SWAINS LOCK (The River Trilogy, book 1) (34 page)

“Where are we going?” Cy asked, still
breathing hard.

Lee pointed inland and upstream. “About
twenty paces in. There’s a clearing with big flat rocks and grass.
On the far end is a huge sycamore with three trunks coming
together. We can bury the bodies on one side of the tree and the
money on the other.”

“Let’s take a look,” Cy said, “and make sure
you got the right island.”

Lee nodded and retrieved the folded tarp
from his canoe. He carried the shovel and tarp several paces up the
beach before turning inland on an overgrown trail.

“Deer path,” he said over his shoulder. Cy
followed with the toolbox. Thin budding branches splayed across the
trail, so Lee hunched over as he proceeded. He was hesitant to turn
his back on Cy, but logic told him that the time to worry was after
the digging had been done. He kept a few steps in front, just in
case. The trail curved left and right, then crossed a small gully
and ended at the entrance to the clearing.

Across the opening, he saw the enormous
sycamore raising its bone-white branches into the night sky. They
walked across flat rocks speckled with moss and onto a half-moon
fringe of meadow grass between the rocks and the tree.

“Found this spot with my friends when I was
a kid,” Lee said. “After we pulled up on the island to get some
shade and take a break from fishing.”

Cy laid the toolbox down and gestured for
Lee to hand him the shovel. Standing arm’s length from the tree, he
drove the blade a few inches into the dirt. “Feels like gravel,” he
muttered. “Tough digging.” He left the shovel upright and walked
back across the clearing. “Let’s get it over with.”

Lee set the tarp on a rock and followed Cy
back to the beach, where they hoisted Kevin’s body out of the black
canoe. Holding its ankles, Cy led the way back along the path. They
shuffled awkwardly forward, dodging branches and brush as the damp
sheet clung to the corpse and the open cuff of the shackles
dangled. When they reached the clearing, they laid the body near
the base of the tree. Cy bent to catch his breath, then stood up
and grabbed the shovel.

“Where’s the first hole?” he asked. Lee
studied the tree. The three trunks were all about the same size,
with the one directly in front of them facing the heart of the
clearing. The trunks to the left and right were recessed toward the
woods, the left trunk closer to Virginia and the right trunk closer
to Maryland.

“Let’s bury the money on the Maryland side,”
he said. “Easier to remember. We can dig the grave on the Virginia
side.”

At the base of the right-most trunk, Cy
heeled the shovel into the earth. Dirt, rock shards, and split
tendrils of whisker roots came up in the first load. He dumped it
aside and stabbed again. Two minutes of digging left the hole a bit
wider and deeper than the toolbox. Cy rested his hands on the
planted shovel, breathing heavily. Lee pulled it away and attacked
the hole. After splitting roots and digging out grapefruit-sized
rocks, the hole was long and wide enough. He scraped dirt from the
bottom to deepen it, then stopped to lean on the shovel in turn.
Sweat on his scalp ran down his temples. He pulled off his cap and
ran a hand through his damp hair.

“Might as well be a goddamn ditch-digger,”
Cy said. “Fucking nigger work.” He unfolded the tarp on a flat rock
with its rubberized side up and set the toolbox at its center.
“Tell you what,” he said. “While you was digging, I was thinking.
It’ll take us all night to dig a decent grave for them fellas. The
river’s up, maybe still rising. We got a canoe with a hole in it.
Let’s set them bodies against the seats and send them downriver.
They’ll swamp and sink, or wash up somewhere dead with a busted-up
canoe. It’ll look like they was out for a ride and capsized. Like
they pulled over at Swains and borrowed a canoe to go fishing, then
hit a rock in high water. We can keep both paddles and use ‘em to
get back in your canoe. Don’t know if we want to be out here much
longer anyway with the water coming up.”

Lee rested against the shovel and considered
Cy’s plan. It made sense, and it foreclosed the troubling scenarios
he associated with digging a grave. With the river rising, the
sooner he and Cy got back to Swains the better. And two men
paddling a single canoe would have more control in high water. His
cousins had drowned in the first place, so they already looked like
drowning victims. If and when the bodies and the green canoe were
discovered somewhere downstream, that’s what the finders would see.
Except for one distinguishing feature on Kevin’s ankle. Lee reached
into his pocket and pulled out the key to the leg-irons.

“Makes sense,” he said, “but they got to
look like they was drownded by accident. Not shackled first.” He
knelt beside Kevin’s ankle, unlocked the cuff from the dead man’s
leg, then dropped the leg-irons onto the tarp alongside the
toolbox. He tossed the little key on top of them. “Since we’re
getting rid of all the evidence.”

Cy stared expectantly at Lee. “Better throw
that toolbox key in with it,” he growled.

Lee looked puzzled for an instant, then
laughed. “Almost forgot.” He detached the toolbox key from Kevin
Emory’s ring and dropped it alongside the box as well. Cy grunted
his approval, then folded a long side of the rectangular tarp over
the top of the toolbox toward Lee, who folded the opposite edge
back toward Cy. They rolled up the ends of the folded tarp until
they hugged the toolbox. Lee lowered the box into the hole so it
sat upright with the rolled tarp-ends tucked under its base. Cy
started shoveling dirt as soon as Lee stood up.

When the hole was filled, Cy kicked the
residual dirt in different directions. Lee reached into his coat
pocket and felt Katie’s pendant. He pulled out the sheathed knife
instead. Cy squinted at him, and Lee thought he saw a passing look
of malice. He pointed the knife at the tree. “I’ll carve a mark so
we can remember which trunk to dig under.”

As Cy grunted and began camouflaging the
toolbox grave, Lee approached the Maryland-side trunk. He found a
spot at eye-level where the thin bark was scaling away to reveal
the pale wood. Setting the blade at an angle, he carved a slash two
fingers wide. To confirm the mark wasn’t a random scar, he carved a
parallel slash below the first. Cy was watching as he finished; the
debris he had strewn over the burial spot made it hard to identify.
Lee gave Cy a good look at the knife before sheathing it,

“Let’s get out of here,” Cy said. He grabbed
the corpse’s ankles, facing away from the body and waiting for Lee
to take the armpits. The clammy shirt felt cold to his touch now
and the skin underneath seemed stiffer. They adjusted their grips
and shambled back through the woods with the body. How is it I
always have to hoist the damn upper body, Lee thought. But at least
this way I can keep an eye on Cy.

When they reached the canoes, the water in
the eddy seemed higher and restless as an incipient breeze blew
ripples across it. The sterns they’d left motionless on the water
had begun to swing lightly back and forth. “If we screwed around
much longer back there we might of lost our boats,” Cy said. They
carried Kevin’s body to the green canoe and lowered it to the
floor, with the dead man’s torso slumped against the bow seat.
Tom’s sheet-covered corpse was still prostrate on the stern half of
the floor.

“That’s good,” Cy said. “Keep ‘em both low
and the boat won’t flip right away. It’s better if they get some
distance downriver first.” Lee removed Cy’s paddle and the sheets
covering the corpses. He dropped the paddle on the sand and tossed
the bundled sheets into the black canoe.

Cy rummaged along the waterline until he
found a rock the size of a fox head. He carried it to the canoe and
located the small hole on the starboard side. While Lee watched, he
held the rock near the hole, swung it away, and brought it crashing
back into the side of the canoe. Lee heard the birchbark skin and a
supporting rib crack. When Cy pulled his hand away, Lee could see
the hole had grown from the size of a knuckle to the size of a
fist. Cy slammed the rock into the hull with another crunch and the
hole expanded toward the waterline.

“Should be enough to send them swimming,” he
said. “Let’s launch ‘em.” Facing each other with hands on the
gunwales, they pushed the bow off the bank and into the water. The
hole was near the waterline and water splashed through it into the
boat. They thrust in unison and the boat slid away from the island.
It glided out into a lazy turn as its momentum carried it to the
eddy line. The stern crossed first, swinging downstream as the
current pulled the canoe out of the eddy. It bobbed away from them
at the speed of the water and Lee watched its silhouette spin
slowly into the night.

The worst of his fears receded with the
green canoe. His dead cousins belonged to the river now, and his
bones would not lie tangled with theirs in the dirt. But what about
the message he had left for Charlie, with its reference to the
killers? The night wasn’t over yet, he thought. He and Cy still had
to drive the scow down to Widewater and scuttle it. Cy was still a
threat, so it still made sense to leave the clues. He could recover
them later if things went well.

“I’ll go get the shovel,” he said, thrusting
his thumb back toward the deer path. “No sense giving someone an
invitation to dig.” He walked deliberately toward the path and
ducked into the woods, then accelerated once he was out of sight.
At the clearing he ran to the shovel, jammed its blade into the
earth near the Virginia-side trunk, and removed a wedge of dirt and
pebbles. Digging into his coat pocket, he drew out Cy’s flask and
rotated it to find the inscription on the leather holster: C. F.
Elgin. Maybe it would still be legible after days or weeks in the
dirt. He pulled out Katie’s pendant and held it for a second. Why
couldn’t he just give it back to her tomorrow? Why had the world
turned inside-out this morning? He blinked away tears as he tucked
it between the flask and holster and wrapped its cord around the
bottleneck, then laid the flask and pendant gently in the shallow
hole. Keep moving! He kicked the displaced dirt into the hole,
raked leaves and sticks over the buried items with the shovel, and
stepped on the dirt and debris to tamp it down.

He pulled out the knife and turned his
attention to the Virginia-side trunk. At an eye-level spot facing
the covered hole, he quickly carved a tipping C. Through its lower
portion he added three straight slashes that converged to a point.
He examined the mark – Charlie should recognize it. He grabbed the
shovel and jogged across the clearing and into the woods.

When the path emptied onto the beach, he
slowed and walked unhurriedly to the black canoe. Cy had pulled it
further ashore and climbed aboard. With a paddle across his knees,
he glared at Lee from the stern seat. “What the hell took you so
long?”

“Couldn’t hold it anymore,” Lee said,
grimacing and rubbing a hand across his abdomen. “Had to do some
squatting.”

Cy shook his head in disgust. “If you can’t
hold your bowels, keep on your own damn side of the boat. Push us
off and get in.”

We’d make it back faster if I were in the
stern seat, Lee thought. And there was something unnerving about
getting into a canoe with Cy. He slung the shovel onto the floor,
lifted the bow, and pulled it into the water, then swung a leg into
the boat and pushed off hard from the bank. Cy took sweep strokes
on starboard while Lee backstroked on port to spin the boat in the
eddy. Don’t want to get into the current on the Virginia side, he
thought. “Let’s keep it turning. Stay in the eddy and paddle down
to the tail.”

Cy followed Lee’s instructions but said
nothing. With two paddlers and no dead weight, the canoe held its
course and speed. Sitting in the bow, Lee was more attuned to the
water than he had been earlier. As the river rose, the eddy felt as
if it was pulsating, almost breathing. The eddy narrowed as they
passed the rocky tail of the island, with small whorls and creases
forming and disappearing along its dark borders. It seemed to Lee
that the main current was faster than it had been on their outward
crossing. Less than an hour ago some of the large rocks between the
island and the Maryland shore were still arching their backs above
the surface. Now the river had covered them all. The sound of
flowing water had deepened in pitch and seemed to come from far
away and right beside him at the same time. In the reflected
moonlight it was hard to tell the color of the river, but Lee knew
that it was caramel brown, and that they were traversing the early
waters of a flood.

The eddy was tapering to a point and Lee
wanted to exit it paddling into the Maryland-side current. They’d
have to work hard to keep their ferry angle during the crossing and
avoid being swung downstream. With the speed of the current, they
might end up a mile downriver – if they didn’t hit something first.
Lee jammed his paddle into the water to brake their momentum. “Back
it down!” he yelled. “We need to spin inside the eddy!” The boat
decelerated, and Lee backstroked while Cy took draws to spin the
canoe. When it was facing upstream, Lee glanced sternward; Cy’s
swollen face and expressionless mouth reminded him of a toad
waiting for a fly.

“What are you looking at?” Cy snapped. “Keep
paddling.”

“I’m ready,” Lee said, raising his voice
against the sound of the water. “The river’s fast so we got to keep
our bow upstream. I’ll paddle starboard, you take port. Be ready to
throw a stroke on my side if we need it.”

“I know what I’m doing, you little prick!”
Cy barked. Lee turned back toward the bow and held his paddle above
the water.

“Then let’s go!” Their paddles hit the water
and the canoe drove forward. The bow crossed the eddy line and Lee
paddled hard on starboard to keep it from swinging downstream. When
the stern crossed into the current, he felt the boat rise and fall
with the undulating flow.