SWAINS LOCK (The River Trilogy, book 1)

by Edward A. Stabler

  Cy shook his head in disgust. “If you can’t hold your bowels, keep on your own damn side of the boat. Push us off and get in.”

  We’d make it back faster if I were in the stern seat, Lee thought. And there was something unnerving about getting into a canoe with Cy. He slung the shovel onto the floor, lifted the bow, and pulled it into the water, then swung a leg into the boat and pushed off hard from the bank. Cy took sweep strokes on starboard while Lee backstroked on port to spin the boat in the eddy. Don’t want to get into the current on the Virginia side, he thought. “Let’s keep it turning. Stay in the eddy and paddle down to the tail.”

  Cy followed Lee’s instructions but said nothing. With two paddlers and no dead weight, the canoe held its course and speed. Sitting in the bow, Lee was more attuned to the water than he had been earlier. As the river rose, the eddy felt as if it was pulsating, almost breathing. The eddy narrowed as they passed the rocky tail of the island, with small whorls and creases forming and disappearing along its dark borders. It seemed to Lee that the main current was faster than it had been on their outward crossing. Less than an hour ago some of the large rocks between the island and the Maryland shore were still arching their backs above the surface. Now the river had covered them all. The sound of flowing water had deepened in pitch and seemed to come from far away and right beside him at the same time. In the reflected moonlight it was hard to tell the color of the river, but Lee knew that it was caramel brown, and that they were traversing the early waters of a flood.

  The eddy was tapering to a point and Lee wanted to exit it paddling into the Maryland-side current. They’d have to work hard to keep their ferry angle during the crossing and avoid being swung downstream. With the speed of the current, they might end up a mile downriver – if they didn’t hit something first. Lee jammed his paddle into the water to brake their momentum. “Back it down!” he yelled. “We need to spin inside the eddy!” The boat decelerated, and Lee backstroked while Cy took draws to spin the canoe. When it was facing upstream, Lee glanced sternward; Cy’s swollen face and expressionless mouth reminded him of a toad waiting for a fly.

  “What are you looking at?” Cy snapped. “Keep paddling.”

  “I’m ready,” Lee said, raising his voice against the sound of the water. “The river’s fast so we got to keep our bow upstream. I’ll paddle starboard, you take port. Be ready to throw a stroke on my side if we need it.”

  “I know what I’m doing, you little prick!” Cy barked. Lee turned back toward the bow and held his paddle above the water.

  “Then let’s go!” Their paddles hit the water and the canoe drove forward. The bow crossed the eddy line and Lee paddled hard on starboard to keep it from swinging downstream. When the stern crossed into the current, he felt the boat rise and fall with the undulating flow.

  He stroked with conviction but could tell right away they were slipping downstream. We’re already below Swains, he thought, so we’ll probably have to paddle half a mile back up. A braid of thin islands along the Maryland shore squeezed the river below Swains. We can paddle up alongside those islands, he thought. The current should be weak enough a few feet from the shore. The boat caught a small wave and surfed forward for a second or two. That’s how you stay upstream while ferrying! The canoe struck a side swell that nudged its bow leftward, and losing their ferry angle stalled their sideways progress. Lee took a flurry of strokes to push the bow around to starboard.

  A northwest breeze swept over the canoe and cooled him down. Was Cy even paddling? He could feel the boat respond when his own paddle hit the water, but he didn’t sense any energy coming from the stern. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Cy’s blade in the water, ruddering. Work, you fucker!

  He turned toward the bow and stroked on as the canoe surfed another small wave. Lee lifted his focus from the river and saw dim stars in the northern sky. He raised his paddle for a second to rest his shoulders and upper back. As he drove it back toward the water, he heard a grinding noise and felt a jolt from somewhere behind him on the starboard side. Instantly the canoe stopped rising and falling with the pulse of the river. The bow began to pivot downstream around the middle of the canoe.

  We’re stuck on a pour-over! Lee swiveled in his seat to assess the canoe. Nothing looked broken. “We’re on a rock!” he yelled.

  “Well push us off!” Cy yelled back. He was taking short backstrokes to starboard. Lee stood up in a crouch and stepped one leg over the nearest thwart as the canoe rotated a few degrees further. We’ve got to get off this rock before we flip, he thought. The throbbing current pushed water under the hull and moved the canoe onto the highest point of the submerged rock, where its midpoint again came to rest. We need to keep the boat leaning downstream while I work us off, he thought. He thrust the edge of his paddle blade against the hidden rock. Extending his arms and pushing hard, he felt the boat slide an inch. His paddle slipped and he brought the blade back onto the rock in search of better leverage. Leaning over the gunwale to starboard, he felt his paddle gain purchase as he flexed his arms and shoulders.

  His only warning was a split-second impression of a low, whistling sound and something flying toward him. He raised his eyes from the water with no time to duck as the swinging shovel-blade slammed into his neck and jaw below his right ear. His flexed arms crumpled and his knees went slack as warm blood gushed from his jugular vein. The stars spun into view as his head and shoulders tumbled toward the water and the paddle fell out of his hands.

  In a stab at retribution that was more a reflex than a conscious thought, he kicked up his heel and locked the muscles of his leg as he fell. His tendon caught the thwart and he felt his leg hold fast as cold water closed over his head. His chest and hips fell in and the current embraced his upper body, intent on bearing it away. The crushing cold expelled his breath and massaged his open vein. When he swung his arms in search of something solid, he found only water. His arms felt heavy and numb but his lower leg held firm, dragging the starboard rail to the water. Stars were following him down into the depths, and he felt his body begin to flicker and disappear. With a last conscious spasm he pulled his heel hard toward his thigh. The canoe capsized and he felt his leg release and follow him. The rock, the overturned boat, and his assailant fell away into another world. He was part of the river now, and all of his hopes and fears were over.

  Chapter 26

  Paper Spear

  Sunday, March 30, 1924

  On a hazy spring morning, the young woman walked through greening woods on the trail to Blockhouse Point. Beneath her jacket the top buttons of her floral-print dress were unfastened in the warmth. She absently traced two fingers against the skin below her neck, where her necklace no longer hung. The trail wound up a hillside before crossing a shallow drainage that fell away through the woods to the canal. Across the gully the trail rose again, then leveled and descended an easy grade to the cliffs. She continued along the rocks to a vantage point and looked down and out at the river below.

  It was a rolling caramel avenue two-thousand feet wide, speckled with breaking waves and white foam. The brown current carried discarded barrels, trash, and the stripped trunks of dead trees like the trophies of a victorious army returning home.

  She lowered her hand into the pocket of her jacket and withdrew a piece of paper folded in half. She opened and read it a final time.

  March 29

  Charlie,

  Welcome home. I left your drill in the shed, behind the marked plank.

  Lee

  For her, the note and the flood both represented an ending. She folded the paper in half again, then added four more folds on one end to form a point.

  At the base of the cliffs, the canal and the towpath were lost under the river. Further out the field of rocks below Seneca Falls was gone. A mile up the shoreline, the Dam 2 feeder and Violettes Lock were buried. Pennyfield Lock was underwater, a mile-and-a-half downstream. And Swains Lock. And three of the locks at Great Falls, just above Bear Island. S
he held the paper javelin aloft and launched it away from the cliffs. It sailed outward, hovered motionless for an instant, then dove toward the rolling waters below.

  Part Three

  Chapter 27

  Rising

  Friday, March 30, 1996

  Vin stepped from the dance floor of the Spanish Ballroom and walked along a half-lit hallway, leaving the patter of voices behind. At the end of the hall he turned into a dark waiting room with wooden benches along the windowless walls. Across the room a door was ajar, and yellow light spilled in through the doorway. He walked through it into the next room.

  To his right was an antique floor lamp that cast an amber glow over the walls and the Persian rug beneath his feet. The opposite wall held a portal next to a grandfather clock, and a leather divan with scroll arms reclined along the wall to his left. Resting between burgundy throw pillows on the divan was a long object curved into an S shape. He approached and saw it was a plush toy snake nearly six feet long, with black felt eyes and a faded speckled pattern on its worn fabric. Its stuffing was compressed and soft, maybe as old as he was.

  He sensed a presence and turned to see a young woman standing in the portal wearing a jaguar mask. She had shoulder-length brown hair and was barefoot, dressed only in a tight, jade-colored skirt. Light from the single lamp cast the curves of her breasts into chiaroscuro. Her arms hung motionless at her sides, but he could sense the lithe, quick muscles within them. She glided over and stared at him through her mask, and he thought he saw her irises flicker.

  She put her hands on his shoulders and guided him down to a sitting position on the divan, then knelt beside him and pulled off his shoes. He stared at her mask as she unbuttoned his shirt and proceeded to undress him. When she had finished, she tied the two ends of the plush snake into half-hitches around his wrists, then laid his shoulders back against the divan and guided the snake over the padded armrest to hold his arms in place. She climbed onto the divan with her knees astride his thighs and slowly lowered herself onto him. Leaning in and staring down at him through her feline mask, she rocked back and forth.

  Vin’s eyes narrowed as the tide within him withdrew. Starfish and sea urchins emerged on the wet sand and legions of small fish flopped in shallow pools. The jaguar paced along the beach, eyes and hair rocking forward and back as it waited for the tsunami. When it came, Vin was flipped and tumbled in the rush of whitewater. He closed his eyes and lost his bearings as his senses were everted and extruded like a flare. The flare waned into staggered pulses that grew further apart and the glowing whitewater of the wave withdrew in a long steady roll. His breath came back into tidal rhythm as he opened his eyes.

  The jaguar woman was sitting upright now, still holding his penis inside her. She pushed her mask back over her head and removed it, dropping it onto the divan, then looked down at him. It was Nicky, and he realized now that he’d known it all along. She pulled away from him and he felt an echo of the extruded flare. Standing up, she flipped the snake over the scroll arm and onto his chest. He brought his hands together and pulled the half hitches loose.

  “I’m going to take a shower,” Nicky said.

  He followed her into the master bathroom. It had a spacious Mexican-tiled shower that was already running, filling the room with steam. The shower was partitioned from the bathroom by a curtain of hanging amber beads. He stood at a sink he’d never seen before and rinsed off his penis. “I think I’ll take Randy for a run on the towpath down to Great Falls.”

  “Be careful,” Nicky said, as she stepped through the bead curtain. “Someone reported seeing a bear in the woods down there yesterday.”

  “That could be trouble,” he agreed. “Maybe we’ll run upstream instead.”

  Immersed in the shower, Nicky didn’t answer.

  He left the bathroom through a door that led to their bedroom, then dressed himself in running clothes and sneakers. Randy was already waiting just outside the sliding door, wagging his tail and pressing his nose against the glass. Vin let himself out and Randy raced across the lawn with Vin following at a jog, into the woods and down the hill to Pennyfield Lock. They crossed the footbridge and turned onto the towpath.

  Two miles upstream they were nearing Violettes Lock when Vin checked his watch and saw that it was almost two-thirty. At four this afternoon there was an all-hands project meeting at his old company in Boston. The Rottweiler project manager was flying in from California and Vin was supposed to be there, but there was no way he could get to the airport and catch a flight in time. He shook his head in dismay and resigned himself to missing it.

  Randy ran ahead along the towpath. As Vin followed, he saw the dog accelerate and dash into the woods between the towpath and the river. Vin ran faster until he reached the place where Randy had entered the woods, then stopped. The trees were thick here and he couldn’t see the dog or the river, but he heard an unbroken chorus of barking that seemed to be moving through the woods. He tried to track the commotion with his eyes. At first it seemed to be heading upstream and then it seemed to be coming toward him. Suddenly a flash of brown fur showed for an instant through the trees. It disappeared and emerged again. It was Randy, running back downstream through the woods, parallel to the towpath. The dog passed him and kept running, and Vin looked hard to see what was chasing him. Nothing.

  Maybe Randy was the pursuer, not the prey. Vin sprinted back down the towpath calling Randy’s name. The barking continued, receding and approaching again. A quarter-mile from the Blockhouse Point cliffs, the apron between the towpath and the river narrowed steadily. The bear burst onto the towpath first, twenty strides ahead of Vin. It was much smaller than he expected, not much bigger than a cub, and ran with a lumbering gallop. Randy leapt out of the woods a few seconds later. Ignoring Vin’s calls, he continued to chase the bear down the towpath. Vin was surprised that he was able to keep pace with Randy and the bear. As the cliffs drew near, the apron disappeared entirely, leaving only a steep slope with rocks and scrawny trees between the towpath and the river.

  Vin began to gain on Randy and the bear, and when he drew closer he saw that Randy’s quarry wasn’t really a bear. It was a beaver. Below Seneca Falls, where the river hugged the towpath, the beaver scampered down the rocky grade into the water. Randy followed, extending his front legs to brake his descent to the river. Vin ran to the spot and stumbled down the slope. He dove out away from the shore and swam toward Randy, who was floating on his back, paws and nose extended into the air. The beaver had disappeared.

  Despite the field of rocks further out, the river here was six feet deep and unbroken. It was early spring but the water felt comfortably cool. Vin reached Randy and rolled over onto his back alongside the dog. They pointed their legs downstream and drifted with the current. He looked over at Randy – the dog’s tongue was lolling from his mouth and his eyes were half closed. He seemed to be smiling.

  Vin surveyed the oncoming cliffs of Blockhouse Point to his left. On a high branch of a cliff-top tree, he noticed a white shape. As his viewing angle improved, he realized it was a large bird, the size and shape of a great blue heron but entirely white. When he and Randy drew even with the cliffs, Vin saw the heron lean forward and unfold its wings as it pushed away from the branch and took flight. After a few awkward flaps, the heron pulled its legs into alignment with its body. A hundred and fifty feet above them, the bird flew a short distance downstream, circled toward the center, and began flying back upriver, still high above the water. The heron turned clockwise until it was heading directly toward them. When it was almost overhead, it retracted its wings and tilted its dagger-like beak at the water. Vin couldn’t avert his eyes as the bird plunged toward them. Forty feet, thirty feet, twenty, ten. Like a helpless herring, he waited for the heron’s beak to strike his heart. He woke up drenched in sweat, his fever broken.

  Chapter 28

  The Level Trade

  Tuesday, August 27, 1996

  Passing the sleek trunk of a crepe myrtle protrudin
g from her patio, Kelsey caught a glimpse of the television through the glass doors to the study. She’d left it on when she stepped outside to water her plants, and the screen now displayed a satellite image of red-orange spots on a familiar blue field. Three spots were aligned from west to east – the westernmost a whorl with an icy blue eye and emerging spiral arms; the central spot broader but split and unfocused; the easternmost off the African coast and underscored by a dotted line of fiery scars. She shaded her eyes and squinted through the glass at the image on the screen. Below the picture was a boldface caption, “Hurricane Edouard and Tropical Storm Fran.” She felt a spike of adrenaline and resolve. Her quarry’s illness and slow recovery had made the last five months uneventful, but those listless days were over now.

  She finished her morning chores and drove to her studio, where her concentration repeatedly strayed from an editing project. Whatever was going to happen had to begin now. At two o’clock she hung the “Closed” sign on the front door with a note saying she would reopen at three. She drove home to Vera Lane and went straight to her study. Allie rose up from her dog bed in the corner of the room, wagging at Kelsey’s early return.

  “Not yet, honey. We’ll take a nice walk later, when it cools down.”

  Facing her built-in bookcase, she pulled a slim volume from the shelf that held books with library tags. Its dust jacket was missing, but the book’s gray cover was clean and unscuffed, its title clearly legible on the spine. She carried it to her desk and pulled the Montgomery County phonebook from a drawer. It was easy to find the unusual name; she wrote the phone number down on scrap paper. Looking at the library book, she jotted down its title, author, and call number, then slid the book into her purse, pocketed the paper, and headed back out to the car.

  A few minutes later she stood before the card catalog in the Potomac Library, opening the Ca – Ch drawer and flipping through cards aimlessly for a minute or two, then scribbling on the scrap paper from her pocket. She closed the drawer and used the scrap to navigate to the Maryland geography and history shelf, where she knelt to study the numbered spines. When a glance confirmed she was unobserved, she slid the book out of her purse and inserted it between its assigned neighbors. She retreated past the checkout desk with her purse open, but no one asked to examine it.