Текст книги "Swains Lock"

Автор книги: Edward A. Stabler

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

“Leave it on,” Cy said abruptly. “Since the bodies are staying here while you’re gone. Got to have something pointing to you as well. Keeps us both honest.” Lee looked up and squinted but left the cuff attached. He held his cousin’s ankles while Cy gripped the body by the armpits. They carried the bodies downstairs and laid them in a dark corner of the basement.

Back in the kitchen, Lee put the ledger in the box along with the pouch of coins and the refilled coin tray. He closed the cover and set the latches, then pulled out the key ring and locked the toolbox. “That was a good idea you had,” he said. “About keeping us honest. Made me think I should leave the box with you until tonight. I’ll take the key with me. That way we trust each other. And we don’t have to worry about someone else bumping into it.”

Cy put the box on top of a cabinet, where it was unlikely to be noticed right away. They walked out toward the lock, where Lee retrieved his damp clothes from the swing-beam.

“Let’s lock the scow down,” Cy said. “Get it out of the way and set us up for later.” They reset the lock, brought the scow through, and moored it to a post near the mouth of the flume. Lee led the mules across the lock and tied them up near the water. Cy peered out at the uninhabited islands in the center of the river. “Show me again where you’re thinking,” he said.

Lee pointed at the island. “There’s a huge sycamore we can use as a landmark. And flat ground next to it for digging.” They agreed that Lee would bring a second canoe down from Pennyfield at seven and Cy would find a reason to send Katie and Pete to Great Falls before he arrived.

“One more thing,” Cy said as Lee set out. “If you got one, bring a shovel.”

Chapter 24

Pennyfield Pages

Saturday, March 29, 1924

During Lee’s walk back to Pennyfield, his thoughts spiraled from the central question: who had killed his cousins? His fingers reached past the wet bills in his pocket to absently finger Katie’s sandstone pendant. He resisted reason, which told him that she must have been involved. Maybe against her will. He had given her the leg-irons and no one else at Swains had ever seen them. But if she’d used them to lock the bicycle, they never could have been used to drown the Emorys, because he hadn’t given her the key. So she must have chosen not to lock it. That was troubling – a breach of faith, however small. There must be another explanation, he thought, as his fingers closed around the pendant. If she was coerced into helping the killer, he prayed she hadn’t been hurt in turn. Maybe she would return to Swains and tell Cy she had left the leg-irons unlocked by mistake. Someone else must have found and used them.

Cy. Lee still sensed that he might have had a hand in the killings. He knew that Cy owed his cousins money. And he knew that Cy’s vices – gambling and drugs – meant he might not have been able to pay. So Cy had a motive, both to steal and to cancel a debt. But the gold and silver was still in the toolbox and that didn’t make sense. Maybe Cy had come across a payback killing and scared the killer away. And then he was preparing to saw the toolbox free of the leg-irons when Lee arrived at Swains. No matter how Lee tried to construct a logical thread, it fell apart when he thought it through.

But instinct told him that Cy was dangerous. Whether or not he was involved in the murders, Cy would regard Lee as a witness who might incriminate him. Or he might worry that Lee would exhume the Emorys’ money for himself. As he assessed this possibility, Lee realized that he was the one at risk. By disposing of Lee, Cy could silence him and keep all the gold and silver. But Lee was younger, faster, strong; if he kept his guard up, he thought he could defend himself.

What if Cy returned to the burial spot by himself in the days ahead? If the money was missing when he and Cy went back for it, Lee could tell the Emory clan that Cy had been seen passing gold and silver coins. And that would mean he would have to spend the next seven months wondering when a bullet would find him from the woods along the canal. So it was in Cy’s interest to live up to his agreement with Lee. Each of them would get almost four hundred dollars of the Emorys’ money. Even for Cy, that had to be enough.

But Lee still felt anxious. Striding fast on the approach to Pennyfield, he lightly tapped Tom Emory’s knife in his pocket. It would come with him tonight. And he needed more… some other form of insurance. Not for his safety, since that was up to him alone. But in case things went wrong. What if Cy managed to betray and bury him along with the bodies of his cousins? He shuddered at his next thought. What if Katie really was involved in the murders and was collaborating with Cy? What if everything he felt about Katie, about the two of them together, was an illusion? He shook his head and willed the doubt away. That couldn’t be, and he would return from tonight’s loathsome tasks to be with her again. She would be innocent. He held the pendant lightly in his pocket. And if he was wrong, if he was killed tonight, he would make sure he left a thread for others to follow.

By the time he reached Pennyfield, this thread was forming in his mind. He entered the lockhouse and went straight to the dining room. On top of a bureau he found the locktender’s log-book, which he carried to the table. He hung his coat on the back of a chair and tore out a blank page from the back.

As he considered how to word his message, he struggled with the many purposes it had to serve. If he was killed by Cy tonight, he wanted someone to find his body. The only person he could trust right now was Charlie Pennyfield. This was Charlie’s lock, and he had trusted Lee to watch over it the last ten days. And Charlie wouldn’t be conflicted, since he was outside the circle of Emorys and Elgins. He was due to return on Sunday or Monday. So the message had to tell Charlie where to look. And it had to warn him that the killer or killers were still at large. He could leave an additional clue at the burial site that would implicate Cy for his own killing and the murder of his cousins. And Katie? He ardently believed she was innocent, but if she was part of it, then something should point to her as well.

If he survived and made it back to Pennyfield, he could recover the note before Charlie found it. But what if someone else intercepted it first? His blood chilled as he considered another possibility: maybe Katie was the killer, and maybe she would find it. If that happened, she and Cy would go free and his body would never be found. He needed to leave the message in a place only Charlie would see it… somewhere no one else would care to look. Maybe the shed. And just in case, he needed to guide Charlie to the burial site using terms that wouldn’t help an unwanted reader. He tapped his pen in rhythm against the table as he thought.

He still hoped that his cousins had been killed by enemies from their bootlegging world. If so, their deaths were a sad fate of their own making. And if Cy lived up to his word, he and Lee would split the Emorys’ silver and gold. A few hundred dollars would be a stake he could build on. He could start saving for a house. Something small in Seneca, with a view of the meadows. Would Katie like it there? Keep your focus, he scolded himself. These are the only words you can speak from your grave.

What day was it? The 29th. Tapping the pen, he visualized the intended burial spot again. A name and an image crystallized and he began to write. When he was finished, he changed a few words and rearranged the sentences. Then he tore another page and wrote the message as legibly as he could.

March 29, 1924

Charlie,

If it is April and I am missing, I fear I have been killed because of what happened today at Swains Lock. I may be buried along with the others at the base of three joined sycamores at the edge of a clearing. The name of the place is well knowed by Emmert Reed’s albino mule. One tree leads to the money, the second leads to the killers and the third leads to the dead. In your search for me you may find the truth. Be careful you don’t share my fate.

Your friend, Lee Fisher

He read the note a second and third time. It was the best he could manage. Charlie had spent many years at Pennyfield Lock and Lee felt sure he would understand the reference to Emmert Reed and his albino mule. To most others the clue would be opaque. He folded the note and left it on the table. Was there something else he should he leave as a clue? A reference to Katie, in case his fears came true. The photograph of them at Great Falls. She had left it near the porch-swing during her visit last night, and he found it this morning while cleaning up. If Lee went missing, the photo would provide a tacit pointer to the people Charlie should find.

The flask with C. F. Elgin inscribed on its holster lay next to his travel bag on the stairs. Katie had probably neglected it last night because she’d been busy trying to keep him on his feet. And now he’d forgotten to return it to Swains today. Just as well, since she wasn’t there to receive it, and it would have been strange to hand the flask directly to Cy. He shook his head, amused at his diffidence. Instead you showed him the key to the leg-irons that killed your cousins! He opened the bag and pulled the photo out from between the pages of a book. Appraising the flask, he realized it would be useful tonight.

He tore another blank page from the log-book and folded it to serve as a sleeve, then placed the message and the photo inside it. His idea about where to leave the note still made sense, so he carried the papers across the lock and turned into the woods on the path up to Charlie’s shed.

The drill he’d bought recently was lying on the workbench where he’d left it, next to a hammer and a handsaw. He thought about leaving the message on the bench but realized that anyone who wandered in would see it. A safer approach occurred to him. He set the note and photo aside and took the hammer to the unadorned wall of cedar siding planks to his left.

He chose a plank near the center of the wall and used the claws to remove the nails that held it in place, tossing them on the floor one by one. The studs behind the plank could hold a little shelf of cut shingle, and there was a pile of shingles in the corner. At the workbench he cut one to fit, then tapped in new nails from the workbench jar to support it. He propped the drill on the shelf – it held. He placed the photo and his note behind it, pinned against the inner face of the thick outer siding. It was a strange place to leave a message, but no stranger than the events of the day.

He laid the plank face up on the floor. From his pockets he removed Tom Emory’s knife and Katie’s sandstone pendant, then examined the pendant’s symbol. First a curve like a tipping C, then three converging slashes. He tested the blade with his thumb; his cousin kept it sharp. He carved a shallow C near the base of the plank. Its outline was rough but he didn’t care – he was etching the symbol for himself, and to Charlie it would just be a mark. From the lower end of the curve, he extended the slashes.

He sat back with his arms around his knees and yawned, knowing he wouldn’t sleep much tonight. Leaning against the wall, he closed his eyes for a few minutes. A stab of hunger jarred him awake. Grabbing the plank and hammer, he pulled a handful of nails from the jar and hammered the plank back in place, with Charlie’s drill and the message he hoped no one else would ever read hidden safely behind it. He left the shed and walked down through the woods.

One more note to write… a note so pedestrian that no one but Charlie would care about it. At the dining room table he removed another page from the log-book.

March 29

Charlie,

Welcome home. I left your drill in the shed, behind the marked plank.

Lee

He left the note in the center of the table and put the log-book away, then scraped together leftovers in the kitchen. Fried sausage and potato salad from last night and the remnants of a loaf of bread. He finished what was left of his mother’s ham with a glass of water. After eating he dragged himself up the stairs and laid down. Years of boating had taught him how to sleep while still keeping track of time. He let go and was asleep within seconds.

When he woke up, the angle of the light striking the wall told him sunset was still an hour away. He closed his eyes and visualized the steps he needed to take. Bring the canoe and a paddle down from the rack next to Charlie’s house. He was pretty sure there was an old rubberized canvas tarp in the basement of the lockhouse that would be useful to cover a body in the canoe. And if they wanted to use it as a burial shroud for the toolbox, it probably wouldn’t be missed for a while. Charlie kept a pair of shovels in the shed and Lee had already carried one to the lockhouse a few days ago. It would take him almost an hour to paddle down to Swains. He took a deep breath and got to his feet.

A few minutes before six, he dragged the black birchbark canoe down the berm. The shovel and tarp were under the stern seat as he pushed that half of the canoe into the water. On a final visit to the lockhouse he retrieved his coat, sliding Cy’s flask into the empty hip pocket, balancing the one that held Katie’s pendant and Tom’s knife. He pulled his cap from a hook on his way out the door. The air felt cool now as he crossed the lock, jogged down the bank to the waiting canoe, and pushed off.

As the canoe sliced through still water, he felt a surge of adrenaline and dread. What he was going to do with Cy had to be done – there was no alternative. If he backed out, Cy would consider him a threat and might hunt him down. Or he could use Lee’s leg-irons as evidence against him. He was committed to the plan, but a subliminal fear kept reminding him his life might end tonight. He faced the stern from the bow seat, picked up the paddle, and aligned the boat’s heading with short strokes. His heartbeat slowed. He clung to the hope that Katie would return to Swains unhurt and be able to identify the killer or killers. The hope that someone other than Katie or Cy had murdered his cousins. He paddled resolutely downstream across the darkening water as the sun descended into the trees.

Chapter 25

Grave Dance

Saturday, March 29, 1924

The colors of sunset emerged and faded as Lee paddled down the canal. Approaching Swains through the twilight, he drove his canoe toward the berm near the entrance to the flume. A lone figure moved haltingly toward him. Without words, Cy caught the stern and hauled it up onto the grass. “Pull it up next to mine,” he said, turning back toward the lockhouse as Lee climbed out.

The green canoe was sitting on the beaten grass near the front door. Lee dragged his boat alongside it and noticed the Emory’s toolbox was already under its bow seat. I guess he wants the money within reach, Lee thought. And there was a paddle but no shovel.

“You ain’t got a shovel?”

“No. Couldn’t find one. Long as we got yours, that’s enough.”

What an ass, Lee thought. Maybe he plans on counting the money again while I dig.

“You bring the key to the box?”

“I got it,” Lee snapped. His pulse fluttered as he prepared to ask the question foremost in his mind. “Katie come back yet?”

“Ain’t seen her,” Cy said without looking at Lee, who felt as if a scabbed wound had been torn open again to bleed. “Pete showed up around three with a couple loaves of bread. Said Katie sent him off to the crossroads store this morning. Damn long walk for a kid his size. I can’t figure what she had in mind.”

“Pete ain’t around here now, is he?” Lee said, trying to refocus on immediate concerns. No ten-year-old should see them carry his dead cousins out of the basement.

“No. I fed him dinner and told him to stay in his room for a couple hours. Told him I’d whup him if I saw him and he knows I would. Anyhow he’s too tired to complain. Now let’s get them bodies out before something else happens.”

Lee followed Cy down to the basement. The clammy air didn’t smell like death yet, but he knew the decomposing had begun. Cy took Kevin Emory’s ankles, leaving Lee to grope beneath the sheet for the armpits. With no human warmth to dry them, his cousin’s clothes were still cold and wet. When Lee lifted, the dead man’s head fell between his thighs; he winced at the upside-down view of Kevin’s red-brown hair, ruddy face turned pallid, lifeless eyes. The unseeing pupils were as wide as a finger. They carried Kevin’s body out to Lee’s canoe, then returned to the basement for Tom’s.

“You OK with all that weight?” Lee asked as they laid the corpse on the floor of Cy’s canoe. With three bodies in the green canoe this afternoon, the hole in its side had sunk below the waterline. “Want me to take the box?”

“I’ll take it,” Cy said gruffly. Lee turned to his own canoe and laid the shovel alongside the covered body. Then he and Cy dragged the laden canoes back to the canal, paddled them across, and portaged to a muddy landing on the riverbank.

Looking out toward the island in the fading light, Lee could see that the current was running fast. In the summer, the river drifted and was no more than waist-deep here, with scattered rocks the size of rowboats littering the channel. It was spring now, so the water should be higher and faster, but tonight it looked above a normal spring level. He could only see a handful of lumpish shadows raising their backs above the surface. A week of warm weather had brought an abrupt end to winter in the western reaches of the Potomac watershed and suddenly melted heavy accumulations of snow and ice. Lee guessed that the water they had to cross might be five or six feet deep and rising.

“Looks like the river’s come up.”

“Maybe,” Cy said, gazing out toward the dark shape of the island. “Not enough to worry about. Long as we keep moving.”

Lee held the green canoe steady as Cy climbed in, then lifted the bow from the bank and pushed the hull forward into the water. He stepped into the black canoe lightly with one foot and pushed off the bank, then followed Cy out into the eddy.

“What part of the island are we shooting for?” Cy said as Lee paddled alongside.

Lee pointed directly across the river, then swung his arm a few degrees downstream. “Tail end. On the far side there’s an eddy where we can pull up to a beach. Got a fair current right here, so we’ll need to face upstream and ferry over. Follow me.”

He took a stroke on each side and his canoe glided past Cy’s. After crossing the eddy line, he set the canoe against the current at a fifteen-degree angle and stroked repeatedly on the port side to keep the stern pointed upstream, aiming well above the upper end of the island. The weight of the dead man in his boat made the canoe feel sluggish and unresponsive. As hard as he paddled, the canoe still drifted downstream as it rode sideways across the current toward the island. He looked to his left to chart his progress. He would miss the tail end of the island, but not by much. Directly below the island the current would be minimal, so it would be easy for him to paddle up to the tail.

He looked to his right. Cy was following at the same angle but losing ground to the current. The body and all those coins are slowing you down, Lee thought. The island was broad enough at its mid-point that the eddy below it extended a few hundred feet downstream. So even if Cy missed the island, he could paddle back up inside the eddy. Lee refocused on his own boat when he felt the barely-submerged skin of a rock brush the canoe’s hull just behind his seat. He paddled hard on his left to keep the canoe from drifting downstream onto it.

A few minutes more brought him into the eddy below the island, and he felt the current diminish. He took a deep breath and paddled more easily. The muscles in his chest and shoulders burned, then grudgingly unclenched. He turned the canoe to face straight upstream and took alternating strokes. Within thirty feet of the island the current disappeared. He spun the canoe to monitor Cy’s progress.

The ambient light reflected off the dark water and he could see that Cy had finally reached the eddy below the island and was paddling on alternate sides to head straight upstream. But his ferry had carried him to the eddy’s tapered base, where the split currents converged and began to regain strength. With the additional weight and downstream distance, he had to work much harder than Lee had to attain the island. After paddling in place for almost a minute, he passed a critical point and began to make headway. When Cy finally drew alongside, he was gasping. He shipped his paddle and slumped forward, hands on his knees and breathing heavily. “Damn current is a lot stronger than it looks.”

“Spring runoff. Feels like it’s still rising.”

“Then let’s get these poor bastards in the ground and get the hell out of here.” He gestured toward the island’s Virginia-facing shore. “That our landing?”

“That’s it. It’s a sandy beach when the river’s down.”

Cy grunted and jammed his paddle into the quiet water, taking short strokes. Lee followed and they eased up the island’s Virginia side, navigating between rocks to a spot where the rising river lapped at long grass and low brush. They got out and pulled the canoes ashore. Lee grabbed the shovel from his boat while Cy pulled the toolbox from under his seat.

“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.