Chapter 39: Nobody Ever Does

She tied the ferry to the post. She didn't decide to. Her hands did it, as they'd done everything that morning, while the rest of her sat a little way off and watched. She poled the ferry out from the landing in the gray light with the water sliding under the hull, brown and smooth and enormous, lifting everything, and brought it up against the old post, and made the rope fast round it, above the eighth line, where the white paint was already under the water. Then she sat down on the stern bench, with her back to the dark lamp, and put her hand flat on the tarred wood of the post. It was cold and wet and solid under her palm. The same as that day. The water was a hand over the eighth line. Above it there was half a hand of black tar, and then…