Lower River Street was not paved with stone. It was paved with the piled up wreckage of twelve winters of unmeasured silt, coal melted rock waste, and rotted hemlock corduroy.
The street ran along the southern embankment of the Black River, following the natural curve of the river-bed basin where the water slowed before entering the weir channels. On either side, two-story apartments built of rough-sawn pine and salvaged barge timber leaned toward one another across the alleyways like rows of drunken mourners. The second-story floor beams projected four feet beyond the lower walls, their moss-covered brackets nearly meeting in the center of the lane, cutting off what little surrounding light bled down from the cloud canopy and turning the muddy thoroughfare into a dark, underground tunnel.
Len walked with his shortened sounding pole tapping two paces ahead of his boots. The brass metal ring, notched and scarred from the granite well, probed the sludge: squelch, clack, squelch.
His Road Sense traced the rotting timber ties buried beneath eight inches of freezing black mud. The wood was spongy, soaked with rotten-egg runoff that smelled of old salt water and tannery lime. In places, the corduroy had rotted through entirely. That left deep voids where cold river water pooled beneath the surface crust. Every jolt sent a dull, throbbing ache through his braced left forearm. But he kept his pace steady, his boots finding the solid crown of the buried stringers with gut courier care.
