“You’ll have to signal,” McElvane said to Jensen. “He won’t hear us.”
“Matt’s a powerful voice. Give a holler, Matt.”
The assistant’s shout rolled along the banks and died away.
“It’s too far,” McElvane said, “and the river’s up.”
They waited, listening. The current under the ghostly mist made a low, rushing sound.
“I’ll light a torch,” McElvane said and busied himself about his cart. In a few minutes he raised a burning stick high in the grey light. After a while, a lantern flashed on the opposite bank.
John stared at the grey, darkening water. It gave nothing back, not even the dull sky. McElvane took out his little book and pencil stub and scratched away while a small light in the distance grew larger, its edges yellow and blurred.
Jensen said, “Some take the chains off as soon as Virginia, but I have to see the town limits of Columbia before I’m comfortable. Even so, I feel better over the Potomac.”
“Any body of water slows a runaway down,” McElvane said.
Though it was almost dark, the day was warmer. The breath of the blacks no longer hung visibly. John tensed and turned. But the dusk had hidden Daney’s face among the women’s. It had been only days and miles, yet his old life seemed a distant memory, effaced by the hatred building in his veins. He could imagine seeing Orlett’s doglike grin in the ferryman’s widening lamp glow as it spread over the black water. It seemed sometimes that the overseer had burned that grin into his brain. As the ferry reached the bank, John lifted a cuffed hand to the letters and pressed the cold iron there.
Jensen began to drive the coffles onto the scow. It was broad and flat, like a barn floor, with thick ropes low around the sides. The ferryman, pinch-faced and elderly, had two large blacks as helpers. Their job was to move the ferry by means of two long wooden poles that they wielded with powerful grace. In the glow cast by the lantern, everything appeared larger. Shadows splashed over the deck like buckets of thrown river water. A ragged mongrel chained to an anvil at the ferryman’s side yipped and growled as the coffles boarded.
“We’ll have to make two trips,” Jensen said. “We’re in a hurry. Can’t you make those boys pull fast?”
The ferryman spat out a chaw of tobacco. “Never met one of you Georgia traders who weren’t in a hurry. My boys pull as fast as the river allows. No hurrying a river.”
The scow pushed off into the current. John stood near enough to the dog to smell it; it strained at its chain and bared its teeth. He looked away. At the opposite end of the ferry, standing behind McElvane’s horse and cart, Daney seemed to look straight back at him. Her eyes caught and reflected the lantern’s glow as she slowly lifted one hand and touched the rope at her neck. She shifted slightly. Now her body seemed cut in half by the board of McElvane’s cart; she might have been sitting in it. The boy glanced at the dog, which leapt and threw itself forward and fell back again. McElvane’s horse shied, its hooves battering the wooden deck. McElvane approached and patted the horse’s neck, then bent his head to it. Beyond him, Daney’s body dipped quickly and vanished. John saw her lift one of the iron balls from the cart and turn.
“No!” he shouted. “Nooo!”
The women screamed. McElvane’s head shot away from the horse’s as the blacks’ poles hung in the air. In his effort to jump forward, John pulled Daney’s eldest son, Robert, down against him. But he kept his eyes on Daney. She held the ball cradled at her stomach and pulled the coffle toward the edge. It happened so quickly that the others had no chance to resist. Before McElvane could reach the ropes, all the women had gone over. Jancey had gone over. The ferry drifted away from the rapid sequence of splashes until the ferryman heaved an anchor into the current. The women’s screams continued for a few long seconds above the dog’s barking as the scow turned sideways. The broken water where the women had gone under quickly healed. Frantically, McElvane ordered the blacks to sweep with their poles.
“Try to catch hold of the ropes,” he shouted and bent so far over the edge that it seemed he must fall.
The ferryman rushed over with the lantern and pulled him back.
“Don’t be a fool, man,” he cried. “There’s no chance of getting them up in time.”
Robert was panting. He tried to pull the whole line of chains forward. But the men resisted. For his part, John was willing enough to join the women; at least he did not have the will to fight Robert’s grief. The face of Daney’s son was raw and tear-scalded. His eyes rolled back in his skull as he shouted for his mother and sisters. The ferryman ran to a wooden box near the chained dog and removed a shotgun. He trained it on the coffle.
“First one who wants to, dies.”
John helped to hold Robert still. McElvane continued to direct the blacks with the poles. “She can’t hold them all down,” he cried.
It was impossible to see where the water had been broken. “Oh, pray! Oh, pray!” repeated the old man, Motes, as the current flowed around the scow. The dog began to howl, and McElvane, looking conflicted, finally left the edge of the scow and calmed his horse before it bolted and plunged over the side with his cart full of iron. His face shook like paper being eaten by fire.
John stared at the calm, black surface of the river. They were all dead by now. Daney always said. Except no one but her had made the separation. That was what she must have thought. They were all dead, still roped together, the iron ball spilled from Daney like the dead weight of all the children that could not be ripped from her by other hands.
The river flowed black and smooth, and the last shreds of mist and lantern light flickered over it. He touched his cheek.
Dare felt the fish hook bit of scar that stuck out from the top of his beard onto his bare skin. The mark remained, but the two letters were gone, the chains were gone, he held in his uncuffed hands a set of oars. And the shotgun, just visible in the grainy dusk, appeared to shine and rise before him in the air.
The Englishman had begun to cross the boundary.
II
The days passed quickly now, though fractured and fraught. Anson attended Louisa much of the time, for in her presence he did not feel such urgency about reuniting with Dare. But his concern for the girl would not let him relax. Evenings were the worst, and he fell naturally into the same broken rhythm that he’d known at Antietam, snatching an hour or two of sleep and walking to keep himself alert.
Suddenly, one morning, the settlement took the girl’s fever into itself. It wasn’t only the days lengthening and the sun burning brighter and hotter; it was the general pace of activity. Down at the cannery, in the mix of shadows and sunlight on the rough-planked wharves outside each building, the barefoot Indian women spent endless hours hunched over piled tresses of linen, expertly weaving them into gillnets. Anson watched in amazement as their brown hands butterflied among the meshes; these women, short and stocky for the most part, mild and silent, with their shy smiles and fondness for colourful beads, ribbons, and braid work, turned into regular demons of industry with wooden hanging-needles in their grasp. Meanwhile, more great cedar canoes, elaborately carved with designs of various totemic creatures—bears, ravens, wolves, and killer whales—slid into the landing almost by the hour, bringing more men and women to pull the nets and row the fishing skiffs, more barely clothed children, noses green and running, to roam the muddy banks, and more scrawny, mixed-breed dogs to fill the sultry silence with their barks and howls.