Midnight Records: The Night Ferry
Old Cui ferries a red-coated woman across the misty Qinghe River one night — a woman who had no bus to miss, and who leaves behind his late wife's brass locket, not a footprint.
Midnight Records: The Night Ferry
Old Cui's ferry boat had no name. A rusted sheet of iron was nailed to the bow, and on foggy nights he steered by its dull red glimmer.
The Qinghe River once had three bridges. The great flood of '98 took two of them; the one that remained stood in the upstream town. The villagers down here who worked the night shift at the brick factory across the water had no choice but to wait for Old Cui.
Cui was a widower. His wife died in the sixth year; her grave lay on the west slope, facing the dock where he moored. Every night after his last crossing, he tied the boat's rope between two willows in front of her grave, as if to sit with her a while.
That night it rained through the fog, and the brick factory's last shuttle never came. Three workers grumbled across the river. Cui was about to untie the rope when someone called to him from the riverbank.
A young woman in a red padded coat stood at the water's edge, a cloth bundle in her arms, her neck drawn in against the cold. She said she had missed the last shuttle and begged him for a ride.
Cui hesitated. There was no road on this side of the river — what last shuttle? But the woman's lips were blue with cold, and from the bundle poked a corner of little clothing, as if she carried food for a child.
His heart softened, and he lowered the plank.
Midway across, the fog thickened. Cui heard a faint sucking sound from the bundle, like an infant. He looked down; the woman only drew the cloth closer and said nothing.
As they neared the far bank, Cui suddenly remembered: one spring, on just such a foggy night, a young mother with a child had fallen into the Qinghe. When they pulled her out, the baby still clung to her mother's hem. The mother had worn a red coat like this one.
His hand froze on the scull.
The far bank came. The woman stepped onto the plank, looked back at him with a smile — and slipped.
Cui lunged to grab her and caught only a strip of cold wet cloth. The plank was empty; the river lay still without a single ripple.
He crouched at the bow, gasping, before he thought to feel for the ballast coin in his pocket — his wife's brass locket, which she had tucked there for safe passage on the water. He kept it under the cabin floor every night.
But now it was not under the floor. It hung from the willow at the end of the plank, the brass darkened by fog, glowing the same dull red as the iron on his bow.
Cui took the locket down and closed his hand around it. From then on, before untying the rope, he would look once to the grave on the west bank, and once to the riverbank.
He never told anyone about that night. The villagers only noticed, later, that a brass locket had appeared at the bow of Cui's boat, winking in the fog like someone keeping a light for him.