Part Two
Chapter
Fourteen
Locking
Through
Two
fallen red-maple blossoms drifted slowly with the current toward Pennyfield
Lock. On the towpath, the young man
stood transfixed watching them. One was closer
to the berm, and it was drawn inexorably away from its partner and into the
breakaway current descending the flume.
The blossom bounced and accelerated down the stone ramp before vanishing
into the chute, where it was swept to the cataract that tumbled into the next
level of the canal. Its companion curved
idly into the eddy above the closed gates of the lock.
For
Lee Fisher on this sunny Monday afternoon in early spring, everything was a
metaphor for his future with Katie. The
blossoms were pulled apart so he forgot them and got back to work, alert for
the next harbinger of fortune or loss. If
he was going do some drilling in the shed, he needed to reset the lock for a
loaded boat. He leaned against the end
of the beam to swing the gate; when it met its counterpart in the center of the
lock, the downstream gates were closed.
He
stepped onto the walkway on the upstream gates and swung the first
lock-key. Water flooded through the
square wicket below him and kicked up a gushing fountain of whitewater in the
lock. She loves me. He sidestepped to turn the second
paddle. She loves me not. He continued across, opening the wickets on
the berm-side gate. Four surging
fountains reveled below him; he dismounted to the lock wall as the water rose.
He
checked his pocket watch and wound the stem.
It was
Knowing
them Emorys, they’d be driving a single team of mules, with no sensible
schedule for work and rest. They’d just
boat along until the mules or the driver didn’t want to walk no more, then tie
up, put out the feed trough, and take a nap.
And since the canal wasn’t officially open yet, some of the locktenders wouldn't
be at their locks. So his cousins might
have to set some of the locks themselves.
Even allowing for all that, they should have been able to make twenty
miles from
Lee
watched the upwelling fountains subside into swirls as the water in the lock
reached the level of the canal upstream.
When the swirls dissolved, he criss-crossed the lock to open the upstream
gates. Set for a loaded boat.
He
headed for Charlie’s house across the meadow.
The house was quiet, since the Pennyfields were still in
Inside
the shed was a solid wooden workbench that Charlie had outfitted with a vise. He propped the ends of the poles on the
bench, laid one inside the vise so that six inches were protruding, and spun
the screw to hold it tight. The
eggbeater-style hand drill was on the bench and he examined it again before
resuming work. Charlie would be happy
with it. A gear tooth on his old drill
had broken a few weeks ago and he had left Lee instructions to buy a new drill in
Since then he’d managed to sneak in a ride on
the towpath every day. The only way to
do it was to keep the bicycle down at the lockhouse rather than in the
shed. It looked almost new and Lee would
hate to lose it, so he knew he needed a lock.
Things that weren’t nailed down had a way of disappearing on the canal. Luckily there was a war surplus store near
Weaver’s, and he had found a pair of old leg-irons there for sixty-five
cents. The cuffs were adjustable out to
a four-inch diameter and had a key lock, so he could use them to lock the
bicycle to a thin tree or a railing.
Katie would be back from
The
work was simple -- measure, mark, drill the first hole, rotate the pole in the
vise, drill the second hole -- and he soon found himself revisiting his
encounters with Katie Elgin. Until two
days ago, he hadn’t seen her since the canal stopped running last fall. She’d come down from Williamsport the Saturday
after Thanksgiving to help her brother Cy close up his boat after a hard freeze
hit out west and the company drawed the water off the whole canal. Cy was captaining the number 41 back from
Cy’s
younger brother Pete was on the canal with him, but Pete was only ten, just a
mule driver. Them two colored boys that
Cy took on as hands last season disappeared the night they drawed the water off
the canal. That was strange. Maybe they figured they’d already been paid
in
Lee
had already finished his season boating with Ben Myers on the number 9 and had
made his way down to his family’s farm near Seneca after Ben tied up for the
winter in Hancock. As far as Lee could
tell, Ben Myers and Cy Elgin didn’t have much use for each other. Cy looked to be in his late twenties, seven
or eight years older than Lee, and even though Cy had only been a captain for
one season, he didn’t seem too impressed with the other boat captains on the
canal -- not even the captains with decades of experience like Ben Myers. Cy seemed either aloof or surly; Lee wasn’t
sure which. He and Cy had crossed paths
once or twice while boating last season, so they recognized each other but had
never actually met.
All
the same, when Lee heard Cy’s 41 boat was stuck in the drained canal just six
miles from Seneca, he’d gone down the Sunday after Thanksgiving and climbed the
plank up to the stranded barge to ask if Cy wanted help with his mules. They was company mules but two good teams,
and Lee told Cy that he could take all four up to a farm near Seneca that
occasionally took on mules for the winter, and then bring ‘em down to Cy’s boat
again in the spring. That way Cy
wouldn’t have to take them almost fifty miles out to the canal company’s main
winter farm in
Standing
on the deck and leaning back against the windowless forward wall of the cabin,
Cy hadn’t answered Lee right away.
Instead he looked him over like he was trying to decide whether Lee was
working some kind of angle. It turned
out Cy was right, but Lee didn’t know it yet, since he first met Katie a few
minutes later! She came walking up the
towpath from Swains, and Cy saw her approach from over Lee’s shoulder. A young boy followed a ways back, scavenging
rocks that he could toss toward the scattered puddles at the bottom of the
drained canal. Without saying anything,
Cy walked past Lee and stepped onto the fall-board. Lee followed and they descended to the thawing
mud on the bank below the towpath, then climbed up to meet her. Lee noticed that Cy walked with a slight limp
on his left side, so maybe the surliness was just physical pain.
It
was the last day of November, opaque and dingy, but whatever sunlight managed
to slant through the clouds seemed to get tied up in Katie’s face and hair as
she approached. She was wearing a wool
coat but no hat, and her wavy hair glinted in the gray light. Lee felt a strange current run through his
chest. He tugged the brim of his flat
cap down, pushed his hands deep into his coat pockets and kicked self-consciously
at a lump of mud on the side of his boot.
Katie stopped when she reached them and smiled at Lee before turning to
Cy.
“Did
you find Jess Swain?”, Cy asked.
“Cyrus,
don’t be rude. Aren’t you going to
introduce me to your friend before you interrogate me?”
Cy
grunted and turned toward Lee, and Lee saw the dark depressions beneath his
eyes that he hadn’t noticed from further away.
“My little sister Katie Elgin.”
The towheaded boy came trotting up next to her, stealing glances up at
Lee and Cy, who ignored him. “And our
kid brother, Pete.” Cy looked back at
Katie. “This is Lee from Captain Myers’
boat.”
“Lee
Fisher,” he said, removing his cap with a smile and extending his hand toward
Katie. “I’m pleased to meet you.” And the skin on the inside of his wrist had
been singed when she touched it softly with her index finger.
Katie
studied Lee for an instant through hazel eyes, then turned to Cy and confirmed
that Jess Swain had offered to give her and Pete a lift to the railroad station
on Monday in time to catch the afternoon train to
And
so Lee had seen Katie on the following morning as well. By which point he’d already decided to take
care of the mules at his family’s farm over the winter. He arrived at Swains early, hoping Katie
might be there early as well, and she was.
And Cy was late, coming not from his stranded boat, but from down the
towpath toward
Then
Jess Swain had come down from the main house in his Model T to collect Katie
and Pete. Lee watched them leave for the
train station and felt a warm rush when Katie glanced back at him as the car
pulled away. Cy limped into the backyard
ten minutes later, unshaven and bloodshot, and nodded curtly toward Lee. They walked up
That
had been December 1, he thought, as he loosened the vise screw and laid another
drilled pole on the floor. And when he’d
seen her again two days ago, it was as if no time had passed at all. On Saturday morning, he’d driven Cy’s mules
down from his family’s farm in Seneca.
He was proud of the team, since they were well-fed and groomed sleek
after a winter under his care. He walked
the mules down
“You’re
still here! Don’t you belong to
anyone?”, she’d said teasingly.
“No,”
he answered, “but I might like to.” Then
his face flushed, so he hopped onto the plank and crossed the lock ahead of her,
extending his hand to help her along the last portion of the plank. When she clasped it and stepped down beside
him, he again felt a spark from her fingers against his skin. He joined her for the five-minute walk up the
towpath to Cy’s boat, which was still tied up where it had spent the winter.
Along
the way Katie explained that Jess Swain was letting Cy, Pete, and her stay in
the lockhouse during the week before the canal officially opened. While they got Cy’s boat ready, they could
keep an eye on things and help the repair scows lock through as they worked the
levels clearing debris and patching breaks.
They reached the long plank to Cy’s boat and Lee asked whether she’d
like to visit
“That
sounds wonderful,” she’d said, brightening again.
And
yesterday afternoon she’d been waiting for him on the bench in front of the
lockhouse, wearing a trim jacket over her Sunday dress. The dress was light gray with white
pinstripes and a dark blue sash. Below
its collar hung a sandstone pendant necklace with an inscribed symbol he’d
never seen before. She wore a felt hat,
lower on one side in the current style, with an indigo hatband. Her wavy hair shone where it fell along her
neck and the dress picked up the hazel of her eyes. She smiled at him and he was sure he’d never
seen a girl as pretty. There was
something about her that suggested willingness -- a readiness to step forward
into uncertainty, or maybe just to step onto a plank across a lock. For Lee, this was part of her charm. They’d walked down the towpath from Swains to
He
extracted the drill from a completed hole and raised the bit to blow the
sawdust loose. What glowing gems from
yesterday’s conversation could he contemplate?
Eighteen years old. She hadn’t
mentioned any particular boy in
Three
sisters and three brothers! With Cy the
oldest, Pete the youngest, and Katie in the middle. A fourth sister died at six from the
flu. All her siblings had been on the
canal, one season or another while growing up, with her daddy Jack Elgin who
ran the number 32 boat out of
Lee
spun the screw to open the vise and pulled out the last drilled pole. Cy’s boat was almost ready, and after that
he’d be waiting for the canal to open and for his two new colored boys to come
up from
After
crossing to the towpath, he had a better view of the canal upstream. The scow was still two hundred yards away but
he recognized it immediately. Company
scows had decks of planks nailed across a hollow hull, with no storage
below. Toward the stern there would be a
small cabin, painted white with green trim and windows on each side. And there would be wheelbarrows, shovels,
hoes, and bags of cement scattered across the deck.
You
couldn’t see the deck on the scow upstream because it had a cabin in the bow,
painted grayish blue. It was a stable
for two mules, but the Emorys used it as a hayhouse, since they only worked one
two-mule team and kept the mules out at night.
They had a separate cabin toward the stern. In between the stable and the cabin were six
wooden hatches, painted gray, that covered the cargo stored in the hull. The Emory’s scow was two or three feet narrower
than a coal barge and less than half as long, so it was much easier to steer
through locks. If you had someone on
board who knew how to steer, Lee thought.
The
mule team approached pulling in single file along the edge of the towpath,
close to the canal. No bells on this
team -- for the same reason, he guessed, that there was no name painted on the transom. The driver was Kevin Emory and he walked
behind the team down the center of the path.
When he saw Lee, he raised his tin horn and blew a few celebratory
toots. Lee jogged up the towpath to
greet him.
“He-ey-ey
lockee! Set your gates, keeper, we’re
driving through!” Kevin pushed his ratty
black fedora back on his head and grinned at Lee with tobacco-stained teeth; his
fleshy face reddened above his russet mustache.
“Good to see you, cousin.”
Lee
shook Kevin’s hand and waved to Tom, who waved back from the tiller but said
nothing. Lee fell in alongside Kevin as
the mules kept walking. “How’s your run
going?”
“Fair
enough,” Kevin said. “Though I’d rather
be steering than driving.” He turned his
head to spit tobacco juice onto the path.
“We’re switching at every lock, but I always seem to drive the long
levels. Today I drove the damn
seven-mile level of Point of Rocks and then the damn eight-mile level of
Riley’s Lock.”
“I
guess that means Tom drove the damn nine-mile level of Whites Ferry in
between.”
Kevin laughed and the crow’s feet around his eyes burrowed into soft red
skin. “If you say so, Lee. Didn’t seem like no nine miles to me!”
“Where
you coming from today?”
“
“That’s
about mile 42,” Lee said. “Pennyfield is
mile 20.” He looked at the chestnut
coats of the mules, whose ribs were showing.
These mules were much thinner than the four he had returned to Cy Elgin
on Saturday. “I hope you’re not asking
your team to start the season with a thirty-mile trick. They get any breaks today?”
“Sure,
lots of ‘em,” Kevin said. “Every time we
was locking through!” He flashed Lee a
jowly smile, and Lee watched a drop of dark juice slide over his lower
lip. Kevin put his hand on Lee’s
shoulder and his voice softened. “We put
our feet up for a bit and watered ‘em at Chisel Branch, just past the Goose
Creek River Lock. And we figured they
might enjoy some canal-company corn when we got here.” He winked at Lee. “Case you seen a delivery yet.”
Lee
looked away to hide the irritation on his face.
Charlie’s corn crib was partly full, but Lee wasn’t sure it was from the
canal company. Even if it was, his
cousins shouldn’t be counting on it to feed their team. He changed the subject. “What are you hauling?”
“Why,
cord-wood, of course!”, Kevin said with a look of mock surprise. “I thought you knowed our business, cousin!”
Lee
laughed and shook his head. “Must be a
whole eight, nine cords. Might fetch
three dollars a cord in
Kevin
spat a gobbet at the nearest hoof.
“Seven cords,” he said. “Don’t want to punish the mules on our first
trip of the year. Plus we got some
ballast under a couple of the hatches.
You might want to do a little inspection at the lock.” The mules were within a hundred feet of the open
gates and they knew enough to slow down.
Kevin made eye contact with his brother at the tiller. “You got a snub line for us, captain?”
Tom
wrapped a line around the tiller and crossed to the starboard rail, where a
thick rope lay coiled on the stern-most hatch.
The rope was cleated to the bow, but the Emorys had learned that you
needed to have the snub line close to the captain when no one else was on
board. Tom unwound a few coils and threw
the remaining loops toward the towpath; they unwound in flight and the last segment
landed on the bank. Lee ran to grab it before
it slid back into the canal. The rope
was heavy and wet, over an inch thick and coated with sand and grit. He reeled it in and coiled it loosely around
his arm. “If you get ‘em past the lock,”
he told Kevin, “I’ll snub you.”
Kevin
grabbed the lead mule’s bridle and guided the team past the lock. As he watched Tom steer between the walls,
Lee carried the heavy rope to the snubbing post. It was as high as his waist and almost as
thick, with deep spiraling grooves burned into it. He wrapped the snub line around the post as
the scow entered the lock, allowing thirty feet of slack. The mules were standing still now, but the boat
glided forward under its own momentum, heading for a collision with the
downstream gates. When the line grew taut and began to stretch, he wrapped
another loop around the post. The line slid
and groaned and he smelled a curl of woodsmoke.
He added a third loop and the scow decelerated to a swaying halt, like a
bull brought to its knees by the final knife.
Its bow was still fifteen feet from the downstream gates. Not much challenge snubbing a scow, he
thought. A coal boat was a different
matter.
Tom
Emory hopped down onto the lock wall and walked over to greet Lee. Tom was six or seven years younger than
Kevin, which would put him in his late twenties if Lee remembered right. He was lean and quiet, almost taciturn, with
a dark mustache, a joyless slash for a mouth, and hard, glittering eyes that
often looked black. Lee always pictured
Tom with a Bowie knife in his hand, since at idle moments Tom invariably seemed
to be carving or whittling something, or casually flipping his knife into the
deck of a boat. Lee was relieved to see
that the knife had been sheathed on Tom’s belt while he was steering into the
lock. “I think I’ll stretch my legs a
minute,” Tom said with a humorless wink.
“All three of ‘em.” He strolled
across the towpath, unbuttoned his fly, and urinated on the fringe of grass next
to the lockhouse.
Lee
unwrapped the snub line and pushed the swing-beam through a ninety-degree
arc. She loves me, he thought, as the
gate swung closed. He crossed over the
scow and swung the gate closed on the berm side. She loves me not. From the walkway, he used the lock-keys to
open the wickets on the downstream gates.
Swirls formed as the water drained and Lee’s prospects rose and
fell. When the swirls subsided, he
opened the downstream gates.
Kevin
slapped the lead mule in the haunch.
“Giddap, Mike! Bessie! Up now!”
Tom had jumped back onto the scow and the mules drew the towline taut,
leaning forward against their harnesses with muscles flexed and ears
twitching. Lee watched from the lock
wall. Starting a boat from a dead stop
was a real strain on the mules, even with a small boat like the scow. For a loaded coal boat, a two-mule team might
have to thrust against their harnesses for a minute before they could take a
single step. Some captains would bring
out two teams to start a loaded boat. If
the load was too heavy, the mules could get spavined legs, and then the
swelling around their joints was very painful.
Lee walked back to open both wickets on the nearest upstream gate, and
the swell of water into the lock helped push the stern forward. With the mules pulling steadily, the scow
crept out onto the next level of the canal.
They
tied up next to the towpath and Kevin unharnessed the mules while Tom set up
the feed trough. On one side of it was a
folding leg, which he unfolded. On the
other was a rope, which he tied to a tree across the towpath. Mules couldn’t knock over this kind of
trough. Tom dumped in the contents of
the bucket and the mules began feeding half-heartedly. Rejoining his cousins, Lee saw that the hay
looked discolored and old.
“Hand
me your bucket and I’ll fetch them some corn,” he told Tom. Charlie’s corn-crib was in the side-yard of
the lockhouse, and Lee drew half a bucket of dried kernels. He added it to the trough and the mules
immediately ate with more enthusiasm. He
noticed that the chestnut hair on the backs and hindquarters of the mules was
sweat-streaked and dirty, speckled with the debris of budding trees. The harness pads were worn thin and more
flies than Lee would have expected circled the mules. “You ever curry that team?”, he asked Kevin.
Kevin
chuckled and spat a stream onto the towpath.
“After every trip…whether they need it or not!” He wiped juice from his lower lip, then
continued in a confiding voice. “Mike
and Bess are a good team. They don’t
call for much special attention.”
“My
stomach is calling for a little special attention,” Tom said. He had pulled his knife from its sheath and
was using the tip to explore the undersides of his fingernails.
“You
speak for us all, my brother,” Kevin said.
“Lee, how about you join us for a bite of supper while we rest the
mules?”
Lee’s
stomach growled at the mention of food.
He’d made himself a stack of pancakes for breakfast but overlooked
lunch. “I guess I’m hungry enough,” he
said.
“Well
we have some commendable bean soup we can offer you, courtesy of my faithful
Ellie,” Kevin said. “Tom and I were
savoring it last night when we both realized that it might benefit from a
little added smokiness. Maybe a few
slices of smoked beef or pork.”
Tom
flipped his knife in the air and caught it by the handle in mid-rotation. “Fresh turtle’d be better still, if you got
one. Slice him up and stew him. We got a stove of hot coals going in the
galley.”
Lee
exhaled in resignation. “I ain’t caught
no turtles this year. Hardly even seen
one yet. But I got a quarter leg of
cured ham in the lockhouse. My mother
sent it with me when she heard I might be down at Pennyfield for a week. I’ll take a few cuts and bring ‘em on board.”
“We’ll
take care of the libations,” Kevin said.
Lee
walked back to the lockhouse and hacked three slices out of the ham leg in the
kitchen. He carried a diced plateful
back out to the scow. Kevin and Tom had
raised hatch number five and were tossing aside the top layer of firewood
beneath it to reveal a large wooden barrel, lying on its side. They struggled to raise one end of the barrel
a few inches, and Tom pushed a log underneath to keep it tilted. Kevin held a ceramic jug under a tap on the
opposite end. He twisted the tap open
and a clear liquid flowed from the barrel.
When the jug was half full, Kevin shut off the tap and they put the
barrel, the cord-wood and the hatch back in place.
“I
think you’ll find that
To
the left of the stove on the forward wall was a freestanding cupboard that held
assorted plates, bowls, cups and utensils in its lower shelves and the limited
provisions of the Emorys’ kitchen behind its single door. Beans, a few eggs, five or six potatoes,
flour, Crisco, coffee, and sugar. Below
the window to Lee’s left, two narrow bunks were built into the wall, one above
the other. To the immediate left of the
entryway, a small drop-leaf table was anchored to the aft wall, its free end
projecting into the room. Two wooden
stools stood alongside it.
“Welcome
to Emory’s house of fine dining,” Kevin said, extending the table to its full
length and pushing one of the stools toward Lee with his boot. He retrieved three mismatched tin cups and
two glazed-clay bowls from the cupboard and put them on the table. Not finding another bowl, he settled on a
small frying pan and put that on the table as well, along with banged-up metal
spoons. “With no woman on board, meals
are a little less elegant than we like them to be.” He splashed a few fingers of moonshine from
the jug into each of the cups. At the
stove, Tom ladled overflowing spoonfuls of bean soup into the bowls and frying
pan, then ferried them to the table.
Kevin collected his cup and the frying pan and sat back on the lower
bunk, facing Lee across the table. Tom
took the stool to Lee’s right.
Lee
salivated as the smell of hot soup rose to his nostrils. He put a spoonful in his mouth and the soup’s
heat warmed his whole body. Navy beans,
large chunks of softened potatoes, stewed tomatoes that had almost dissolved,
and a bit of onion. And Kevin was right
that the ham made a difference. He
greedily took another spoonful.
Lee
watched Kevin tilt his cup back and close his eyes while not swallowing, just
letting the raw whiskey massage his lips and trickle into his mouth. Kevin opened his eyes and inhaled sharply. “Now that,
cousin, is the taste of money. Thanks to
our friends in
Lee
stared at the three fingers of moonshine in his own cup, and the alcohol vapors
made his eyes water. He emulated Kevin,
taking a slow sip and holding it in his mouth.
The heat was round and almost palpable but the whiskey had very little
taste. When he swallowed, it sent a warm
kick into his chest that briefly expelled the air from his lungs. He lowered the cup and slurped air as his
eyes teared up. “It may be money,” he
said, turning back to his soup, “but it sure ain’t legal tender. How much are you hauling?”
“Two
barrels for a customer in
“You
mean the captain on number 41?”, Lee said, caught off-guard. “Cy Elgin?”
“The
same,” Kevin said. “We met him near the
end of last season and did a little business.
He sent word he wanted to catch us on the first run of the year. Said he’d be starting out from a stuck boat
above Swains, and a young feller from Seneca who boated with Ben Myers was
bringing his mules down from winter quarters.”
Kevin stopped for another drawn-out sip of moonshine. “That’s how we knowed you’d be down on this
part of the canal. So we figured you
could boat with us back up to
Tom
finished scraping puddles from the bottom of his bowl and leaned away from the
table. “Always good to get another pair
of hands on board,” he said, belching and looking at Lee with expressionless
eyes.
“And
a third set of legs on the towpath,” Kevin said with a wink. “One trick on, two tricks off. Allows for family conversation at the
tiller.” He pushed the empty frying pan
onto the table before knocking back the rest of his whiskey with a wrist tilt,
then put the cup down and rubbed his reddish-brown mustache. “So we was wondering, cousin,” he said, “how
you got tied up with Cyrus Elgin in the first place. He don’t really seem like your type.” Tom had pulled his knife from its sheath and
was holding it a few inches above the table, then dropping its point to the
wooden slab. When the stuck knife
stopped wobbling, he repeated the process.
Lee
explained that when he heard Cy was stranded on the drained White Oak Springs
level, he’d offered to find a winter farm for Cy’s mules. Lee was going to give his farmer friend in
Seneca the chance to earn a few dollars but had decided to take care of the
mules himself instead. He was planning
to request the standard fee from the canal company, since the company generally
paid to have its mules wintered. “I never
got an opinion of Cy from last season,”
he added. “Just saw him coming
and going a few times. Didn’t seem like
a real friendly guy, but I never heard of him causing trouble neither.”
“You
might want to keep an eye in the back of your head when he’s around,” Kevin
said. “Based on what we heard last fall,
he ain’t your typical ditch runner.”
Lee
nodded, remembering Cy’s bloodshot arrival at Swains last December, too late to
see off Katie and Pete. “I know he
growed up boating out of
Tom
left his knife wobbling in the impaled table as he leered at Kevin, who leaned toward
Lee with a slowly spreading grin. “You
met his sister?”
“I
met her last season, when she come down to help Cy close up the boat,” Lee said
warily. “Seen her a few times, I guess.”
“She’s
a looker,” Kevin said. “Short blond
hair, kind of flirty. Going on twenty or
twenty-one, maybe?”
Lee
flushed and stared at the moonshine in his cup.
“That don’t sound exactly like Katie,” he said. “She’s only eighteen. Could be you met one of her sisters.”
Kevin
chuckled and shook his head. He bent
forward to snare the jug from the table, then poured himself a refill and sat
back on the bunk. “Oh, I think we met
the same girl. She was with Cy when we
did a little business with him in
Lee
looked at Kevin in surprise. It stung
him a little that his cousins knew Katie, and he bought time with another slow
sip of whiskey. That Cy would associate
with the Emorys didn’t surprise him, but Katie -- whose fingers had singed his
wrist, and who had worn her Sunday dress to walk with him out to
“I’d
keep an eye on her as well, cousin,” he said.
“She strikes me as the kind of girl that can make a man see whatever he
wants to see.”
Lee
felt the skin around his temples burn. He
focused on the knife stabbing the table.
Tom plucked it free with a flourish, sheathed it, and looked at
Kevin. “Still got six miles of boating
to Widewater, and we got to get through Swains and Six Locks first.”
“Quite
true, my brother,” Kevin said. He put
his hands on his knees and rose heavily from the bunk. “Cousin Lee, thanks for joining us at Emory’s
house of fine dining.” He dug into his
hip pouch for a plug of tobacco, which he crammed into the side of his mouth
and worked into place with his tongue.
“We’ll look for you here in a few days,” he said, spitting stained
saliva into the empty frying pan, “for the trip upstream.”
After
subduing his tobacco, Kevin went on to explain that they planned to tie up at
Widewater, below
Lee
retrieved the ham-plate and followed the Emorys back up to the deck of the
scow, where Tom put the feed trough away while Lee helped Kevin harness the
mules. When they had the towline rigged,
Kevin took the tiller. Tom drove the
mules forward to drain the slack while Lee untied the mooring lines and tossed
them onto the scow. Since the boat was
already a hundred feet out on the next level, the current from the flume
provided a push. “Up now! Git on, Mike!”, Tom called out, slapping the
mule in the haunch. Mike and Bess strained
against their harnesses and the scow started moving downstream.