The Thicket Read Free

and could hold a good bit of horses and such, and the man who was managing it was a big, hatless, redheaded fellow, like me. He was waiting for a wagon pulled by two big white horses to roll off the ferry, and when that was done he closed up the gate, started pulling on one of the ropes that was hooked to a trolley rig, and began drawing the ferry back across.
    The ferry was new, built as of recent, and the ferryman was having a hard time of it. There was something about his motions that made me think he was new to the process, as if it were a recent trade he had taken up. We waited on him to get to our side, and when he did, he threw a kind of wooden brake on the rope and let down the hatch on our bank of the river. He stepped out on solid ground in a manner that made him look as if he were standing on peg legs, which was for me another clue to his newness to the profession. Grandpa gave me the lines, got off the wagon, and walked over to him. I could hear them talking.
    “What happened to the bridge?” Grandpa said.
    “Burnt down,” said the ferryman.
    “I can see that. When?”
    “Oh, a month ago thereabouts.”
    “How?”
    “Caught on fire.”
    “I know it caught on fire, but how did it catch on fire?”
    “I can’t say.”
    “Is someone going to build it back?”
    “I ain’t,” said the ferryman.
    “Guess not. How much?”
    “Two bits.”
    Grandpa stared at the ferryman as if he had just asked him if he’d like a stick in the eye. “Two bits? You are surely exaggerating.”
    “Nope,” said the ferryman. “Don’t think so. If exaggerating means I might be saying a price I don’t mean, I ain’t doing that, not even a little bit.”
    “That’s highway robbery,” Grandpa said.
    “No, sir. That’s the fee to cross this river on my brand-new ferry,” said the ferryman, scratching at his red hair. “You don’t want to pay, you can go on up five miles and cross in the shallows. But you do that, you got a rough patch before you can get on a trail that will then lead to the road, say, a mile or so later. It would be a tough go for a wagon.”
    “I need to get across now,” Grandpa said. “Not five miles from now.”
    “Well, then you’re going to need to pay two bits, now, aren’t you? You could maybe swim the horses across, but it’s too deep for a wagon, and to float it, you’d have to cut trees and tie them to the sides, and that would take more time and effort than you might want to do with. Besides, I bet you ain’t got an ax, and I don’t loan any. So now that leaves you with the other choices, going that five miles to the shallows or turning around.” The ferryman held out his hand.
    Grandpa pushed his hat up on his head, letting his wild gray hair escape. “Very well, but I do it under protest, and with the warning to you that God does not like a thief.”
    “It’s the toll—nothing thieving about it. It’s just more than you want to pay, and God ain’t needing to cross the river. You are. Now, you want on or don’t you?”
    Grandpa dug in his pocket like he was reaching down in some dark mine for the last piece of coal left in the world, and pulled out his hand with two bits in it, slapped it on the ferryman’s palm, and came back to the wagon. He appeared more upset about that toll than he was about putting his son and daughter-in-law in the ground earlier that day.
    He climbed up on the wagon and sat there for a moment, looked up at the sky. “I reckon we could go five miles, but that storm looks to be coming quick, so I gave him his overpriced fee, and I’ll let him live in God’s judgment.”
    “Yes, sir,” I said.
    “I think he burnt that bridge to build that ferry,” Grandpa said as he looked down at the ferryman. “He looks to me like a man who would do that, don’t you think? Not a God-fearing man at all.”
    “I don’t know, sir,” I said. “If you say so.”
    “I say so, but we need to cross. And when we get on the ferry, mind the ferryman and keep