SWAINS LOCK (The River Trilogy, book 1)

by Edward A. Stabler

  Disappointed, he directed light into the corner this wall formed with the rear wall, where he noticed a vertical shape tucked into the shadow. It was a black iron rod, about his own height, with chisel ends. Used to dig holes or split rocks, he guessed. He set his flashlight down and held it like a spear; it was even heavier than he expected.

  Putting it back, he reached for a shorter iron rod leaning in the deepest recess of the corner. It was about three feet long, with a square socket at one end and a graceful curve at the other. The curved end seemed smoother than the rest of the rod, almost like it had been sanded, or worn by human hands. The worn end terminated in a rounded tongue. He’d never seen a rod like it before but immediately recognized it on a visceral level. Finding a name for it took a few beats. It’s a lock-key. He visualized the socket on the end of the key fitting over an iron stem that protruded through the swing-beam of a gate. All of the lock-keys on the canal are gone, he thought, but I’m holding one. Maybe Emmert Reed used it to turn…

  He froze in place as he heard footsteps overhead. Someone’s upstairs! He stopped breathing to listen intently. Five seconds – ten – nothing. Cool beads formed on his brow as he stood motionless, holding the key. Think rationally. The door and windows into the floor above you are boarded up, front and back. Someone might have followed you into the basement, but there’s no way to get upstairs. There’s no one up there, so that wasn’t a footstep. Or was it?

  Breathing lightly now, he aimed the flashlight straight down. He started to put the lock-key back but thought again. Maybe someone followed me in; if so it’s a weapon. Holding the key by its socket end, he crept along the partition wall toward the bottom of the stairs. When he reached the landing, he stood motionless with the light aimed backward for two full minutes. No sound. He stealthily edged onto the landing and sidestepped across it.

  Peering into the darkness of the other side he saw nothing moving, just light pouring in through the unboarded window. He panned the room with the flashlight. It looked as it had before. Still carrying the lock-key, he crossed to the open window. A furtive peek told him no one was waiting in ambush. He tossed the lock-key and flashlight on the grass and climbed out.

  Back on the lawn, he paused to gather his wits. The rain had stopped but it was still humid and overcast and he wiped sweat from his forehead. Why was I so spooked, he wondered as his pulse eased down. He found the drill where he’d left it and dug into the pocket of his jeans for the screws. The green partition fit neatly back into the open hole and after all the screws took their places, the boarded window looked as it had when he’d arrived. He surveyed the dirt slope to the boat ramp and the empty towpath in both directions. Clutching the lock-key, drill, and flashlight, he strode back across the lawn and up to the towpath. A vibration in his chest made him glance nervously back at the lockhouse from the bridge, half expecting to see a girl’s pale face and hands in the window. Only the boarded windows stared back.

  ***

  After a fruitless hour trying to debug the code for a nested loop, Vin realized that he had been incrementing the wrong counter variable. He snorted in disgust and substituted “i” for “j”. The loop executed correctly. What an idiot. He climbed the stairs to the kitchen. When he overlooked simple things like that, it was time to take a break – even though he’d only been at his desk for a couple of hours after returning from the lockhouse. He carried a glass of iced tea into the living room, where the lock-key was lying next to the Vieira book on the coffee table. He slumped onto the couch and opened the book. Maybe there were other insights laced within it. In the sections on Harpers Ferry, or Big Slackwater, or the Paw Paw Bends.

  He was still reading when Nicky got home from the Clinic. In response to his usual query she said the last part of her day had been awful; she’d had to put down a sick kitten that had been adopted by a family with young children. It was vomiting and had diarrhea, and it hadn’t responded to the antibiotics she’d prescribed. “The little thing just couldn’t get his intestines to work. I hate having to tell the owners it’s hopeless.” She reached for a sip of Vin’s iced tea. “What are you reading?” He raised the book to show her the cover, and she squinted in admonishment. “You’re kidding, right? Don’t tell me you’ve resurrected your quest.”

  “It’s not really a quest,” he said. “Just curiosity. Trying to discover the truth.”

  “Aaaaggh!” she howled affectedly. “You are starting again! I recognize that phrase ‘the truth’.”

  He laughed and put a hand on her shoulder. “Honey, relax. I’m just treating it like a research hobby. The way some people study birds or trees.”

  “But, Vin, birds and trees are real, living things! You can see them or touch them – today! They’re alive right now! They’re not some imaginary mystery involving people no one has ever heard of who have been dead for a generation!”

  He dropped his hand from her shoulder. “Nicky, it’s interesting to me. The history. We live right up the hill from a national historic landmark – what’s wrong with trying to understand it? These were real people who lived and worked here.” He picked up the lock-key from the coffee table. “See? This is a real lock-key, from the canal era. It’s not imaginary.”

  Nicky squinted hard, then shook her head and backed away. Her narrowed eyes now looked entirely blue, but Vin could sense darker colors darting behind them. “Where did you get that?” she demanded. “And why on earth did you bring it home?”

  He smiled sheepishly. “I don’t know… I guess it’s a souvenir. I wasn’t really thinking about keeping it. I just…”

  “You weren’t really thinking about it?” Nicky’s tone implied frustration and disbelief. “How does that happen? Where did you find it?”

  “Just... a little ways up the canal,” he said, scrambling to cut his losses, “in a pile of stuff. Most of it was trash.”

  “And that’s not trash? Oh, great. You’re spending the afternoon poking around through piles of old garbage! Vin, you’re really scaring me now. Isn’t there work you need to be doing? Did you actually do any work today?”

  “Sure. I worked today.”

  “For what, ten minutes?”

  He frowned and cocked his head. “No. For more than ten minutes.”

  “Is the Rottweiler stuff on track?”

  “I got done what I needed to get done.” That’s almost true, he thought.

  Nicky sighed as her expression melted into one of resignation. “The wedding is less than two months away. Doesn’t it make sense to try to get the project done before then? So you won’t have to think about it on our honeymoon? And so you can start fresh when we get back?”

  He nodded as she spoke but raised his fingers when she finished. “The pace of the project is really determined by Rottweiler. I should have phase two done by early October, but who knows how long it will take them to review it and sign off. And then we’re supposed to have a couple of brainstorming sessions about phase three.”

  Nicky walked back to the kitchen shaking her head. “It just sounds like this will drag out indefinitely. And you’ll spend the next two years huddled over your desk in the basement.”

  “God forbid!” he said, stifling a laugh. “But there’s always that risk.”

  Chapter 31

  Archives

  Friday, August 30, 1996

  On Friday morning Vin was working on his last consulting task of the week: developing a suggestion-rating feature for Rottweiler’s website. As he considered the user interface, he realized the requirements weren’t fully specified. Could anyone post a rating? If not, what sort of credentials were needed? While e-mailing a series of questions to his project manager, he felt a combination of disappointment and liberation. It was how he’d felt in grade school when a Friday of exams was canceled because the furnace broke. You knew you’d have to take the exams later, but for now you had the rest of the day and the weekend off.

  After sending his message, he uploaded his project to the Rottweiler serv
er. Through no fault of his own, he reminded himself, there was no more work worth doing today – and it wasn’t even ten yet. He climbed the stairs, poured what was left of the breakfast coffee, and leaned into the living-room couch with Vieira’s book.

  Instead of continuing with the chapter about Cumberland, he returned to the Edwards Ferry page that referenced Emmert Reed. Something about the words penciled in the margin had been nagging him. The arrow implied that the phrase “and his albino mule?” should be inserted between the words “Emmert ‘M-Street’ Reed” and “tended lock 25”. The phrase was posed as a question and the question gnawed at him now. Why would a locktender have an albino mule? Or any mule? Along the canal, mules were primarily used to pull boats.

  In his note to Charlie Pennyfield, Lee Fisher had said the place was “well knowed by Emmert Reed’s albino mule.” Lee was a young man when he wrote the message, and young men didn’t generally tend locks. They worked on canal boats. So if Lee was a boater, he would have passed through Edwards Ferry twice on each circuit between Cumberland and Georgetown. He would have had many opportunities to meet Emmert Reed and his memorable mule.

  But Lee’s note implied that Charlie would also know Emmert Reed and his mule, and Charlie stayed put at Pennyfield Lock throughout the boating season… while Emmert was ensconced twelve miles upstream at Edwards Ferry. So when would Charlie encounter Emmert and his mule?

  Vieira mentioned that Emmert sold smoked pork and turtle meat to passing boaters. But Vieira also wrote: “Reed’s nickname reportedly derived from his affinity as a younger man for the Georgetown taverns at the terminus of the canal.” As a younger man… M-Street Reed frequenting the saloons in Georgetown. From reading the Hahn and Kytle books last fall, Vin already knew who else visited those saloons: boaters, at the end of their runs to Cumberland and Georgetown, while waiting for their boats to be loaded or unloaded by the Canal Company.

  Now it made more sense. The books had mentioned that many locktenders were former boatmen. Maybe, before he’d taken over Lock 25 at Edwards Ferry, Emmert “M-Street” Reed had captained a canal boat. If Reed had boated as a younger man, his albino mule would be known by locktenders and other boatmen. How many albino mules could there be along the canal? Maybe Lee Fisher started boating as a young boy, when Reed’s albino mule was still plying the towpath. Charlie Pennyfield would have seen the mule as well, unlike someone with less experience on the canal. So perhaps Lee was trying to make sure his message could only be understood by a canal veteran like Charlie.

  Hopeful that he had unraveled a portion of the knot, Vin felt a flush of accomplishment. But his optimism deflated as he considered the ramifications of his reasoning. If Reed ran a canal boat with a team that included an albino mule, the entire canal would be “well knowed” by the mule! Lee’s message said the joined sycamores were at the edge of a clearing. But that clearing could be anywhere. The canal was 184 miles long!

  Wait, he reminded himself. Think through it. Lee’s note said he might be buried along with the others “because of what happened today at Swains Lock.” So the truth was probably no more than a day’s walk away. Swains was at mile 16.7, Georgetown at mile 0, and Edwards Ferry at mile 31. That was the most promising terrain for his search.

  Back to Emmert Reed. If I consider him a boatman rather than a locktender, what does that mean? Most boat captains came from the upper regions of the canal – Cumberland, Hancock, Williamsport, Sharpsburg. A few came from nearer towns, like Brunswick or Frederick. So even if Reed ended up tending lock at Edwards Ferry, it wasn’t surprising that Thomas F. Reed in nearby Poolesville told Vin that he had never heard of him. There weren’t that many locks, and old M-Street probably took the first locktending position he was offered. At least Edwards Ferry wasn’t in the middle of nowhere, as some locks were.

  If Vin could find out where M-Street was from, maybe he could find a relative who still lived there. Of the books he’d reviewed, only Vieira’s book even mentioned Reed. But there must be some kind of surviving records from the Canal Company. Vin knew that during the last decades of the C&O, the Company owned all the boats and all the coal they carried. The boat captains might own their own mules and some of the boat rigging, but they were essentially hired hands. So maybe there were some employment records gathering dust somewhere that he could review. Something that would tell him where Reed lived during his boating days, or provide some other insight. Something that could steer him toward a particular place.

  He set Vieira’s book on the table and headed for the entryway, plucking his car keys from the ceramic bowl on the table. He couldn’t remember the author’s name but was sure he’d recognize the book when he saw it again. He passed his desk and monitor without a glance and left through the door to the garage. Five minutes later he pulled into the Potomac Library lot.

  The book was by Walter S. Sanderlin. The Great National Project: A History of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. Published in 1946. The other books Vin had found were authored by well-read canal enthusiasts and included insights from interviews and personal observations. But Sanderlin had taught history at the University of Maryland. His book preceded the others by a generation and read like a dissertation. And its bibliography was meticulous. Vin found the lead he’d hoped for on page 298.

  The most important sources for the entire history of the canal and its predecessors are the private records of the canal company and the Potomac Company… With a few exceptions the records are complete, and are deposited in the Department of Interior Archives of the National Archives.

  He checked the Sanderlin book out and drove home. The National Archives were in D.C., somewhere down on the mall, right? Along with all the museums? He and Nicky had spent a Sunday morning on the mall a few weeks after they moved to Potomac. Everything was free, so they’d popped in and out of the American Museum of Natural History, both wings of the National Gallery, the Air and Space Museum, the Hirshhorn… They had a tourist’s map of the mall somewhere. He found it tucked into the living room bookcase. The National Archives building was near the center of the map, facing the mall from the north side of Constitution Avenue. The clock in the kitchen read ten minutes to noon. He slipped the map into the Sanderlin book and headed back out to the car.

  ***

  The clerk at the research counter in Room 203 at the National Archives asked for Vin’s last name, examined his temporary ID badge, and turned to a row of wheeled carts behind the counter. The carts held gray document boxes, each of which was tagged with a copy of the document-pull slip, held on by rubber bands. The clerk selected two boxes and brought them back to the counter. After reviewing the indices in the Finding Aids Room, Vin had submitted his request to the Archives staffer less than an hour ago, and now his documents had been pulled and boxed. He signed the check-out sheet and carried the boxes to an empty desk.

  From his desk he surveyed the room. The walls were gray brick masonry and a row of oversized windows looked out past Pennsylvania Avenue toward the columned façade of the National Portrait Gallery. Rustic wagon-wheel chandeliers hung from the high coffered ceiling, which had recessed wooden panels painted in a geometric pattern of warm colors.

  He opened the hinged top of the first box to find a ledger bound in black leather, its title embossed in gold on the spine: Reports of the Trustees of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company. Dates were written in longhand on its title page: March 3, 1890 – December 31, 1904. He leafed through sturdy pages covered in elegant script. Most of the entries were minutes of the meetings of the trustees for the Canal Company, who were appointed when the company went into receivership after the catastrophic flood of 1889 suspended canal operations for over a year. There were summaries of reports provided by various engineers on the cost of restoring different portions of the canal and reports on the status of petitions by assorted canal creditors. He closed the ledger and laid it aside.

  From the second gray box came two more ledgers: The Chesapeake and Ohio Transportation Company and Can
al Towage Company, Minutes of the Board of Overseers. The first one was dated January 30, 1894. It contained a company charter and a series of agreements between the trustees of the bankrupt Canal Company and the newly-established Transportation Company, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the B&O Railroad. Vin remembered reading that when the Canal Company went into receivership, the B&O Railroad had been its largest bondholder. The B&O was determined that the canal and its rights of way not be sold to its competitor, the Western Maryland Railway Company. So the B&O created the Transportation Company, which paid the Canal Company to maintain the canal for commercial use. In exchange for the token profit guaranteed by these payments, the Canal Company trustees agreed not to sell the canal.

  The meeting minutes in the ledger for the Canal Towage Company were more interesting, since they provided data on the operations of the canal during its last two decades. The purpose of the Canal Towage Company was to standardize and streamline the process of shipping coal down the canal. Because it was created in 1902 by agreement between the Consolidation Coal Company and the canal trustees, the Canal Towage Company was also under the aegis of the B&O Railroad. Consolidation Coal was a B&O subsidiary that owned and operated coal mines in western Maryland. Coal was transported from the mines to the head of the canal in Cumberland via another B&O subsidiary, the Cumberland and Pennsylvania Railroad. So from its resurrection after the 1899 flood until its demise in 1924, the C&O Canal served as little more than a link in the distribution chain that delivered B&O-owned coal to Washington, D.C.

  Vin skimmed the issues discussed in the minutes, looking for lists and tables. He found them in the appendices. Financial statements for the years 1902 through 1922. Statements documenting the coal tonnage carried and the tolls paid each year. Annual statements of spending for the construction and repair of canal boats, listed by boat number. And the pages he’d been hoping to find – the annual fleet rosters from 1903 through 1922, listing the captains operating on the canal and the boats to which they had been assigned.