SWAINS LOCK (The River Trilogy, book 1) (17 page)

“Then!” he yelled, casting it into the chasm
and watching it fall end over end into the sweeping current
below.

“For you, Miles!” He threw the second
cross.

“Soon, motherfucker!” He threw the two
pieces of the broken final cross. “Soon.”

Chapter 13
Fever

Sunday, March 24, 1996

Nicky sliced a lime on the kitchen counter,
then peered out the window into the side yard as her mind wandered
away from the ingredients for lemongrass soup. She hoped it wasn’t
mycobacterium abscessus, since that could take weeks of antibiotics
to treat. But that possibility was why the doctor had taken a
culture from Vin’s hip yesterday. His wound had all the symptoms of
infection: redness, swelling, tenderness, pus. Still, the
incubation period should have been longer than five days. More like
a month. So maybe it was something less serious. But how then to
explain the fever and lightheadedness he had woken up with this
morning?

She turned back toward her ingredients,
which ringed a cutting board in the mid-afternoon light from the
window. She rinsed the stalks of lemongrass in the sink, removed
their rough outer leaves, and began dicing them into small disks.
Vin had never been sick around her before, so she wasn’t sure how
long his fever would last. She shook her head in silent reproach.
Thirty-five years old and running around chasing phantoms in the
woods. On a Tuesday morning when there must have been some work to
do. Hadn’t he said that Rottweiler had given him feedback on his
proposal for phase two? Or maybe he was still waiting for that… she
couldn’t remember. At least he could have done background reading
this week, if he hadn’t injured himself.

Now he’s lying in bed with a fever on a
warm, clear Sunday. Poor guy. He’s honest and he tries hard, but he
sometimes acts like he’s still a teenager. This mystery from 1924,
for example. She wasn’t even sure what he’d been looking for in the
woods, but she knew it was tied up with that treasure-hunt somehow.
If he hadn’t found the photo and the note behind the wall, would he
be pursuing some other enigma? She looked up and squinted as a
passing cloud dimmed the late-afternoon light and a clutch of
sparrows darted past the window.

She started mincing the lemongrass disks
into smaller pieces. Maybe he was bored, she thought. Bored because
he didn’t know many people in D.C. yet. Bored because he worked at
home. His Rottweiler project would wrap up this fall, and after the
wedding he could get a full-time job. That would be the best way to
start feeling connected. And he’d mentioned rock-climbing. Maybe
they could take lessons later this spring and meet some people that
way. She finished the lemongrass and turned to the cilantro.

***

When Vin opened his eyes, Nicky was clearing
space on his bedside table for a tray she’d brought in. He smiled
feebly as she set it down. “Soup,” he said in a hoarse voice.
“Thanks, honey… the steam looks great.” He swung a second pillow
against the headboard and raised himself. He was wearing a cotton
turtleneck and a sweater under his blankets but still felt chilled.
He pulled his fleece hat down over his ears.

“Do you think you can you eat something?”
Nicky said. “You must be hungry, since you skipped breakfast. How
about toast? And lemongrass soup for your congestion.”

Vin nodded weakly. He rolled onto his good
hip and leaned toward the bowl to hold his face over the rising
steam, closing his eyes. “It already tastes good.”

“After you eat, let’s change your bandage
and take a look at your hip.”

He rolled carefully into a sitting position
and picked up the spoon. The first mouthful was hot and tangy and
pushed rays of warmth into his chest. When he’d finished, Nicky
removed the bandage and applied a topical antibiotic to the wound.
There was no new pus, and at least it didn’t seem to be getting
worse. After she replaced the bandage, he felt another chill arise,
so he dove back under the covers as she took the tray away. He was
asleep within minutes.

When he woke up again he was still dreaming.
He was alone in the room and he could see through a window on the
narrow far wall that it was dark outside. Not completely dark, so
the moon must have been up. He looked at his surroundings and
didn’t recognize them. It was a small room and the ceiling slanted
down toward the windowless wall on his right, as if the room were
in an attic. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep. It was windy
outside and he heard the moaning and clattering of branches bending
and colliding. It sounded as if a branch was scraping against the
house near the window on the far wall. He opened his eyes and
propped himself up as a shock raced through him. A young woman was
staring at him through the window! She had wavy hair and shadowed
eyes, and a leaf-shaped pendant hung from her neck against the pale
skin below her throat. Her hand was making a sweeping motion
against the glass. She turned from the window and disappeared into
the night. The skin around his scalp tightened. He was on the
second floor!

He thrust back the blankets and planted his
sock-clad feet on the floorboards. Sitting on the edge of the bed,
he took deep breaths and felt his breathing come easier. He stood
up and steadied himself. His books and papers were stacked on a
desk along the windowless wall. Not his desk, but another. He lit
the desk lamp and leafed through papers until he found the photo of
Lee Fisher and K. Elgin at Great Falls. An old jar held pens,
scissors, a letter opener, and a magnifying glass. He bent over the
glass to study the photo in the lamplight. It was her, the girl at
the window – the same hair, mouth, eyes. The same necklace, which
the glass suggested was etched with a symbol too small to read.

The flood! He remembered now that the flood
was coming, and Nicky was down at Swains! She didn’t know! He had
to save her! He found a pair of sweatpants in the dresser and
pulled them on, then laced up his running shoes. The floorboards
groaned as he hurried to the door, which flew open when he turned
the knob. A light breeze was blowing up the stairway and he could
see that the front door was swinging in the wind. He hurried down
the worn, wooden steps of the unlit staircase and slipped into the
warm and windy night.

The view in front of him wasn’t what he
expected. He was on the towpath and the dark water of the canal
before him was alive with wind-driven ripples reflecting light from
the moon. He turned back toward the door flapping in the wind and
saw the old Pennyfield lockhouse. It was dark except for a light in
the bedroom upstairs, but its whitewashed stones glowed softly in
the moonlight. He took a long stride down the towpath and broke
into a run. A low shape hurtled toward him from the dirt yard, and
he instinctively twisted to dodge it. The shape jerked to a stop
and let loose a ferocious vocal assault. All he could see at first
were gleaming white teeth. As his eyes adjusted, he saw a
powerfully-built black dog on a long tether. A Rottweiler. He
turned back to the towpath and ran toward Swains Lock.

With a southwest crosswind flowing over him,
he felt like he was flying down the dim ribbon. The ripples along
the canal fled toward the berm at his approach, and the bare trees
creaked and groaned in the wind. The river was somewhere through
the dark trees to his right, running with him. It approached and
receded, approached again. Where the canal was carved into rock
faces on the berm, the river ran fast alongside him down a steep,
twenty-foot slope. It ran like a line of dark horses and sounded
like rain. The apron widened and the river disappeared as the trees
guarding the towpath grew taller.

Vin ran effortlessly, realizing at some
point that his hip no longer hurt. His thoughts drained away and he
became the motion of running. He came to the spot where he and
Nicky had picnicked while canoeing last fall. They had pulled their
canoe into the overgrown meadow where the trees had been felled for
the buried gas line, then eaten apples while watching a beaver swim
figure eights and thwack its tail in warning. But now there was no
meadow; the trees were unbroken and had yet to feel the thwack of
an axe. Thwack. Warning. His thoughts fell back into alignment. He
had to find Nicky at Swains Lock before the flood arrived!

The towpath grew darker as the woods
deepened on the apron. He rounded a shallow bend and saw a bright
light in the distance, at the level of his eyes. It expanded slowly
and seemed to radiate through an arc in his direction, like a
wide-angled flashlight or the headlight on a train. Through the
swirling wind and between the thumps of his footsteps, he listened
for the sound of a train. Instead he heard a fleeting sound of
bells. The wind rose up and the sound was lost. The light grew
brighter and seemed to shift left of the towpath, still several
hundred feet away. Another trace of bells and the thump of a heavy
footstep that wasn’t his own, from somewhere downwind, ahead of
him, as he flew on down the towpath. And suddenly the dark beasts
filled his vision, ten paces ahead. He straightened his legs to
brake with each step, veering to the fringe to avoid a collision.
He heard a whinnied protest and the strenuous shaking of bells as a
huge head and mane bobbed away from him, toward the canal.

“Jeepers, mister!” cried a young voice above
him. “You about scared the mules half to death!” Vin edged along
the fringe toward the second mule, which followed in line,
harnessed to the first by straps, a spreader bar, and chains. This
mule eyed him nervously as it passed.

“Giddap, Berniece!” called the boy as Vin
heard the slap of hand against haunch. The bells resumed a walking
rhythm and the towbar floated past. A taut, dark line angled out
toward the light, now a hundred feet away. The bow-lamp cast a
ghostly aura over the snub-nosed front of the barge, which rode
high in the water and was painted white above the waterline.
Framing the bow-lamp, black square windows loomed like eyes.

Vin walked quietly as the barge slid by him.
Near its stern, a square cabin rose above the level of the deck,
and a canopy was suspended above the cabin’s flat roof. Low voices
drifted across the water from beneath it. A silhouette leaning on
the stern rail turned to face him as the barge passed by, and Vin
saw the dark shaft of the tiller extending from the man’s arm. He
leaned into a jump-step and resumed running.

He was sweating now, so he pulled off his
sweater and tied it around his waist. He pushed the sleeves of his
turtleneck up and the breeze across his forearms cooled him down. A
formless white shape materialized in the distance and bobbed closer
as he ran, gaining definition. It was the lockhouse at Swains. He
slackened to a fast walk. The water in the canal looked higher than
usual and the wind blew ripples across it toward the entrance to
the lock. The upstream gates were open – set for a loaded boat. He
strode toward the footbridge but it wasn’t there. Water lapped at
the stone walls of the lock, a few inches from the top. In a small
yard beside the unlighted lockhouse, he noticed a clothesline of
drying laundry blowing in the breeze.

“Nicky!” he yelled. No response but the
creaking of branches overhead. He proceeded to the closed
downstream gates and stepped onto the plank walkway. “Nicky!” he
called again. No answer. He edged cautiously out over the dark
water. A horizontal iron rod, curved up slightly at the end nearest
him, angled toward his knees and he stepped carefully around it. It
was a lock-key, he realized, seated atop an iron stem. He
sidestepped a second lock-key to reach the center, where he felt
the support of converging swing beams underfoot, then negotiated
the remainder of the plank to the other side. He jogged to the
lockhouse and banged on the front door. No lights came on and no
one answered. Another knock brought nothing.

Where was she? Where was everyone? Had they
all fled for high ground? Had they already been told? He looked
past the lock at the scattered trees on the apron. There was no
sign of life. Moonlight glinted off the undulating river as it
poured between the Maryland bank and one of the ragged island
stitches sewn into its heart. He passed two old benches in front of
the lockhouse and turned the corner into the side yard. White
shirts, colorless trousers, and small white sheets fluttered on the
clothesline. He circled to the backyard and saw a forlorn picnic
table near its center. A bare shade tree rose beyond it, overseeing
packed dirt and patches of trampled grass.

A line of low shapes guarded the border of
the backyard and the ascending berm, and drawing closer he realized
they were gravestones. A row of eight, all facing the lockhouse.
The first stone was tilted and looked ancient. Though the moonlight
caught it from an angle, he couldn’t read the engraving on its
eroded face. He paced the row of leaning, weathered stones, tracing
their inscriptions with his fingers. The writing was intact but
indecipherable. When he reached the last gravestone, he could see
that it was different – planted dead straight, its face unscarred
by time. The inscription looked freshly carved and the shadowed
grooves were legible in the ambient light.

Nicole Callahan Hayes

1965-1996

He knelt and stroked the letters of her name
with his index finger, choking back sobs. It was too late for
Nicky. She was gone.

He blinked away tears and continued his
circuit around the lockhouse, turning into the upstream side-yard
that bled into the dirt driveway. Two racks of canoes stood across
the parking area on the berm. He walked to the nearest rack and
touched the inverted hull of a canoe in its middle row. The hull
was birchbark, painted black, and he tapped the woodwork of its
gunwales and thwarts. He tried to lift the canoe but its central
thwart was cabled to the rack. He let go and turned back to the
canal.