Easter Sunday (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 7)

  Easter Sunday

  A novel by

  Thomas Hollyday

  Easter Sunday by Thomas Hollyday

  All rights reserved

  Copyright Thomas Hollyday 2015

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  Publisher’s note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Published by Solar Sipper Publishing, Division of Happy Bird Corporation, PO Box 86, Weston, MA 02493

  ~ v1 ~

  EBook ISBN number 978-0-9854753-6-9

  “He saw the face of his son and was bewildered”

  - From an early German Christian poem

  about Joseph the father of Jesus

  Chapter One

  It was the day before Easter Sunday.

  Bobby looked up from his grandfather’s letter. He folded the pages and stared angrily at his father, Hank Green, who was beside him. Since opening this long awaited letter, to be read only on his twelfth birthday, the boy’s face had changed from anticipation to disappointment. Bobby took another moment to examine a pointed black metal object attached to the last page. It looked like a small black crucifix. Bobby inserted all back in the envelope.

  Hank watched with growing concern as Bobby crushed the letter into the pocket of his jeans. A white corner showed from under his oversize black and orange Brooks Robinson baseball shirt.

  The boy, thin and tall from baseball practice, turned to leave. He said slowly to himself, “Not never.” “Not never,” he repeated with emphasis, scuffing the wood floor of his father’s store. He strode outside, knocking over one of the carefully arranged pots of Hank’s prized white daffodils. Bobby stopped for a moment, bent down and set the pot back on its shelf.

  The boy reached the street outside and stood silhouetted in the hazy sunlight. Dark clouds grew in the southern sky. His friends waited on their bicycles. Cathy Allingham, another twelve-year-old, rangy and tall, yelled in her tough voice, “Hey, what did the letter say? Did your grandfather leave you some money for your birthday? Are you going to get a boat?”

  Bobby pedaled off without answering her and she followed, barely keeping up. The other friend, Richard Solomon, a chunky black boy, rushed after his friends, puffing weakly, “Wait up, you guys, wait up.”

  Hank, still surprised, ran to the door, calling down the tree-lined street. The children pedaled more than a hundred yards away. He called again, “Bobby, we have to talk about this. Come back!”

  The boy either didn’t hear or didn’t intend to stop.

  Hank looked after him.

  Whatever my father wrote was wrong. Twelve is too young to spring something distasteful on a kid.

  Not more than two hours later, the fire alarm went off.

  During Hank’s childhood, always when he heard that siren, he thought that his father, who had been Chief of the Volunteer Firemen, would be in danger. After Bobby’s birth, however, Hank changed his focus. He began to worry that instead it was Bobby who might be in danger.

  Hank listened as two rescue trucks roared out of town. He shook his head again about Bobby’s disappointment and anger at the letter. A few minutes later, he sat at his desk planning his annual stroll through town. He had done this for years. He had given daffodils to the town parks and took his walk to photograph them in the spring when they bloomed. He was a gardener, like his father had been, an average height, handsome man approaching middle age, still with all his hair and possessing a strong body kept tough by his outdoor work. He thought about the past years, his former wife, his young son, Bobby, his father and mother now gone, his friends, and the steady life he had found here. A song ran through his mind about the green grass of home, an old Vietnam song.

  The phone rang and the town fire alarm went off again, the two echoing against each other.

  The police dispatcher was on the line. “It’s your son, Mr. Green. There’s been an accident at the Wilderness.”

  Hank’s stomach lurched. All his concerns came back, the alarm ringing a tardy reminder that he should have gone after Bobby when his son left in such a distraught mood. He glanced at the wall clock as he ran through the store. Seven o’clock. It would soon be dark at the Wilderness, almost night. He grimaced as he thought of the letter again, that somehow it might have caused Bobby’s accident, made him careless, and affected his judgment.

  Outside it had begun to rain. In a few moments Hank was on the way, leaning over the steering wheel of his old white delivery truck. Its headlights shone weak in the road shadows, the engine racing as fast as it could.

  The Wilderness, a large swampland, was a few miles out of town. He anxiously scanned the road. Off to his right he finally saw what he had been searching for. The headlights flashed on the new Maryland State Road sign Great Wilderness Swamp National Wildlife Refuge. Behind it were the remaining graffiti covered stones of the former monument naming the wetland for a Confederate victory in Virginia in 1864.

  Hank turned, the vehicle leaning, almost on two wheels, as it entered the sandy, rain-puddled road. Between the overgrown hedgerows the vines and bushes scratched the truck metal. The cinder-block ranger station loomed on his left. Beyond the building was a large stand of towering loblolly pines leading to the swamp and the boat landing.

  Beside the road he saw the line of trees of various ages that his family had donated over the years to the swampland property. Hank’s father had planted them with him. Then, when Bobby was a child, Bobby had helped to place the trees. Behind them, far off, were the porch lights of Pete Smithfield’s farmhouse. He rounded another turn and ahead were the blinkers of fire trucks and rescue vehicles scattered along the sodden edge of Pete’s lower field.

  Hank pushed the old nursery truck harder and faster across the ruts, springs bumping, metal creaking, black earth spattering the white sides of the truck. Some of the plants stored in the back ready for delivery tomorrow tipped to the steel-ribbed floor. The tied stalks rolled back and forth with the pitching of the truck, earth spraying from the roots.

  Hank reached the landing and slid to a stop. He tore out of the front seat, leaving the headlights beaming ahead and the door open. He shook his head in frustration as he tried to run forward, slowed by the wet gusting wind. His clothes were soaked as he splashed across the wet ruts toward the small group of men by the dock.

  The glare from a burst of lightning only a few miles away lit the taut exhausted faces of the men.

  “Hank,” shouted Sammy, Chief of the River Sunday Volunteer Fire Department, his face wrinkled from years of working in the hot Maryland sun, his fire coat glistening from the rain. Hank saw Bobby’s red and white bike leaning against the fence by the pier.

  As if he were comforting Bobby, Hank stopped, and while the others waited, gently took a nearby tarpaulin to place over the wet metal frame of the bike. Then he turned, wiped his eyes, and walked quickly with Sammy toward a workboat thumping against the pilings as the open swamp water billowed in, driven by the gusts. Beyond the pier, the marsh stretched hundreds of yards through tall reeds. Swamp grass higher than a man circled treacherous tiny floating islands of mud. The swamp covered a vast area, over a h
undred square miles of wetland reaching to the Chesapeake Bay. These reeds hid the channels. The water appeared formidable especially when it was rough with the passing gusts, but actually the swamp was not deep. Hank knew the real danger was in the soft bottom. The federal wildlife scientists had taken core samples and found it mysteriously went down forty or more feet with no hard bottom discovered. They said that if a person got caught he might be sucked under and never found.

  Sammy said, leaning over the boat, “The two kids that were with Bobby, they’re up to Pete’s house, out of the wind.”

  “Where is Bobby?” Hank asked, his words quick, urgent.

  “He’s down in a cave under the old burial mound,” said Sammy.

  Sammy pressed the starter. The outboard turned over and misfired, a large cloud of white smoke blowing over the two men. He inspected the gasoline line and as he worked, he swore. Sammy was a gaunt man, his voice hoarse from cigarettes.

  “There,” he said. The engine roared spray out from the stern. Sammy added, over the noise of the engine, “I left a message for your ex-wife, too.”

  “Try Will Allingham,” said Hank, not shaking as much, more in control of himself.

  “They’re all up at her annual Easter Party.”

  “I guess I don’t understand about that anymore,” said Hank.

  “Wish your father was still alive,” yelled Sammy. “We’ll sure miss him in the crew today.”

  Hank nodded. All the firemen remembered his father. He had been the one they depended on in emergencies. Sammy had taken over the Department after Hank’s father died.

  The engine cavitated, losing its grip, then screamed with high-speed revolutions. Its propeller caught in the weed and then released, the burned oil smell of the exhaust drifting by. The rain eased to a weak drizzle as they headed out.

  “Dig him out is all I know,” said Sammy. “The kids said your boy mentioned some air blowing into his face just before the cave fell in. He mighta crawled back into a muskrat den, with air vents back under the ground.”

  “Maybe,” said Hank.

  “Don’t know,” answered Sammy, steering into another large swell.

  It was black night. As they went out from the dock Hank saw Sammy’s mouth swearing but the squall worked up, with some harder rain in patches, and the words were blasted into the wind. Sammy moved his free arm toward a larger distant island, a far row of trees, which were little more than shadows. The wind quieted for a moment and Hank could hear him.

  “Soft,” said Sammy.

  “Soft,” repeated Hank, as if he didn’t believe all this was happening.

  “Bad this spring,” said Sammy.

  “Might get Mudman to help,” said Hank, speaking of his closest friend, Henry Parks, a man who had been through high school then Vietnam with him. Mudman had taken over his family’s well drilling business and was an expert on working in wet soil.

  “Can’t depend on him.” Sammy shook his head, fighting the tiller against the current. He was referring to the fact that Mudman was usually drunk. The bow of the boat lifted then smashed down on another swell.

  “Bobby was just at the store a little while ago,” said Hank.

  Sammy answered, “You don’t expect kids to watch the weather.”

  The lights of the rescue party grew brighter as they approached. The beam reflections shattered as the rain pelted the swamp surface. The boat turned and twisted while Sammy wrestled to keep headway in the shallow and imperfect channel. Hank, in turn, leaned over the bow watching for sudden snags of broken tree limbs sticking up, sharp spears that would instantly put a hole in the thin metal hull.

  “You’re still in good water,” shouted Hank.

  The burial mound was on an island hidden again behind high reeds. The boat turned around another curve in the channel. The spray hit Hank in the face and as soon as he wiped the drips away, more flooded him with its salty taste and swamp smell.

  They passed another stand of reeds and the way opened to the island. He could see lights again. He could also hear chainsaws. This was a true island, although too small to have a name on the maps of the Chesapeake Bay. Still, it was a landmass, not like the plots of grass that floated throughout the swamp and often sank as they were stepped on. This land was different in that it was firm and did not move or float. There had been more land to the island when Hank was a child. Over the years, marsh had gradually invaded the drier land. Surviving on what was left were the same tall loblolly pines, stretched in a line like warriors on guard with the irregular needled branches their weapons. The trees were bending hard against the gusts. Along the shoreline of the island were the dozens of holes, usually only a few inches in diameter, where the muskrats had their tunnels.

  In the center of the island was the burial mound, the only property still owned by Jimmy Swift’s tribe. The place was sacred, dedicated to ancient chiefs of the tribe, those who had fought bravely in tribal wars over the surrounding land. Jimmy Swift was the last of the Nanticokes worshipping the swamp island. The mound was covered with marsh grass and small bushes and flanked by pines. It was about two hundred feet long and more across, at least a thousand feet around, rising fifteen feet or more above the water level and ten feet over the island. Around it the rest of the island was a chaos of inlets and tiny hills and gullies, reeds and trees. The whole of the dry land measured about four hundred yards across and more than a thousand yards in circumference, so that the mound was much smaller. A line of men in fire coats filled sandbags on one of the dry spots beside the sacred hill.

  The boat sliced into the beach and stopped, its bow a good foot into the crush of reeds at the shore. Hank stood up quickly and, jumping out of the craft, pulled the bow further up while Sammy shut down the engine.

  “We’re putting up bags as much as we can, Hank,” he said.

  The men were constructing a barrier to keep the mound dry. Small work lights barely illuminating the area were around the mound. Other men were cutting back what remained of a large fallen pine. Sammy pointed to where they had already started digging a trench into the end of the mound and laying sandbags to keep back the tide.

  “That’s where he is, somewhere down in there,” he said.

  Hank ran toward the lights and past the line of firemen. As he moved ahead, his body bent against the gusting wind, he saw Pete, some called him Old Pete, standing on top of a wall of sandbags. Like the patriarch Moses, Pete was directing the barrier construction. He was a tall, distinctive black man with white hair and a grizzled beard.

  Hank climbed up through the slippery earth to stand next to Pete. The large man put his big hand on Hank’s shoulder, his voice soft with a slight drawl. “Hank, Sammy’ll get him out.”

  Close by the edge of the mound the pines were swaying with the winds. Pete pointed at the large tree that had been cut away from the mound. “That was the pine sealed Bobby off when it come down. Figure it forced him further into the mound.”

  Bob Johnny, the Ranger, a young man with a short beard, stepped forward from the darkness, a dripping shovel in his right hand. His face was shrouded by a yellow plastic windbreaker, and, when he spoke to Hank, he sounded only a little older than Bobby, “It’s like a pile of jelly; we dig and it falls right back in.”

  “I’ve seen it like this before,” said Pete. “Top of the mound sinks right in under you.”

  Bob Johnny went on, “He could be far inside, a hundred feet.”

  Hank felt the ooze under his shoes. Sammy had come up from the boat and announced, “Baltimore weather says storm’s main winds are still south, moving up from Norfolk. Airport’s shut down.”

  Hank climbed up the sodden embankment. Bob Johnny was pacing back and forth and said, “We could put a hundred men out here digging for ten hours and we’d be lucky to clear out a quarter of this mound.”

  Sammy said, “If we had time, we’d build a cofferdam, then excavate. Best we can do is filling sandbags. There’s some instruments might pick his up body heat but can�
�t get them either. Nothing we can get over from Baltimore in this weather.”

  “Jimmy was here first thing. Jimmy always hears about things, don’t know how,” said Pete. “He told me to do what we have to do to get Bobby out. He says there’s too many dead already in that mound.”

  “That old man is not the only person who says what about the mound,” said Bob Johnny.

  “Yeah, but his people are the owners and you Park Rangers aren’t, Bob Johnny,” said Pete. “What do you want to do? Just walk away?”

  “Hank, I marked where we think the entrance was.” Pete pointed to a stick planted in the side of the hill. “Jimmy said he’d be back when we need him, whatever that means.”

  “I want to see for myself. Just let me see,” Hank said, his voice breaking. He clambered in front of the team digging the trench and grabbed handfuls of the wet earth in a frenzy of trying to get at his son.

  Pete called to him, “You can’t do it by yourself.”

  Hank moved slowly back, his clothes covered with the slippery black mire. He remembered the baby boy in his arms. He was a younger man again carefully holding the new child. He held the bottle to the boy’s lips and watched as the smile came over the little face. There was a trust in those little eyes that the father would not let the child fall down, would not let the child get hurt, ever get hurt.

  The image faded. He blinked, tears in his eyes.

  “If Jimmy Swift isn’t concerned, I am,” said Bob Johnny, staring at Sammy, his voice beginning to shrill.

  Hank stared at him and started to clench his fist as he realized the ranger was more concerned about the destruction of the swamp and his job than the survival of his son.

  Pete said, “Don’t pay him any attention, Hank.” He addressed the park ranger, who was at least a third of his age. “You leave your kid down there if you were in this mess?”

  “No,” said Bob Johnny, not meeting Hank’s eyes.