The Ferryman of the Dark River
An encounter on the waterfront reveals the quiet, lingering melancholy of a man reflecting on the 'old timey days' and the hard reality of post-slavery life.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Descending the steep banks to the water thirty feet below, I saw an old ferryman sitting in his boat, with his chin resting upon his left hand, apparently absorbed in meditation. A large white crane standing like a statue on one leg on the opposite shore seemed to be trying to rival him in loneliness. As I boarded, the old man rose—a venerable Negro whose face showed that age had dealt kindly with him, though his eyes carried the weight of a different era.
I asked him what he thought of the times. 'Ah, young master,' he sighed, 'they’re not what they was in the old timey days. That crane did surely put me thinking. There ain't no such days now.' When I pressed him on the difference between freedom and slavery, he spoke with raw pragmatism: 'Well, sir, I think right straight, I think its about one and t'other. The only difference I see is that there’s more freedom and less to eat; more privilege and less comfort. We are all slaves anyhow to our backs and our bellies. Them’s worse masters than ever the overseers was.' He lamented that in the old days, a sick man had a master to send for a doctor, but now, if the poor fall ill, the doctor won't come unless he is certain of his pay. As the boat struck the shore, I offered him a silver half-dollar, and he looked at me, surmising, 'I believe you, sir, is the son of an old timey planter.'
“We are all slaves anyhow to our backs and our bellies. Them’s worse masters than ever the overseers was.”
While this vignette reflects the specific racial hierarchies of the 1870s, the ferryman's observation on the commodification of basic healthcare remains a stinging critique. His weary recognition that 'the doctor won't come' unless he is paid first echoes today's ongoing struggles with healthcare access and the precarity of the working poor in a rapidly developing city.
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