The Brass Plaque and the Empty Ferry

Just after daybreak on the seventh day of the second month, Ding Quan arrived with a plane. A-Zhao had wiped the wet plank at the stern dry the night before, but this morning a thin line of water again ran diagonally across the old, palm-sized patch. Ding Quan put down his plane, stepped into the boat, and pressed down with his foot on each side in turn, asking her to watch whether the seam opened with the pressure.

Azhao didn't want anyone to know she'd gone back to feel that plank again the night before, and answered a little too quickly, “Just that little bit.”

Ding Quan let it pass. He only said that a little was what they could see for now, and they’d have to scrape away the old caulking on the outside to see what the wood underneath was like. A-Zhao went for the small iron scraper, but he told her to finish the morning crossings first. The boat would stay afloat fine during the day, and there was no sense keeping today’s passengers waiting over that little bit of water. Then he took his oar and sat beneath the willow, holding a curled wood shaving under his nose as though his new oar were what he’d come for in the first place.

There were only two people on the first crossing. Tao Laoliu, the vegetable seller, set his shoulder load in the bow as usual and sat amidships, ready to shift over for the woman coming up behind him. A-Zhao had never given the gesture much thought before, but today she saw at once that his load was pinning the mooring rope and asked him to move it a foot back. Tao Laoliu laughed and said she'd grown stricter since becoming a boat owner. Her father had never even asked where he put his vegetables.

“That's because he remembered you'd move it yourself,” A-Zhao said.

Tao Laoliu looked down and hurriedly dragged his load out of the way. A stalk of green garlic slipped out from the bottom. The woman picked it up and, once she had it in her hand, was reluctant to put it back in the muddy basket. They were still discussing whether the stalk counted as a gift when they reached midstream. A-Zhao listened as she worked the scull and suddenly remembered that little things like this had always made her father laugh too. The boat was quieter now, yet the people who stepped aboard were still more than memories.

When they landed and she went to collect the fares, Tao Laoliu felt around in his sleeve for a long time and said he’d forgotten his string of cash. He’d pay on the way back. A-Zhao drew her hand back and was about to make a note when the woman behind him held out his five cash in her palm too. She was always owing him a couple of coins for vegetables anyway, she said. Today they could trade places. Tao Laoliu laughed at her for keeping such close accounts. If she didn’t, the woman said, how would she know when he forgot those two cash? A-Zhao put the coins into the bamboo tube and spared them an explanation of her father’s old rules.

When she returned to the west bank, seven or eight people were crowded onto the ferry slope, and for a moment she thought she might have more passengers today. Up close she found they were rice cake sellers from the new bridge who had borrowed the space to set down their loads and wait for a passing cart to take them along. Seeing the empty boat, several remarked warmly that Miss He was still running the ferry, but none got aboard. A-Zhao passed them and caught the smell of warm rice cakes. She suddenly wanted two. She put her hand into the money tube, then pulled it out again.

Ding Quan saw her empty hands and asked whether she hadn't gone to ferry people across. Thinking he meant to remark on the lack of passengers too, Azhao set the bamboo money tube on the deck for him to see. He paid no attention to the money and handed her half a cake. Old Sixth Tao had bought too many, he said, and left them under the tree to pick up on his way back, so Ding Quan had helped him out by eating one. Azhao took a bite before remembering that Old Sixth Tao had just said he hadn't brought any money. She looked straight at Ding Quan. His shoulders shook with laughter. Don't give him away so soon, he said. The tale about trading oar shavings for cake at the vendor's stand was a joke. He'd paid for it.

Only when he had finished the tale did he pry up the old caulking. The plank underneath was thicker than A-Zhao had imagined. Only a short stretch by the seam had gone soft. Ding Quan said the boat could still be used if they replaced the outer plank. For now they could patch the seam and decide on a bigger repair once they found somewhere safe to do it. Hearing that the boat could still be used, A-Zhao asked whether it would cost her another large sum. She hardly dared breathe a sigh of relief over the boat anymore, as if the moment she did, money would have to leave her hands.

“As long as you have the boat, you'll have that expense,” Ding Quan said. He pointed at his new sculling oar. “This can still wear out after I've finished planing it.”

A-Zhao crouched beside him and caught the damp filler he scraped out in an old dish. She asked what he'd do in her place. Ding Quan didn't answer right away. He sharpened the plane blade with a couple of strokes, then said he didn't have a boat that big, but he had people young and old to feed. If he had a boat, of course he'd first put it to work earning the money to repair it, even if that meant picking up and setting down passengers somewhere besides the old stone steps. He stopped there to see whether A-Zhao would argue. She tilted her head and asked only where the passengers at the other stop would come from.

Ding Quan mentioned the firewood carriers at West Landing and the people who went to the morning market at Tongwei. Moving the landing would save them two stretches on foot. He would have to try it himself, though. Saying it would work would hardly bring the passengers in. Luo Yan did bamboo-strip work, and from carrying materials back and forth for her he knew a few households willing to take the boat. He made no claim that this stretch of water would be a gold mine again. On clear days, he said, people would still rather take the bridge, with something solid underfoot and no wait for someone to ferry them.

A-Zhao thought for a while, then suddenly asked, “Do you want to rent it?”

The plane stopped in Ding Quan's hands. He didn't say yes right away. He told her to work out first how long she meant to keep the boat. If a good buyer came along three days from now, it would be awkward for both of them. He still needed a piece of wood fitted to the tip of his oar. He hadn't come just to sit waiting for her decision. Azhao felt her face warm. The way she'd asked made it sound as if she could casually slot someone into her father's place and head off to town with a clear mind.

Near noon they found themselves a bundle short of the hemp they needed for caulking, so she went to look in the back room. The top shelf of her father’s old cupboard held odds and ends for boat work, and the clothes stacked below were neater than her own. After her mother died, her father wouldn’t let her rummage there. He said he knew where he kept everything. Now the cupboard stood open, with no one to stop her, yet it took a long time to find a single bundle of hemp. At last she felt it beneath a packet of medicine. On the wrapping were the two characters she’d written in haste that winter.

She took out the hemp and brought down the ledger as well. They still owed the pharmacy, the oil shop, and the lumber shop a total of one hundred and eighty cash. Her father’s fingers had shaken while he was ill, and she’d written two of the entries for him. She’d meant to pay them all when she sold the boat. The boat was still unsold and the debts were still there, and each time she opened the cabinet it felt as if someone had come by again. She counted out the amounts, threaded them onto three short strings, and made the original full string a little shorter.

The apothecary recognized her. He took the money and asked first whether she wanted to take back that old blanket from the cold night. Azhao couldn't remember leaving one. It took her a while to recall that when her father had come for medicine, he'd borrowed the shop's thick cloth for wrapping jars because he was afraid the medicine pot would cool. When the apothecary brought it out, the corners had frayed and the rest had faded from washing. Azhao looked at it and suddenly laughed. She said it belonged to them, so how could she take it home?

Only then did the shopkeeper slap his forehead. He’d got it muddled too. With all the things people had borrowed from each other that winter, he said, it was easy to get the days confused. He’d always thought her father had brought it from home. A-Zhao folded the cloth for him and let the little mix-up pass without asking what her father had said that day. She pushed her short string of cash across the counter and watched him cross out the name. Something in her felt empty, and it wasn’t all sadness.

By the time she’d been to the other two shops, a sliver of afternoon sun had come out. A-Zhao didn’t go to the city gate or ask about carts to Ruancheng. She just bought some hemp for caulking and brought it back. Ding Quan had already laid out the line for fitting the sweep. When he saw her return, he beckoned her over to steady one end. She braced it as he showed her, and together they looked over the joint at the blade. Ding Quan said it still needed another day to dry, so they couldn’t try it in the water today. A-Zhao thought of her skirt. However neat the finishing stitches looked, someone still had to put it on and squat in it once. The corner of her mouth twitched.

The last passenger at dusk was an old man carrying a chicken cage. The chicken wouldn’t settle, so he poked it in the head through the bamboo slats, and the more he poked, the louder it squawked. A-Zhao told him to stop and pulled the old cloth down over the cage. The chicken gradually stopped flapping. The old man said He Huaizhou used to cover the cage the same way and told her approvingly that she took after her father. A-Zhao couldn’t tell for a moment whether she was pleased to hear that. She turned to see if the gangplank was secure on the bank.

One lantern lent out, still to be returned.

One lantern lent out, still to be returned.

She brought the ledger closer to the lamp and looked again. The handwriting was her father's, and what he'd written was indeed lantern, not sampan or lamp oil. There was no name underneath, no number of cash beside it. She turned to the pages on either side and even felt along the paper edges for another slip tucked between them. Her father liked to explain how to record even a round trip with a chicken cage. Here he'd left only one line, as though there had been no need to write the other half down for anyone.

The earthenware lamp they used indoors was right by her hand, and the hooded lamp at the bow was hanging where it always did. She'd wiped it that morning. She went over every lamp in the household she could account for and couldn't think of one that was missing. If her father had borrowed somebody else's, she would have to return it, but he'd plainly written that he'd lent it out. She tapped the ledger with a knuckle and thought of the old cloth she'd mistaken for something else at the pharmacy. It came to her that some things left without a name in the books still mattered too much to let go.

Outside the window, Ding Quan was putting away the new sculling oar. The wood struck the ground with a knock. A-Zhao called to him and asked whether her father had another bamboo lantern with a tall shade. Ding Quan thought for a moment and said the lantern shop seemed to take one every spring, though he hadn't paid close attention to which years it had gone out or come back. At the mention of the shop, A-Zhao finally pictured the bamboo strips on the counter and the old woman who could always pick out her father's footsteps from behind a dozen lanterns.

She closed the ledger without crossing out the line. She’d go and ask first thing in the morning. The Qin home was much closer than Ruancheng, and she could go without selling the boat first or promising Ding Quan anything. She set the new hemp on a dry part of the windowsill. The little string of loose cash in her hand had grown cold. Only when she’d put the coins back in the tube one by one did the landing that had stood empty all day finally seem to recede beyond the walls of the house.