SWAINS LOCK (The River Trilogy, book 1) (5 page)

Your friend, Lee Fisher

As he re-read the note, Vin felt the back of
his neck chill. He studied the photo of the young couple again,
turning it over to see the notation “R. L. Fisher and K. Elgin at
Great Falls”. That could be Lee Fisher in the picture, he thought,
since Great Falls was only a few miles away and the picture was
also dated “March, 1924”. He turned back to the letter. Who was
Charlie? And why was the note placed here, where Charlie – hell,
anybody – would have been highly unlikely to find it? Maybe Charlie
had already found the note and hidden it here himself. But then why
would the drill be hidden along with the papers? Strange.

He plucked the finishing nails from the
planks, then carried them back to the house along with his tools
and the newfound drill and papers. On his way to the driveway his
throat felt dry, so he set everything down in the foyer and climbed
the half-flight to the breakfast nook and kitchen for a glass of
water.

Between sips in the foyer, he finger-tapped
the planks as they leaned against the wall. Definitely cedar and
quite solid. The strange mark was facing outward at the top of one
plank, so he spun the plank to its original orientation. The curve
and one of the slashes suggested a sickle, but the other two
slashes made the symbol look alien. Wondering whether there was a
connection between the mark and the photo, he studied the picture
again but couldn’t find one. The doorbell rang and he nearly jumped
out of his skin. He laid the photo on the foyer table and opened
the door.

“Hi, Vin,” the woman at the door said. He
stared at her blankly for a second. “We met yesterday.” Her
gray-green eyes flitted left and right, then settled on his own.
She smiled as he remembered yesterday’s dogfight.

“Sure, sure,” he said, sweeping his hair
back from his brow. “You’re Kelsey, right? I’m sorry, I was asleep
on my feet when you rang. Come in.” He stepped back and held the
door.

“Thanks. Where’s your dog?”

“Napping on the deck. At least he better
be.” She laughed as Vin found himself locating the faded scar on
her left temple. He quickly made eye contact again. “How does your
dog’s ear look today?”

“About the same. I’m trying to make sure she
doesn’t scratch it, but given the amount of time she spends rolling
around outside, the ear spray sounded like a good idea.”

“Right, the gentamicin. Nicky told me where
to find it. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Kelsey watched as he headed off to the
kitchen. He ducked into the pantry, flicked on the light, and
started checking labels on the medicine shelf.

***

In the foyer Kelsey surveyed her
surroundings. A split-level from the late sixties or early
seventies, she thought, with no major updates. A generic pendulum
lamp overhead and a cute little red-and-orange kilim rug over slate
tiles. To the right, a half-flight down to the first floor and
another up to a breakfast nook. An alternate half-flight on the
left led up to the living room. An antique table in front of her
and cedar planks propped beside it against the wall. Her gaze
drifted down the face of the nearest plank and her eyes widened
when she saw the symbol carved near its base. Her mind went blank
in disbelief and all she could think of or feel was the hammering
of blood against the walls of her heart. The mark from Whites
Ferry. A vague intuition formed like a bubble in her subconscious
and ascended until it became a discernible pearl. The pearl
shattered into a premonition, and the premonition flew beyond her
grasp.

Chapter 3
Whites Ferry

Tuesday, June 20, 1972

Destiny Gowan, née Melissa, pushed the
twelfth and final four-by-four until its opposite end nudged the
windshield just above the dash. She swept tiny beads of sweat from
her forehead, then looked up at her boyfriend and smiled. “That’s
the last one,” she said, slamming the tailgate shut. The yellow
Ford station wagon squatted cautiously in the heat, unused to its
burden of two hundred paving stones and a dozen beams of varying
lengths.

Miles Garrett checked his watch and brushed
the dirt from his hands. “Damn, I hope so,” he said. “Since we
still need to take all of this shit back out.” He pulled on the
tailgate to make sure it was fully closed. “I thought artists were
supposed to use art supplies. Like paint…or chalk...or clay.”

“It’s architectural sculpture, Miles,” Des
said. “Tell him, Kelsey.”

“It’s architectural sculpture, Miles,”
Kelsey said. “And thanks for taking the morning off to help. Teresa
is a talented artist – even when we were in high school she was
talented – ask Des. And you can come to the open house at the
Collaborative next week to see what she can do with this stuff.”
Kelsey ducked and shaded her eyes to peer in through the open
tailgate window. The back seat was folded over, buried beneath the
stones and beams. “Des, do you think all three of us can fit in the
front seat?”

“Sure. If Miles sits in the middle and keeps
the beams from swinging into me, and you can scrunch against the
door on the passenger side…”

Miles was happy with this arrangement for
the short ride to the ferry. It meant that his back would be
pressed against Kelsey’s hips and torso while he twisted to keep
both arms on the beams. And his eyes could rest on the swell of
Des’s breasts beneath her peasant blouse. The blouse’s ties hung
lightly against her chest, framed by the emerging curves. To avoid
staring, he shifted his attention to the barely-visible blond hairs
on her tanned forearms as she turned the wheel. Then to the
purple-tinted granny glasses he’d grown attached to last semester,
and her streaked auburn hair, pulled back into a loose single
braid.

He held the beams away from the steering
column so Des could shift into gear. Gravel crunched beneath the
tires and small plumes of dust flared in their wake as the station
wagon pulled away from the Leesburg nursery lot and turned toward
Whites Ferry. The wagon accelerated slowly, undulating a little
under the load. Des clicked on the radio and a gentle reggae rhythm
filled the air.

and I will find you

across a river of time,

and I will hold you

until you know you are mine.

The morning sun was already high overhead,
and Miles felt his back grow warm pressing Kelsey’s bare left arm.
Prickles of sweat formed beneath the curls of dark brown hair
hanging against his neck and his t-shirt stuck to the skin between
his shoulder blades. He slid the air-conditioning knob to the right
and felt the hot air from the vents turn cool. The open windows
funneled a crosswind into the car. Strands of Kelsey’s hair flicked
against his ear and shoulders.

“Hey, Des,” Kelsey said. “Do you remember
that guy we met at the Taj Mahal show last month? Dave? The weather
guy?”

“Yeah. Hmmm. Maybe.”

“He called me a couple of nights ago. I
guess he has tickets for the Stones at RFK Stadium and can score a
few more, but he and two friends need a place to crash that night.
He seems cool enough, but I’ll be gone for the 4th. You
interested?”

Des squinted behind her purple shades.
“Let’s see. My folks will be at the beach. We could stay at their
place and throw sleeping bags on the deck. Dave’s a weather guy, so
he should be smart enough to come inside if it rains. Are we in,
Miles?”

Miles remembered a speech from his foreman
about getting to the job site on time. “I need to be in Rockville
by seven-thirty the next morning,” he said, “but it’s the Stones.
Let’s tumble some dice, baby.”

“Kelsey, I guess we’re in. Tell him we want
field tickets.”

“Sure,” Kelsey said, rolling her eyes. “I’ll
tell him you need to see every tongue thrust.”

Des extended her tongue, curled it toward
her chin, then pulled it in and pouted. Miles smirked but couldn’t
suppress a smile – the gesture was so typical of Des. The tide of
reggae ebbed and a DJ began blabbering, so Des twisted the volume
down. When the forecast came on she turned it back up.

“After making landfall in the Florida panhandle
yesterday as a category-one hurricane, Agnes has now been
downgraded to a tropical depression and is centered over Georgia.
Meteorologists expect the storm to continue tracking to the
northeast through the Carolinas today and tomorrow, possibly
regaining hurricane strength if it moves back over water off North
Carolina and turns northward again. Even if Agnes doesn’t regain
hurricane strength, we can expect heavy rain in the D.C. area,
beginning mid-day tomorrow, through tomorrow night, and into
Thursday. Depending on the path Agnes takes, areas to the north and
west of Washington, D.C. could see up to 12 inches of rain.”

“Yecch,” Des said. “I’m glad we’re doing
this today, since tomorrow looks ugly.”

“We can stash the beams in Teresa’s shed.
It’s OK if the stones get wet,” Kelsey said.

“Hey, if it rains hard enough, I get the day
off,” Miles said. His smile melted away. “But that means work on
Saturday.”

“Bummer, man,” Des said.

She swung the station wagon into a right
turn from Route 15 onto Whites Ferry Road. Miles tightened his arms
around the beams to keep them from sliding toward Des, and he felt
the loaded chassis sway as the car completed its turn.

Aside from its paved surface, Whites Ferry
Road hadn’t changed much since its construction in the aftermath of
the Civil War. It ran straight for a half-mile between a copse on
the left and unplowed fields on the right, then turned into the
woods along a hillside and descended to the Potomac River. Des
guided the wagon along the old road, then eased it to a stop behind
the last car in line.

The smell of green leaves and vines filled
the air and Miles inhaled deeply. This was his first trip to Whites
Ferry, so he turned to look out Kelsey’s window at the brown
flowing water of the Potomac. Five hundred yards away, on the
cleared bank across the river, stood the small store and the ferry
operator’s house that comprised Whites Ferry, Maryland. A taut loop
of steel cable was stretched across the river at the waterline and
anchored by concrete counterweights at each shore. Steel wheels
attached to the upstream side of the ferry traveled inside this
cable loop as the ferry trudged back and forth across the river.
The cable kept the boat from being pushed downstream by the current
during its traverse.

The ferry was churning toward them, a
featureless gray barge with chipped and rusted metal railings on
the sides and swinging gates at each end. The pilothouse and
engines looked like a little tugboat grafted onto the middle of the
ferry’s downstream side. Miles counted eleven cars in rows
three-wide, all pointed toward the concrete boat ramp that formed
the dock on the Virginia shore. “Hey, we lucked out,” Des said.
“We’ll make it on the next trip.”

Miles surveyed the cars in front of them
that formed an arc down to the boat ramp; they were tenth in line.
The ferry pilot eased the throttle and the boat decelerated. He
stubbed out a cigarette and threw the throttle into reverse, then
neutral, and the ferry stopped as its bow nudged the boat ramp. The
pilot threaded through cars to the bow, flipped a metal loading
ramp down onto the concrete with a bang, swung the gate open, and
shuffled down the metal ramp. He pointed to the cars in an ordered
sequence and they filed off, heading up the boat ramp and past the
waiting cars on Whites Ferry Road.

Des joined the procession of cars driving
down the hill and onto the ferry, which departed for Maryland less
than a minute after the gate closed behind them. With the car’s
engine still running and its air-conditioner blowing, Miles didn’t
immediately realize that they’d begun moving. It was only when the
view through the windshield evolved that he looked out Des’s window
and saw the folds and eddies in the brown water and the scattered
armada of sticks and debris pushing downstream with the
current.

“River law!” Des sang out, eyebrows rising
behind her purple shades.

“What is river law?” Miles said, drawing his
focus back inside the car.

Kelsey smiled resignedly. “There is none.
River law is no law. We’re not in Virginia or Maryland, so the
rules don’t apply. That’s always been our theory, anyway.”

“Kelsey, can you find my pipe under your
seat? It’s in a shoebox.”

Miles slid his legs aside while Kelsey bent
at the waist and foraged under the front seat. Reaching deeper she
touched cardboard and pulled the box forward. It snagged on a
tangle of unused seat belts. “Jeez, Des. Hang on a second,” she
said, unsnarling the belts.

Miles admired the taut curve of Kelsey’s
back beneath the wrinkles of her lavender linen shirt as she
twisted the shoebox out. She flipped the top off the box and
rummaged around, then pulled out a plastic disposable lighter and a
wooden box. It was smaller than a pack of cigarettes and the color
of ash wood, smooth and polished from handling, with a symbol that
looked something like the combination of a scythe and an arrow
etched on its face. A retractable lid on one of the shorter ends
gave access to the contents of the box.

“Hey, a dugout! Very elegant.”

“Thanks,” Des said. “I found it at a flea
market in Arlington a few weeks ago.”

Kelsey slid the wooden lid partly off one
end of the dugout, and the tail end of a small ceramic pipe popped
out. She retracted the lid further to reveal a second compartment.
The smaller shaft held the pipe and the larger compartment the
marijuana. “Where from?” she said.

“Jamaican,” Des said. “Timmy gave me an
ounce last week. Let’s spark one up.”

Kelsey removed the pipe, tilted and tapped
the dugout, and pressed the shallow pipe bowl into the side of the
stash compartment to fill it. She withdrew the loaded pipe and
closed the lid over both compartments with her thumb. Des looked to
the right, where a pickup truck and another car had followed them
on board to complete their row, screening them from the pilothouse.
The driver of the pickup truck had tilted his seat back and closed
his eyes. There were no cars in the final row behind them. “Better
roll up your window a bit,” she said, rolling her own window to an
inch or two from the top. “We don’t want to look like a
chimney.”