Day 4 - Ferryman Wanted

 "Oi! Old man. What’s the story?"

    Charon stopped, his muscles relaxing, pausing momentarily, the oar thudding against the gunwale. Lifting his head, the smile lines, if that’s what they were, at the edge of his eyes tightened as he squinted, looking towards the shore. 

"Hey, Old Man! You got ears?" 

Odd. He is alone, where is the throng of people, of the dead waiting to cross the river? Even odder he can see the sign. Can he read it? Charon asked himself. The boat continued to drift towards the bank, running up the muddy incline. 

Charon stood, watching the boy before him. He is young for someone wanting to cross the river. It was not odd to get someone so young; this boy though did not look sickly, nor did he bear the marks of a fatality. At a guess, Charon would put him at 13, maybe 12. "Can you read it, boy?" 

"Yeah, what is it though?" 

"What do you mean what is it? It’s a job. Are you interested?" asked Charon.

"Know it’s a job, but what’s a ferryman?"

"What’s your name, boy?" 

"Brandon." 

"Well then Brandon, a ferryman is me, I am the ferryman." 

Brandon looked at the old man standing before him, gaunt, dressed in nothing more than a loincloth, his long grey thinning hair matted to his skull. His gnarly hands rested upon the pommel of his oar, its blade dug into the mud of the shoreline holding the heavy oaken boat still as the water of the river flowed past, pressing upon the hull, trying to pull it adrift. 

"You interested in the job, Brandon?" 

"I might be, what are the conditions?" 

Charon smiled inwardly. What are the conditions? Who is this kid, barely old enough to know of such things as conditions? He was able to read the sign though; maybe this is the one. There’d been few before, none successful, or none that lasted more than a few hours. 

"Have you got your coin, boy?" 

Brandon looked puzzled for a moment, and then he recalled, watching his mother place a coin in his hand. Looking down, he opened his hand revealing an old penny. He raised his hand, palm open to show the old man. 

"Good, good. Come, we can discuss the job as we cross," said Charon, gesturing for the boy to climb aboard, watching with some satisfaction as the boy nimbly, ably boarded the boat. 

Leaning upon the oar, pushing down, Charon lifted his weight, leveraging the boat free, the current grabbing and tugging the boat into a spin. Turning, dropping the throat of the oar into its lock, he turned, facing his destination, pulling hard on the oar’s improvised tiller to point the boat to the far shore. 

As if appearing from thin air, four paddle blades folded out from the hull, two on each side, and the forward momentum began; he had time, and all was calm. 

"What do I call you?" asked Brandon. 

"Oh, I’ve many names, all spelt the same way but pronounced differently. I am Charon with a ch, or it could be pronounced with a k, even a h or any other variation of this, even Aaron," replied the ferryman. 

Brandon looked over his shoulder briefly, towards what he assumed would be the other side of the river, then turned back to Charon. 

"You look like you deserve respect, so I think I’ll call you sir." 

Astute young fellow thought the ferryman. 

"So why the job ad? You going to retire or something?" 

Retire? Charon had heard that before, there was the fat banker, who complained on the whole trip that he’d never gotten to retire, then the spinster that complained her retirement was ruined by the death of her partner; boy when she got hold of him, he was in for it. 

"No Brandon, not retire. I need more hands to do the work. It’s almost like a seasonal effect where I occasionally need help." 

"Help? Doing what? I was the only one at the river today, at your sign, and now I’m your only passenger." 

"You use some interesting words, my boy. Conditions, retire, today. I know of such things, I’ve not experienced them. Today, as you put it, is a construct of the living, it is how they measure time or account for the daylight hours as compared to the dark, there’s none of that here." 

"You’ve not answered my question." 

"No, I’ve not. Help, you ask? Well, we have a season upon us and the dead amass on the shore, requiring passage into the afterlife; I can’t keep up. It’s not been like this before. It’s been busy in the past, but now, well, they all seem to be in a rush. Some can pay, and those who cannot. It’s not uncommon to have to hold off the rabble from the fair paying passengers; now though even the fair paying passengers are squabbling, fighting, pushing to get aboard; they complain I’m too slow, I take too few." 

"But I was the only one waiting, there was no one around me!" interrupted Brandon. 

"I know," responded Charon, leaning into his oar, angling the bow of the boat upstream, to not drift south too much. He knew now Brandon was to go the higher land, the land upstream; he was innocent, neither good nor bad.

 

"That’s what makes you different, it seems we are meant to have time to talk," he continued. "About what? About the job? About me becoming a ferryman." 

"Yes, I think so, Brandon. What brought you here?" What he really wanted to know, and would ask at the right time ‘What have you left behind?’