“Morphine is too expensive,” Zimmerman said, “and you can’t find it anyway. The times have changed.” He closed his eyes and paused while Cy watched the omnipotent gears engage and spin. “It started with the Narcotics Act,” he continued. “Then there was the war. But some doctors… some pharmacists still understand.”

“E.S. Leadbeater,” Cy said. “In Alexandria. A pharmacist named Nelson gave me your name. They still sell to you?”

Zimmerman wheezed, shook his head. “I can’t say. But I can help you. When you pass through the area.”

“You should work further up the canal. You’d find other buyers. And you must know the territory. Nelson told me you boated on the canal long ago. That’s why he thought you’d be willing to meet me.”

“He’s right,” Zimmerman said. “That was one reason. But my boating years was decades ago. In the eighties. I boated until I was fifteen, then I was done.”

“You was still too young to work a real job. Why did you quit?”

“The canal closed down. That was 1889, the end of May. A flood wrecked the canal, same flood that killed Johnstown. The canal didn’t open again until ’91, and by that time I didn’t want no part of it.”

“You was seventeen by then. I guess you outgrowed it.”

Zimmerman stared ahead in silence, gnarled fingers interlaced across his worn gray shirt. Below wisps of hair, his high forehead displayed constellations of age spots. He turned slowly toward Cy. “No,” he said. “That wasn’t it. My daddy quit boating but there was other captains that wanted to take me on. The canal still accounted for most of the work in Sharpsburg.”

“Then what.”

“Something I saw,” Zimmerman said. “Two days before the flood.”

Cy looked puzzled. “Something on the canal? Too much mule shit?”

“I was on the towpath. By myself. Driving the team for my daddy’s boat. It was late at night, past midnight. We was boating fast that season – we never tied up. Just switched teams at the locks. We was a light boat, on the level of the Log Wall. About halfway up to Widewater from Seven Locks.”

Cy scratched himself, nodded, yawned, keeping his eyes fixed on Zimmerman.

“This was a dark stretch. The woods was thick, with tall trees that ran downhill toward the river. No light reflecting – you couldn’t see the river from the towpath. It was off somewhere beyond the trees.” He waved a hand to dismiss it. “But I noticed a light coming up in the woods. Couldn’t barely see it at first, since it was a long ways down the hill. It was just a kind of green or orange glow. First it would look green, then orange. Whatever made the light was still below us, out of sight. The mules had blinders, so they didn’t see it right away.”

Cy leaned back with his eyes closed and tried to visualize this segment of the canal. Like other boatmen, he didn’t like being out on the Log Wall level at night.

“The light started coming up the hill toward us,” Zimmerman said. “You could see it was getting brighter, moving uphill and upstream at the same time. There was a glow that was mostly steady, and then a brighter line that came and went, through the trees. The glow and the line was both moving in our direction. When the light was a hundred feet below us on the hillside, the colors started to change. Green, then orange. Yellow. Red. Then orange again.”

The lights staged their color progressions behind Cy’s closed eyes, and Zimmerman paused briefly to catch his breath. He rubbed a finger across the residual white powder on the drawer, then drew the finger across his yellowed teeth. He inhaled sharply through them before continuing.

“The night was warm, with only a little breeze, but it suddenly felt very cold to me. My skin tightened from the chill and my heart started to pound in my chest. The mules was getting agitated now too, ‘cause they could see the flickering light moving toward us through the woods. It was close enough now. I started to walk faster and tried to keep the mules pulling. My lead mule was getting spooked, so I walked in front of her to talk her down. Trying to get her eyes back on the towpath. She must of decided it was better not to look, ‘cause she started pulling straight again. And the second mule, he followed her lead.

“I got back beside them and turned toward the woods. My heart shot into my throat and I tried to scream, but I couldn’t make a sound. The glow and the bright line was right on us now, only twenty feet away in the trees. Moving upstream through the woods, alongside us. It was a person. A girl, probably about my own age, fifteen or sixteen, and she was glowing green from head to foot! I swear, there was green and gold sparks raining from her hair. She turned to look at me and I could see her blue glowing eyes. My heart was pounding faster than I ever felt before. Then my skin froze, ‘cause I saw her walk right through a thick tree as she tracked us upstream. Like a ghost. Then she passed through another tree, still looking right at me, and she started to turn orange. The sparks from her hair were changing color, too, turning red. She smiled at me and I could see her teeth.

“I closed my eyes ‘cause I was too afraid to look anymore. Then I was too afraid not to look, so I opened my eyes again. And she was still walking fast through the trees, but she had turned back downhill. Moving upstream but back down into the woods and away from us. I watched as she became a bright line again, then the line disappeared and there was just a glow. And then the glow faded below the rim of the hillside and it was dark again.

“I kept driving that night, on up to Six Locks, where we switched teams and I come on board. My daddy sent one of the older hands out to drive the next trick. I never mentioned it to him or the other hands and they never said anything about it to me. My daddy was steering and they was sleeping when it happened, and I don’t think anyone else saw it. To this day I don’t know what it was, or whether I imagined the girl. But when she smiled I heard her whisper she would come again to kill me, and I knowed that night that I was done with the canal.”

Cy opened his eyes, looked at Zimmerman, and yawned. The heroin was warming his chest, legs, and bones, and Zimmerman’s story was part of a mosaic unfolding around him. “How much for the rest?”

Zimmerman peered into the vial. “It’s half an ounce,” he said softly. “Twenty.”

Cy pulled out his roll of bills and counted. He peeled off two singles and handed Zimmerman the rest of the roll. Zimmerman passed him the vial and he put it in his pocket. They pushed themselves up from the straw tick and started for the stairs. There would be a reckoning of sorts with the Emorys, Cy figured, but that was for tomorrow. What was left of tonight was free of worry, pain, and fear. He followed Zimmerman up the cellar stairs.

Chapter 22

Swains Lock

Saturday, March 29, 1924

It was after 8:30 on Saturday morning when Cy’s feet found the floor. Habit guided him to the simple wooden dresser in his lockhouse bedroom at Swains, where he was relieved to see his stash of bills. He must have remembered to bring it upstairs from the kitchen jar last night after returning from Great Falls. With Pete and Katie around, valuable things needed to be kept out of sight. Leafing through, he counted fifty-six dollars. He hobbled over to the chair where he’d thrown last night’s clothes and withdrew the contents of his coat pockets. Only an empty tasting flask, two more dollars, and the remainder of Zimmerman’s vial, which he held up to the light to measure with his eyes. He opened a dresser drawer and hid the vial inside his pair of clean socks.

Standing in his underwear, he looked out the room’s lone window and considered the events of the previous night. Shit. He’d sold seven pints and then been up in the poker game for most of the evening – up over ten dollars at one point. His winnings had evaporated as the game wound down. And in the ensuing session with Zimmerman, the rest of his money had purchased an ephemeral reprieve from his pain. So now he had fifty-eight dollars and owed the Emorys seventy-five. They were half-assed boaters, and if they’d reached Widewater from Georgetown yesterday, it would still take them two hours to get through the locks at Great Falls and cover the distance to Swains. So he still had a little time.