“That’s Emmert. I think that was taken down at his lockhouse.”

Vin stared at the image. There was something mesmerizing about Emmert’s playful eyes and elusive smile. What secret are you holding from me, he wondered. What does your mule know that I don’t? He became aware that Betsy was looking at him, waiting for a signal to turn the page. He raised his eyes from the image.

“There are a few earlier pictures,” she said. Vin nodded and she flipped the page backward, then pointed to the left-hand photos. “Those are from Jake’s fiftieth birthday party. After that, he left the picture-taking to Dan and Sarah.”

She swung her finger to the opposite page. “These are the other pictures of Emmert. Well, except the one on the bottom, which Emmert took of the boys.” The uppermost photo showed a man wearing a flat cap and a light-colored shirt unbuttoned at the neck. His mustache was dark and luxuriant as he leaned against the transom of a broad boat with his hand on the long wooden tiller. Vin recognized the impish eyes of a younger Emmert Reed. The caption below the photo read, “Cpt Emmert Reed, Boat 32, 1905.”

“That’s Emmert on his boat. And that next photo is a family portrait.”

Vin turned to the second picture. Emmert and a young woman in a jacket, skirt, and wide-brimmed straw hat were seated at opposite ends of a short bench out on a lawn. Between them were two boys about seven or eight years old, dressed neatly in white shirts and dark shorts, and a younger girl in a simple dress leaning against her mother. The caption read, “Emmert, Howard, Jake, Alice, Helen” and “July 4, 1909.”

“That’s the whole family,” Betsy said. “Howard ended up going off to war and moved to Baltimore when he came back.”

Vin studied the image. No one was smiling, because you didn’t smile when you had your portrait made in that era. But Emmert still seemed to be radiating a rakish self-confidence. Maybe it was the mustache.

He proceeded to the third photo and his heart leapt into his throat. Emmert Reed wasn’t in it, just two boys, each perched bareback atop a horse. But the large ears were a giveaway that the boys were riding mules, not horses, and the mule on the left was entirely white. Emmert Reed’s albino mule! He devoured the caption: “Howard and Gladys, Jake and Annie, 1913.”

“That’s Jake on the right. Howard was a year older, so he usually got to ride Gladys. I think she was a bit of a celebrity, being albino. Jake said she was kind of spoiled.”

Vin tried to sound dispassionate. “Did he say anything else about Gladys?”

She regarded him quizzically. “Not that I recall. I know she was part of Grandpa Em’s team for a few years, but I don’t remember hearing anything else that was special about her. Apart from her color.”

He sighed and looked back down at the album, reviewing the photos from the bottom up. Howard and Jake astride their father’s mules. Emmert in his prime, posing with Helen and the kids for a family portrait. And Emmert as a young man, during one of his first seasons captaining a canal boat. It was frustrating to come this close – but no closer – to the man who could explain part of Lee Fisher’s message to Charlie Pennyfield. He had been able to construct the framework of an answer but was missing a plank that he needed to tie it all together.

After turning back for another look at Emmert as an older man, he tried not to let his disappointment show as he tied up the obvious loose ends with Betsy. Jake’s siblings Howard and Alice had been dead for years. Dan’s older sister Sarah was still alive but suffering from Alzheimer’s at a nursing home. Betsy knew of other families – the Moses, Colberts, Snyders – that had lived in Sharpsburg for three or more generations, but she couldn’t say for sure which of them had been involved with the canal in the twenties.

He took a few notes as a gesture of good faith and closed his notebook, telling Betsy he had to leave for an appointment back in Washington. He said he appreciated her willingness to help his research by sharing her recollections and family photographs.

“You’re quite welcome,” she said. She led him to the door and they said their goodbyes. As he turned to leave, she added a wish. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.” He thanked her again, then turned to wave from the far side of Chapline Street, but she was already closing the door.

Feeling thwarted and hollow, he approached his car, noticing that the back tailgate and windshield were covered with dust. He remembered the cloud he had stirred up on his brief spin alongside the C&O at Snyder’s Landing. It was time to wash it anyway. As he passed the rear windshield, he saw that someone had drawn a symbol in the dust and he felt as if his core sinews had been plucked like guitar strings. It was Kelsey Ainge’s mason’s mark. He swiveled to pan his surroundings but saw no person or gray sedan. The street was so quiet he could almost hear his own heart thumping. He stood still while a grassfire burned at his hairline and pinpricks of sweat formed on his forehead. He swept his hair back with his hand and opened the car door.

On the drive home he took the longer, faster route. When he swung east onto Route 70 near Hagerstown, he turned on the radio and hit the scan button, tapping it to hold the channel when he heard a weather report.

Fran remains a category 3 hurricane with winds of 115 to 125 miles per hour. The storm is tracking northward at 15 miles per hour and is now centered about 75 miles south of Cape Fear, North Carolina. The National Hurricane Center is predicting that Fran will come ashore sometime this evening, and has issued a hurricane warning for the coastlines of South and North Carolina.

Sounds like most of the storm will miss us to the west, he thought. I wonder whether we’ll even get any rain. The worst of it will hit the Appalachians and then start washing down toward us. He tapped the scan button again and the plaintive whine of a bluegrass fiddle filled the air. The feeling of having been here before flooded his senses, and for a few disorienting seconds the green hills of Washington County felt like home.

Chapter 35

Pas de Deux

Friday, September 6, 1996

Late Friday afternoon Vin pulled his hands from the keyboard and lifted tired eyes toward the ceiling. The first incarnation of his user interface for the ratings feature was finished. There was still the server-side code to write, but he felt as if today’s work had almost compensated for the time lost on yesterday’s fruitless trip to Sharpsburg.

Behind him on a portable TV perched on a filing cabinet, a CNN commentator was saying something inaudible about financial markets. Vin tapped the buttons for the Weather Channel and eased the volume up. They’re probably still showing full-time hurricane coverage, he thought. I wonder how Fran is doing.

The station showed a reporter in Roanoke wearing crimson rain gear and standing in an empty, rainswept street. After coming ashore at Cape Fear last night, Fran had tracked north by northwest, through North Carolina and into central Virginia as it was downgraded first to a tropical storm and then to a depression. Fran’s unraveling remains were now centered just south of the West Virginia panhandle, on course for Morgantown and Pittsburgh. The only menace Fran had left to offer was rain, but rain was enough. Flash floods were already responsible for almost two dozen missing or dead.

When the storm’s projected path was superimposed over a map of the mid-Atlantic states, Vin swiveled toward the screen. From central Virginia through southern Pennsylvania, Fran would be scouring the broad western reaches of the Potomac watershed, dropping torrential rains on the Appalachian and Blue Ridge mountains. He glanced out the glass doors at the backyard. The storm’s relentless wind and slashing rain had receded during the last few hours, leaving in their wake an intermittent drizzle and the gray light of an overcast afternoon.