A Death In The Family by James Agee Read Free Book Online Page A

said.
    “Howdy.”
    “You generally always come o’ Sundays, yer womurn, couple o’ young-uns.”
    “Yeahp.”
    He walked away, to the edge of the water, and holding his lantern low, examined the fit of his flatboat against the shore. Then he raised the lantern and swung it, as a railroad man would; Jay, who had left his engine running, braked it carefully down the steep, thickly tracked clay, and carefully aboard. He shut off his engine; the sudden silence was magical. He got out and helped the man block the wheels. “All ready here,” he said, straightening; but the man said nothing; he was already casting off. They both watched the brown water widen under the lantern light, apparently with equal appreciation. Must be a nice job, Jay reflected, as he nearly always did; except of course winter.
    “Run all winter?”
    “Eah,” said the man, warping his line.
    “Tain’t so bad,” he added after a moment, “only for sleet. I do mislike them sleety nights.”
    Both were silent. Jay filled his pipe. As he struck a match he felt a difference in motion, a kind of dilation; the ferry was now warped into the bias of the current, which carried it, and the ferryman worked no more; he merely kept one hand on his line. The flat craft rode against the water like a hand on a breast. The water mumbled a little; during this part of the crossing, that was always the only sound. And by now, the surface of the river gave back light which could not as yet be as clearly discerned in the sky, and along both banks the trees which crowded the water like drinking cattle began to take on distinctness one from another. Far back through the country along both sides of the river, roosters screamed. The violet sky shone gray; and now for the first time both men saw, on the opposite shore, a covered wagon, and a little figure motionless beside it.
    “I God,” said the ferryman. “Reckon how long they ben awaitin!” Suddenly he became very busy with his line; he had to build sufficient momentum in cross-power to carry it past the middle of the stream, where the broadside current, at full strength, could lock both line and craft. Jay hurried to help. “Tsch right,” the man called him off, too busy for courtesy. Jay quit. After a moment the man’s hauling became more casual. He turned, enough to meet Jay’s eye. “F’wrn’t man enough to hanl that alone, wouldn’t be man enough to hanl the job,” he explained.
    Jay nodded, and watched the expanding light.
    “Hope tain’t no trouble, brung ya up hyer sich an hour,” the ferryman said.
    Jay had realized his curiosity, and respected his silence, at the first, and so, although the question slightly altered this respect, he answered, somehow pleased to be able to communicate it to an agent at once so near his sympathies, and so impersonal: “My Paw. Took at the heart. Don’t know yet how bad tis.”
    The man clacked his tongue like an old woman, shaking his head, and looking into the water. “That’s a mean way,” he said. Suddenly he looked Jay in the eyes: his own were strangely shy. Then he looked again into the brown water, and continued to haul at the line.
    “Well, good luck,” he said. “Much obliged,” said Jay.
    The wagon grew larger and larger, and now the dark, deeply lined faces of the man and woman became distinct: the sad, deeply lined faces of the profound country which seemed ancient even in early maturity and which always gave Jay a sense of peace. The woman sat high above the mule; the flare of her deep bonnet had the shape of the flare of the wagon’s canopy. The man stood beside his wagon, one clayed boot cocked on the clayed hub. They gazed gravely into the eyes of the men on the ferry, and neither of them moved, or made any sign of salutation, until the craft was made fast.
    “Ben here long?” the ferryman asked.
    The woman looked at him; after a moment the man, without moving his eyes, nodded.
    “Didn’t hear yer holler.”
    After a moment the man