White’s Ferry by Jeremy Nathan Marks

I worked the ferry for years. It used to be that people would come at all hours and in all weathers to cross. Now they just come between sunup and sundown.

I worked the ferry over ice. I recall moving that platform back and forth, keeping a channel open. I did it for the wagons and the cars that were drawn by horses because people’d run out of gas. I don’t think I stood still for four days.

We’ve got many rules now, like no horses on the ferry. And I’m not allowed to fish while working. I used to stay fed on bass and trout, now I can’t. It saved me a packet once. And drinking’s not allowed either. I told the owner that drink is the cheapest way to keep working. I got arthritis and tendonitis, any itis you like, and drink takes care of it all. She said, no can do. The law is the law, and the law would take her license away. I said, “Then how’s anyone going to cross the river?” She said the government would run the ferry.

I tell you, when there was ice, and I didn’t sleep, the government never knew.

And once it was a hundred degrees ten days straight. People kept coming and going at all hours just to be by the water. It didn’t cool off at night because the river’s got hot dark breath. People say when it’s hot as Hades the first thing you want’s to get to is water. They’re thinking about the ocean, not the river. Ten days and I barely had time for a cold drink. I couldn’t sleep either, and the government didn’t know that.

The river’s been my life. I never married. People used to call on me all hours, and that was like a marriage. I even rescued a woman who fell in and didn’t come up. I told my passengers to hold the line tight and not let the barge move, then I fished her out of the thalweg. She stuck her tongue in my mouth when I tried to put some air in her lungs. She called me handsome, said she’d move in with me and make me all my meals, but I said no.

I’ve had one love in this life, and it wasn’t the river. It’s the ferry.

Jeremy Nathan Marks lives among the Great Lakes. Recent poetry and prose appears/will appear in places like Studio One, The Medley, Fifty Word Stories, Right Hand Pointing, and Commuter Lit among other places.

Photo courtesy of Jeremy Nathan Marks

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