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.
The worst of his fears receded with the green canoe. His dead cousins belonged to the river now, and his bones would not lie tangled with theirs in the dirt. But what about the message he had left for Charlie, with its reference to the killers? The night wasn’t over yet, he thought. He and Cy still had to drive the scow down to Widewater and scuttle it. Cy was still a threat, so it still made sense to leave the clues. He could recover them later if things went well.
“I’ll go get the shovel,” he said, thrusting his thumb back toward the deer path. “No sense giving someone an invitation to dig.” He walked deliberately toward the path and ducked into the woods, then accelerated once he was out of sight. At the clearing he ran to the shovel, jammed its blade into the earth near the Virginia-side trunk, and removed a wedge of dirt and pebbles. Digging into his coat pocket, he drew out Cy’s flask and rotated it to find the inscription on the leather holster: C. F. Elgin. Maybe it would still be legible after days or weeks in the dirt. He pulled out Katie’s pendant and held it for a second. Why couldn’t he just give it back to her tomorrow? Why had the world turned inside-out this morning? He blinked away tears as he tucked it between the flask and holster and wrapped its cord around the bottleneck, then laid the flask and pendant gently in the shallow hole. Keep moving! He kicked the displaced dirt into the hole, raked leaves and sticks over the buried items with the shovel, and stepped on the dirt and debris to tamp it down.