His arms grew tired and almost numb as the river cooled them, and he considered shedding his shorts to swim in his underwear. It would be much easier, he thought; I’d be almost naked. But I don’t want to give up my knife yet… or my wallet and all my cards. Or the two small keys. If I drop them I’ll have nothing to show for my trip to Gladys Island.
But I’ll have nothing anyway if I lose Nicky, or if she’s already gone. Nothing left but an aging dog and a tenuous connection to the surface life. Maybe I’ve lost it all already, and I’m swimming out of my old life into something else. He stopped to glide with his face in the water. I could let go and drift downstream. Then I wouldn’t need my ID cards. It’s two miles to the Falls.
No. He rolled his head sideways for a breath and resumed swimming. I need to find Nicky. For better or worse. We’re getting married next month. He raised his head to get his bearings and the hilltop lights swam in a hazy aura. Both upstream now, but seemingly closer. He blinked and squinted while treading water, then reset toward the upper lights and swam on.
I will find Nicky, he told himself, and leave this ill-starred odyssey behind. This riddle has toyed with me for almost a year and has pulled us apart. We’ll get married and I’ll finish my consulting work. Then I can restart my career. Can, he wondered, or will? A wave lapped his open mouth and he inhaled a mixture of air and water. He stopped to lift his head, coughing and gasping. Maybe I can stand here, he thought. He stretched his legs but didn’t find the bottom, and his head slipped back underwater. Shit! He kicked and thrust to the surface, and the burst of activity inflamed his muscles. His lungs felt raw. He caught his breath, lowered his head into the water, and swam on.
He was close enough to the Maryland shore now that the hilltop lights were far apart and hard to see. His hand brushed a large rock, then another. He held it and looked up to see the dark shape of the mainland looming ahead. There were too many rocks now, some visible and some submerged, to swim blindly. He took shallow strokes with his head up, pulling himself forward when he found an underwater handhold. Soon his hands felt silt. He pulled himself to the water’s edge and scrambled up to the vegetation.
The water streamed off his legs and back and his skin tightened with chill as he assessed the terrain. Where was he? Somewhere below his launching spot at Swains. The flat apron with its scattered trees and campsites was nowhere in sight; the ground in front of him was a clutter of twisted saplings and rotting washed-up trunks. He plunged into the brush, stepping lightly with bare soles but moving as fast as he could. Across a ditch he confronted another channel of water – he had landed on a seamed and nameless claw downstream from Swains. Long enough, but too emaciated to be called an island. The backwater channel was barely moving, filled by seeping veins from the main current upstream. A steep, rocky bank across the channel climbed to the canal and the towpath, only eighty feet away.
Groaning, he staggered down and pushed out into the channel. Every muscle wanted to float and rest, but thirst for air made him breathe and his breathing made him swim. He crossed the backwater mindlessly and crawled out, then scrambled up the bank and saw the pale ribbon through a screen of trees. A cry of gratitude and relief in the back of his throat was throttled before it found release. He still had to find Nicky.
He stepped through the trees and stared at the crouching water of the canal. The towpath glowed softly and he peered into the gloom along its course. Was that a faint white shape in the distance upstream? When he strained to see it, it receded into the darkness. His feet were already sore, and he rubbed his soles on his shins to brush them free of pebbles. Thin slices of the towpath had been smoothed by the tires of countless bicycles; he stepped into one of these tracks of softer dirt, then leaned into a few long steps and started running.
Water dripped from his shorts onto his legs and feet, which were soon caked with mud. The night air felt humid against his bare chest and his lungs began to burn. I’ve been running on the towpath for a year, he thought, but this is the first time I’ve run it at night. Or barefoot. A breeze arose and died and the trees swept arching branches through the sky over the canal. He settled into a rhythm of striding, breathing, and pain.
This all started on my birthday, he thought. When Nicky gave me the driftwood collage and I had to assemble it. That was the only reason I went out to that old shed in the woods – to look for a work surface. And I found the mark on the plank and the note and the drill hidden in the wall behind it. Was I drifting before I found the mark, as Nicky implied, or have I been drifting since? The white shape appeared in the distance again. It should be closer by now, he thought. Is it moving upstream along with me? Maybe I’m still chasing Emmert Reed’s albino mule.
No, I found her. I found Gladys and visited her island. And I dug up pieces to Lee Fisher’s puzzle, but lost the one that might be worth something. My search is over now, and the money – if that’s what was in the toolbox – is gone. I’m sorry, Lee, but I don’t know what happened to you. I never learned the truth.
The white shape hovered before him and became part of the rhythm of his running. It was the whitewashed stone lockhouse at Swains, gaining tangibility as he approached. If I can just get back to my bike, he thought, I can finish this misbegotten triathlon and be home in half an hour. And find out that Nicky is alright. And confirm that my fears are unfounded, like Lee’s fears may have been unfounded.
He visualized his bicycle locked to the post where he’d left it and recited one number from its combination lock with every fourth footbeat. 3…19…36…3...19…36. He was still intoning the sequence when he reached the white shape and the gates of Swains Lock.
A looming form ahead surprised and alarmed him: a long dark arm barred most of the towpath. After a confused moment he realized that it was a swing-beam. The downstream lock gates were closed! Normally the beam rested parallel to the towpath, held in place by a taut wire cable that connected the swing-beams together across the lock, preventing either beam from moving. But now the cut wire hung limply from an eye-hook in front of him, falling tensionless onto the towpath. As he stepped around the distal end of the beam, he heard the bubbling sound of churning water and a pleading stream of words he couldn’t understand in a woman’s voice. His apprehension congealed into fear and he darted to the lock wall.
Peering down into the darkness, he saw the water was higher than he expected, and moving. It was welling up behind the upstream gates and flowing toward him as the lock slowly filled. Who had opened the wickets? From the wall’s midpoint, he squinted at the upstream gates beyond the footbridge. The three nearest stems were naked, but the stem closest to the far wall was crowned by a slim perpendicular shadow the length of his arm. A lock-key! He looked at the area around both gates but saw no one.
He started across the lock to investigate. As his foot struck the bridge, a plaintive voice rose from the gloom below.
“Help me, I’m chained!”
The hair on his arms stiffened. It sounded like Nicky, somewhere beneath him! He backtracked to the wall and dropped to his knees. Standing under the bridge in shoulder-deep water was a woman with short, straight hair. Her head hung forward and her upraised hands were braced on the stones of the far wall.
“Nicky!”
“Help me… Vin! I’m chained!” Her voice sounded alien and remote and she answered him without turning away from the wall or lowering her hands.