SWAINS LOCK (The River Trilogy, book 1) (11 page)

Instead he seemed to be immersing himself in
a riddle spawned by the 1924 note he’d found in that decrepit shed
a few weeks ago. And now this incipient obsession with the canal.
Did it imply some kind of low-level detachment?

“It’s really fascinating, reading about the
C&O. When we walk along the towpath, the history is all around
us. It’s practically alive.” He sipped his beer. “If I ever figure
out what happened at Swains Lock, it might make a good screenplay.”
He laughed and slumped back in his chair.

Nicky looked at him but said nothing as her
eyes narrowed and another sparrow flashed behind them.

Chapter 7
Newspapers

Friday, December 1, 1995

The periodicals room at McKeldin Library was
quiet on a Friday morning, with students scattered at tables and
through the carrels. It had taken Vin fifteen minutes of fast-paced
walking to reach the University of Maryland library from the
visitors lot, but then only a few words from the librarian and a
minute in the rows of filing cabinets to find the reel of microfilm
he wanted.

He placed it on the spindle, threaded it
onto the empty reel across the viewing plate, and scrolled forward.
Near the end of the tape he found the newspaper edition he was
looking for.

The Washington Post: Sunday, March 30, 1924

Death and Loss in Flood Widespread

Floods in the upper Potomac and upper Ohio rivers and
their tributaries have brought death and vast destruction. Bridges
have been swept away and trains marooned.

Cumberland, MD property loss – Railroads, $5,000,000;
buildings, $1,000,000.

Flood deaths – McCoal, MD., 6; Cumberland, MD., 3;
Newark, OH., 4; Johnstown, PA., 1; Pittsburgh, 2; Melcroft, Penn.,
3;

The remainder of the article cited a cold
wave and snow in the midwest.

He advanced slowly but found no reference to
an incident at Swains Lock on the preceding day. None of the other
articles even mentioned the C&O Canal. He scrolled to the next
day’s issue and found only one related article:

The Washington Post: Monday, March 31, 1924

Pittsburgh Flood Ebbs; Steel Mills are Hard Hit

A score of city blocks in the lower sections were
inundated, and sections for several miles upstream laid waste when
both the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, meeting here to form the
Ohio, left their banks today in Pittsburgh’s greatest flood in 10
years. No loss of life was reported…

Aware that the Potomac flood had actually
reached Washington on March 31, he advanced the reel again.

The Washington Post: Tuesday, April 1, 1924

Crest of Flood is Receding, but Damage Has
Increased

The crest of the flood-swollen Potomac swept swiftly
by Washington yesterday with the ebbing tides. After a futile
effort at high tide yesterday to touch the high water mark at 8
feet registered on the morning rise, the waters quickly fell back
in their path and raced on to the bay, with the remnants of the
wreckage from upstream…

Water observers estimated that the current was moving
at a greater speed than the day before, but it raced off solemnly,
its wrath apparently spent. No waters overlapped the others in the
flow; they all kept in their place. It was a rhythmic, quick march
of a victor to the sea…

There was one float that gave mute evidence of the
havoc wrought in one popular industry of the river swamps. It was a
copper still, its tarnished nose bobbing about on the racing water
like a buoy.

With communication lines along the Potomac
damaged by the flood, Vin guessed that a full description of the
devastation in the upper valley would have taken several days to
trickle in to the Washington newspapers. And those papers were no
doubt focused on stories of more global interest. Whatever Lee
Fisher saw or experienced at Swains Lock on March 29 would not be
chronicled in the 1924 Washington Post, the Baltimore Evening Sun,
or any other newspaper archived at libraries. So Vin’s search for
Lee Fisher’s truth would have to rely on the words in his note.
Rewinding the microfilm, he parsed the message once more in his
head.

Charlie,

If it is April and I am missing, I fear I have been
killed…

The books made clear that Charlie Pennyfield
tended Pennyfield Lock in 1924. Maybe Lee’s fear had proven idle;
maybe he hadn’t been killed because of what happened at Swains
Lock. But then why hadn’t he retrieved the note? Why should he
leave a clue to buried money behind a marked plank in Charlie’s
shed if he were alive and well in the days that followed?

Vin wondered whether the money Lee referred
to was stolen. If so, Charlie could have launched some kind of
investigation, putting Lee at risk of being considered a criminal
or an informer. If Lee were alive in April, 1924, why not just take
the money himself? It didn’t make sense, he thought, looking up and
arching his back. For that matter, if Lee survived into April, why
abandon a useful hand-drill that might be expensive to replace?

To Vin, the prospect that Lee’s fear had
come true seemed more likely. Maybe Lee was buried along with the
others at the base of three joined sycamores at the edge of a
clearing. Something had happened to Lee, and Charlie never found
the message that would lead him to the communal grave beneath the
sycamores. Who else was buried there? The note gave no hint. Was
Emmert Reed involved? Maybe his albino mule had hauled the bodies
to the clearing it “knowed well”. Along the towpath somewhere?

If Vin could find the place and its joined
sycamores, what else would he find? The money, the killers, and the
dead? The dead might still be there. The killers, if given a
chance, would have come back for their spoils. But maybe the flood
had interfered somehow. Or maybe the killers had been caught or
killed. Maybe the money was still there, waiting to help Vin tell
the story of what happened at Swains Lock. The story’s tentacles
had begun to embrace him, and for reasons he couldn’t define, he
almost felt destined to become part of it himself. Maybe the last
line in Lee’s note really did apply to him.

He boxed up the Post and Sun microfilms and
returned them to their filing cabinets. Walking back across the
campus to his car, he forced himself to snap out of his musings.
He’d been working on the Rottweiler project all week and needed to
submit an invoice to them tomorrow. He slowly pieced together a
snapshot of the project in his mind. One day away from it and
already it seemed tedious; the problems it posed were
straightforward and didn’t require creative or elegant solutions –
just grinding away.

His trip to College Park had been fruitless,
since he’d found the same books he’d already seen at the C&O
Visitor’s Center, the Potomac Library, or the Montgomery County
Historical Society. None provided additional insight into the only
leads he possessed: Lee Fisher, K. Elgin, Charlie Pennyfield,
Emmert Reed. Aside from Pennyfield, all the surnames were common to
the area. Across Maryland and Virginia, there were hundreds of
Fishers, Elgins, and Reeds. And the joined sycamores reference, he
thought, wasn’t much help either. The sycamores along the river and
the towpath were too numerous to count.

Chapter 8
Spanish Ballroom

Saturday, December 30, 1995

As the lead singer issued his best
Joe-Cocker moan and backed away from the microphone, all three
saxmen raised their horns and the first tenor launched into a
wailing lead. The bass and rhythm guitar set a crawling floor under
the horns and the keyboard player hammered trills. Spinning through
a swing-dance sequence with Vin, Nicky saw the dimly-lit features
of the Spanish Ballroom blur into panorama: the walls painted pale
yellow with inlaid patterns of faded blue, orange, and green tiles;
the mission-style squared-arch openings to the outer arcade that
surrounded the floor; the tall, worn obelisks with art-deco accents
flanking the raised stage; the second-story casement windows and
balconies with balustrades, looking down on the dance floor; and
the blond, rock-maple floor itself, dulled and dry but unbroken,
stretching off over a hundred feet from the stage through dim light
to the far end of the ballroom. Toward that end, two long tables
formed a bar that faced the stage. Past the bar stood a Christmas
tree, fifteen feet tall and twined in colored lights and
ornaments.

The singer strode forward again, grabbing
the microphone from its stand and shooting a look at the two women
singing backup vocals. When the lead sax fell back into the rhythm,
he belted out the final verse of “Unchain My Heart.” And the whole
band let loose on the refrain, with the lead singer clutching and
bleating and the backup singers wailing soulfully against the
saxes.

Vin spun away from a swing move as he and
Nicky segued into solo steps. The floor had grown crowded near the
stage and Nicky felt an elbow spear her upper arm. She looked over
at Vin, who was bobbing his head and shoulders toward the floor and
holding his outstretched fingers before him, aping the saxmen as
his black blazer flopped from his sides. He arched upright again,
released the imaginary sax, and swept his hair back from his
glistening forehead. He smiled at Nicky and the sharp point of his
upper canine tooth gave him a wolfish look. The dancers around him
thrust and spun.

She smiled back, closed her eyes, and danced
a rhythmic shuffle as the refrain repeated and built toward a
climax. Opening her eyes she saw the painted balustrade of a
windowed balcony on the side wall and suddenly felt disoriented.
She looked at the crowd, at Vin, and recognized no one. The arm she
extended wasn’t her own. As the band held the final note and the
cymbals rattled into a terminal bass-drum thump, she turned toward
the stage. The music stopped and she felt a light hand on her
shoulder. She turned and saw Vin. Through the whistling and
applause, the lead singer said the band would take a break.

“That was strange,” she said, catching her
breath. “I had the feeling for a moment that I didn’t exist, even
though I could see and hear everything around me.”

“Like a trance?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Like a
combination of amnesia and déjà vu.”

“I think they call that early-onset
Alzheimer’s.”

“Great,” she said glumly. “It only lasted a
second.”

Vin prescribed champagne and set off to
retrieve two glasses. Nicky said she’d wait near the side wall as
he turned to negotiate the drifting crowd. Making her way toward
the wall, she felt someone squeeze her forearm.

“Hey, you!” said Abby Tuckerman. “I was
hoping you and Vin would be here!”

“We weren’t going to miss it,” Nicky
replied. “Especially since it was the only New Year’s party we
heard about! Plus it’s for a good cause, and Vin was excited about
the band. He’s been doing his Joe Cocker imitation for days.” She
rolled her eyes as Abby laughed.

“Speaking of that good cause,” Abby said,
leading Nicky away by the forearm, “let me introduce you to one of
the beneficiaries.” She tapped a tall black woman on the shoulder
and the woman turned toward them. Faint lines around her mouth and
eyes told Nicky she might be in her early forties. She wore a
tight-fitting gold sweater over black pants and leather mules.
Casual and elegant at the same time, Nicky thought. The woman
greeted Abby and listened.

“Teresa, this is Nicky Hayes. Nicky’s a vet;
she works with me at the Potomac Clinic. Nicky and her fiancée just
moved here from Boston a few months ago.”

“Well, welcome,” Teresa said. She held out
her hand and Nicky took it – long fingers and artistic onyx and
amber rings.

“And this is Teresa Carillo,” Abby said,
“one of the original members of the Glen Echo Artists
Collaborative.”

Teresa’s laugh was quick and bright. “I was
afraid you were going to say oldest!” To Nicky she said earnestly,
“Thanks for coming to our party. I’m glad someone told you to dress
warm, since the Spanish Ballroom has never had heat!”

“It’s an amazing place, anyway,” Nicky
said.

“It still is,” Teresa agreed, surveying the
room. “Even though it’s just a ghost of its former self. In the
1930s and 1940s, hundreds of couples came to dance in this ballroom
on spring and summer nights.”

“And the old Glen Echo amusement park here
was the biggest and best in the area,” Abby said. “It had a roller
coaster, a carousel, and the Crystal Pool… People used to take the
trolley out here from D.C. I think they finally shut it down in the
late 60s.”

“Too bad,” Nicky said. “It seems like a
perfect location… on a hillside above the river.”

“But now it provides studios for struggling
local artists,” Teresa said.

“Don’t give me that struggling stuff,
Teresa! Maybe in the 70s, but not now!”

“What kind of art do you create?” Nicky
asked.

Teresa explained that she was a sculptor,
and that early in her career she had designed large architectural
and spatial compositions out of mixed media, “the kind of stuff
you’d see in a public park”, but that those pieces were hard to
sell. Now she was working primarily in bronze, creating smaller
abstract works for the grounds of suburban estates.

Abby mentioned that Teresa’s dog Floyd, an
enormous Great Dane, was well known at the Clinic, and Teresa said
she hoped Floyd would meet Nicky soon. She excused herself and Abby
turned toward Nicky. “How’s everything going with you guys? I never
get a chance to chat with you at work. Is Vin still
consulting?”

“We’re doing well. We’ve almost got a date
for the wedding, which looks like late October. And Vin’s plugging
away on his consulting project. He hasn’t begun looking for a
permanent job, but I’m hoping he’ll get started after the holidays.
Sometimes he goes off on tangents. Right now he’s fascinated by the
history of the C&O Canal.”