The Ferryman

The crossing lay half a day short of where the map said it would be, and by the time the river came into view the charcoal already knew what it would have to say. Snowmelt had swollen the water to something with a different voice than the noise it made further down, and the ferry, when it came into sight around a bend, sat well upstream of where a careful ink line said it ought to be.

The Ferryman was coiling wet rope on the far bank and did not hurry over. When he finally poled across, empty, and the wayfarer held out the map already opening a stick of charcoal, he only glanced at the sheet and said the crossing had moved after a flood some springs back and nobody had gotten around to redrawing that part of it.

"You're not the first to bring me that particular argument with the paper," he said. "Mark it if you like. Won't move the water back either way."

The wayfarer marked it, a rough stroke of black above the ink line, and asked when they might cross, thinking of the day's plan and how far there was still to walk before dark.

"When the water says." He nodded at the surge coming down brown and fast around the bend, carrying a branch end over end. "Not before. I've lost enough gear trying to argue with a river on the wrong afternoon."

There was nothing to do but wait, and the wayfarer did it badly at first, pacing the bank, checking the light, asking twice more when. The Ferryman kept coiling rope, checking the load line on the ferry's rail, feeding the goats tied at the landing, and answered the second asking the same as the first. By the third hour the wayfarer stopped pacing and sat down on a rock, watching the water instead.

Toward evening the surge eased. The Ferryman waved the wayfarer aboard along with a farmer's cart of onions bound for the far side, and paid out the guide rope that ran the crossing bank to bank, strung above the current its whole length.

"Hold that," he said, nodding at the rope where it ran through an iron ring at the ferry's bow. "Not like you mean to keep it."

The wayfarer took hold with both hands and closed a fist around it the moment the current caught the ferry broadside, the rope suddenly alive and dragging hard against the ring. Within a dozen strokes the palm was burning, a bright line of heat where the wet rope tried to run and the fist refused it.

"Let it move through your hand," the Ferryman said, working the pole against the current without looking over. "It has to run with the surge or it takes your skin instead. Hold it loose enough to feel it going and it won't fight you."

The wayfarer eased the grip, just enough, and the rope began sliding through the loosely closed hand instead of tearing at it, the heat dropping to something bearable, the ferry answering the current instead of arguing with it the rest of the way across. It was not comfortable. It was only no longer burning.

On the far bank the Ferryman's own palms, when he tied off, showed old marks the same shape as the one now rising on the wayfarer's hand, pale ridges crossing the lines of both palms.

"Every season for a while," he said, when he saw where the wayfarer was looking, and went back to checking the mooring.

He helped the farmer walk the cart of onions off the ferry, coiled the guide rope for the return, and was already poling off for another load before the wayfarer had finished rubbing the heat out of one palm. The road went on from the landing, and the wayfarer went with it in the last of the light.

This is a teaching-story. It happened nowhere, and it happens all the time.