“Sure. If Miles sits in the middle and keeps the beams from swinging into me, and you can scrunch against the door on the passenger side…”
Miles was happy with this arrangement for the short ride to the ferry. It meant that his back would be pressed against Kelsey’s hips and torso while he twisted to keep both arms on the beams. And his eyes could rest on the swell of Des’s breasts beneath her peasant blouse. The blouse’s ties hung lightly against her chest, framed by the emerging curves. To avoid staring, he shifted his attention to the barely-visible blond hairs on her tanned forearms as she turned the wheel. Then to the purple-tinted granny glasses he’d grown attached to last semester, and her streaked auburn hair, pulled back into a loose single braid.
He held the beams away from the steering column so Des could shift into gear. Gravel crunched beneath the tires and small plumes of dust flared in their wake as the station wagon pulled away from the Leesburg nursery lot and turned toward Whites Ferry. The wagon accelerated slowly, undulating a little under the load. Des clicked on the radio and a gentle reggae rhythm filled the air.
and I will find you
across a river of time,
and I will hold you
until you know you are mine.
The morning sun was already high overhead, and Miles felt his back grow warm pressing Kelsey’s bare left arm. Prickles of sweat formed beneath the curls of dark brown hair hanging against his neck and his t-shirt stuck to the skin between his shoulder blades. He slid the air-conditioning knob to the right and felt the hot air from the vents turn cool. The open windows funneled a crosswind into the car. Strands of Kelsey’s hair flicked against his ear and shoulders.
“Hey, Des,” Kelsey said. “Do you remember that guy we met at the Taj Mahal show last month? Dave? The weather guy?”
“Yeah. Hmmm. Maybe.”
“He called me a couple of nights ago. I guess he has tickets for the Stones at RFK Stadium and can score a few more, but he and two friends need a place to crash that night. He seems cool enough, but I’ll be gone for the 4th. You interested?”
Des squinted behind her purple shades. “Let’s see. My folks will be at the beach. We could stay at their place and throw sleeping bags on the deck. Dave’s a weather guy, so he should be smart enough to come inside if it rains. Are we in, Miles?”
Miles remembered a speech from his foreman about getting to the job site on time. “I need to be in Rockville by seven-thirty the next morning,” he said, “but it’s the Stones. Let’s tumble some dice, baby.”
“Kelsey, I guess we’re in. Tell him we want field tickets.”
“Sure,” Kelsey said, rolling her eyes. “I’ll tell him you need to see every tongue thrust.”
Des extended her tongue, curled it toward her chin, then pulled it in and pouted. Miles smirked but couldn’t suppress a smile – the gesture was so typical of Des. The tide of reggae ebbed and a DJ began blabbering, so Des twisted the volume down. When the forecast came on she turned it back up.
“After making landfall in the Florida panhandle yesterday as a category-one hurricane, Agnes has now been downgraded to a tropical depression and is centered over Georgia. Meteorologists expect the storm to continue tracking to the northeast through the Carolinas today and tomorrow, possibly regaining hurricane strength if it moves back over water off North Carolina and turns northward again. Even if Agnes doesn’t regain hurricane strength, we can expect heavy rain in the D.C. area, beginning mid-day tomorrow, through tomorrow night, and into Thursday. Depending on the path Agnes takes, areas to the north and west of Washington, D.C. could see up to 12 inches of rain.”
“Yecch,” Des said. “I’m glad we’re doing this today, since tomorrow looks ugly.”
“We can stash the beams in Teresa’s shed. It’s OK if the stones get wet,” Kelsey said.
“Hey, if it rains hard enough, I get the day off,” Miles said. His smile melted away. “But that means work on Saturday.”
“Bummer, man,” Des said.
She swung the station wagon into a right turn from Route 15 onto Whites Ferry Road. Miles tightened his arms around the beams to keep them from sliding toward Des, and he felt the loaded chassis sway as the car completed its turn.
Aside from its paved surface, Whites Ferry Road hadn’t changed much since its construction in the aftermath of the Civil War. It ran straight for a half-mile between a copse on the left and unplowed fields on the right, then turned into the woods along a hillside and descended to the Potomac River. Des guided the wagon along the old road, then eased it to a stop behind the last car in line.
The smell of green leaves and vines filled the air and Miles inhaled deeply. This was his first trip to Whites Ferry, so he turned to look out Kelsey’s window at the brown flowing water of the Potomac. Five hundred yards away, on the cleared bank across the river, stood the small store and the ferry operator’s house that comprised Whites Ferry, Maryland. A taut loop of steel cable was stretched across the river at the waterline and anchored by concrete counterweights at each shore. Steel wheels attached to the upstream side of the ferry traveled inside this cable loop as the ferry trudged back and forth across the river. The cable kept the boat from being pushed downstream by the current during its traverse.
The ferry was churning toward them, a featureless gray barge with chipped and rusted metal railings on the sides and swinging gates at each end. The pilothouse and engines looked like a little tugboat grafted onto the middle of the ferry’s downstream side. Miles counted eleven cars in rows three-wide, all pointed toward the concrete boat ramp that formed the dock on the Virginia shore. “Hey, we lucked out,” Des said. “We’ll make it on the next trip.”
Miles surveyed the cars in front of them that formed an arc down to the boat ramp; they were tenth in line. The ferry pilot eased the throttle and the boat decelerated. He stubbed out a cigarette and threw the throttle into reverse, then neutral, and the ferry stopped as its bow nudged the boat ramp. The pilot threaded through cars to the bow, flipped a metal loading ramp down onto the concrete with a bang, swung the gate open, and shuffled down the metal ramp. He pointed to the cars in an ordered sequence and they filed off, heading up the boat ramp and past the waiting cars on Whites Ferry Road.
Des joined the procession of cars driving down the hill and onto the ferry, which departed for Maryland less than a minute after the gate closed behind them. With the car’s engine still running and its air-conditioner blowing, Miles didn’t immediately realize that they’d begun moving. It was only when the view through the windshield evolved that he looked out Des’s window and saw the folds and eddies in the brown water and the scattered armada of sticks and debris pushing downstream with the current.
“River law!” Des sang out, eyebrows rising behind her purple shades.
“What is river law?” Miles said, drawing his focus back inside the car.
Kelsey smiled resignedly. “There is none. River law is no law. We’re not in Virginia or Maryland, so the rules don’t apply. That’s always been our theory, anyway.”
“Kelsey, can you find my pipe under your seat? It’s in a shoebox.”
Miles slid his legs aside while Kelsey bent at the waist and foraged under the front seat. Reaching deeper she touched cardboard and pulled the box forward. It snagged on a tangle of unused seat belts. “Jeez, Des. Hang on a second,” she said, unsnarling the belts.
Miles admired the taut curve of Kelsey’s back beneath the wrinkles of her lavender linen shirt as she twisted the shoebox out. She flipped the top off the box and rummaged around, then pulled out a plastic disposable lighter and a wooden box. It was smaller than a pack of cigarettes and the color of ash wood, smooth and polished from handling, with a symbol that looked something like the combination of a scythe and an arrow etched on its face. A retractable lid on one of the shorter ends gave access to the contents of the box.