Chapter
Thirteen
Fever
Nicky
sliced a lime on the kitchen counter, then peered out the window into the side
yard as her mind wandered away from the ingredients for lemongrass soup. She hoped it wasn’t mycobacterium abscessus,
since that could take weeks of antibiotics to treat. But that possibility was why the doctor had
taken a culture from Vin’s hip yesterday.
His wound had all the symptoms of infection: redness, swelling,
tenderness, pus. Still, the incubation
period should have been longer than five days.
More like a month. So maybe it
was something less serious. But how then
to explain the fever and lightheadedness he had woken up with this morning?
She
turned back toward her ingredients, which ringed a cutting board in the
mid-afternoon light from the window. She
rinsed the stalks of lemongrass in the sink, removed their rough outer leaves,
and began dicing them into small disks. Vin
had never been sick around her before, so she wasn’t sure how long his fever
would last. She shook her head in silent
reproach. Thirty-five years old and
running around chasing phantoms in the woods.
On a Tuesday morning when there must have been some work to do. Hadn’t he said that Rottweiler had given him
feedback on his proposal for phase two?
Or maybe he was still waiting for that… she couldn’t remember. At least he could have done background
reading this week, if he hadn’t injured himself.
Now
he’s lying in bed with a fever on a warm, clear Sunday. Poor guy.
He’s honest and he tries hard, but he sometimes acts like he’s still a
teenager. This mystery from 1924, for
example. She wasn’t even sure what he’d
been looking for in the woods, but she knew it was tied up with that treasure-hunt
somehow. If he hadn’t found the photo and
the note behind the wall, would he be pursuing some other enigma? She looked up and squinted as a passing cloud
dimmed the late-afternoon light and a clutch of sparrows darted past the
window.
She
started mincing the lemongrass disks into smaller pieces. Maybe he was bored, she thought. Bored because he didn’t know many people in
D.C. yet. Bored because he worked at
home. His Rottweiler project would wrap
up this fall, and after the wedding he could get a full-time job. That would be the best way to start feeling
connected. And he’d mentioned
rock-climbing. Maybe they could take
lessons later this spring and meet some people that way. She finished the lemongrass and turned to the
cilantro.
When
Vin opened his eyes, Nicky was clearing space on his bedside table for a tray
she’d brought in. He smiled feebly as
she set it down. “Soup,” he said in a
hoarse voice. “Thanks, honey… the steam
looks great.” He swung a second pillow
against the headboard and raised himself.
He was wearing a cotton turtleneck and a sweater under his blankets but
still felt chilled. He pulled his fleece
hat down over his ears.
“Do
you think you can you eat something?”, Nicky said. “You must be hungry, since you skipped
breakfast. How about toast? And lemongrass soup for your congestion.”
Vin
nodded weakly. He rolled onto his good
hip and leaned toward the bowl to hold his face over the rising steam, closing
his eyes. “It already tastes good.”
“After
you eat, let’s change your bandage and take a look at your hip.”
He
rolled carefully into a sitting position and picked up the spoon. The first mouthful was hot and tangy and
pushed rays of warmth into his chest.
When he’d finished, Nicky removed the bandage and applied a topical
antibiotic to the wound. There was no new
pus, and at least it didn’t seem to be getting worse. After she replaced the bandage, he felt
another chill arise, so he dove back under the covers as she took the tray
away. He was asleep within minutes.
When
he woke up again he was still dreaming.
He was alone in the room and he could see through a window on the narrow
far wall that it was dark outside. Not
completely dark, so the moon must have been up. He looked at his surroundings and didn’t
recognize them. It was a small room and
the ceiling slanted down toward the windowless wall on his right, as if the
room were in an attic. He closed his
eyes and tried to sleep. It was windy
outside and he heard the moaning and clattering of branches bending and
colliding. It sounded as if a branch was
scraping against the house near the window on the far wall. He opened his eyes and propped himself up as
a shock raced through him. A young woman
was staring at him through the window!
She had wavy hair and shadowed eyes, and a leaf-shaped pendant hung from
her neck against the pale skin below her throat. Her hand was making a sweeping motion against
the glass. She turned from the window
and disappeared into the night. The skin
around his scalp tightened. He was on
the second floor!
He
thrust back the blankets and planted his sock-clad feet on the
floorboards. Sitting on the edge of the
bed, he took deep breaths and felt his breathing come easier. He stood up and steadied himself. His books and papers were stacked on a desk
along the windowless wall. Not his desk,
but another. He lit the desk lamp and
leafed through papers until he found the photo of Lee Fisher and K. Elgin at
The
flood! He remembered now that the flood
was coming, and Nicky was down at Swains!
She didn’t know! He had to save
her! He found a pair of sweatpants in
the dresser and pulled them on, then laced up his running shoes. The floorboards groaned as he hurried to the
door, which flew open when he turned the knob.
A light breeze was blowing up the stairway and he could see that the
front door was swinging in the wind. He
hurried down the worn, wooden steps of the unlit staircase and slipped into the
warm and windy night.
The
view in front of him wasn’t what he expected.
He was on the towpath and the dark water of the canal before him was
alive with wind-driven ripples reflecting light from the moon. He turned back toward the door flapping in
the wind and saw the old Pennyfield lockhouse.
It was dark except for a light in the bedroom upstairs, but its
whitewashed stones glowed softly in the moonlight. He took a long stride down the towpath and
broke into a run. A low shape hurtled
toward him from the dirt yard, and he instinctively twisted to dodge it. The shape jerked to a stop and let loose a
ferocious vocal assault. All he could
see at first were gleaming white teeth.
As his eyes adjusted, he saw a powerfully-built black dog on a long
tether. A Rottweiler. He turned back to the towpath and ran toward Swains
Lock.
With
a southwest crosswind flowing over him, he felt like he was flying down the dim
ribbon. The ripples along the canal fled
toward the berm at his approach, and the bare trees creaked and groaned in the
wind. The river was somewhere through
the dark trees to his right, running with him.
It approached and receded, approached again. Where the canal was carved into rock faces on
the berm, the river ran fast alongside him down a steep, twenty-foot
slope. It ran like a line of dark horses
and sounded like rain. The apron widened
and the river disappeared as the trees guarding the towpath grew taller.
Vin
ran effortlessly, realizing at some point that his hip no longer hurt. His thoughts drained away and he became the
motion of running. He came to the spot where
he and Nicky had picnicked while canoeing last fall. They had pulled their canoe into the
overgrown meadow where the trees had been felled for the buried gas line, then eaten
apples while watching a beaver swim figure eights and thwack its tail in warning. But now there was no meadow; the trees were
unbroken and had yet to feel the thwack of an axe. Thwack.
Warning. His thoughts fell back
into alignment. He had to find Nicky at Swains
Lock before the flood arrived!
The
towpath grew darker as the woods deepened on the apron. He rounded a shallow bend and saw a bright
light in the distance, at the level of his eyes. It expanded slowly and seemed to radiate
through an arc in his direction, like a wide-angled flashlight or the headlight
on a train. Through the swirling wind
and between the thumps of his footsteps, he listened for the sound of a
train. Instead he heard a fleeting sound
of bells. The wind rose up and the sound
was lost. The light grew brighter and
seemed to shift left of the towpath, still several hundred feet away. Another trace of bells and the thump of a
heavy footstep that wasn’t his own, from somewhere downwind, ahead of him, as he
flew on down the towpath. And suddenly
the dark beasts filled his vision, ten paces ahead. He straightened his legs to brake with each
step, veering to the fringe to avoid a collision. He heard a whinnied protest and the strenuous
shaking of bells as a huge head and mane bobbed away from him, toward the
canal.
“Jeepers,
mister!”, cried a young voice above him.
“You about scared the mules half to death!” Vin edged along the fringe toward the second
mule, which followed in line, harnessed to the first by straps, a spreader bar,
and chains. This mule eyed him nervously
as it passed.
“Giddap,
Berniece!”, called the boy as Vin heard the slap of hand against haunch. The bells resumed a walking rhythm and the
towbar floated past. A taut, dark line
angled out toward the light, now a hundred feet away. The bow-lamp cast a ghostly aura over the
snub-nosed front of the barge, which rode high in the water and was painted
white above the waterline. Framing the
bow-lamp, black square windows loomed like eyes.
Vin
walked quietly as the barge slid by him.
Near its stern, a square cabin rose above the level of the deck, and a
canopy was suspended above the cabin’s flat roof. Low voices drifted across the water from
beneath it. A silhouette leaning on the
stern rail turned to face him as the barge passed by, and Vin saw the dark
shaft of the tiller extending from the man’s arm. He leaned into a jump-step and resumed
running.
He
was sweating now, so he pulled off his sweater and tied it around his
waist. He pushed the sleeves of his
turtleneck up and the breeze across his forearms cooled him down. A formless white shape materialized in the
distance and bobbed closer as he ran, gaining definition. It was the lockhouse at Swains. He slackened to a fast walk. The water in the canal looked higher than
usual and the wind blew ripples across it toward the entrance to the lock. The upstream gates were open -- set for a
loaded boat. He strode toward the footbridge but it wasn’t
there. Water lapped at the stone walls
of the lock, a few inches from the top. In
a small yard beside the unlighted lockhouse, he noticed a clothesline of drying
laundry blowing in the breeze.
“Nicky!”,
he yelled. No answer but the creaking of
branches overhead. He proceeded to the
closed downstream gates and stepped onto the plank walkway. “Nicky!”, he called again. No answer.
He edged cautiously out over the dark water. A horizontal iron rod, curved up slightly at
the end nearest him, angled toward his knees and he stepped carefully around
it. It was a lock-key, he realized, seated
atop an iron stem. He sidestepped a second
lock-key to reach the center, where he felt the support of converging swing
beams underfoot, then negotiated the remainder of the plank to the other
side. He jogged to the lockhouse and
banged on the front door. No lights came
on and no one answered. Another knock
brought nothing.
Where
was she? Where was everyone? Had they all fled for high ground? Had they already been told? He looked past the lock at the scattered
trees on the apron. There was no sign of
life. Moonlight glinted off the undulating
river as it poured between the Maryland bank and one of the ragged island stitches
sewn into its heart. He passed two old
benches in front of the lockhouse and turned the corner into the side
yard. White shirts, colorless trousers,
and small white sheets fluttered on the clothesline. He circled to the backyard and saw a forlorn
picnic table near its center. A bare
shade tree rose beyond it, overseeing packed dirt and patches of trampled
grass.
A line of low shapes guarded the border of the backyard and the ascending berm, and drawing closer he realized they were gravestones. A row of eight, all facing the lockhouse. The first stone was tilted and looked ancient. Though the moonlight caught it from an angle, he couldn’t read the engraving on its eroded face. He paced the row of leaning, weathered stones, tracing their inscriptions with his fingers. The writing was intact but indecipherable. When he reached the last gravestone, he could see that it was different -- planted dead straight, its face unscarred by time. The inscription looked freshly carved and the shadowed grooves were legible in the ambient light.
Nicole Callahan Hayes
1965-1996
He
knelt and stroked the letters of her name with his index finger, choking back
sobs. It was too late for Nicky. She was gone.
He
blinked away tears and continued his circuit around the lockhouse, turning into
the upstream side-yard that bled into the dirt driveway. Two racks of canoes stood across the parking
area on the berm. He walked to the nearest
rack and touched the inverted hull of a canoe in its middle row. The hull was birchbark, painted black, and he
tapped the woodwork of its gunwales and thwarts. He tried to lift the canoe but its central
thwart was cabled to the rack. He let go
and turned back to the canal.
Across
the water on the towpath stood a girl, staring at him. Her eyes were lapis lazuli embers and her
hair fell in glowing green and gold braids like the tails of fireworks. She wore a long-sleeved top and a simple
skirt above calf-high boots. A bracelet
of thin bands circled each wrist and a glowing red feather trailed from each
bracelet. Her face was in shadow, but he
could see her lips part and her white teeth emerge as she started walking
straight toward him, across the towpath, down the bank to the water, and across
the surface of the canal.
When
Vin woke up again he was screaming.
Nicky came running into the bedroom, and he rose up through his fever
and pain to embrace her.