Outer Dark (11 page)

THE ROAD MADE
a switchback at the top of the hill and then ran along the ridge so that following it he had a long time to watch the river below him, slow and flat, a dead clay color and wrinkling viscously in the late afternoon light. The road was good until it started down the bluff and then it was washed out again and muddy and plugged with the tracks of mired horses or men or small things that had crossed it in the night. When the road reached the river it went right on into the water and he could see that the water was up. There was a heavy timbered scaffold and a ferrycable running from it out across the river, bellying almost into the current and rising again at the far side. A voice was coming from the far side too but he could not understand what it said. After a while he saw a man come from the ferry and stand on the bank and put his hands to his mouth and then in a minute came the voice again faint with distance. It was just a voice with no words to it. He cupped his own hands to shout but he could think of nothing to shout so he let them fall again and after a while the man went back to the ferry and he couldn’t see him any more.

Holme found a dry place in the grass to sit and he watched the river. It was very high and went past with a dull hiss like poured sand. The air had turned cool and the sky looked gray and wintry. Some birds came upriver, waterbirds with long necks, and he watched them. After a while he slept.

When he woke it was growing late and he could see the ferry on the river. What woke him was a horse and when he turned to look there was a man at the landing holding the reins while the horse drank in the river. Holme rose and stretched himself. Howdy, he said.

Howdy, the man said.

You goin acrost?

No, he said. He was watching the ferry.

Holme rubbed his palms together and hunched his shoulders in the cold.

He thinks I am, the rider said.

He does?

Yes. He jerked the horse’s head up and ran his palm along its neck. You reckon that’s half way, he said.

What’s that? Holme said.

The man pointed. The ferry yander. You reckon she’s half way here?

Holme watched the ferry coming quarterwise toward them with the snarl of water breaking on the upriver side of her hull. Yes, he said. I allow he’s a bit nigher here than yander.

That’s right, the man said. Hard to tell where half way is on a river unless you’re in the middle of it. He pulled the horse’s head around and put one toe in the stirrup and mounted upward all in one motion and went back up the road in a mudsucking canter.

The ferry was the size of a small keelboat. It slowed in the slack shore currents and nosed easily into the mud. The ferryman was standing on the forward deck adjusting the ropes.

Howdy, Holme said.

You still cain’t cross. You a friend of that son of a bitch?

Him? No. I was asleep and he come up.

I’m fixin to get me one of them spyglasses anyways, the ferryman said. He came from the barge deck with a little hop and seized up nearly to his knees in the soft mud and cursed and kicked his boots about and made his way to the higher ground. Yes, he said. One of them spyglasses put a stop to that old shit. He was raking his boots in the grass to clean them. He wore a little leather vest and a strange sort of hat that appeared vaguely nautical. Holme chewed on a weed and watched him.

Little old spyglass be just the thing to fix him with, the man said.

What all does he do? Holme said.

The ferryman looked at him. Do? he said. You seen him. Just like that. He does it all the time. Been doin it for two year now. All on account of a little argument. Sends his old lady over to Morgan for him. I ort by rights to quit haulin her fat ass.

Holme nodded his head vaguely.

So anyway you still cain’t cross till I get a horse.

All right, Holme said.

People is just a dime. Horses is four bits.

All right.

I cain’t afford to make no crossin for no dime.

No. How long do ye reckon it’ll be afore a horse comes?

I couldn’t say, mister.

I ain’t seen many people usin this road.

Sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t. It was busy yesterday evenin. I ain’t never been more’n a day or two without somebody come along.

Day or two? Holme said.

They be somebody along directly.

I sure would hate to have to wait any day or two.

They ort to be somebody along directly.

It’s nigh dark now, Holme said.

They come of a night same as they do of a day, the ferryman said. It’s all the same to me. You goin to Morgan?

If it’s yan side of this river and in the road I’m goin thew it.

Good little old town, Morgan. Say you ain’t never been there?

No, Holme said.

Good little old town, the ferryman said again. He squatted in the grass, looking out over the river. Say you don’t aim to lay over there?

No, Holme said. I don’t reckon.

Well, I don’t ast nobody their business.

Holme sat and crossed the boots before him. He plucked a grass stem and fashioned a loop in one end. It was growing dark rapidly. The river hissing blackly past the landing seemed endowed with heavy reptilian life.

She’s still risin, the ferryman said

Yes.

Say you just goin thew Morgan?

I don’t know, Holme said. They any work there?

The ferryman spat and wiped his mouth on his knee. What sort of work? he said.

I don’t know, Holme said. He knotted the stem and snapped it. I ain’t choicey.

You ain’t got nary trade?

No.

I don’t know. Might find somethin. Nice enough little old town, Morgan.

Is that your home?

Yep. Borned and raised there. My daddy built this here ferry. I guess you come from over in Clayton County.

No, Holme said.

He could no longer see the ferryman’s face and the ferryman didn’t say anything for a while. With the dark the river grew louder and Holme wondered if the water was rising or if it was just the dark.

She runs just on the current I reckon you noticed, the ferryman said.

What?

I said she runs on the current if you’ve not seen such a ferry afore.

No, Holme said. I ain’t.

I allowed maybe you’d not. What you do is you snug up the front and let out the back on a loose line so she noses upriver and the water just pushes her right acrost. Then when ye want to come back you just loose up the snug end and snug up the loose and here she comes.

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.

Holme splashed forward. There was no sound. Ho, he called. He could see nothing. He felt his way along the gunwale. Something reared up out of the dark before him with a strangled cry and he fell to the deck, scrabbling backwards as the hoofs sliced past him and burst against the planking. He clambered crabwise back along the deck, wet now and very cold. Ho there, he called. Nothing answered. It’s tied, he said. But it wasn’t tied. When he crossed to the other side he heard it go down the deck and whinny and crash and then he heard it coming back. His eyeballs ached. He dropped to the deck and crawled beneath the rail, up in the scuppers, and the horse pounded past and crashed in the bow. He pulled himself up and started for the rear of the barge and then he heard it coming again. He clawed at the darkness before him, cursing, throwing himself to the deck again while the horse went past with a sound like pistolfire. He waited, his cheek against the cold wood. The barge drifted, swung slowly about, trembling. A race of water wandered over the deck, ran coldly upon him, in his shirt and down his boots and receded again. He could not hear the horse. He could hear the sandy seething of the river beneath him. After a while he rose and started back up the deck. A black fog had set in and he could feel it needling on his face and against his blind eyeballs. When the horse came at him the third time he flattened himself half crazed against the forward bulkhead and howled at it. The horse reared before him black and screaming, the hoofs exploding on the planks. He could smell it. It yawned past him and crashed and screamed again and there was an enormous concussion of water and then nothing. As if all that fury had been swallowed up in the river traceless as fire. The barge rocked gently and ceased. Holme slid to the deck, gasping, his two fists together against his chest. He raised his head and listened to the silence. When he was sure it had gone he rose cautiously and made his way to the bow, unbalanced and staggering in such blackness. With his hands on the rails he leaned and looked down toward the water. The river mouthed the hull gently. After a minute he realized he was standing on something and he reached down to pick it up. It was a boot. He held it in his hands for a moment. Then he leaned and dropped it into the water. The boot tilted and filled and sank instantly as if a hand in the river had claimed it. He felt very cold.

He did not know what to do. He groped his way along to the benches and sat and hugged himself and rocked back and forth. He could hear the whisper of water going up and down over the deck. It sounded as if it were looking for him. After a while he cupped his hands and hallooed into the night. There was not even an echo. His voice fell from his mouth in a chopped bark and he did not call again. He wondered how far away the shore could be, and the dawn.