Outer Dark(41)

You don’t have to swap ends?

Nope. They both the same. You just change your lines thataway and here she comes.

That’s pretty slick, Holme said.

Yes tis. Don’t cost nary cent neither.

Did your daddy think it up?

Naw. Folks say he done but he never. He seen one like it somewheres.

It’s pretty slick.

Yep. Just change them lines is all they is to it. If you was to set em both the same you wouldn’t go nowheres.

No.

Might bust the cable.

Yes.

The ferryman sat down from off his haunches and stretched his feet in the grass. Cable busted once and killed a horse. They said they was a man holdin it and it knocked the horse plumb in the river and left him standin there holdin the reins.

He was lucky, Holme said.

The ferryman nodded. Yes, he said. It wasn’t even his horse.

I wish one would come on now, Holme said. I’m gettin cool.

We don’t get somebody directly we might ort to have a fire.

I doubt they be much dry wood about.

Well, maybe somebody be along directly.

Yes.

If it was saturday they’d be here. It’s a sight in the world the traffic I get on a saturday.

What day is it? Holme said.

I don’t know, the ferryman said. It ain’t saturday.

They sat in the grass and watched the river run in the dark as if something were expected there. Yes, said the ferryman. She is risin.

Been a sight of rain up here too I reckon.

Yes. Risky to run at night when she’s high thataway. Easy to get stove with a tree or somethin.

I guess it would, Holme said.

She scoots acrost like a striped-assed ape when the river’s up.

I guess it’s up pretty high now.

Yes. Hush a minute.

Holme listened.

The ferryman rose. Here we go, he said.

Is they someone comin?

Listen.

He listened. When the horse came out on the hard ground of the bluff above the river he could hear its hoofs clatter dead along the road, a sound moving sourceless through the dark, no silhouette among the sparse trees of the ridge, no horseman against the night sky. The ferryman had gone to the barge and was making ready to cast off. The rider above them faded out of hearing and Holme knew that he was coming down the road toward the river in the soft mud and after a while he could hear the chink of the horse’s trappings and the animal’s windy breathing in the dark and then they came out on the landing, visible against the river, the rider leading the horse. He could hear the ferryman say something and the rider said no, and the ferryman said something else and the rider said no again. You’ve got another fare there.

Holme rose and stretched and made his way across the mud to the ferry. The rider was leading the horse aboard, the horse with knees high and head jerking up nervously and its hoofs clopping woodenly on the ferry deck until the man got him forward and tethered. Holme boarded and got his dime out and handed it to the ferryman. The ferryman nodded and swung his rope and made it fast and the boat began to quiver and to move very slowly out, the eyerings riding on the cable overhead with a rasping sound and water beginning to boil against the hull. The river was dark and oily and it tended away into nothing, no shoreline, the sky grading into a black wash little lighter than the water about them so that they seemed to hang in some great depth of darkness like spiders in a well.

Holme had taken a seat on a bench that ran under the gunwale at the rear of the barge. He reached down and trailed one hand for a moment palmdown in the cold water as if to check his balance. The ferryman was standing riskily on the afterdeck adjusting the ropes. They had begun to move very fast and the water against the upriver hull was raging and he could feel the ferry shuddering under him.

She goes right along, don’t she, he called to the ferryman above the howling water, but the ferryman was busy at his ropes, his mariner’s cap skewed on his head, watching upward at the cable beneath which they ran and where the rings were now screeching in a demented fiddlenote. At the front of the boat the horse snorted and nickered and clapped one hoof on the boards. When Holme looked back to the ferryman again he appeared to be dancing among his ropes and Holme could hear him swearing steadily. He stood up. They seemed to be in high wind and water was blowing over the deck. The river was breaking violently on the canted flank of the boat, a perpetual oncussion of black surf that rode higher until it began to override the rail and fall aboard with great slapping sounds. Holme could no longer hear the ferryman. They were careening through the night wildly. The ferryman leaped to the deck and ran forward. The horse stamped and sidled. The ferryman sprang at the forward ropes. Water was now pouring across the rail and Holme had jumped to the rear capstan where he balanced as best he could and looked about him in wonder. They appeared to be racing sideways upriver against the current. The barge shuddered heavily and a sheet of water came rearward and circled the capstan and fanned with a thin hiss. Then there was a loud explosion and something passed above their heads screaming and then there was silence. The ferry lurched and came about and the wall of water receded and they were drifting in windless calm and total dark.