Verily leaned his face against the bars, closed his eyes.
“Are you unwell?” asked Alvin.
“Sick with the thrill of at last staring knowledge in the face,” said Verily. “Sick with it. Faint with it.”
“Well, don't puke on the floor, I'll have to smell it all night.” Then Alvin grinned.
“I was thinking more of fainting,” said Verily. “Not Makepeace, or anyone else who's living in a… black lie. Makes me wonder about my opponent, Mr. Daniel Webster.”
“Don't know him,” said Alvin. “Might be an honest man, for all I know. A lying man might have an honest attorney, don't you think?”
“He might,” said Verily. “But such a combination would only work to destroy the lying man in the end.”
“Well hell, Verily, a lying man destroys himself in the end every time anyway.”
“Do you know that? I mean, the way you know the plow is alive?” asked Verily.
“I reckon not,” said Alvin. “But I have to believe it's true, or how could I trust anybody?”
“I think you're right, in the long run,” said Verily. “In the long run, a lie ties itself in knots and eventually people come to see that it's a lie. But the long run is very, very long. Longer than life. You could be long dead before the lie dies, Alvin.”
“You warning me of something in particular?” asked Alvin.
“I don't think so,” said Verily. “The words just sounded like something I had to say and you had to hear.”
“You said them. I heard them.” Alvin grinned. “Good night, Verily Cooper.”
“Good night, Alvin Smith.”
Peggy Larner got to the ferry bright and early in the morning, wearing her urgency like a tight corset so she could hardly breathe. White Murderer Harrison was going to be president of the United States. She had to talk to Alvin, and this river, this Hio, was standing in her way.
But the ferry was on the other side of the river, which made perfect sense, since the farmers on the other side would need to have it earliest, to bring their goods to market. So she had to wait, urgency or not. She could see the ferry already being poled along, tied to a metal ring that slid along the cable that crossed the river some forty feet overhead. Only that frail connection kept the whole thing from being washed downriver, and she imagined that when the river was in flood they didn't run the ferry at all some days, since even if the cable were strong enough, and the ring, and the rope, there'd be no trees strong enough to tie the ends to without fear of one or the other of them pulling out of the ground. Water was not to be tamed by cables, rings, or ropes, any more than dams or bridges, hulls or rafts, pipes or gutters, roofs or windows or walls or doors. If she had learned anything in her early years of looking out for Alvin, it was the untrustworthiness of water, the sneakiness of it.
There was the river to be crossed, though, and she would cross it.
As so many others had crossed. She thought of how many times her father had snuck down to the river and taken a boat across to rescue some runaway slave and bring him north to safety. She thought of how many slaves had come without help to this water, and, not knowing how to swim, had either despaired and waited for the Finders or the dogs to get them, or struck out anyway, breasting the water until their feet found no purchase on the bottom mud and they were swept away. The bodies of such were always found on some downriver bank or bar or snag, made white by the water, bloated and horrible in death; but the spirit, ah, the spirit was free, for the owner who thought he owned the woman or the man, that owner had lost his property, for his property would not be owned whatever it might cost. So the water killed, yes, but just reaching this river meant freedom of one kind or another to those who had the courage or the rage to take it.
Harrison, though, would take away all meaning from this river. If his laws came to be, the slave who crossed would still be a slave no matter what; only the slave who died would be free.
One of the ferrymen, the one poling on this side, he looked familiar to her. She had met him before, though he'd not been missing an ear then, nor had he any kind of scar on his face. Now a gash marked him with a faint white line, a little puckering and twisting at the eyebrow and the lip. It had been a wicked fight. Once no one had been able to lay a hand of harm on this rough man, and in the sure knowledge of that he had been a bully. But someone took that lifelong hex away from him. Alvin had fought this man, fought him in defense of Peggy herself, and when the fight was, done, this river rat had been undone. But not completely, and he was alive still, wasn't he?
“Mike Fink,” she said softly when he stepped ashore.
He looked sharp at her. “Do I know you, ma'am?”
Of course he didn't. When they met before, not two years ago, she was covered in hexes that made her look many years older. “I don't expect you to remember me,” she said. “You must take many thousands of people a year across the river.”
He helped her hoist her traveling bags onto the ferry. “You'll want to sit in the middle of the raft, ma'am.” She sat down on the bench that ran the middle of the raft. He stood near her, waiting, while another couple of people sauntered over to the ferry– locals, obviously, since they had no luggage.
“A ferryman now,” she said.
He looked at her.
“When I knew you, Mike Fink, you were a full-fledged river rat.”
He smiled wanly. “You was that lady,” he said. “Hexed up six ways to Tuesday.”
She looked at him sharply. “You saw through them?”
“No ma'am. But I could feel them. You watched me fight that Hatrack River boy.”
“I did.”
“He took away my mother's hex,” said Mike.
“I know.”
“I reckon you know damn near everything.”
She looked at him again. “You seem to be abundant in knowledge yourself, sir.”
“You're Peggy the torch, of Hatrack River town. And the boy as whupped me and stole my hex, he's in jail in Hatrack now, for stealing gold off'n his master when he was a prentice smith.”
“And I suppose that pleases you?” asked Peggy.
Mike Fink shook his head. “No ma'am.”
And in truth, as she looked into his heartfire, she saw no future in which he harmed Alvin.
“Why are you still here? Not ten miles from Hatrack Mouth, where he shamed you?”
“Where he made a man of me,” said Mike.
She was startled then, for sure. “That's how you think of it?”
“My mother wanted to keep me safe. Tattooed a hex right into my butt. But what she never thought of was, what kind of man does it make a fellow, to never get hurt no matter what harm he causes to others? I've killed folks, some bad, but some not so bad. I've bit off ears and noses and broken limbs, too, and all the time I was doing it, I never cared a damn, begging your pardon, ma'am. Because nothing ever hurt me. Never touched me.”
“And since Alvin took away your hex, you've stopped hurting people?”
“Hell no!” Mike Fink said, then roared with laughter. “Why, you sure don't know a thing about the river, do you! No, every last man I ever beat in a fight had to come find me, soon as word spread that a smith boy whupped me and made me howl! I had to fight every rattlesnake and weasel, every rat and pile of pigshit on the river all over again. You see this scar on my face? You see where my hair hangs straight one side of my head? That's two fights I damn near lost. But I won the rest! Didn't I, Holly!”
The other ferryman looked over. “I wasn't listening to your brag, you pitiful scab-eating squirrel-fart,” he said mildly.