SWAINS LOCK (The River Trilogy, book 1)

by Edward A. Stabler

  Chapter 25

  Grave Dance

  Saturday, March 29, 1924

  The colors of sunset emerged and faded as Lee paddled down the canal. Approaching Swains through the twilight, he drove his canoe toward the berm near the entrance to the flume. A lone figure moved haltingly toward him. Without words, Cy caught the stern and hauled it up onto the grass. “Pull it up next to mine,” he said, turning back toward the lockhouse as Lee climbed out.

  The green canoe was sitting on the beaten grass near the front door. Lee dragged his boat alongside it and noticed the Emory’s toolbox was already under its bow seat. I guess he wants the money within reach, Lee thought. And there was a paddle but no shovel.

  “You ain’t got a shovel?”

  “No. Couldn’t find one. Long as we got yours, that’s enough.”

  What an ass, Lee thought. Maybe he plans on counting the money again while I dig.

  “You bring the key to the box?”

  “I got it,” Lee snapped. His pulse fluttered as he prepared to ask the question foremost in his mind. “Katie come back yet?”

  “Ain’t seen her,” Cy said without looking at Lee, who felt as if a scabbed wound had been torn open again to bleed. “Pete showed up around three with a couple loaves of bread. Said Katie sent him off to the crossroads store this morning. Damn long walk for a kid his size. I can’t figure what she had in mind.”

  “Pete ain’t around here now, is he?” Lee said, trying to refocus on immediate concerns. No ten-year-old should see them carry his dead cousins out of the basement.

  “No. I fed him dinner and told him to stay in his room for a couple hours. Told him I’d whup him if I saw him and he knows I would. Anyhow he’s too tired to complain. Now let’s get them bodies out before something else happens.”

  Lee followed Cy down to the basement. The clammy air didn’t smell like death yet, but he knew the decomposing had begun. Cy took Kevin Emory’s ankles, leaving Lee to grope beneath the sheet for the armpits. With no human warmth to dry them, his cousin’s clothes were still cold and wet. When Lee lifted, the dead man’s head fell between his thighs; he winced at the upside-down view of Kevin’s red-brown hair, ruddy face turned pallid, lifeless eyes. The unseeing pupils were as wide as a finger. They carried Kevin’s body out to Lee’s canoe, then returned to the basement for Tom’s.

  “You OK with all that weight?” Lee asked as they laid the corpse on the floor of Cy’s canoe. With three bodies in the green canoe this afternoon, the hole in its side had sunk below the waterline. “Want me to take the box?”

  “I’ll take it,” Cy said gruffly. Lee turned to his own canoe and laid the shovel alongside the covered body. Then he and Cy dragged the laden canoes back to the canal, paddled them across, and portaged to a muddy landing on the riverbank.

  Looking out toward the island in the fading light, Lee could see that the current was running fast. In the summer, the river drifted and was no more than waist-deep here, with scattered rocks the size of rowboats littering the channel. It was spring now, so the water should be higher and faster, but tonight it looked above a normal spring level. He could only see a handful of lumpish shadows raising their backs above the surface. A week of warm weather had brought an abrupt end to winter in the western reaches of the Potomac watershed and suddenly melted heavy accumulations of snow and ice. Lee guessed that the water they had to cross might be five or six feet deep and rising.

  “Looks like the river’s come up.”

  “Maybe,” Cy said, gazing out toward the dark shape of the island. “Not enough to worry about. Long as we keep moving.”

  Lee held the green canoe steady as Cy climbed in, then lifted the bow from the bank and pushed the hull forward into the water. He stepped into the black canoe lightly with one foot and pushed off the bank, then followed Cy out into the eddy.

  “What part of the island are we shooting for?” Cy said as Lee paddled alongside.

  Lee pointed directly across the river, then swung his arm a few degrees downstream. “Tail end. On the far side there’s an eddy where we can pull up to a beach. Got a fair current right here, so we’ll need to face upstream and ferry over. Follow me.”

  He took a stroke on each side and his canoe glided past Cy’s. After crossing the eddy line, he set the canoe against the current at a fifteen-degree angle and stroked repeatedly on the port side to keep the stern pointed upstream, aiming well above the upper end of the island. The weight of the dead man in his boat made the canoe feel sluggish and unresponsive. As hard as he paddled, the canoe still drifted downstream as it rode sideways across the current toward the island. He looked to his left to chart his progress. He would miss the tail end of the island, but not by much. Directly below the island the current would be minimal, so it would be easy for him to paddle up to the tail.

  He looked to his right. Cy was following at the same angle but losing ground to the current. The body and all those coins are slowing you down, Lee thought. The island was broad enough at its mid-point that the eddy below it extended a few hundred feet downstream. So even if Cy missed the island, he could paddle back up inside the eddy. Lee refocused on his own boat when he felt the barely-submerged skin of a rock brush the canoe’s hull just behind his seat. He paddled hard on his left to keep the canoe from drifting downstream onto it.

  A few minutes more brought him into the eddy below the island, and he felt the current diminish. He took a deep breath and paddled more easily. The muscles in his chest and shoulders burned, then grudgingly unclenched. He turned the canoe to face straight upstream and took alternating strokes. Within thirty feet of the island the current disappeared. He spun the canoe to monitor Cy’s progress.

  The ambient light reflected off the dark water and he could see that Cy had finally reached the eddy below the island and was paddling on alternate sides to head straight upstream. But his ferry had carried him to the eddy’s tapered base, where the split currents converged and began to regain strength. With the additional weight and downstream distance, he had to work much harder than Lee had to attain the island. After paddling in place for almost a minute, he passed a critical point and began to make headway. When Cy finally drew alongside, he was gasping. He shipped his paddle and slumped forward, hands on his knees and breathing heavily. “Damn current is a lot stronger than it looks.”

  “Spring runoff. Feels like it’s still rising.”

  “Then let’s get these poor bastards in the ground and get the hell out of here.” He gestured toward the island’s Virginia-facing shore. “That our landing?”

  “That’s it. It’s a sandy beach when the river’s down.”

  Cy grunted and jammed his paddle into the quiet water, taking short strokes. Lee followed and they eased up the island’s Virginia side, navigating between rocks to a spot where the rising river lapped at long grass and low brush. They got out and pulled the canoes ashore. Lee grabbed the shovel from his boat while Cy pulled the toolbox from under his seat.

  “Where are we going?” Cy asked, still breathing hard.

  Lee pointed inland and upstream. “About twenty paces in. There’s a clearing with big flat rocks and grass. On the far end is a huge sycamore with three trunks coming together. We can bury the bodies on one side of the tree and the money on the other.”

  “Let’s take a look,” Cy said, “and make sure you got the right island.”

  Lee nodded and retrieved the folded tarp from his canoe. He carried the shovel and tarp several paces up the beach before turning inland on an overgrown trail.

  “Deer path,” he said over his shoulder. Cy followed with the toolbox. Thin budding branches splayed across the trail, so Lee hunched over as he proceeded. He was hesitant to turn his back on Cy, but logic told him that the time to worry was after the digging had been done. He kept a few steps in front, just in case. The trail curved left and right, then crossed a small gully and ended at the entrance to the clearing.

  Across the opening, he saw the enormous sycamor
e raising its bone-white branches into the night sky. They walked across flat rocks speckled with moss and onto a half-moon fringe of meadow grass between the rocks and the tree.

  “Found this spot with my friends when I was a kid,” Lee said. “After we pulled up on the island to get some shade and take a break from fishing.”

  Cy laid the toolbox down and gestured for Lee to hand him the shovel. Standing arm’s length from the tree, he drove the blade a few inches into the dirt. “Feels like gravel,” he muttered. “Tough digging.” He left the shovel upright and walked back across the clearing. “Let’s get it over with.”

  Lee set the tarp on a rock and followed Cy back to the beach, where they hoisted Kevin’s body out of the black canoe. Holding its ankles, Cy led the way back along the path. They shuffled awkwardly forward, dodging branches and brush as the damp sheet clung to the corpse and the open cuff of the shackles dangled. When they reached the clearing, they laid the body near the base of the tree. Cy bent to catch his breath, then stood up and grabbed the shovel.

  “Where’s the first hole?” he asked. Lee studied the tree. The three trunks were all about the same size, with the one directly in front of them facing the heart of the clearing. The trunks to the left and right were recessed toward the woods, the left trunk closer to Virginia and the right trunk closer to Maryland.

  “Let’s bury the money on the Maryland side,” he said. “Easier to remember. We can dig the grave on the Virginia side.”

  At the base of the right-most trunk, Cy heeled the shovel into the earth. Dirt, rock shards, and split tendrils of whisker roots came up in the first load. He dumped it aside and stabbed again. Two minutes of digging left the hole a bit wider and deeper than the toolbox. Cy rested his hands on the planted shovel, breathing heavily. Lee pulled it away and attacked the hole. After splitting roots and digging out grapefruit-sized rocks, the hole was long and wide enough. He scraped dirt from the bottom to deepen it, then stopped to lean on the shovel in turn. Sweat on his scalp ran down his temples. He pulled off his cap and ran a hand through his damp hair.

  “Might as well be a goddamn ditch-digger,” Cy said. “Fucking nigger work.” He unfolded the tarp on a flat rock with its rubberized side up and set the toolbox at its center. “Tell you what,” he said. “While you was digging, I was thinking. It’ll take us all night to dig a decent grave for them fellas. The river’s up, maybe still rising. We got a canoe with a hole in it. Let’s set them bodies against the seats and send them downriver. They’ll swamp and sink, or wash up somewhere dead with a busted-up canoe. It’ll look like they was out for a ride and capsized. Like they pulled over at Swains and borrowed a canoe to go fishing, then hit a rock in high water. We can keep both paddles and use ‘em to get back in your canoe. Don’t know if we want to be out here much longer anyway with the water coming up.”

  Lee rested against the shovel and considered Cy’s plan. It made sense, and it foreclosed the troubling scenarios he associated with digging a grave. With the river rising, the sooner he and Cy got back to Swains the better. And two men paddling a single canoe would have more control in high water. His cousins had drowned in the first place, so they already looked like drowning victims. If and when the bodies and the green canoe were discovered somewhere downstream, that’s what the finders would see. Except for one distinguishing feature on Kevin’s ankle. Lee reached into his pocket and pulled out the key to the leg-irons.

  “Makes sense,” he said, “but they got to look like they was drownded by accident. Not shackled first.” He knelt beside Kevin’s ankle, unlocked the cuff from the dead man’s leg, then dropped the leg-irons onto the tarp alongside the toolbox. He tossed the little key on top of them. “Since we’re getting rid of all the evidence.”

  Cy stared expectantly at Lee. “Better throw that toolbox key in with it,” he growled.

  Lee looked puzzled for an instant, then laughed. “Almost forgot.” He detached the toolbox key from Kevin Emory’s ring and dropped it alongside the box as well. Cy grunted his approval, then folded a long side of the rectangular tarp over the top of the toolbox toward Lee, who folded the opposite edge back toward Cy. They rolled up the ends of the folded tarp until they hugged the toolbox. Lee lowered the box into the hole so it sat upright with the rolled tarp-ends tucked under its base. Cy started shoveling dirt as soon as Lee stood up.

  When the hole was filled, Cy kicked the residual dirt in different directions. Lee reached into his coat pocket and felt Katie’s pendant. He pulled out the sheathed knife instead. Cy squinted at him, and Lee thought he saw a passing look of malice. He pointed the knife at the tree. “I’ll carve a mark so we can remember which trunk to dig under.”

  As Cy grunted and began camouflaging the toolbox grave, Lee approached the Maryland-side trunk. He found a spot at eye-level where the thin bark was scaling away to reveal the pale wood. Setting the blade at an angle, he carved a slash two fingers wide. To confirm the mark wasn’t a random scar, he carved a parallel slash below the first. Cy was watching as he finished; the debris he had strewn over the burial spot made it hard to identify. Lee gave Cy a good look at the knife before sheathing it,

  “Let’s get out of here,” Cy said. He grabbed the corpse’s ankles, facing away from the body and waiting for Lee to take the armpits. The clammy shirt felt cold to his touch now and the skin underneath seemed stiffer. They adjusted their grips and shambled back through the woods with the body. How is it I always have to hoist the damn upper body, Lee thought. But at least this way I can keep an eye on Cy.

  When they reached the canoes, the water in the eddy seemed higher and restless as an incipient breeze blew ripples across it. The sterns they’d left motionless on the water had begun to swing lightly back and forth. “If we screwed around much longer back there we might of lost our boats,” Cy said. They carried Kevin’s body to the green canoe and lowered it to the floor, with the dead man’s torso slumped against the bow seat. Tom’s sheet-covered corpse was still prostrate on the stern half of the floor.

  “That’s good,” Cy said. “Keep ‘em both low and the boat won’t flip right away. It’s better if they get some distance downriver first.” Lee removed Cy’s paddle and the sheets covering the corpses. He dropped the paddle on the sand and tossed the bundled sheets into the black canoe.

  Cy rummaged along the waterline until he found a rock the size of a fox head. He carried it to the canoe and located the small hole on the starboard side. While Lee watched, he held the rock near the hole, swung it away, and brought it crashing back into the side of the canoe. Lee heard the birchbark skin and a supporting rib crack. When Cy pulled his hand away, Lee could see the hole had grown from the size of a knuckle to the size of a fist. Cy slammed the rock into the hull with another crunch and the hole expanded toward the waterline.

  “Should be enough to send them swimming,” he said. “Let’s launch ‘em.” Facing each other with hands on the gunwales, they pushed the bow off the bank and into the water. The hole was near the waterline and water splashed through it into the boat. They thrust in unison and the boat slid away from the island. It glided out into a lazy turn as its momentum carried it to the eddy line. The stern crossed first, swinging downstream as the current pulled the canoe out of the eddy. It bobbed away from them at the speed of the water and Lee watched its silhouette spin slowly into the night.

  The worst of his fears receded with the green canoe. His dead cousins belonged to the river now, and his bones would not lie tangled with theirs in the dirt. But what about the message he had left for Charlie, with its reference to the killers? The night wasn’t over yet, he thought. He and Cy still had to drive the scow down to Widewater and scuttle it. Cy was still a threat, so it still made sense to leave the clues. He could recover them later if things went well.

  “I’ll go get the shovel,” he said, thrusting his thumb back toward the deer path. “No sense giving someone an invitation to dig.” He walked deliberately toward the path and ducked into the woods, then accele
rated once he was out of sight. At the clearing he ran to the shovel, jammed its blade into the earth near the Virginia-side trunk, and removed a wedge of dirt and pebbles. Digging into his coat pocket, he drew out Cy’s flask and rotated it to find the inscription on the leather holster: C. F. Elgin. Maybe it would still be legible after days or weeks in the dirt. He pulled out Katie’s pendant and held it for a second. Why couldn’t he just give it back to her tomorrow? Why had the world turned inside-out this morning? He blinked away tears as he tucked it between the flask and holster and wrapped its cord around the bottleneck, then laid the flask and pendant gently in the shallow hole. Keep moving! He kicked the displaced dirt into the hole, raked leaves and sticks over the buried items with the shovel, and stepped on the dirt and debris to tamp it down.

  He pulled out the knife and turned his attention to the Virginia-side trunk. At an eye-level spot facing the covered hole, he quickly carved a tipping C. Through its lower portion he added three straight slashes that converged to a point. He examined the mark – Charlie should recognize it. He grabbed the shovel and jogged across the clearing and into the woods.

  When the path emptied onto the beach, he slowed and walked unhurriedly to the black canoe. Cy had pulled it further ashore and climbed aboard. With a paddle across his knees, he glared at Lee from the stern seat. “What the hell took you so long?”

  “Couldn’t hold it anymore,” Lee said, grimacing and rubbing a hand across his abdomen. “Had to do some squatting.”