Boatman had a father until he hanged himself in the winter one year. He had not been a boat man. He had been a postman, and a drunk. After he died, Boatman became homeless, living off the river and handouts, and a new man delivered the mail. This was a long time ago, but he was watching the winter sky and how the cold drew the stars closer, and the cold reminded him of his father. He unwrapped his bread from its paper and took a drink of water from his flask. He watched the sky. The boat rolled slightly on the river. The Lord had been gone now for some hours. Boatman chewed the bread in the dark and made constellations. He had never known the real ones, the shapes used by shipmasters and oracles, but he could make his own; he could make the stars into birds, and rivers, and boats.
There was a rustling in the long grass, near the water’s edge. Boatman swallowed his bread and began packing away his things, when instead of the Lord, an old dog appeared. By starlight the dog was the same blue as everything else. It nosed its way to where the boat was tied to its post, and then it looked further out. Boatman threw a piece of bread over, and for a while, the two ate beside each other, listening to the river. They did this until he ran out of bread, and the dog padded away through the grass. Not long after that, the river rocked Boatman to sleep.
When the Lord woke him the sky was approaching dawn, and seagulls were collecting nearby. Boatman splashed his face with the river and brought the oars down while the Lord untied the boat.
A little way into the journey, the Lord took a bottle from his satchel, popped the cork, and swigged.
‘What were you dreaming about?’
‘What?’
‘When I came back you were sleeping.’
‘Oh. I don’t remember.’
‘A few days ago, I had a nightmare I was being tortured.’
‘Hm.’
‘There were these men,’ he paused to swig his drink, ‘pulling my ribs apart, and I could see myself from the outside. And every time the men turned away, my ribs would close back up, and they’d have to start all over again. It kept going on like this for days.’
‘Sounds bad.’
‘It’s funny because I don’t really know what my insides look like. Do you?’
‘Yeah, I’ve seen it.’
‘Oh,’ he smiled and put the bottle into his bag, ‘was this during the war?’
‘I wasn’t conscripted.’
‘So when?’
‘A boy from my town got drunk at the dogfight. Bet gold on himself to win.’
‘To win a dogfight?’
‘Aye. Dog opened him up in a second. Tore out his throat, then his balls, then his belly.’
‘And then what?’
‘Then we took our winnings home.’
At a curve in the river they came to a small fishing village. Half-a-dozen tanned men were standing in the early light, attending to their lines. Boatman kept beyond the lines and slowed to a crawl, so as not to scare any catch. The fishermen were mostly old, waiting for sons who had never come home from the capital.
‘If you poisoned the fish,’ the Lord said, as though to himself, ‘they’d starve.’
Boatman didn’t say anything. He could still feel the early morning on his tongue, and knew that at this hour, the water carried sound further.
When they arrived at his town, Boatman rowed to the shore and tied the boat up. The Lord handed over a purse – from here to wherever it is he lived, he travelled by carriage. Boatman never asked. It was part of the arrangement that the Lord remain anonymous, that they travel on the river in the dark, and that Boatman say nothing to the people of his town about the man he ferried.
He tucked the purse into his coat and watched the Lord cross the road, where a carriage was already waiting. Boatman watched the carriage until it dipped over the hills outside of town, and then he went home.
*
Boatman waited on the river, trying to sleep. The night was cold. He fastened his coat and lay as deep in the boat as he could. The river slipped under him and the boat and gradually under his dream. The dream was a house with a woman inside. When he woke up the Lord was already in the boat, rinsing his gloves in the river. Once he was done he signalled to Boatman that they could leave. For a while after that he sat opposite Boatman with his eyes closed, either sleeping or thinking, until he asked –
‘Do you have any money saved?’
‘Money?’
‘That’s right. Do you keep any aside?’
‘A bit. It depends on which week you ask.’
‘I’m asking this week.’
‘Then yes.’
‘Am I your only source of income?’
‘Is that important?’
‘I’m going to pay you more.’
‘I do fine.’
‘You do for now,’ he said, ‘but in a few months? I doubt it.’
They came to a long curl in the river and Boatman wished the Lord would ask about something he could really answer. He wished he would ask about the water instead, since there was nothing he thought of more – the river was in his head always, reaching some ocean, and the only way he could think of time was as a direct flow of liquid that drowned everyone; he could only sleep if he could hear the river, and winter was painful to him, some years freezing the river and the wells and his rigid hands. But when he died, whenever that might be, he was terrified of it being in the river. As a child once he had nearly drowned trying to swim across. He had seen reeds and the fish in them and was pulled out before he could die. This was before his father’s death. Now he still couldn’t swim and he spent most of his life on the water. He had heard of the people who lived in the far north, where the river iced over for nine months of the year. Up there they brought summer newborns to the water and held them under for a song.
While he was thinking, they passed by a larger boat. It was heading the way they had come, carrying what looked like an entire home. A child was sat on top of the crates and blankets and waved down to Boatman and the Lord. The Lord waved back. Once the boat was gone he took off his gloves. He tucked one inside the other.
‘I come back to the boat with blood on my hands and you don’t even ask why.’
‘You pay me not to.’
‘Yes I know but do you have no natural curiosity?’
‘It doesn’t bother me.’
‘Were you educated? Does your town have a school?’
‘A priest comes once a week to read with the children.’
‘A priest of what faith?’
‘What?’
‘What religion does the priest who teaches your children follow?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘All of you river people worship the river in some way. You all play with it, but all it comes down to is, water is life, the river is god, the drowned are a sacrifice. Is that about it?’
‘Not many of us keep church, no.’
‘As loose and free as the river. Sometimes the faith overflows and other times it runs low.’
‘Aye.’
‘It’s too easy. I’m just saying words.’
‘Hm.’
‘I’ll bet you that priest teaching those kids doesn’t give a shit about your river. He’ll say he does, but he’s from the capital. There’s no river down there. They follow the one god and wherever the priests go, the one god changes shape. Your god is a volcano? Then the one god is a volcano. You worship snow? Well, the one god is an avalanche.’
‘Do you believe?’
The Lord slouched back in the boat and looked up at the brightening sky. There were heavy clouds rolling in from the north. A column of rain.
‘Sometimes,’ he said quietly. ‘I travelled west once, across the sea.’
Boatman rowed and waited for him to say more. Instead, the Lord pulled his hood over his head and tried to sleep. He came down between his seat and Boatman’s legs and lay foetal. Boatman tried to understand a man like that, leaving himself as open as a baby to a stranger. If he wanted to, Boatman could ruin the Lord’s skull with a foot. He could raise his boot up and crack it down once or twice and never stop rowing.
They went on like this for a while, creeping along the country, until eventually it started to rain, and hail, and the hail skittered on the river like salmon. Waking, the Lord swore, slapped the side of the boat, and returned to his seat. He opened his bag and started to drink.
‘I can’t sleep,’ he said over the sound of the rain, ‘do you know any games?’
Boatman considered this and decided that no, he didn’t know any games.
‘Fine,’ the Lord said, ‘we’ll play Catch the Cat.’
‘Never heard of it.’
‘It’s easy. I’ll say something like, I once killed a pig with an oar, and if you’ve done that, too, you have to drink. And then you have a turn.’
‘Have you killed a pig with an oar?’
‘No. It doesn’t have to be something you did, the game is to catch me out.’
‘Catch the cat.’
‘Exactly.’
‘I don’t drink in the boat.’
‘Shit,’ he said, ‘I’ll pay you double if you play.’
By now the rain had stopped, but Boatman was getting cold in his wet clothes. He nodded and went on rowing. To their left, over the empty fields, the sun was finding its way.
‘Alright,’ said the Lord, ‘I once slept with a kitchen maid.’
Boatman frowned, took the Lord’s bottle, and swigged. He went to drink more but the Lord stopped him.
‘You take one drink.’
‘I was drinking for each maid.’
The Lord took a sip and laughed.
‘Alright,’ Boatman said, ‘I once found a baby on the river in a basket…’
The Lord raised the bottle to drink.
‘…but the baby was dead, so I turned the basket over, and let it sink.’
The Lord watched Boatman’s face.
‘Are you finished?’
‘Aye.’
*
The Lord arrived in the late afternoon and asked for a journey longer than usual, two days there, two back. Boatman packed extra bread and dried meat, and a blanket large enough for two men, and was rowing half an hour later. By then it had started to snow.
The Lord took a rough-skinned journal from his bag, and a pen and pot of ink, and wrote something down. He would look out over the flatlands for a while, and then he would write something. He did this a few times before Boatman asked him about it.
‘Observations, information, keeping an account of what we pass.’
While the Lord was taking his notes, they came to an old wood bridge. Boatman kept the bridge as a marker – here the land began to shift from open fields to jagged rock, and loose hills. They had passed it enough times now that the Lord recognised the bridge. He pointed through the drifting snow with his pen.
‘There’s someone waiting.’
‘Hm. Prob’ly a boy.’
As the river brought the boat closer, the figure on the bridge started to sing.
‘A boat on the river is hard for me to see,
for a boat on the river is where my love left me.’
The voice was a man’s and it moved over the river like fog. The Lord closed his journal and called out for another verse.
‘A boat on the river will surely make me weep,
for a boat on the river is where my love did sleep.’
By now they were almost close enough to see the man’s face. They could see the snow collecting on his head.
‘Another!’ the Lord cried.
‘A boat on the river is not a welcome sound,
for a boat on the river is where my love did drown’
The Lord clapped enthusiastically, and as the boat came to the bridge, he took a coin from his pocket and tossed it up, into the singer’s hands. The Lord hummed the tune over and over for a length of the river, and eventually hummed himself to sleep.
The further they travelled downriver, the thicker the snow. Boatman watched as it hit the water and coasted for a moment before melting. By tomorrow, everything would be white, and the night would hurt on his shoulders.
When the Lord woke the day was just ending; the moon was out early and full. He brushed the snow from his cloak and cleared his throat.
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘you need to leave the river.’
‘What?’
‘Not long from now, the whole river is going to change hands. It’s going to be sold.’
‘Nobody can sell a river.’
‘Some people can, and will. They’ll fish the river dry and leave it for dead.’
Boatman stopped rowing. He saw the river as a huge silver necklace. He didn’t understand.
‘You think the river is the centre of the world,’ the Lord said, ‘but everyone thinks they’re in the middle. For someone else, this river is a line on a map. And for any of you people who don’t relocate out of necessity, they’ll send men to do it for you. They’ll pack you up and ship you off. Take my advice and leave early. Avoid the rush. Find work down at the coast.’
Boatman kept his eyes on the hills to their left, a huge stretch of land he’d never crossed. He had no idea what the capital looked like, or what happened after the river. The sea was a foreign world.
‘I’m fine,’ he said, finally, and continued to row.
Once the moon had set, and the snow was glazing over with frost, he brought them to the river’s shore, and he and the Lord pulled the boat out of the water. Boatman used his feet to clear snow from a patch of grass, and together they turned the boat over and lay beneath it. The space was narrow. He realised now how much larger he was than the Lord, who stretched the blanket out over them, and fell asleep with his head on Boatman’s shoulder.
Boatman listened to their breathing, and the wind creaking against the snow and the boat. He listened to the river, running ahead of them. When he had been alone as a child, it was the river that remained. It was the river that carried on its back the night and the moon, could turn the sun to liquid, ran through the autumn hauling dead logs and deer. Everything he had, had been given to him by the river – he no longer knew his old name, whatever name his father had tried. And he was terrified, still, of what the water could do. How all of his memory was cradled within it.
*
They set off the next morning just as it was getting light. The country changed again around them, smoothing back down to fields, and marshland. Boatman had only been this far south a handful of times, where the river widened and flooded every year. While he rowed, the Lord opened his bag and brought out a cob of bread, and a jar. In the jar was a bruise-coloured jam Boatman had never seen. The Lord used his finger to scoop out a glob and smear it onto the bread.
‘We’ll be there soon,’ the Lord said after taking a bite, ‘it’s a busy place. Lots of trade comes up from the ships. They send rafts full of fish and pearl, and ivory, if you’re lucky.’
‘Hm.’
The snow was still coming down, but it was soaking on the marshes. In the distance there were farmhouses with snow stuck to their roofs, clean and white, like islands. The rest of the morning and afternoon passed in a drab silence. The farmhouses gave way to smaller huts, and cottages, which gradually accumulated into fishing villages. Men just like those near Boatman’s home were standing under makeshift awnings, watching their lines.
By the time the sun was overhead, coasting on the river like coins, the Lord was sleeping again. Boatman rowed and thought about not rowing – about a time when he wouldn’t ever row oars again. About a time if he wouldn’t. The curve of his hands and his back and his legs in the boat had learned their shape from the rowing. Sometimes he put his feet on the steady earth and felt too still, like something inside him had stopped. The river had a beginning and an end. It began somewhere more north than the mountains, though Boatman had only heard this, and ended in the sea. In between was everything else.
The town first came into view as a small light beside the river, and gradually clarified. The details separated and waiting on the river were heavy cargo boats, their sails holding the dim light of evening. Boatman pushed the tip of his boot into the Lord’s back and started to draw the boat to the shore.
‘Are we here? Bring us by those other boats, just there.’
The boats were tied up beside a small, rotting platform. When their boat was tied up, the Lord checked his bag, took a drink of water, and handed Boatman a purse.
‘That is for the return journey. In case I can’t get back.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means I might need to find another route home. Or not. I won’t know until I know.’
‘How long should I wait?’
‘For as long as you think I’m coming back.’
Boatman watched him join the road ahead that led into town. There was a group of men on the road, and a tradesman with his mule. There were lonelier looking men, too, coming into town from places Boatman would never see. Eventually his view of the Lord was interrupted by trees, so he tucked the purse into his coat and sat down by the water’s edge. There was no snowfall anymore, and the evening was settling in. Boatman watched the river until he was no longer seeing it anymore, only his eyes were on it, and he was elsewhere. He maintained a rhythm with his hands to work out the strain, making and unmaking fists, until he felt somebody standing nearby.
‘One’a those boats yours?’
‘Aye.’
‘You look strong,’ the woman said, ‘what’re you doin’?’
‘Waiting.’
The woman came over to the water and sat down. Boatman glanced. She was younger than the rasp in her voice.
‘Waiting for what?’
‘A man. He pays me to ferry him up and down the river.’
‘What man?’
‘A man who pays me not to say.’
‘Ah.’
‘Did he send you to me?’
‘Nobody sent me, boat man. I’m just visitin’, thought I’d take a walk, see something more than the inside of a tavern. Then I saw you. Now we’re sittin’ here.’
‘Hm.’
‘So you’re from north.’
‘I am.’
‘This man, he paying you well?’
‘He keeps me in food. And drink.’
‘Until he doesn’t need you anymore,’ she said almost softly, and threw a rock into the water, ‘which could be soon.’
‘Could be.’
‘What if I said I know a place on a ship? You wouldn’t be rowing, but we’re always lookin’ for men your size.’
Boatman scratched his beard. He was fairly certain the Lord had found this woman at the dock and asked her to take him from the river. Off to their right, the town’s glow was bleeding into the water. The moon was out and a little less than the night before.
‘The sea is where the money is these days. I’ll bet you that me and my crew are richer than your man. What do you want to do, whaling? Shipping goods? We carry everything anything you think of. Fruit, gold, iron, logs, fish, oil. Families.’
‘Hm.’
‘How about this.’
Boatman focused on the river and massaged his hands, squeezing the fingers of one hand with the other. Beside him, the woman was rifling through her satchel.
‘Look. Open this.’
She passed to him a small, lacquered wooden box. He held it in both hands and frowned.
‘I’ll open it,’ she said, and with a careful hand, she lifted the lid. ‘What do you think that is?’
Boatman didn’t know. It was difficult to see in the closing dark, but he knew he had never seen a thing like it, round and milky white and stinking of saltwater. It was like a fish egg, or a big translucent eye. He had never seen an eel in its egg sac – perhaps this was it. While he was trying to see more clearly into the box, a movement shuddered out, like a heartbeat.
‘I don’t know,’ he whispered.
‘What if I said you’re holding the egg of a mermaid.’
Boatman turned to look at her face. She wasn’t smiling. He snatched the lid of the box from her hand and shut the thing back up.
‘I’d say you think I’m stupid, and you can go back to your ship.’
‘I’m not-‘
‘I said I’m done.’
He listened to her put the box away in her bag and stand up from the damp mud. She stood there for a moment, watching him or the river.
‘My ship’s name is the Oakhouse,’ she said, ‘I’ll be leaving when the others are done drinkin’.’
In the time after the sailor left him, Boatman sat beside the water and let the night take the details of the day away, leaving him with the sound of his breathing and the sound of the river. He sat there long enough for the seagulls to land nearby, and for the last of the town’s voices to die out. He sat with numb legs and hands and with his feet inches from the water as it slopped at the mud. He thought of moving or trying to sleep, but in the end he did neither. The woman had left him with the sea in his head, with all of its whale and sky and its horizon like a scar. But for as much as he could see it all like a child’s dream, he was not there. Instead, he was on the river, rowing back into the thickening snow, thinking of nothing longer than a day.
Until then he would wait.
*
Connor Harrison’s writing has appeared at Evergreen Review, LA Review of Books, and Poetry Wales, among others. He has fiction upcoming with Action, Spectacle.
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