The Galleon, Volume 60, 1984-1985 Page: 5
This periodical is part of the collection entitled: Galleon and was provided to The Portal to Texas History by the McMurry University Library.
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The Ferry
A.J. Bradshaw cut off the engine of the Corolla and set the brake, as the sign on the steel beam
that rose from the middle of the ferry instructed. The loudness of Huey. Lewis which had been
coming from the speakers died, much to his relief. He had heard this tape through twice already,
and he had wanted to put an end to it half an hour earlier, but he had told Kelly that he could play
his own music the whole day that they would be together.
Now that day was almost over, but the late-winter clouds over the coastal plains were so dense
that the declining sun could not change their color. The clouds had poured rain on them while
they were driving toward San Jacinto, and they had barely made it inside the museum before the
downpour from the Gulf started. They had stayed there three quarters of an hour, A.J. reading
with no real interest yellowed documents on the career of such luminaries as Mirabeau B. Lamar,
while Kelly gave his twelve-year-old attention to the Bowie knives and the powder horns.
But the shower had ended and they had made their escape back into the present. Kelly was so
eager to return to his friends in West Memorial that he released his father from his promise to take
him on tour of the Battleship Texas, moored in a slough off the Ship Channel.
The Lynchburg ferry ran every five minutes during the day, the attendant at the museum had
told them. A.J. had followed the hand-signals of the ferryman onto the flat barge, parking behind a
station wagon filled with four copper-skinned, black-haired people, two parental looking people, a
teen-aged girl and a boy about six. A.J. rolled down his window, and the ferryman, a stout man in
an electric-blue jump-suit, took such as a sign of A.J.'s eagerness to engage in conversation.
"Y'all get rained on?" he asked.
"Yeah. Back at the monument," A.J. answered.
"Went through the monument?"
"Yeah."
"I been living out here thirty-seven years-came out here right after the war-and I ain't never
set foot inside that thing. Don't know why. I do like them graves over by where the battleship is.
There on the left. About twenty graves right in under them live oaks. I used to eat dinner right
there, under them oaks, right next to them graves. A sack lunch. Some people thought I was
crazy. Did y'all see them graves?"
"No. We only had time to see the monument," A.J. said, hoping to close off the conversation.
A few raindrops had fallen since they boarded the ferry, and he wished that the ferryman would
start. A few seagulls flew out of the reeds along the bank of the channel. From the station wagon
in front of them came the sound of high-pitched strings and tinny percussion that would have
been more natural on the banks of the sacred Ganges than of the Houston Ship Channel.
"I make this trip sometimes thirty times a shift," the ferryman said.
"We're going back this way because it was so damn awful driving out through Pasadena.
Maybe it won't smell so bad going back to town on Ten."
"It won't make a bit of difference," the ferryman sneered. "Wish I had a nickel for every time
somebody complained to me about how bad it stinks around here, like I don't know. Hell, it don't
matter which way you go back, the way you came or up through Galena Park. Gas, sulphur,
fumes-it's the same on both sides."
He paused and then spoke again.
"How much do you get to see the kid?" the ferryman asked suddenly.
"What?"
"How many days does she let you see the boy?" he repeated, nodding at Kelly, who was
rearranging the cassette tapes in the black satchel-case.
"Every other weekend," A.J. answered, not knowing why he did. "And six weeks in the
summer. How did you know that-?"
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McMurry College. The Galleon, Volume 60, 1984-1985, periodical, 1985; Abilene, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth137876/m1/7/?q=Lamar+University: accessed July 1, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting McMurry University Library.