katie?”

  Jake smiled. “We’ll see. She’s here too. We came out to get you back, so now we need to keep moving. Did Zimmerman see you break off the trail?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see him chasing me.”

  “OK. We played a trick on Cole in the tunnel, so he’ll be mad when he comes out. Probably at the other end. He took the trail to get there, so he might be coming back the same way. We don’t want to run into him. Or Zimmerman.”

  “Do you have a gun? Both of ‘em have guns.”

  Jake shook his head sheepishly. “We just got our wits. And a couple of trusty mules. And a cart. You feel strong enough to do some walking?”

  “I think so. I ain’t hurt, just hungry.”

  “Good. There’s an old road up on top of the ridge, and I think it runs down the other side. If we can climb through the woods and find it, I think we can circle around to our mules.”

  “Is Katie going to meet us there?”

  “I hope so.”

  Chapter 46

  Five Claws

  Sunday, May 11, 1924

  Zimmerman pressed his back to the shale wall and took shallow breaths to assuage the throb in his side. No stones rained down on him, so he realized he must be hidden by the receding angle of the wall overhead. His hip didn’t hurt too much, but that rock-throwing bastard might of cracked a rib. Zimmerman was pretty sure Jake took a bullet. Served him right.

  Stashing the gun in his breast pocket, he pulled out a blue glass vial and tapped a coin-sized mound of white powder into his palm. He set a nostril to it, inhaling what didn’t stick and rubbing the rest against his bared front teeth. Still the best cure for pain. He fished into his pocket for seven more bullets and refilled the Colt’s magazine.

  No sense going after Pete, since Zimmerman couldn’t catch him on the trail. If Jake wasn’t bleeding to death, he’d probably be leading him back over the hill. They might run into Cole, who could decide what to do with them. Let ‘em go if he got what he came for. Leave ‘em dead in the woods for the buzzards if he ain’t. The boy for the toolbox, that was Cole’s deal, and it was out of Zimmerman’s hands now.

  He was here for the Elgin girl. He’d heard gunshots in the tunnel a few minutes before the stones started flying, so maybe Cole had finished her off. If not, and if she was in there, Zimmerman would do that now. How long had he been resting against this wall? Long enough for Jake to be gone or dead… long enough for the heroin to take his place. He felt the sunlit hands of an ally lift his back from the ravine wall and dissolve the pain in his ribs. Approaching the tunnel entrance, he saw the canal water nearly reaching the level of the towpath, but that was more a validation than a threat. The dreams, the apparitions, the unexpected glimpse of a predator in a stranger’s eyes, all of that would end today, as it should have ended years ago.

  He slid the Colt into his waistband and walked into the dark with his hand on the rail. Forty years of drifting and dealing slipped away, and he was back in the tunnel with Henry, driving Patches and Dutch for Captain Zimmerman. The wet-sanded rail, the scalloped dirt beneath his feet – it still felt the same. His pupils dilated in the dark, but the railing and towpath merged with the blackness, and the arching bricks overhead were unlit planets in a starless sky. The circle of light at the far end was the only beacon. It barely seemed closer after the first five hundred feet.

  As he walked further a glimmer emerged and appeared to grow. What he’d taken for a reflection in the canal became a pale yellow light. It grew faster than the daylight circle, and his eyes locked onto it as he walked. Then a foot struck shallow water. Not a puddle, the water was moving, like the final t
hrust of a wave against the beach. The canal was rising over the towpath. That didn’t signify, so Zimmerman kept walking. If the girl was lying dead or wounded on the towpath ahead, these ripples weren’t enough to wash her away. Maybe she’d collapsed after lighting a candle on the railing. He could empty his pistol into her to make sure.

  His hand fell off the end of the railing. Sidestepping through shoe-deep water, he soon found only water underfoot. The railing and the towpath upstream were gone. He retreated, lit a match, looked down. A soft current rolled over his shoes, which seemed to be standing on water. There was no sign of the towpath in either direction. The end of the railing was within reach, and a rope was wrapped around the last post at knee height. Below that, the free end of the rope was a pile of spaghetti in the shallow water. Its fixed end sloped into the canal ahead.

  He squinted and stared at the yellow light, which looked like a candle just above the towpath. There is no towpath, he reminded himself. The pilings are submerged and you can’t see where the railing starts again. As the match burned down he let it drop. The candle must be sitting on a raft, he realized, and the raft must be moored to a piling or a post. How far away was it? Forty feet? Fifty? There were long, boxy shadows behind the light. And in the foreground, a shape that he noticed was distinct from the rectangular silhouettes. It looked like a body lying almost prostrate, legs and feet toward the candle and barely discernible in the light.

  Zimmerman pulled the Colt from his waistband, took aim at the shape, and fired. The roar of the shot masked any sound of impact. The figure didn’t react or move. He fired again. In the Yukon, he’d shot a wolf that was watching his tent at night. He’d thought it was dead when he kicked the corpse, but in the morning it was gone. He lit a second match and studied the rope. If it didn’t come from the raft, it must lead right past it. He tucked the Colt against the small of his back, dropped his hands to the submerged towpath, and slid forward into the chilly water.

  His feet didn’t find the bottom until his head had slipped under. He pushed back to the surface, snorted the water from his nose, and half-stroked to the rope. It was taut enough, only inches below the surface. He started pulling himself upstream. The heroin kept his pain at bay but his healing gunshot wound compromised one arm, so he held with his left and pulled with his right. As the raft drew closer, he fixed his eyes on the wavering flame. The shape beside it was definitely a body, facing away from him.

  The rope was leading him along the axis of the missing railing. Maybe it was looped around a piling further upstream and its other end was cleated to the raft. When he got close enough he lunged for the corner, sweeping his good arm onto the deck in search of a handhold. He dug his fingers into a crack and flattened his forearm onto the planks. Then he reached for the Colt at the small of his back. If he could raise his shoulders a little, there would be no chance of missing at this range, even left-handed.

  As he pulled the gun through the water, he sensed motion on the raft. The figure was curling and rising. In the changing yellow light it looked like a kneeling boy, with limp neck-length hair that screened its face. It had to be the Elgin girl. Zimmerman swung the barrel into position and sighted his target just as a thousand suns exploded in his face. His head snapped back and he blindly fired three shots in retribution as every shade of red, orange, white, and gold flared and waned behind his sightless eyes.

  He let go of the raft and slipped underwater to cool his brain and wait for his vision to return. The northern lights appeared, writhing in the sky over the frozen Yukon River. And the Siwash necklace he’d found, with a wolf tooth and a sewn-shut rabbit ear… Wylie slicing the stitches to show him the inside, with two painted eyes weeping tears of blood. He swam toward the rope and snared it, then lifted his head from the water to open his eyes and breathe. The darkness re-established itself slowly and his eyes found the candle flame, flickering as if in a breeze. It was sliding downstream along with the raft! The girl was slumped in a different position, legs bent awkwardly, face up.

  Did one of his shots sever the mooring line? Was the girl wounded or dead? He had to find out and there were two more bullets in the Colt. He lunged toward the center of the canal and started swimming with the current, pursuing the raft into the blackness downstream.

  Even fully clothed, swinging half-strokes with his head above water, he was able to gain on the raft. An extended breeze cooled his scalp and he could sense the current was bearing them faster now, the water rushing audibly and rising toward the midplane of the tunnel. He remembered watching Wylie swim the Whitehorse Rapids on the Lewes River, then huddling on a rock like a wet rat, telling him the Siwash girl had flipped his boat.

  The candle flame sputtered and died and he focused on the glowing wick until it cooled to black. He could feel the pistol begin to slide free of his waistband, so he stopped swimming to secure it and rest his arms. Treading water, he kept pace with his target. The hanging daylight moon gained prominence as the current carried them closer, casting its reflection on the flowing water ahead and revealing the silhouette of the raft.

  He took a flurry of strokes until he brushed the side, then found a grip. Fingers folded onto the deck, he floated along with the raft, mouth just above water while he caught his breath. The blackness softened to twilight and the moon consumed the night as they approached the entrance.

  He drew a deep breath, kicked his legs, and pressed his palms to the deck, then cast for a handhold with his good arm. The rising light revealed a cleated rope with two short tails. Locking his grip on the severed ends, he braced his elbow against the deck, withdrew the Colt, and looked up. The girl was kneeling just beyond his reach, holding a railing post as if it were a baseball bat. As he swiveled the pistol toward her she swung the post to meet it and sent the gun flying from his hand.

  “Blood-sucking whore!” Zimmerman snarled. His left hand was bashed and burning but he thrust it into his pocket and pulled out Cole’s jackknife. As he tried to open it with his teeth, the post came flying down on the hand that held the rope tails. He screamed in pain and let go, his right hand a set of useless claws. The raft sailed clear of the tunnel and the world opened wide. Zimmerman sunk below the surface and was pushed under the raft when it slammed into the debris pile and stopped dead. Flowing through and around the pile, the current pinned him against it, and when he opened his eyes all he could see were the stringers and planks on the bottom of the raft.

  He tried to pull himself upstream and clear, but his hands couldn’t grip well enough to fight the current. Sweeping his arms, he managed to swivel so his head was pointing downstream, pressed against a section of broken towpath planks. Toward the center of the raft he saw daylight along the edge. An indentation in the pile, and a gap large enough for him to pull to the surface. His lungs were on fire so he exhaled to reduce the pain. He shifted toward the center and brought his head out from the shadow of the raft, expecting to see the sky.

  The Indian girl was looking down at him through the water, just as Wylie had seen her in his dream when he sank into a watery seam on the frozen Yukon River. As Zimmerman brought his arms out from under the raft, she disappeared. He pushed for the surface and his face was inches away when a railing post fell off the raft, blocking his path to a breath. Another post fell into the gap, then a third and a fourth, turning the sky dark. The northern lights swirled above him, resolving into the shape of a glowing girl coming up the hill toward the towpath through the trees. His lungs burst and went liquid as the colors ebbed to black.

  Chapter 47

  Flotsam

  Sunday, May 11, 1924

  From the shoulder of the ravine wall Cole watched the mudstained water flow from the tunnel. The railing and the upper inches of the posts were still visible, but the towpath was buried three feet deep. You could probably float the tunnel at this level, if no fallen trees had washed in and got wedged, but you couldn’t walk it anymore. And the river wouldn’t crest until late tonight or tomorrow morning. It might fill the barr
el yet.

  A raft bearing skewed stacks of posts and planks was pinned against the pile of scrap lumber and driftwood just outside the tunnel entrance. He’d hoped to see Katie Elgin lying dead on it, pierced by his bullets. She and Jake didn’t have the toolbox, he was convinced now. The box she tossed overboard in the tunnel wasn’t big enough.

  If they had it, they would of opened it by now. Exchanged the hard money for rocks, then waved the box at him and dropped it in the water. That might of looked convincing. So maybe the Elgin girl would never remember where it was. Maybe she never knowed.

  Cole still wasn’t sure if his shots had hit her. If she’d been wounded and fallen off the raft, she could of bled to death in the water. If she was pinned inside the tunnel or got pushed into the huge pile, she was drownded by now. Might as well make her pay for Kevin and Tom Emory. And for Lee Fisher. If Cole couldn’t recover the money and the ledger, at least he could give the Emorys a scalp. That way they could lick their wounds and start moving forward again.

  He watched a length of railing on the near edge of the pile work its way loose and float away with the current. The rising water was picking the strainer apart. Jake would of noticed the canal coming up first, Cole thought, since he was standing in it. He probably got out as soon as the coast was clear. Started working another ambush but got scared when the water broke over the towpath. Romeo didn’t want to get stranded, so he hightailed it back to the road and left Juliet in the tunnel.

  A broken stringer with planks nailed to it came free from the back of the pile and drifted off. Maybe the Elgin girl was meant to float out of the tunnel on the raft, Cole thought, and Jake was coming over the hill to meet her. If so, they hadn’t figured on a strainer like this… one that could stop the raft dead. Or on Zimmerman with his elbows on the railing, a loaded pistol, and a pocketful of bullets. Stuck on the raft or swimming in the canal, the girl would be a sitting duck. Maybe Zimmerman shot ‘em both and let the bodies wash down to the river.