Swains Lock

by Edward A. Stabler

  “Lee Fisher,” he said, removing his cap with a smile and extending his hand toward Katie. “I’m pleased to meet you.” And the skin on the inside of his wrist had been singed when she touched it softly with her index finger.

  Katie studied Lee for an instant through hazel eyes, then turned to Cy and confirmed that Jess Swain had offered to give her and Pete a lift to the railroad station on Monday in time to catch the afternoon train to Williamsport. So they had the rest of the day and tomorrow morning to get Cy’s boat squared away. And Katie had convinced Cy that he would be a fool not to accept Lee’s offer to take the mules to the Seneca farm, since with Pete and the mules taken care of, Cy would be free to pursue the unspecified business he claimed to have in Georgetown. Lee could meet them tomorrow morning at Swains Lock and accompany Cy to the stable on River Road, where Cy had been given permission to keep the mules for the weekend.

  And so Lee had seen Katie on the following morning as well. By which point he’d already decided to take care of the mules at his family’s farm over the winter. He arrived at Swains early, hoping Katie might be there early as well, and she was. And Cy was late, coming not from his stranded boat, but from down the towpath toward Great Falls. Lee and Katie sat at the picnic table behind the lockhouse and talked for half an hour while Pete darted around finding stones to throw at a rotting tree. During their conversation Lee collected a fistful of gems to meditate on through the coming winter. Among them was that she would probably return in the spring to drop Pete off again and help Cy prepare the boat for the 1924 season.

  Then Jess Swain had come down from the main house in his Model T to collect Katie and Pete. Lee watched them leave for the train station and felt a warm rush when Katie glanced back at him as the car pulled away. Cy limped into the backyard ten minutes later, unshaven and bloodshot, and nodded curtly toward Lee. They walked up Swains Lock Road to the stable on River Road, where they fed and watered the mules and harnessed them into a team of four. Then Lee mounted Jewel and set out for Seneca with Ed, Belle, and Lila following.

  That had been December 1, he thought, as he loosened the vise screw and laid another drilled pole on the floor. And when he’d seen her again two days ago, it was as if no time had passed at all. On Saturday morning, he’d driven Cy’s mules down from his family’s farm in Seneca. He was proud of the team, since they were well-fed and groomed sleek after a winter under his care. He walked the mules down Swains Lock Road to the canal and tied them to a hitching rail. When he circled to the front of the lockhouse, there she was, coming out the front door on her way to Cy’s boat.

  “You’re still here! Don’t you belong to anyone?” she’d said teasingly.

  “No,” he answered, “but I might like to.” Then his face flushed, so he hopped onto the plank and crossed the lock ahead of her, extending his hand to help her along the last portion of the plank. When she clasped it and stepped down beside him, he again felt a spark from her fingers against his skin. He joined her for the five-minute walk up the towpath to Cy’s boat, which was still tied up where it had spent the winter.

  Along the way Katie explained that Jess Swain was letting Cy, Pete, and her stay in the lockhouse during the week before the canal officially opened. While they got Cy’s boat ready, they could keep an eye on things and help the repair scows lock through as they worked the levels clearing debris and patching breaks. They reached the long plank to Cy’s boat and Lee asked whether she’d like to visit Great Falls with him on Sunday. She’d looked at him soberly for a second, as if reassessing him and reaching a conclusion.

  “That sounds wonderful,” she’d said, brightening again.

  And yesterday afternoon she’d been waiting for him on the bench in front of the lockhouse, wearing a trim jacket over her Sunday dress. The dress was light gray with white pinstripes and a dark blue sash. Below its collar hung a sandstone pendant necklace with an inscribed symbol he’d never seen before. She wore a felt hat, lower on one side in the current style, with an indigo hatband. Her wavy hair shone where it fell along her neck and the dress picked up the hazel of her eyes. She smiled at him and he was sure he’d never seen a girl as pretty. There was something about her that suggested willingness – a readiness to step forward into uncertainty, or maybe just to step onto a plank across a lock. For Lee, this was part of her charm. They’d walked down the towpath from Swains to Great Falls, and then he had paid a quarter to have their picture taken out at the Falls overlook.

  He extracted the drill from a completed hole and raised the bit to blow the sawdust loose. What glowing gems from yesterday’s conversation could he contemplate? Eighteen years old. She hadn’t mentioned any particular boy in Williamsport, though there must have been a posse of them chasing her. She might enroll in a typing class this spring and then try for a job as a secretary in Washington. A friend of hers had a spare room in Alexandria she could rent.

  Three brothers and one sister! With Cy the oldest, Pete the youngest, and Katie in the middle. A second sister died at six from the flu. All her siblings had been on the canal, one season or another while growing up, with her daddy Jack Elgin who ran the number 32 boat out of Williamsport for over twenty years. Cy had done everything there was to do on a canal boat, but he never liked it much and during the war he left to take a welding job at the naval shipyard in Philadelphia. He got married to a Philadelphia girl. The shipyard kept going strong after the war, since they was repairing and scrapping the fleet. But then Cy fell off a scaffold two years ago and broke his hip, and it never healed right. Standing for long stretches was painful, so he couldn’t work as a welder and he stayed home. A few months later his wife left him and moved back in with her family. And when Cy couldn’t find a job he wanted, he’d come home to Williamsport and applied to the canal company to work as a boat captain. There was several long-time captains quitting the canal, with business declining every year, so the company had a boat for him. They gave him the 41 and 1923 was his first full season as a captain on the canal. A slow season. And Cy had told Katie that things was going to get worse for the canal, with the good coal deposits in Cumberland mostly mined out.

  Lee spun the screw to open the vise and pulled out the last drilled pole. Cy’s boat was almost ready, and after that he’d be waiting for the canal to open and for his two new colored boys to come up from Washington. So Katie was taking Pete down to the amusement park at Glen Echo on Wednesday. Her friend from Alexandria was going to go with them, and then they was all going back to Alexandria for a couple of days. On Friday, Katie would bring Pete back to Swains, and then she could meet Lee at Pennyfield around sunset. Four days from now and it seemed unimaginably distant. Katie had told him she’d pick up the photo at the Great Falls Tavern and bring it with her on Friday. He gathered up the finished poles and carried them out of the shed and down the path to the house, where he added them to the pile on Charlie’s porch. As he started gathering a new batch, he heard a distant bleating sound – four squawking notes from a tin horn. Silence. Then four more squawks, a little louder. His pocket watch read just past 4:30. He put the poles back on the porch and headed across the meadow to the lock.

  After crossing to the towpath, he had a better view of the canal upstream. The scow was still two hundred yards away but he recognized it immediately. Company scows had decks of planks nailed across a hollow hull, with no storage below. Toward the stern there would be a small cabin, painted white with green trim and windows on each side. And there would be wheelbarrows, shovels, hoes, and bags of cement scattered across the deck.

  You couldn’t see the deck on the scow upstream because it had a cabin in the bow, painted grayish blue. It was a stable for two mules, but the Emorys used it as a hayhouse, since they only worked one two-mule team and kept the mules out at night. They had a separate cabin toward the stern. In between the stable and the cabin were six wooden hatches, painted gray, that covered the cargo stored in the hull. The Emory’s scow was two or three feet narrower than a coal barge and less than
half as long, so it was much easier to steer through locks. If you had someone on board who knew how to steer, Lee thought.

  The mule team approached pulling in single file along the edge of the towpath, close to the canal. No bells on this team – for the same reason, he guessed, that there was no name painted on the transom. The driver was Kevin Emory and he walked behind the team down the center of the path. When he saw Lee, he raised his tin horn and blew a few celebratory toots. Lee jogged up the towpath to greet him.

  “He-ey-ey lockee! Set your gates, keeper, we’re driving through!” Kevin pushed his ratty black fedora back on his head and grinned at Lee with tobacco-stained teeth; his fleshy face reddened above his russet mustache. “Good to see you, cousin.”

  Lee shook Kevin’s hand and waved to Tom, who waved back from the tiller but said nothing. Lee fell in alongside Kevin as the mules kept walking. “How’s your run going?”

  “Fair enough,” Kevin said. “Though I’d rather be steering than driving.” He turned his head to spit tobacco juice onto the path. “We’re switching at every lock, but I always seem to drive the long levels. Today I drove the damn seven-mile level of Point of Rocks and then the damn eight-mile level of Riley’s Lock.”

  “I guess that means Tom drove the damn nine-mile level of Whites Ferry in between.”

  Kevin laughed and the crow’s feet around his eyes burrowed into soft red skin. “If you say so, Lee. Didn’t seem like no nine miles to me!”

  “Where you coming from today?”

  “Monocacy River. We tied up just past the aqueduct, above the lock.”

  “That’s about mile 42,” Lee said. “Pennyfield is mile 20.” He looked at the chestnut coats of the mules, whose ribs were showing. These mules were much thinner than the four he had returned to Cy Elgin on Saturday. “I hope you’re not asking your team to start the season with a thirty-mile trick. They get any breaks today?”

  “Sure, lots of ‘em,” Kevin said. “Every time we was locking through!” He flashed Lee a jowly smile, and Lee watched a drop of dark juice slide over his lower lip. Kevin put his hand on Lee’s shoulder and his voice softened. “We put our feet up for a bit and watered ‘em at Chisel Branch, just past the Goose Creek River Lock. And we figured they might enjoy some canal-company corn when we got here.” He winked at Lee. “Case you seen a delivery yet.”

  Lee looked away to hide the irritation on his face. Charlie’s corn crib was partly full, but Lee wasn’t sure it was from the canal company. Even if it was, his cousins shouldn’t be counting on it to feed their team. He changed the subject. “What are you hauling?”

  “Why, cord-wood, of course!” Kevin said with a look of mock surprise. “I thought you knowed our business, cousin!”

  Lee laughed and shook his head. “Must be a whole eight, nine cords. Might fetch three dollars a cord in Georgetown. You fellas should be able to take the rest of the season off!”

  Kevin spat a gobbet at the nearest hoof. “Seven cords,” he said. “Don’t want to punish the mules on our first trip of the year. Plus we got some ballast under a couple of the hatches. You might want to do a little inspection at the lock.” The mules were within a hundred feet of the open gates and they knew enough to slow down. Kevin made eye contact with his brother at the tiller. “You got a snub line for us, captain?”

  Tom wrapped a line around the tiller and crossed to the starboard rail, where a thick rope lay coiled on the stern-most hatch. The rope was cleated to the bow, but the Emorys had learned that you needed to have the snub line close to the captain when no one else was on board. Tom unwound a few coils and threw the remaining loops toward the towpath; they unwound in flight and the last segment landed on the bank. Lee ran to grab it before it slid back into the canal. The rope was heavy and wet, over an inch thick and coated with sand and grit. He reeled it in and coiled it loosely around his arm. “If you get ‘em past the lock,” he told Kevin, “I’ll snub you.”

  Kevin grabbed the lead mule’s bridle and guided the team past the lock. As he watched Tom steer between the walls, Lee carried the heavy rope to the snubbing post. It was as high as his waist and almost as thick, with deep spiraling grooves burned into it. He wrapped the snub line around the post as the scow entered the lock, allowing thirty feet of slack. The mules were standing still now, but the boat glided forward under its own momentum, heading for a collision with the downstream gates. When the line grew taut and began to stretch, he wrapped another loop around the post. The line slid and groaned and he smelled a curl of woodsmoke. He added a third loop and the scow decelerated to a swaying halt, like a bull brought to its knees by the final knife. Its bow was still fifteen feet from the downstream gates. Not much challenge snubbing a scow, he thought. A coal boat was a different matter.

  Tom Emory hopped down onto the lock wall and walked over to greet Lee. Tom was six or seven years younger than Kevin, which would put him in his late twenties if Lee remembered right. He was lean and quiet, almost taciturn, with a dark mustache, a joyless slash for a mouth, and hard, glittering eyes that often looked black. Lee always pictured Tom with a Bowie knife in his hand, since at idle moments Tom invariably seemed to be carving or whittling something, or casually flipping his knife into the deck of a boat. Lee was relieved to see that the knife had been sheathed on Tom’s belt while he was steering into the lock. “I think I’ll stretch my legs a minute,” Tom said with a humorless wink. “All three of ‘em.” He strolled across the towpath, unbuttoned his fly, and urinated on the fringe of grass next to the lockhouse.

  Lee unwrapped the snub line and pushed the swing-beam through a ninety-degree arc. She loves me, he thought, as the gate swung closed. He crossed over the scow and swung the gate closed on the berm side. She loves me not. From the walkway, he used the lock-keys to open the wickets on the downstream gates. Swirls formed as the water drained and Lee’s prospects rose and fell. When the swirls subsided, he opened the downstream gates.

  Kevin slapped the lead mule in the haunch. “Giddap, Mike! Bessie! Up now!” Tom had jumped back onto the scow and the mules drew the towline taut, leaning forward against their harnesses with muscles flexed and ears twitching. Lee watched from the lock wall. Starting a boat from a dead stop was a real strain on the mules, even with a small boat like the scow. For a loaded coal boat, a two-mule team might have to thrust against their harnesses for a minute before they could take a single step. Some captains would bring out two teams to start a loaded boat. If the load was too heavy, the mules could get spavined legs, and then the swelling around their joints was very painful. Lee walked back to open both wickets on the nearest upstream gate, and the swell of water into the lock helped push the stern forward. With the mules pulling steadily, the scow crept out onto the next level of the canal.

  They tied up next to the towpath and Kevin unharnessed the mules while Tom set up the feed trough. On one side of it was a folding leg, which he unfolded. On the other was a rope, which he tied to a tree across the towpath. Mules couldn’t knock over this kind of trough. Tom dumped in the contents of the bucket and the mules began feeding half-heartedly. Rejoining his cousins, Lee saw that the hay looked discolored and old.

  “Hand me your bucket and I’ll fetch them some corn,” he told Tom. Charlie’s corn-crib was in the side-yard of the lockhouse, and Lee drew half a bucket of dried kernels. He added it to the trough and the mules immediately ate with more enthusiasm. He noticed that the chestnut hair on the backs and hindquarters of the mules was sweat-streaked and dirty, speckled with the debris of budding trees. The harness pads were worn thin and more flies than Lee would have expected circled the mules. “You ever curry that team?” he asked Kevin.

  Kevin chuckled and spat a stream onto the towpath. “After every trip…whether they need it or not!” He wiped juice from his lower lip, then continued in a confiding voice. “Mike and Bess are a good team. They don’t call for much special attention.”

  “My stomach is calling for a little special attention,” Tom said. He had
pulled his knife from its sheath and was using the tip to explore the undersides of his fingernails.

  “You speak for us all, my brother,” Kevin said. “Lee, how about you join us for a bite of supper while we rest the mules?”

  Lee’s stomach growled at the mention of food. He’d made himself a stack of pancakes for breakfast but overlooked lunch. “I guess I’m hungry enough,” he said.

  “Well we have some commendable bean soup we can offer you, courtesy of my faithful Ellie,” Kevin said. “Tom and I were savoring it last night when we both realized that it might benefit from a little added smokiness. Maybe a few slices of smoked beef or pork.”

  Tom flipped his knife in the air and caught it by the handle in mid-rotation. “Fresh turtle’d be better still, if you got one. Slice him up and stew him. We got a stove of hot coals going in the galley.”

  Lee exhaled in resignation. “I ain’t caught no turtles this year. Hardly even seen one yet. But I got a quarter leg of cured ham in the lockhouse. My mother sent it with me when she heard I might be down at Pennyfield for a week. I’ll take a few cuts and bring ‘em on board.”

  “We’ll take care of the libations,” Kevin said.

  Lee walked back to the lockhouse and hacked three slices out of the ham leg in the kitchen. He carried a diced plateful back out to the scow. Kevin and Tom had raised hatch number five and were tossing aside the top layer of firewood beneath it to reveal a large wooden barrel, lying on its side. They struggled to raise one end of the barrel a few inches, and Tom pushed a log underneath to keep it tilted. Kevin held a ceramic jug under a tap on the opposite end. He twisted the tap open and a clear liquid flowed from the barrel. When the jug was half full, Kevin shut off the tap and they put the barrel, the cord-wood and the hatch back in place.

  “I think you’ll find that Washington County moonshine brings out the flavor in that ham,” Kevin said to Lee. He spat the remainder of his chaw into the canal and gestured for Lee to follow him to the stern cabin. “And Ellie’s bean soup just seems a little lost without it.” The cabin was six feet long and ten feet wide – two feet narrower than the scow – with a square window on each side. Lee ducked his head as he shuffled down the three narrow steps and through the door. The first thing he saw was a coal-burning stove in the right-front corner. Tom was already using a long spoon to stir the contents of a stew pot on the burner. Lee gave him the plate of ham chunks and Tom grunted an acknowledgement as he dumped the ham into the pot. The warmth from the stove permeated the cabin and for Lee was a welcome change from the cool late-afternoon air outside.