Izzy gets into an argument with a guy in a 1989 Lincoln in the parking lot near the C&O canal. Later, he goes for a little rid.
Then he drove off faster than he’d arrived. The 1989 Lincoln Mark VII had the spare-wheel bump in the trunk, which would remind some people of Secret Service agents climbing up the back of a Lincoln in Dallas to shepherd the lady in pink back to her seat. It was a design lost in the 1970s, all boxy and rectangular, with an iron-pumper’s stance. The roofline tried to lift the car visually, but there was just too much holding it down, rooted in steel, flexing its muscles.
I couldn’t remember whether anyone had previously said they’d thrown a cigarette into the street just because the window was open.
Along the C&O canal, there is a mule-drawn canal barge for tourists, a lot like the one in New Hope. I watched from the towpath as the barge captain began his spiel for the modern generation of canal-history buffs.
A mule not far from me shat. The teenager dressed in 19th-century clothes who walked along the towpath with the mules didn’t seem to notice.
The barge crew moved to pull in the gangplank that connected them to dry ground. It crossed my mind that I would like to try vaulting across a canal to a barge before I die.
Instead, I dashed to step on the gangplank before it was unmoored, and I boarded the barge.
When they pulled in the board, we were tethered to the land only by ropes pulled taught by a pair of honest, god-fearing mules. We lightened up on the cushion of fluid that held us free off the earth. Free of the cares of life, I settled into an old wooden barge-pew worn warm by generations of lore-seeking tourists like myself, and with my new shipmates set off for barbarous coasts.
