Easter Sunday (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 7) Read online

  “You want to help me run ashore for more gear, Hank? I could use you,” called a fireman in his boat, holding the shore with his foot as he idled the engine.

  “Yes,” Hank said, as he climbed aboard. He knew what he had to do. The rain was harsh with the gusts. Large swells were running in the shallow stretch they had to cross to the mainland.

  Sammy waded out to Hank. The chief was coughing more.

  “Take a few minutes, Chief. You need to get some rest,” said Hank.

  Sammy spat. “The men need me. You fetching Mudman?”

  Hank nodded. “I should have gone for him before.”

  Sammy said, “I don’t mind telling you, I wish your father was here.” He put his hand on Hank’s arm. “Say to Mudman I could use him. You probably won’t get through. The roads are blocked. Anyway, try it. Take my sedan with the siren.” He handed Hank the keys.

  Betty came down to the water behind Sammy. “I’ll go with you,” she offered.

  Hank shook his head. “Better if Mudman talks just to me.”

  She stopped. Then her face showed that she understood that Mudman would talk to Hank and no one else. She raised her hand in a wave to wish him luck.

  “I’ll be back,” said Hank, as the fireman gunned the outboard.

  As the boat ran out in a broad circle, it passed the dim shapes of animal rescue boats, several of them, their running lights bobbing. The men and women aboard were bent in concentration on their work, pulling the creatures from the water and stowing them safely for the trip to shore. They leaned toward the wind, shadows of their figures in rain jackets and umbrellas moving up and down as the swells tore at their craft. Hank could not see their faces in the darkness but he was sure that Robin Pond and Jimmy Swift were there. One boat resembled the profile of Jimmy’s long wooden rowboat with baskets piled in the center and a tiny engine at the stern. Another was similar to the Pond motorboat, a high-sided fiberglass machine with a central control panel and twin powerful engines.

  The view of the mound became blocked by tall reeds growing out of floating islands. Jimmy had told him it was a place of death and of honor. His people especially honored the Nanticoke chief of legend who had lost his son fighting the English. Now only Jimmy came to pray for that hero.

  The boat turned into another inlet and a glimmer came through the reeds from the big searchlights where the men worked. The light and the vibrations of the motor stirred old memories. They reminded him of a long time ago, of the child he had been. He felt the tremble in his small hand when he hit a big stick on the oak floor at his home. In those days, the other children talked of wartime terror and a burning tanker turning night into day on the town horizon. He was once again the little boy who raced around the dining room in the postwar years with a stick, telling his father he’d protect him from the Nazi invaders. He’s say in as loud a voice as he could muster, “If that old dirty Nazi U-boat ever comes near River Sunday again, I’ll knock it down.”

  The Fleetwood Mac song about landslides also came into his mind, keeping time with the slaps of the hull against the swamp water. Hank mouthed the few words he remembered, the spray smacking against his face as the boat pushed into the waves. He hoped his boy might hear him somehow from deep inside the mound and know his father was near and would somehow protect him.

  Chapter Nine

  Hank concentrated on controlling Sammy’s big red sedan on the high-crowned back roads. The way to Mudman’s trailer home was through River Sunday. The town itself was clear of fallen trees and branches, although there were large ponds of water flecked with fresh green leaves flooding parts of the streets. He went by the Jewish temple, then Reverend Blue’s fundamentalist chapel, and finally the Catholic Church, all dark and deserted. Going down Strand Street, the main avenue through town, and past the waterfront, Hank could see frothy waves smashing over the docks. Asphalt and wood shingles from the colonial style storefronts were flying and battering the few cars parked along the curbs. The traffic lights, hung across the streets on bouncing wires, blinked yellow announcing danger. The light moved shadows wildly across the glass of the store fronts. When he reached the highway outside town, the road was deserted. Even Lulu’s Motorboat, the neon-lit stripper bar that was usually open for the locals and the tourists traveling to the ocean resorts, was in darkness.

  After crossing the highway, Hank entered a small dirt road where he had to slow down to avoid skidding on the wet gravel. At the side of the road the ditches were already filled with rain water and had their own little waves that overflowed and forced Hank to drive to the center of the high crown road. Mudman’s trailer was up a side lane, tucked between groves of loblolly pines and large magnolia trees and surrounded by freshly plowed fields. Mudman’s father, deceased for some time, had used this metal home for many years as a shelter for well-digging crews at construction sites. Mudman had converted it into a house for himself and Cincy. Parked next to it was a brand new blue well-drilling truck with a carefully lettered white sign on the truck door, Mudman Drilling Company, River Sunday, Maryland.

  Years ago, Hank and Mudman went south on leave after Army training for Vietnam. They were two young men in Army dress, with shining brass for the return home after the graduation parade. They skipped off the Army bus and hitchhiked to Florida to have some fun. Mudman said to Hank many times afterward that the best thing he ever did was that trip. When they got to Florida, they entered a roadside store along a south Everglades highway to buy a cold soda. That was the day Mudman met Sincere, Cincy for short. She was a pretty girl, thin with a pug nose, long dark hair, and, on that day, she wore a baggy green cotton dress with drawings of the constellations on it. She worked as a counter girl and had a small table near a bright window where she would sit and make spare change reading fortunes. She took them home to her apartment, a one-room affair, and they stayed a week. They went to the beach each day, a skinny dipping place she knew, where they could smoke pot and drink and lay in the sun. At night they would go to the local places with her friends, in a truck she borrowed from the storeowner, places where the war was not discussed. When their leave was over, when it came time to go back to base, Mudman didn’t want to leave her.

  Approaching Mudman’s trailer, Hank thought about the night the two of them left for Vietnam. His father drove them to the bus station in River Sunday. The older man shut off the engine and turned to the both of them, saying that the best soldiers don’t ask questions. The men who argue are a liability to the team, he said, and get put on the most dangerous missions in hopes that they will get killed and the outfit will be rid of them.

  Hank remembered turning to Mudman after they said goodbye and were leaving town on the bus. He said, “Daddy learned all that stuff when he was in the underground.”

  Hank followed his father’s advice, kept his mouth shut, and learned how to survive. Mudman had a tougher time than Hank because he argued with the officers. When they got in country, Hank drew mostly guard duties. Mudman was assigned to dangerous patrols, including the one where he had to machine gun several Viet Cong women and children.

  A year later, on the day when he and Mudman came home, they were in the cab driving into River Sunday from the bus station. Mudman said that he was taking all his mustering out pay and going to Florida to get Cincy.

  The next day, he and Hank went out to the Ford dealer in River Sunday. Mudman bought a new convertible for cash and told Hank he was going to get rid of the rest of his Vietnam money; spend it as quick as he could. He said it was money from evil. Then he left town. When he came back Cincy was with him. Whether they ever actually got married, Hank did not know. That kind of formality did not seem important to either of them. Mudman and Cincy did not have children. Mudman said and she agreed that they did not want to take the chance that their babies might grow up to be soldiers for the next war.

  Hank knocked on the aluminum door and Cincy opened it.

  “I saw you drive in,” she said in a soft accent.

  Mu
dman sprawled asleep with no clothes on in his chair in front of a large television. A beer, unopened, was in his hand. A shrapnel scar showed where the black hair would never grow back on the left side of his chest.

  “He’s been asleep for a while. I’ll have to wake him up and get him to bed,” she said. She was naked too. The two of them never wore clothes unless she was telling fortunes with a customer or they had to go to town or work. Any other time, Hank would have taken his clothes off and sat with them. Melissa used to come along with him in those first years they were married before Bobby came along and before she inherited all her money. She would sit around with the rest of them, naked too, drinking beer out of tall bottles. She called it the sunshine club of River Sunday.

  These two people, both of whom Hank loved, seemed to welcome nudity as a way to be separate from the humanity around them. Cincy said she was “without any gifts from the world outside her flesh” and as she described herself, “fully awake to everything real that surrounded her.” Mudman in his ever present melancholy, going back as far as his childhood dissatisfaction before the war, claimed he had to be naked because he was getting “close to being planted,” to his final state inside a coffin. He constantly told Cincy he was going to die. How they managed to coexist, with one happy and one sad, Hank did not understand, but they stayed together. When Melissa got her inheritance, she stopped visiting Mudman and his wife. Cincy was always asking about her. She often remarked to Hank that she did not understand why Melissa was no longer her friend.

  Hank blurted quickly what had happened to Bobby. Cincy’s face was downcast as she listened.

  “I dreamed last night that something had happened to a friend. I didn’t expect it was Bobby,” she said.

  “I’ve got to get back to the Wilderness,” Hank said.

  Cincy turned her head back toward Mudman. “Hank’s here.”

  “It ain’t right,” Mudman said, waking. He moved his head and saw Hank.

  His eyes had closed again, but he said, in his gruff voice, “Hank, I’m going to sell all my equipment and truck and leave the area. Let someone else do the well digging around here.”

  Then he mumbled something, his eyes still closed.

  “We do got enough money,” said Cincy, as Mudman began to snore.

  She continued, “We got word yesterday that one of his Vietnam friends in the shelter up in Baltimore killed himself.”

  “What happened?”

  “The vet left a note. Said the pills didn’t help any more.”

  Hank studied his old friend Mudman’s face twitching in sleep as if his mind were talking to itself. Hank fell back into a chair, the exhaustion overwhelming him.

  “You got to rest, Hank,” Cincy whispered. She was right. He was tired. He closed his eyes and dreamed of himself and Mudman as children, Bobby’s age, playing at the General’s annual Easter Party. Hank’s parents were sitting with the General on the overlooking porch on green rockers. They held drinks, his mother with her “old fashioned” whiskey and his father with the German beer he loved. His father advised how to care for the General’s boxwood garden, the General twisting his long mustache as he listened. The children, fifty of them of all ages invited from the Allingham School, running among boxwood, finding the painted eggs hidden among the branches and roots. He and Mudman and Melissa searched and Betty tagged along. Will hunted alone, intently pushing and shoving other kids as he dove under the huge overgrown box bushes, trying to find more than anyone else. The general insisted two of the eggs be hollowed and money placed inside. “Money makes it worthwhile for these kids,” he’d say.

  Mudman was invited because he went to the Allingham School. Otherwise, because of his father‘s dubious character, he would have been relegated to a lower social status. The school was the social leveler in River Sunday, making rich white and poor white equal and, in Bobby’s generation, black talking to white.

  Hank’s head jerked alert. Cincy was trying to talk to Mudman but he was sound asleep. She sat on the floor beside her husband and rubbed his feet.

  “You wake up, honey. It’s your friend. Lord, it’s the only friend you got in this town. You wake up.”

  Hank stood up.

  She said, “I’ll keep trying on him. I will sure try to get him to come help you, I will sure try.”

  Then, as Hank got into his car she ran out into the drizzle, still naked, and stood by the passenger window.

  “I forgot to tell you inside,” Cincy said. “I dreamed last night. I saw animals too. That’s the way I know he is going to be all safe.” She reached into the car and squeezed his hand.

  As he drove the fire department sedan away, she stayed there, her right hand shielding her face against the rain. When he scanned the rear view mirror, the paleness of her bare body blended with the nearest circle of her white daffodils.

  Stronger gusts beat on the sedan as he drove back through River Sunday towards the Wilderness. At the harbor Hank saw a newly careened yacht, its mast askew, that had dragged its anchor and smashed into the main pier. Lights flashed near the hull as some marina workmen scurried to save it from tearing itself apart against the pilings.

  As he approached the turnoff to the swamp, he saw a new police barricade.

  The officer in charge recognized him and waved him through. All along the entry road, cars were scattered, some with empty boat trailers. Deserted rescue trucks from nearby towns added to the frenzy to get to the scene. Hank noticed the television truck too, with its oversize station letters on the side and the antennas.

  When he reached the dock, he saw several boats in the water, ferrying sandbags and personnel to and from the accident site. Two of the boats were marked Maryland State Police. He did not recognize the policemen who were in charge of the boats. They stopped him from getting into a boat that was loading. One of the officers, a tall man, asked him for identification. Hank’s face was lighted in the officer’s flashlight.

  A voice called from behind Hank. “It’s all right, Sergeant. The man is the father of the trapped boy. I’ll take him out.”

  It was Captain Steele. “Come on, Hank.”

  Hank climbed aboard behind the Captain and the boat started away from the pier.

  “I have an idea to share with you guys when we get out to the island,” said Captain Steele. He lifted up the worn leather briefcase he was carrying. “I got a hunch about this whole thing.”

  Chapter Ten

  Captain Steele walked ahead of Hank as they approached the mound. During Hank’s absence, the digging had progressed only a few feet further into the hill, as the mud trench continued to collapse back into the trench.

  “Sammy,” shouted the old flier.

  Sammy had already seen the Captain and parked his tractor against the sandbag wall. He climbed down.

  “Anything more on the boy?” the Captain shouted.

  Sammy shook his head. “Is Cathy’s find a fishing lure like I figured?”

  “Not fishing,” said the Captain. “Look what I discovered.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a plastic bag protecting the object. “Here, under the light.”

  The Captain went to stand under one of the large site spots. Pete and the others came over. As he held the item in the light, he pointed out black marks on the object.

  “These scratches appear to me like a corroded part number.”

  “Part of what?” asked Sammy, spitting.

  “Not sure when I started. The number might be a code used on aircraft parts so I checked around.”

  He opened his briefcase and pulled out a large bound book. “I came up with this.” He opened the book to a page marked with a paper clip. “Boys, this is the parts schedule for a Republic P47 C Thunderbolt fighter aircraft, a model built in 1943 at Farmingdale, Long Island, New York.” He pointed to the center of the page. “Here, this shows part of the rear-landing wheel.”

  Rain came down suddenly, drenching them. Hank managed to cover the book with his arm. They moved back
closer to the light as the rain subsided.

  “Rain makes me feel unwelcome,” laughed the Captain.

  “I guess you aren’t,” said Sammy.

  The Captain went on, with Hank holding the book to the light. “Notice the casting for the tail wheel.” He put the bagged item against the page. The metal object was similar.

  “Allow for the corrosion, but I think it’s part of the strut assembly. Been buried here for a long time.”

  “How long?”

  “Don’t jump to any conclusions. Zinnie Allingham was not the only one to crash a P47 in this swamp. I think more than five of them went in here.”

  Will said, “They found all the other ones. She did fly a Model C on her last flight.”

  “You’re sure of all this?” asked Bob Johnny, from behind Will.

  The Captain nodded. “Will’s right. The other wrecks were all found. Over in the part of the swamp closest to the Bay.”

  “You think this is a wheel section, Captain?” asked Hank.

  “Seen enough of them, for sure. In the war lot of times we had to help fix them, too. This thing broke off a P47. I even lost this strut on my own fighter when I bounced her tail in landing.”

  “Aunt Zinnie’s plane,” said Will. “Sure I’d find it. Sure.”

  “Don’t get too excited, Will. This might still be a part fell off from those other wrecks,” said the Captain.

  “Yeah, but they were a couple of miles away from here, and the Army cleaned up all the wrecks,” said Will.

  The Captain continued, “I thought about those other lines in the earth.”

  “We’re still finding them,” said Hank.

  “I think they’re probably what’s left of control cables. Parts were broken clear of the fuselage when she came in. Might be the individual strands unraveled and rusted in those curved patterns.”