Old Zhong of the Back-River Ferry
For thirty years Old Zhong has kept the Back-River Ferry, guided by one rule: he reads a passenger by the step onto his plank. Heel-first means an honest heart; toe-first, a guilty one. On the night before the New Year a young man begs to cross to his dying mother, money in hand, but his feet betray him and Old Zhong refuses. By dawn the grain-pawn shop is robbed and the thief has fled east. It is a quiet tale of a man who trusts the foot over the tongue.
Old Zhong had kept the Back-River Ferry for thirty years, not a day short.
The Back River is a branch of the old canal, curving half a loop around the shanties beyond the West Gate. It is not deep; at its widest it barely spans seventy or eighty feet. Yet there is no bridge. Everyone who wishes to cross must rely on Old Zhong's little wooden skiff. The boat is made of fir, coated in three layers of tung oil. In the hold sit two small stools and a chipped enamel tea mug. At the bow hangs a storm lantern; when he ferries by night he lights it, a dim yellow orb that shows the water and the faces upon it.
Old Zhong's wonder was never in the oaring. Oaring was mere labor. His wonder lay in the single step a passenger took onto his plank.
He kept one hard rule: he ferried by the foot. When a man stepped onto the gangplank, how his foot fell told Old Zhong everything. The clear of heart planted heel first, steady. The guilty let toe touch first, hovering, as if the water might eat him. In thirty years he had never let pass one he should have stopped, nor wronged one he should have carried. The neighbors called him a sage; he only said, "The water lies to no man, and neither does the foot."
Most days he carried the regulars. Granny Sun of the east-bank gardens came each dawn with two baskets of greens, her soles thumping the boards; Old Zhong heard the sound and loosed the rope. Hou the Fifth, who shoed horses on West Street, sometimes came drunk, his steps adrift, and Old Zhong made him squat at the bow until he sobered. None of that was wonder.
The wonder came on the night before the New Year.
The river wind of the twelfth month cut like a blade. Near the second watch a young man in a blue padded jacket came running, gasping, and beat the gunwale. "Sir, ferry me across! My mother is at death's door—her last breath—I must see her!" From his bosom he pulled a wad of notes, crisp and new, clutched tight, and pressed them into Old Zhong's hand.
Old Zhong took no money. He only swung the lantern down to the young man's feet. The blue cloth shoes stepped onto the plank toe-first, hovering twice before steadying; the heels never once settled. He looked at the face: the sweat was not of urgency but of panic—dry at the temples, a slick film on the brow, eyes darting, refusing the light.
"Your mother lives on the east bank year-round?" Old Zhong asked.
The young man faltered. "Y-yes..."
"Whose house? What is her surname?"
The young man stuck. After a long stammer he squeezed out, "S-surname Wang." Yet the east bank held only a handful of households, Granny Sun among them; Old Zhong could count them in his sleep.
Old Zhong pushed the money back. "No crossing tonight."
The young man flushed, angry. "You, a ferryman, dare hinder a filial son? If my mother dies, can you bear it?"
Old Zhong did not flare. He wound the rope slowly back upon its post. "Young man, those are not the feet of a son going to his dying mother. Toe first is fear; heel unsteady is falsehood. That wad in your bosom reads not like mercy money but like fresh spoil still warm in the hand. My skiff can carry a man, but not a ghost."
The young man cursed and ran upstream.
At dawn the whole street spoke of it: the grain-pawn shop on West Street had been broken into, several hundred silver dollars taken, the thief fled toward the east-bank reeds, the headman already searching. Old Zhong heard, shook his head, said nothing, and as ever loosed the rope to ferry the first travelers through the morning mist.
Years later, when asked what would have happened had he carried that young man, Old Zhong drained his cold tea and clicked his tongue. "Mid-river, were he a thief, I would have lost this old life and covered for him besides. A man whose footing is false will not hold steady even in the boat."
When Old Zhong grew old and slow, he gave the skiff to his apprentice Xiaoman. Xiaoman asked how the master had trained such an eye for men.
Old Zhong did not answer. He only pointed at the black river. "See the water—it rises and falls, and never speaks, yet has it ever drowned an honest man?" He paused, then added, "That young man's feet I have remembered all my life. Not because he turned thief—thieves are many. I remember the panic beneath them. Panic is no crime, yet in panic a man will use even his own mother as a blind."
The lantern at the bow wears a new shade now, but its dim yellow still lights the water and the faces. The Back-River Ferry remains, and Old Zhong has become, to the youngsters, "that strange old man."