SWAINS LOCK (The River Trilogy, book 1) (9 page)

“Is there some kind of Halloween event going
on here?”

“There sure is,” she said brightly. “Tonight
we’re staging Life and Death on the C&O Canal. We do it every
year on the Saturday before Halloween.”

“What’s that?” Nicky asked.

“Well, we set up a haunted walk… around the
Visitor Center, and past the entrance to the goldmine up the hill
there.” She pointed toward the signs and pumpkins that Vin and
Nicky had noticed earlier. “And we put on a play about some event
from the canal era. It’s different every year. This year we’re
re-enacting a shootout between the police and the notorious
gangster Finn Geary from the 1920s. His syndicate sometimes used
the canal to smuggle moonshine whiskey into Georgetown during
Prohibition.”

“We’re tied up tonight,” Nicky said, “but it
sounds like fun.”

“Well if you’re interested in the canal era,
there’s a talk going on right over there about the history and
operations of the C&O,” the ranger said. She pointed to a dozen
people standing next to an old canal barge that was up on blocks on
the dirt driveway.

As the ranger walked away, Vin cocked his
head toward the barge. “Let’s go listen for a minute,” he said. But
the group was already walking toward them, following another
uniformed ranger. He strode purposefully by, wearing a flat-brimmed
straw hat, wire-rim glasses, and a bushy salt-and-pepper mustache.
The group followed and formed a half-circle around him as he stood
on the stone wall of Lock 20, midway between the gates. Vin and
Nicky walked their bikes within earshot. Vin noticed that Lock 20
was well preserved, probably because it was used for
demonstrations. Like all the other locks he’d seen, its upstream
gates were closed and downstream gates open, leaving it with
thigh-deep water.

The ranger resumed his presentation. “From
the time the C&O opened in 1850 until it closed in 1924, the
canal went from one financial crisis to another. Floods and
breakdowns were a headache, but the main problem was that the
C&O was competing with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad from the
start. And the railroad got bigger, faster, and cheaper year after
year, until the canal couldn’t compete.

“In the first few decades the canal carried
timber, limestone, grain, and other agricultural products, but the
only cargo that ever really amounted to anything for the canal was
coal. During the later stages of the canal era, coal accounted for
over 99% of the business.”

He pointed back to the barge the group had
just examined. “That barge is essentially identical to all of the
barges that carried coal down from the Cumberland mines in the
later years. Not surprising, since after 1890 all the coal barges
were built and owned by the Consolidation Coal Company. Anybody
want to guess who owned the Consolidation Coal Company?”

“Rockefeller?” said a fleshy man at the
front.

“Nope. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad,” the
ranger said with a conspiratorial squint. “In fact, toward the end
the B&O Railroad owned the canal, too. But that’s another
story.” He shifted his stance and cleared his throat.

“Anyway, that coal barge behind you is
ninety-three feet long and fourteen-and-a-half feet wide. And all
the locks on the canal are a hundred feet long and fifteen feet
wide. So you can see that putting a barge through a lock was a
pretty tight squeeze. And the boats coming downstream loaded with
coal had momentum – they were hard to stop. So they would use a
snubbing post to bring the boat to a halt inside the lock. That
would keep it from crashing into the downstream gates.” He turned
and pointed to a waist-high cylindrical post about six feet back
from the opposite lock wall. “A boathand would wrap a heavy rope
from the boat around the snubbing post and the boat would come to a
stop as the rope tightened.”

He spun back toward his audience. “Most boat
captains would tie up for the night somewhere along the berm side
of the canal by ten or eleven, but some captains wanted to make the
circuit from Cumberland to Georgetown and back as fast as possible,
so they kept their boats moving around the clock. That meant a
locktender had to be ready to lock a boat through at any time of
day or night. So most of them would sleep in a shanty near the
lock. That way they could hear the mule driver yell or blow a horn
when a boat was approaching.”

“Now a boat like that one,” he said,
gesturing back to the barge again, “would be carrying over a
hundred and ten tons of coal down the canal. So the boatmen would
call that a ‘loaded boat’, and it would ride low in the water and
be hard to start or stop. After unloading its cargo in Georgetown,
it would head back upstream as a ‘light boat’. With boats coming
and going at any time, locktenders would usually keep their locks
set for a loaded boat. That means the upstream gates would be open
and the downstream gates closed. So a loaded boat could drift right
in and be snubbed to a stop. Then they would close the gates behind
it.”

Vin stepped away from the group for a better
view of the upstream gates. Each was a thick wooden door that
pivoted around a wooden post set into the lock wall. When closed,
the gates formed a shallow V-shape, which helped them seal tightly
against each other and withstand the water pressure they faced when
the lock was empty. The pivot-posts each supported a heavy
swing-beam that was a foot wide and a foot thick. These swing-beams
converged at the juncture of the gates, and from there angled
upward and outward, reaching the height of a man’s waist at their
distal ends, a dozen feet outside the lock walls.

Planks had been nailed to the upstream faces
of the swing-beams to create a V-shaped walkway across the lock
when the gates were closed. At least one set of lock gates had to
be closed at all times, Vin realized, so during the canal era there
was always a way to cross the lock on foot, even without the
footbridges.

The ranger was still talking. “Once a boat
was in the lock and all the gates were closed, they needed to drain
the water out of the lock to drop the boat. Anyone know how they
did that?” The ranger pointed to the only child present, a boy of
ten or eleven standing next to his parents. “How did they get the
water out of the lock?”

“Through those windows at the bottom of the
doors,” the boy said.

“That’s right,” the ranger said. “But you
mean the windows at the bottom of those doors,” he said, gesturing
toward the downstream gates. “Those windows are called ‘wickets’,
and the wooden panels that fit snugly inside the wickets are called
‘paddles’. The paddles can be rotated to open or close the
wickets.” Vin studied the bottom of the gates. Each door had two
wickets, and the paddles were actually more like wooden spatulas,
with iron stems that ascended the back sides of the gates and
pierced the swing-beams, extending another foot or so into the air.
The stems terminated with butt-ends that he guessed were designed
to mate with sockets on the lock-keys. All four lock-keys had been
removed.

“When the water in the lock dropped to the
level of the canal” the ranger said, “the locktender would push the
swing-beams until the downstream gates were flush against the walls
of the lock. You can see,” he said, pointing again, “how the walls
have indentations to hold the open doors. Remember, getting the
boats in and out was a tight squeeze!

“Then the mule driver would untie the
snub-line, start the mules moving down the towpath, and pull the
boat out of the lock and down the canal. To lock a light boat
through upstream, the process was reversed.” He described it, using
gestures to mimic the opening of gates and turning of lock-keys.
Two people stepped away from the group and Vin sensed the speaker
was losing his audience. The ranger raised his voice.

“One more question I forgot to ask you. Who
knows the difference between a canal and a river?” No one replied
so he sought out the boy again. “Can you tell me the difference
between a canal and a river?”

“Sure. A river flows. A canal just sits
there. And a river has fish in it.”

“The canal has always had fish in it. Even
eels,” the ranger replied.

“Eels, cool!”

“And the canal flows, too. It was designed
to flow at two miles per hour. Why do you think they designed it
that way?” More people peeled away, but the few remaining were
listening again. Nicky nudged Vin with her elbow and rolled her
eyes, but he put a hand on her shoulder and focused on the
ranger.

“I don’t know,” the boy said.

“To help the mules?” Vin said, making eye
contact with the ranger.

The ranger brightened. “That’s right! With
the canal set to flow at two miles per hour, it was the same amount
of effort for the mules to pull a loaded boat downstream or a light
boat upstream.”

“But the canal is flat,” the boy said. “What
makes it flow?”

“The same thing that makes a fountain flow,”
the ranger said. “Actually, the canal is like a fountain that’s a
hundred and eighty-four miles long, and made up of seventy-four
connected levels stretched end to end. The water flows into the
fountain from the Potomac River, through five separate feeder
canals that draw water from the river. The feeder canals have gates
like these,” he said, pointing once more to the lock gates, “called
guard locks. Once the water is in the canal, it flows continuously
across each level at two miles per hour, and then cascades down to
the next level using one of two routes: the lock or the flume.

“You already know how the lock transfers a
boat and water downstream. But when the lock isn’t being used, it
acts like a dam, so water flows through the flume to drop from one
level of the canal down to the next. Some flumes are just a
straight channel parallel to the lock that leads to a seven-foot
waterfall into the lower level. Other flumes are rocky streams that
curve around the lockhouse. These flumes take an indirect path to
make the descent more gradual.”

“I think we need to take an indirect path
out of here,” Nicky whispered, ducking her shoulder out from under
Vin’s hand. “This guy could go on forever!” Vin smiled but kept his
eyes on the ranger.

“And after the water had flowed down to the
lowest level of the fountain, it was used to power the grain mills
in Georgetown.”

“So that was part of the business of the
canal?” Vin said. “Selling hydro power?” Nicky exhaled loudly and
waggled her head in apparent disbelief.

“Sure was,” the ranger said. “Even when
other parts of the canal were closed due to flood damage, they
tried to keep the Georgetown feeder canal open to provide power to
the mills.” The remainder of the group used Vin’s question as a
chance to escape, leaving Vin and Nicky alone with the ranger.

“Actually,” the officer continued in a
quieter voice, looking at them in turn, “all the feeder canals were
important, since the canal was quite thirsty.”

“I’m thirsty, too,” Nicky said, “and I
forgot to bring my water bottle. Did I see a water fountain near
the Visitor Center?”

“There’s one near the front entrance,” the
ranger said, pointing toward the facade.

Vin shot a glance at Nicky. “I’ll meet you
over there in a second,” he said as she turned to walk her bike
toward the entrance.

“Thirsty?” Vin said. “You mean evaporation,
or leaks?”

“Both. Water evaporated from the surface in
dry weather. And muskrats would burrow into the banks and cause
leaks. Sometimes they’d undermine the bank enough to cause a break.
The water would blow through the break and run down into a culvert,
or toward the river, and the whole level would drain. Any boats on
that level would be stranded.”

Vin nodded. “That sounds like a big
problem.”

“Dangerous, too,” the ranger said, “if you
were driving mules out on the towpath at night. They’d send a
repair crew out in the middle of the night if there was a break. Of
course, after a heavy rain, the canal might have too much
water.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Vin said,
looking back in the direction Nicky had gone.

“When that happened, they’d open the gates
to the waste weirs.”

“Waste weirs?”

“Waste weirs are channels that drain excess
water from the canal down to the river. They use gates with
miniature paddles to shunt the water through culverts under the
towpath. There’s one just above this lock.”

“Speaking of towpath,” Vin said, “I need to
catch up with my fiancée and hit the trail. Thanks for the
presentation.”

“You bet,” the ranger said. He raised the
brim of his hat and looked back at the barge, which a young couple
and their small children were admiring. “Excuse me,” he said,
turning in their direction.

Vin found Nicky waiting on the brick walkway
near the entrance to the Visitor Center.

“That was kind of scary,” she said. “I was
worried he was going to drag you back to the barge to show you how
the mules were hooked up, or start telling you what the boat
captains ate for breakfast.”

“I guess we missed that part of the program.
Maybe we should come back next Saturday… get here a little
earlier…”

“Be my guest. Maybe you can learn the
material and be his assistant.”

“I wonder if he knows anything about Lee
Fisher. Or Emmert Reed. Hmmm…maybe I could write a book about all
this canal stuff.”

“You could call it Life at Two Miles per
Hour,” Nicky said. “Or how about, I Was a Teenage Mule Driver.”

***

After examining the photo of Lee Fisher and
K. Elgin for several minutes, Kelsey carefully laid it back on top
of Lee’s note on the breakfast-nook table, then walked downstairs
and slipped out the sliding door. As she crossed under the deck,
Randy rushed to the railing and serenaded her with another
threatening round of barks. She ignored him and traversed the lawn
toward the hillside, where she found the path and disappeared into
the woods.