WHEN MY EYES ADJUST to the sudden flare of light, it’s Huckleberry Finn, not the Grim Reaper who sits before me.
The boatman wears frayed and sun-bleached jeans rolled up to his knobbly knees. His shirt may once have been silk, but now it’s stained from years of use, missing half its buttons, and in dire need of a wash. A leather vest, at least two sizes too small, hugs his shoulders, but won’t close across his stomach. Atop his head, a wide-brimmed straw hat casts his entire face in shadow—except for his reedy chin, which sports a scraggly beard the colour and consistency of the shore’s flaxen grass. A sliver of river grass juts from his gap-toothed grin, and he chews merrily on the end.
He sits on the edge of a raft, his feet tracing lazy circles in the water that I’d so carefully avoided. He lazily bobs a fishing pole with one hand, though the pole is little more than a pale branch with a thread looped around one end.
The raft’s base is a simple mesh of uneven white logs, lashed together with bits of thick woven cords. A teepee made out of old blankets dominates the centre of it, and within I spot a sleeping roll and a small chest of drawers. The boatman has a laundry line tied between his teepee and one of the raft’s wooden side rails. A maroon bathrobe hangs limply over the line, like a fox pelt left out to dry. In front of this makeshift shelter rests a galvanized garbage bin, out of which a crackling fire now licks greedily at the otherwise smothering darkness.
Based on the voice and the ominous river, I’d been expecting a skeleton poling a barge, not this country bumpkin.
Willow stands at the dock’s edge, and her grin matches that of the boatman’s, save that she’s retained her teeth. She slips back into nursery rhymes, and sings, “One misty, moisty morning, when cloudy was the weather. I chanced to meet an old man clad all in leather. He began to compliment, and I began to grin ... how do you do?”
And then both she and the boatman turn to look at me expectantly. Without knowing what to say, I parrot Willow’s words, “How do you do?” and am rewarded with a look of relief washing over Willow’s face. The boatman looks disappointed.
He mumbles, “...and how do you do, again?” before motioning us aboard his vessel.
Willow bounces onto the raft, which doesn’t rock in the water as she steps aboard.
When I follow, however, the craft sinks three inches into the water and begins to spin lazily on the current. Before I’ve gained my sea legs, the boatman unwraps a line from the post beside him, and jabs his fishing rod into the inky eddies, as if his raft were a pole barge.
Soon, our vessel is a small bubble of light on black waters. I lose sight of the dock, but cannot yet see the far shore. I’m struck by the strangeness of the maze. I sidle up beside Willow who is sitting happily in front of the fire. “This river,” I whisper, not sure if I’m allowed to talk out of rhyme. “Was there no other way?”
“None that I’ve ever taken,” she whispers back. “Everyone crosses the river.”
The journey is surreal, has been surreal the entire time, and I name the only river that this one recalls: “Styx.”
Willow shrugs. “I don’t know its name.”
“Willow,” my whisper comes out ragged. “This is the unorthodox ‘bridge’ you mentioned, right? Are we almost out?”
She shakes her head.
The boatman, perhaps feeling excluded from our conversation, speaks loudly over our whispering voices, “Drove the ducklings to the water, every morning at nine. Hit her foot against a splinter, fell into the foaming brine.”
Whether a threat or a nonsense nursery rhyme, I’m not sure. Nevertheless, I fall silent for the duration of our river voyage.
Occasionally, the boatman crows other vaguely ominous bits of rhyme, most to do with drowning. “Ruby lips above the water, blowing bubbles, soft and fine. But, alas, I was no swimmer. I lost my Clementine,” he sings, as he rows us across the river.
The sick feeling in the pit of my stomach settles in.
Later in the crossing, the boatman points into the deeps, a broad smile still plastered on his face. He sings, “Come to the window, my darlings, with me. Look out on the stars that shine on the sea. There are two little stars that play bo-peep, with two little fish far down in the deep.”
I look where he points, but can see neither fish nor anything else in the opaque waters. When, after a minute or so, I notice that his grin has widened further, I quickly huddle back into the centre of the raft. I worry that perhaps Willow and I are the fish, and he’s just made another drowning metaphor.
Willow looks unconcerned. She stares straight ahead, eyes scanning for an unseen shore.
The trip, though long, is relatively uneventful. I track the passing of at least four hours on my wristwatch, but doze off and lose count after a time.
When I awaken, Willow has donned her shoes again. Anticipating landfall, I put my shoes on as well, but the journey still takes several more loops of the minute hand.
How long have we been on this river? Eight hours? More? What kind of a river takes this long to cross?
The water shimmers like glass beneath us and the sky is a black shroud. Whether by some property of the water or simply by virtue of the boatman’s skill, neither ripples with our passing.