The Boatman's Code

The first taste is free.

John Doe #17 had landed staring face up at the blue yonder he’d just fallen from, getting his eyes cooked and awaiting whichever Boatman drew the short straw to rope up, drop down and hoist him from the gulch floor. Ever you think the dead might ought to consider your sorry-ass backache during descent, you just begging Mr. Tick Tock to clock block you, top of your shift, so you’re on sloth time for the next nine hours. Turns a brush fire into a lava lamp and you can count a hummingbird’s wing beats, you lucky enough working the River to see anything that alive or that pretty. Which you won’t. Believe elsewise, might as well believe you’re on water for real, forget this place ain’t been but dust and drought since God split light from dark. Making peace with that piece of truth next yesterday is the only way to stay sane on the River.

Working the River is half search-and-rescue and half crime scene hunt-and-gather, but the first half’s coming too late and the second won’t ever see trial. Shit, a Boatman could string that yellow barricade tape double-wise around the equator, make the whole planet off limits during investigation and tell every man, woman and child on Earth not to leave town. Day comes we got flying cars and Christmas dinner in a pill, Sheriff still won’t have no leads. And after the last living parrot squawks the last human word, the sun goes black, and the Earth turns to ice, every John Doe and Jane Doe file will still be open.

Worst of the job is how locals take you for a windowpane, look right through you. Like it’s a question of when some bird bashes full-throttle into your chest. Best, you a sore sight for bright eyes or worst, you straight up invisible. Not worth the swipe of a hat brim ‘less they getting an itch scratched back of their head with a gun barrel. Truth up, nobody wants to touch a Boatman, or wants you touching them. You handle the dead with them hands. Chalk it up to some sanitation fixation on account of they don’t get how germs work. But us Boatmen? We all eat with these hands, brush our teeth, live. Until one day it hits you, can’t recall last time anyone offered their hand. Backtrack in your head for scraps: handshake, backslap, shoulder punch, anything. ‘Less it’s from another Boatman, you come up empty.

That lead block in your chest is hunger from your skin-starved skin, your own bloodleather rotting for contact. Ain’t just for want of a good fuck like everyone says, though you won’t hear any complaints. But you need eyes and breath and a heartbeat, reminders that we all cut from the same God because working the River is daily evidence elsewise.

No surprise then, there’s mingling among the crew. Any other gig, that’s a one-way ticket to a Human Resources sit-down, next stop: the door. Above board, the Shop ain’t no different since we’re on the County payroll. Reality’s another story, a point of fact unspoken but one we all know. You get partnered with someone, everyone looks away and nobody whispers or makes jokes. Truth up.

Take Leigh. She rides shotgun with me, a real pro. We’d been together a couple times, just weren’t together. A couple of nights (one early morning, still dark, it makes any difference) when that black weight was the same for both of us, knotting up limbs in the dark, pulling each other harder and closer, like maybe we squeezed hard enough we could touch hearts. Matter of time, though, any Boatman will tell you, when being together wouldn’t be enough for one of us.

[From Sunder, a short published in In Filth It Shall Be Found, Outcast Press 2021)