Original fiction · Chapter 1 of 2
The Last Ferry Across
On the morning of the last ferry, a crewman brought me a child's yellow life jacket and asked whether the name inside was mine.
My initials were still there. So was a slash in the canvas where my father had trimmed a loose thread with a fish knife and caught the cloth. I hadn't seen the jacket since I was ten.
The crossing was being discontinued after a new bridge opened upriver. I had come for the last run because my father used to take me on the ferry on Saturdays. I thought I'd walk on, cross, and walk back. The crewman, Daniel, had other ideas.
“It was in the wheelhouse,” he said. “I found it when we cleared the lockers.”
I told him my father had died the year I turned eleven. I assumed the jacket had gone in a bag of things my mother gave away. Daniel asked if I'd ever heard about the winter the ferry got stuck in the river ice.
I remembered the story the way my mother told it. Dad was supposed to come home from work and take me to a school concert. He missed the concert. He said the ferry wasn't running and there'd been no way to get across. I remember telling him he could have called. I had been waiting to say it all evening, and I went to bed as soon as I did.
Daniel turned the jacket over. Someone had sewn a patch onto the back, a little blue square that didn't match the yellow cloth.
“I put that on,” he said. “My mother gave me a needle when I wanted to fix it myself.”
“Why did you have it?”
He watched two passengers walk past us with coffee cups. One of them stopped to take a picture of the ramp. When they were gone, Daniel asked if we could sit down.
“My father was on that ferry,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “He missed your concert because he was getting me off it.”
