BURYING ZIMMERMAN (The River Trilogy, book 2)

by Edward A. Stabler

  Maybe Gilbert was hungry and foresaw a chance at a meal, or maybe his instincts told him that Captain Zimmerman was more of an opportunity than a threat, but for some reason he guided Captain Z and Henry to his grandmother's house in Georgetown. The Captain's conversation with her confirmed his impressions. Without a father, Gilbert was slipping into an orbit she couldn't monitor or control.

  Captain Zimmerman offered to take Gilbert onboard as an apprentice mule driver on their run to Cumberland and back. That would mean long days on the towpath and plenty of work, but the boy would be fed and clothed and paid three dollars when they arrived back in Georgetown in two weeks. It was mid-July, and if he proved up to the job, he could stay on for the next round-trip. As long as he played it straight, Gilbert could boat with Captain Z and Henry and their older hand Otis until school started up in the fall.

  And so despite the effortless mendacity Gilbert demonstrated in his first encounters with the Zimmermans, Captain Z threw him a lifeline, and Gilbert was introduced to the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. The Captain must have seen a resourcefulness that he thought could be channeled toward honest and laudable ends. But even though Gilbert was only thirteen years old, I'm convinced now that a core part of him was already unreachable and broken.

  ***

  We never took Gig Garrett's fingerprints, so there is still no evidence that he strangled Jessie Delaney before he fled to the Yukon. And while there are rumors that he stabbed a fellow miner in Alaska, leaving the dying man with his throat pinned to a claim-stake, there were no witnesses to that event either.

  The only killings that can be surely attributed to Garrett were my brother's and his own – the position of the bodies and bullet-holes left little doubt about what had happened. But an earlier incident foreshadowed those killings, and it inspired Garrett's nickname. Henry Zimmerman was both its witness and its victim.

  By August of 1888, the summer after his watermelon heist, Gilbert had become a capable canal hand. He was less than a year older than Henry, and during that second summer on the canal the two boys were accomplices and rivals in the way that way that closely-spaced brothers are. On normal days the boys would spend hours walking the towpath with the mules. When Captain Z wanted to boat through the night, Henry would drive the mules while Gilbert slept in the boat's narrowest bunk, and at the end of each level they'd trade places. Occasionally, like on that August day, there were chances to escape the routine.

  Captain Zimmerman's boat was approaching Pennyfield Lock on a run back to Cumberland from Georgetown. As the crew got closer, they could see that the lock was set for a loaded boat approaching from the other direction. But another light boat was ahead of them, waiting and tied up to the berm. Henry and Gilbert realized they'd have to watch both boats transit the lock before it would be ready for them.

  That would take fifteen minutes, and it was only a three-minute walk to Muddy Branch, a broad and puddled stream that ducked through a culvert under the canal on its way to the Potomac River. Muddy Branch was bullfrog territory. They tied up behind the waiting boat, and then with a nod from Captain Z, the boys grabbed a frog-gig and a mason jar and set out.

  Gilbert had gone gigging with Henry once before, but they'd failed to catch a frog. Henry had shown him how to hold the fork-tined spear at an angle, then flick it with only his hand and forearm, keeping his eyes on the quarry and his elbow steady. Frog-gigging worked best at night. If you had a lamp you could mesmerize them while you stood in the water and aimed at their shining eyes.

  During the daytime it made more sense to sneak up on them from behind. If the frog was close to the bank, sometimes you could catch them by hand. You had to creep within a few feet, reach slowly into the space above the frog – and then snare it with a swipe, sweeping your hand into the water a bit ahead of it, since the first sign of motion would make the frog submerge and shoot forward. If you couldn't get close enough, then you would use the gig.

  When they reached Muddy Branch, it took less than a minute for Henry to spot his frog. Its telltale nose and eyes broke the surface where a bulging eddy receded into a patch of marsh grass. Henry put a finger to his lips while pointing it out. He gestured downstream, where he led Gilbert across the creek on stepping-stone rocks. They swung wide before approaching stealthily through the grass from behind.

  The frog remained motionless where they'd spotted it, clear-lidded eyes protruding above the waterline. Henry handed the gig to Gilbert and hunched forward toward the frog – he wanted to use his hands. Gilbert stepped away for a clean view of the catch. Henry bent slowly at the waist and knees and stretched his right hand into position... and then flashed it into the water ahead of the frog while his left hand splashed down beside it to brace.

  His fingers touched cool, darting muscle underwater, then closed too late to trap the receding legs, just as a jarring impact electrified his left hand. He screamed in pain and turned to see the wobbling shaft of the gig extending from the mud-clouded water. His hand throbbed and burned where the metal tines pinned it to the creek bed.

  Henry's face went white while his sweat dripped into the water and he turned toward Gilbert in disbelief. Gilbert got busy. He freed the gig from the creek, rinsed the mud from its tines and Henry's hand, and then carefully pulled the two apart. Two of the tines had struck glancing blows and one missed, but the fourth stripped Henry's ring finger to the bone.

  Gilbert pulled off his shirt to wrap Henry's hand and they ran back to the boat, with Henry streaming tears and loping as fast as he could while holding one hand aloft with the other. When they got there Captain Zimmerman immediately escorted Henry to the nearby Pennyfield House to get his hand cleaned and bandaged. Through his sniffles, Henry told his father what had happened, and how Gilbert hadn't waited to see whether he could catch the frog by hand.

  But Henry didn't mention the part that bothered him the most, the part that would be seared into his memory. When he'd screamed and looked up with his hand impaled in the mud, Gilbert was staring at the gig and smiling.

  Three weeks later, doctors amputated Henry's dying ring finger at the knuckle, and by late October he was back on the canal for the final run of the season.

  Gilbert was contrite and solicitous in the weeks and months ahead, but it took another year with the Zimmermans (he stayed with them in Williamsport over the winter and attended school with Henry) before the emotions surrounding the incident drained away. And when school friends – and then even Henry and Captain Z – started calling him "Gig" Garrett, Gilbert knew he'd been forgiven.

  Chapter 4

  I slip the pistol into my coat and walk past Drew's grave as the stones fade to shadows. Henry Zimmerman's message told me to meet him on the washed-up scow at eight, and it may take until then to reach Sandy Landing via the main roads. As the crow flies it's a shorter walk, but I don't want to cross Sam Ford's property after dark. There are still working gold mines along that route.

  It's been thirty-one years since I fell into the shaft at Rock Run, but beads of sweat still pinprick my forehead when I think about underground chambers. Or enclosed spaces anywhere... small quarters that offer no exit and admit no light. When I was eight and had just been rescued, I didn't feel ashamed when my heart started racing and the burning sensation would rise from my chest to my face. I thought those symptoms would recede as years passed and I outgrew my fear.

  And the symptoms did diminish as I got older, but only because I learned to avoid triggering them. I gave wells and mines a wide berth, and found reasons not to walk through old railroad tunnels or explore caves with my friends. When I was fourteen there was a blizzard and some of the kids built an igloo behind the gas house, but I refused to enter it. My success at avoiding small, dark places made me optimistic that my fears would have little impact on my life. But that hope ended when I was seventeen, on a cool September night in 1902.

  ***

  My hands were balled into nervous fists in my coat pockets that night as I walked up to the entrance
of the Cabin John Bridge Hotel. Drew had told me to meet him there at seven-thirty and I was a few minutes early. I stood outside and watched a couple walk past on Conduit Road, arm in arm as they headed for the nearby Union Arch Bridge and the trolley beyond it.

  Drew slipped out the front door and tapped me on the shoulder with a smile. I followed him around to the side lawn, where he pulled a set of handcuffs from his pocket. He'd arranged to borrow them from a bartender at the hotel tavern. We practiced closing the cuffs, opening them with the key, and adjusting their settings.

  "Well, sheriff," he said, "these should be strong enough to keep our outlaw in line." I slipped the cuffs into my pocket as Drew produced a dark revolver from his. I'd seen enough photos in magazines to recognize it as an old army piece, but I had no idea where he'd gotten it. He released the cylinder and swung it wide to show me the six bullets it held.

  ".38 caliber," Drew said, clicking the cylinder back into place and spinning it. "Can shoot all the air out of a stubborn man."

  "What if Garrett has his own gun?"

  "It won't matter, 'cause Henry will have one too. And we won't exactly be blowing bugles to announce we're coming, so he'll be facing two barrels before he has time to think."

  We reviewed the plan. I'd lead the way to Garrett's cabin near the creek delta, since I knew the network of trails between the canal and the river best. Garrett still considered Henry a friend and would likely open the door unarmed when Henry knocked. He would find Henry and Drew with their guns drawn, and Henry would ask him to turn around and extend his hands behind him. Henry would explain that the Montgomery County sheriff had deputized us to escort him in for fingerprinting, and that any resistance would lead to an arrest warrant. And I'd step forward to apply the cuffs.

  If Garrett refused to open the door, Henry would still recite his message. Then we'd leave and report Garrett's lack of cooperation to the sheriff.

  In truth, the sheriff hadn't seemed particularly interested in arresting Garrett based on the unverifiable stories he'd heard a few days earlier from Henry and Drew, but he'd agreed to fingerprint Garrett if they brought him in. Fingerprinting kits were gaining currency in the years after Jessie's death and the sheriff was learning how to use one. With Garrett's prints as a reference, he could search for matching marks on Jessie's locket, which he said he said he'd kept as evidence and only handled by the cord. And the sheriff had assured them that if Garrett refused their invitation, that refusal would be a red flag, and he would issue a summons.

  I don't think the sheriff ever formally "deputized" Henry and Drew, or expected them to arm themselves for their visit to Garrett's cabin. But the sheriff didn't know Gig Garrett.

  "Let's go," Drew said.

  We walked around the hotel toward the octagonal orchestrion that loomed over the building in back, then past the flower beds and terraces that spilled out behind the hotel and down the hill. Light from the banquet-hall windows bled onto the lawn and cast our shadows onto the limestone walkway as we headed for the woods. We passed two men conversing heatedly on their way back from a candlelit gazebo that spiraled around the trunk of a sprawling willow oak. Stone steps led us into the trees, then gave way to a smooth dirt path down to the canal, which was traversed at a height of twenty feet by the suspended log beams and fretwork railings of the hotel's Lovers Lane Bridge.

  It was only then that we realized the footbridge was closed for repairs. The cables still held the span high above the canal, but the stairway entrance had been boarded up and its risers removed to keep people off the bridge. Maybe the planks on the span needed replacing, or maybe the bridge had been damaged by a structure on a passing boat. We didn't have time to figure out why the bridge was closed.

  "Henry will be waiting for us down near the creek," Drew said. "He won't know about this. Come on, we can cross down there."

  We ran back up the path through the woods and then cut across the bottom of the hotel grounds where the trees had been thinned. Within minutes we were descending a wooded slope toward Cabin John Creek, then following the creek downstream.

  The culvert that carried the creek under the canal and towpath was sixty feet long, its entrance framed by a shallow arch as black as a witch's cauldron. While there was an angled fringe of dry ground on either side of the creek at its entrance, it was impossible to tell if this shelf disappeared inside the culvert. To cross through would mean crouching and scuttling, feeling our way forward with both hands and feet. There might be fallen branches trapped in the culvert, and a false step could trip you into shallow water or a deeper pool.

  "We can cut under the canal here," Drew said. "Then climb up to the towpath from the other side. That's where we're meeting him."

  Already racing from our run, my heartbeat drove higher. I tried to slow my breathing but a tide rose within my chest until I was panting for breath. As Drew turned toward the culvert and edged forward crouching, I stared at the black arch and braced my hands on my knees to avoid capsizing in a flood of panic.

  "I can't do it," I gasped. "It's too low... too dark!"

  Drew looked back and me and paused with one leg already into the culvert. He bit his lower lip in thought and looked sympathetic.

  "That's OK, Owen. If you can hop over the creek, head down to Lock 7 and cross the canal there. Then run back up the towpath to meet us. I'll go under so Henry doesn't think we got cold feet, and we'll wait for you at the trailhead."

  I nodded in agreement and Drew crept into the culvert. That was the last moment I saw him alive.

  Retreating up the creek, I found crossing rocks. I was seventeen and the threat I'd felt moments ago became coiled energy, so three leaps carried me dry-footed across the creek. Then I darted uphill on a slant through the trees toward the unfinished streets and houses of Glen Echo, where Drew had worked selling lots for summer homes on land that the Baltzley brothers were developing near the campus of their short-lived Chautauqua. I knew Glen Echo well enough that I didn't have to climb the full hillside to Conduit Road. Instead I took shortcuts through the park, passed the carousel and dance pavilion, and descended back through the trees toward the lockhouse. Lock 7 was set for a loaded boat. Breathing hard, I steadied myself to walk deliberately over the crossing planks nailed to the closed gates.

  And then I was on the towpath, running again, dread and fatigue alternately stabbing my sides as the handcuffs in my coat pocket beat a rhythm against my thigh. I thought about Drew in the encircling culvert and felt my stomach twist. The towpath ran straight for a third of a mile, then curved gently as it approached the creek. I rounded the curve and scanned ahead. No one was waiting for me. Since the culvert carries the creek under the canal and the towpath, you can run right by it without even noticing, so I slowed to a walk when I saw a gap in the trees approaching, then steered to the fringe on my left and looked down. The creek was where I expected it to be, sliding out of the broad-mouthed culvert, but there was no sign of Henry or Drew.

  Had they left without me? They couldn't have – Drew gave me the cuffs! So he must have gone in search of Henry. Maybe Henry had noticed that the Lovers Lane Bridge was closed and assumed we were stuck on the other side of the canal. Maybe he'd arrived at the bridge just after we'd left, and was waiting for us to confirm an alternate place to meet. Or maybe that was what Drew concluded when Henry didn't arrive exactly on time. How long had it been since I'd watched Drew disappear into the culvert? Fifteen minutes? They couldn't have left without me so quickly!

  Because it was the easiest thing to do, and because I didn't want to contemplate walking the trail to Garrett's cabin alone, I skip-stepped into a run and continued up the towpath toward the closed footbridge. That took a few minutes, and by the time I got there I knew the detour was a mistake. I turned and started walking back to the culvert with my hands on my hips, trying to catch my breath.

  And just as I was about to resume running, I heard the faint sound of a dog barking in the distance. I stopped to listen and heard it distinctly �
� deep-pitched, steady-paced, incessant. The dread welled up and I ran. The barking came, I was sure, from Garrett's cabin.

  The lightly-worn trail met the towpath about a hundred feet short of the culvert. After dipping down a slope and under branches, it wandered around depressions and fallen trees toward the creek delta, where Garrett had built his cabin on a spit of high ground adjacent to a lesser channel, not far from its juncture with the Potomac. Different branches of the trail led to different places – a deep pool on the main creek channel, a small beach on the river itself, and both the front and back sides of Garrett's cabin – and I knew we needed to turn right, right, and then left at the sequence of forks to reach Garrett's front door without first alerting the dog he tied up in back.

  When I reached the trail, ducked under its guardian branches, and stood to regain my bearings, I saw an orange glow in the distance through the scattered brush and trees. I walked fast, keeping one eye on the firm mud and crushed leaves that signified the trail and the other on the spectral orange light ahead. It grew as I approached, then gained motion when I was close enough to smell smoke. I zigzagged around a fallen trunk and ran the last ascending stretch, eyes fixed entirely on the fire.

  The side wall of the cabin nearest to me was engulfed, and flames were licking across the shingled roof toward its center. Smoke poured out the top of the open doorway but the fire hadn't reached it yet, and the right side of the cabin was unlit. The door was opened fully into the single room beyond, where I saw flames dancing along the ceiling and curtains on fire above a back-wall table. I crouched, covered my nose and mouth with my sleeve, and edged into the heat of the cabin.

  Drew's body was the first thing I saw, slumped on its side in the center of the floor six feet from the door. Even in the unsteady light I immediately knew he was dead – his eyes were wide and unseeing, his mouth slack, his face and neck dotted with specks of blood. The smoke turned my stunned cry into a coughing fit as I clasped his shoulder and rolled him supine. Inside his unbuttoned coat, his warm, wet, mulberry-colored chest was shredded. Without thinking, I placed my hand on his forehead and ran it back through his hair, then pulled his eyelids closed.