Silence at the Lock

Chapter 4

4

“I have to go,” I said to Sarah a few minutes after the raft floated out of sight.

It’s never easy for me to walk away from someone I know is alone . . . even if that someone is dead and has been alone for decades. Still, I knew my mother would be—if she hadn’t already—coming out of her office when she finished meeting her therapy clients for the day, and I knew she’d be worried about me when she didn’t find me at home.

Sarah just looked at me and nodded. Then, she walked over, leaned against the boulder, and put her head in her hands.

I felt like a jerk. But it was either leave this ghost behind or cause my mother worry. I was going to be a jerk to someone, so it might as well be the someone who wasn’t going to lecture me over dinner.

I walked toward the Coffee Pot that was, in its most recent incarnation, a canoe rental shop. I hoped that even in the off-season someone at the shop might let me use the phone. I kept my eyes on my feet so I could avoid all the broken glass on the side of the highway and promised myself that I’d keep my phone and shoes on me at all times. I couldn’t keep showing up places without shoes or a means to get help; it was ridiculous.

After I called Javier, I exhausted my extremely limited small talk about canoeing and rivers within thirty seconds, but the shop owner was a chatty sort and didn’t seem to notice. I had learned more about portage and canoe safety than I really needed to know. So I was thrilled to see Javier’s Nissan pull into the gravel parking lot outside a few minutes later. I thanked the shop owner for the use of her phone and picked my way carefully across the stones.

“You should really keep your shoes on all the time,” my boyfriend said as I sat down.

Javier had been through this process with me twice before, and he still loved me—or at least I think he loved me. We hadn’t really said that to each other, but I certainly felt that way.

I gave him my best eye roll as I slammed the car door. “Funny. Funny. Thanks for coming.”

He gave me a sideways grin and headed toward home. “So who was it this time?”

“Sarah.” I took a deep breath. “Her mother had been lynched at the boat lock.” We were driving by those stone walls at that moment, and I could see Sarah still there against the boulder. She was staring out across the river. At least it looked like she’d stopped crying.

“Lynched? As in really lynched?” Javier’s jaw clenched tight.

“Yes. I helped her cut her mother down.”

“Oh, Mary.” His hand found mine in my lap. “I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah.” I took a deep breath. “This one is really brutal, not that Moses’s or Charlotte’s experiences were any less awful. But to see someone hanged . . .” I couldn’t really put words to it yet, and I didn’t want to cry, so I stopped talking and stared out the windshield.

We rode in silence until we came to my road. “So should I text everyone to come over while you fill your mom in?”

This guy. He always knew. Always had the right thing to say. “Do you mind?”

“Nope. I’m on it.” He parked his car behind my mom’s, and I hopped out. “Thirty minutes enough time? I’ll go get us some pizzas.”

Did I mention I loved this guy? “Perfect.” I leaned back into the car and kissed him. “Thank you.”

He smiled and put the car in reverse.

Mom was at the kitchen table when I came in, and she didn’t look happy. I started to brace myself, but a second glance at her face told me she wasn’t angry. I’d call her look, “Begrudgingly Resigned.”

I grabbed a mug and filled it with hot water before scooping eight (no more, no less) spoonfuls of hot cocoa mix into it. Then, I sat down and waited.

It only took her a few moments and a deep breath before she asked, “Again?”

“Again. This time, I was over at the canal lock on 60. You know, where we picnic sometimes?”

The wrinkle just above her nose got deeper. “That’s an odd place. I wouldn’t imagine too many people spent too much time there. Unless there was a lock keeper or something?”

I took a sip of my cocoa. “Nope. A woman named Beverly Jennings was lynched there. But she wasn’t alive, um, you know what I mean. It was just her ghost body. . . .” I couldn’t really make sense of this myself. Ghosts don’t really have bodies, but then Bo’s body had been there. . . . I took a deep breath. “Her daughter Sarah was there, though.” I told Mom about Bo’s murder and Sarah’s too, about cutting down Bo’s body, about the raft. Mom listened. She’s the best listener I know, even better than Javier.

“Okay, so the metaphysics of how one person’s spirit can be alive and one person’s body be dead but present and her spirit gone aside . . . why do you think you were there?”

I blew air hard out of my lips. “I have no idea. But everyone is coming over in a few minutes to see if we can’t figure that out. Javier went to get pizza.”

“Okay, sounds good. I’m going to get out of this skirt and into yoga pants. Maybe you want to put on some shoes, just in case.”

“All of you think you are so funny.” But I laughed, and that felt good. I hadn’t realized how tense I was until I felt the laugh loosen my shoulders.

It didn’t last long though. I felt the threads of my neck pull taut again as I tried to imagine exactly what I was going to have to do to get justice for a lynched woman and her daughter.