SWAINS LOCK (The River Trilogy, book 1) (35 page)

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. She 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.