The Ferry Pilot

If Watermelon Z is your strain, this is your sign: the Ferry Pilot. A rope ferry midstream on the hottest afternoon of the summer, empty on the green water, and you hauling on the rope with both gloved hands, the answering bell at your belt.

If Watermelon Z is your strain

You run the crossing. Not the river, which runs itself, and not either bank, which have opinions; just the stretch of green water in between and the rope that gets people over it. You like the in-between. You like being the reason two sides meet, and you like that nobody can say for certain whose side you are on.

You move hand over hand, at the speed the river allows, which is never as fast as people want and always fast enough. When a bell rings you answer it, once, so they know they have been heard, and then you take exactly as long as the water takes. You have never been late and you have never once run. You do not hurry a passenger, and you do not hurry a melon to be cold.

At your best you make the far side feel near. People step off your ferry a little cooler and a little lighter than they stepped on, and they could not tell you why, except that you laughed at the right moment, the river was green, and the melons knocked against the hull as if they were in on the joke. Strangers tell you things in the middle of the river that they would never say on either bank.

Your flaw is that you never pick a bank. Both landings say the ferry started on their side, both have painted it on a board, and you have spent years agreeing with whichever one you are standing next to. It keeps the peace. It is also a small cowardice, and you know it, and you laugh about it, which helps less than you think.

What you need is a long rope, a slow river, a net of melons going cold in the current, and one bell on the far bank that means it. Give you that, and everybody gets across.

Your hour: Three-forty, the hottest part of the afternoon
Your place: Midstream, where the rope dips lowest
Your object: The brass bell on the far landing
Your tempo: Hand over hand
Your weather: High summer, heat haze on the water
Your flaw: You never pick a bank

Your people

The Mountain Elder (Hindu Kush)The Mountain Elder’s snow is in your river by August, which is why the melons get cold. You have never met, and each of you suspects the other is in no hurry, correctly.
The Funky Gourmet (Blue Cheese)The Funky Gourmet throws the parties; you bring the melons, river-cold, and slip away before he can make you dance.
Cindy at Midnight (Cinderella 99)Cindy runs for the last crossing every night and makes it every night, because you wait, and you tell her you weren’t waiting.

Things you say

Ring once. I heard you.
The river isn’t slow. It’s on time.
Both banks are right. It depends which way you’re going.
You can’t hurry a melon to be cold.
Nobody ever crossed a river by arguing with it.

A scene from your world

The three-forty crossing

Three-forty is the hottest part of the afternoon at the crossing, and the Ferry Pilot spends it sitting on the edge of the ferry with his feet in the river and his hat over his eyes. The ferry is a flat wooden deck big enough for two bicycles and a cart, tied up at the near landing. The rope runs from a post beside him, out over the green water, to a post on the far bank, dipping low in the middle where the current leans on it. Off the downstream side hangs the melon net, six striped watermelons turning slowly in the river, colder by the hour.

The bell on the far bank rings once. He lifts the hat. It rings again, which means somebody is in a hurry, or thinks they are. He stands, pulls on his gloves, unhooks the small brass bell from his belt and rings it once across the water: heard you. Then he takes the rope in both hands and leans back, and the ferry slides away from the landing at the only speed it has ever had, hand over hand, the rope rising out of the river dripping and settling back down behind him.

Midstream is where the rope dips lowest and the river argues hardest. He leans into it and lets it argue. Dragonflies stitch the air over the deck. The melons knock gently against the hull. On the near landing a painted board says the ferry started there; on the far landing an older board says the same. He has crossed between them for thirty summers and agrees with whichever one he is standing next to.

The person waiting on the far bank is the melon grower, which has never happened before. Every morning for twenty years she has loaded her melons into his net at this landing and walked back up to her field, and every afternoon he has carried them, river-cold, to the people waiting on the other side. She has never once crossed. She is holding her hat in both hands. “I want to see where they go,” she says. “Ring once next time,” he says. “I heard you the first time.”

She steps aboard and he hands her the rope, because a first crossing should be pulled, not ridden, and she pulls, badly and then less badly, laughing at herself. Halfway over he hauls up the net and sets a melon in her arms. It is her own melon from her own field, and it is cold all the way through, the way only a river can make it.

On the near landing a few people are already waiting for the melons, the way some always are by four, and when they see who is standing on the ferry with a melon in her arms, they start to clap. She does not know what to do with that, so she reaches out and rings the near bell, once, to say she has arrived. The Ferry Pilot laughs, and for the first time in thirty summers he answers a bell from his own side.

The crossing

The rope: Strung bank to bank, older than the ferry and spliced every spring. It hums in the heat and dips lowest in the middle, where the current leans hardest.
The bells: A brass bell on a post at each landing. Ring once and the ferry comes. Ring twice and it comes at the same speed, with more attention.
The answering bell: Small, brass, on a strap at the Pilot’s belt. One ring from his side of the water means: heard you, on my way.
The melon net: A string net off the downstream side. The growers on the far bank fill it in the morning; by mid-afternoon the river has done the rest.
The two landings: Each has a painted board saying the ferry started there. Neither board has ever been corrected, and the Pilot is not going to be the one to do it.
The Z Bend: Below the crossing the river doubles back on itself twice. From the ridge it looks as if somebody signed the valley.