The Best We Can Get

 

Roughly 26 kilometers from his studio apartment in Lexington, KY, where Tates Creek Road meets the Kentucky River, you find the Valley View Ferry, once the oldest private business in Kentucky, for the past 34 years owned by a consortium of the nearest counties. Few travelers use this service these days, the easiest way to cross the river is on I-75 by way of the Clay's Ferry Bridge, named after a ferry that's been gone since 1869, but as a place to sit and be present that won't do. The ferry it is. At this moment the ferry is closed, it's only open till 6 PM on weekdays, but as you approach it on foot from the northwest, once you get around the closed gate and the barbed wire, there's a concrete retaining wall along the roadside with a wooden fence atop that that's okay for perching on if you're able.

You can't see much of the river from there, just ferry and the approach to it,  the river itself, and the trees on the other side, but it's not the outside world that has David's attention. The river by the ferry, having struck him as a good place to be alone, he'd stolen a women's bicycle from a front yard in town, pedaled it all afternoon to a clutch of bushes a couple miles from the river, ditched it in the shrubbery, and walked the rest of the way.  He'd meant to take the ferry and be alone on the other side, marooned until morning, but that, as with most of his plans, did not work out. At 62 years old, with arthritis in both hips and a ruptured disk pressing against his spinal column neat the pelvis, he simply couldn't pedal much faster than he could walk. 

So  he's stuck there until morning. He'd had the foresight to wear a nylon backpack of the type kids carry schoolbooks in, holding 10 cheap cigarillos, a 64 ounce container of water, a brand new disposable lighter, two bottles of 120 water purification pills, a Mylar space blanket to wrap himself in after dark, and a fully charged smart phone with a voice recorder app for if he had any thoughts worth recording.  Only the necessities for sitting and thinking. But the only real thoughts he'd been having for the past 45 minutes was cursing himself for not bringing liquor and food, and that could be remembered later without any effort. Things like this happen often lately. At least he'd shaved before he left so his face didn't itch.

It hadn't occurred to him to find out if there was a charge for taking the ferry, indeed he only has three dollars and some change in his pocket, but that wouldn't matter: he'd simply wait till a car showed up to cross and go along then. Being friendly and humble often worked for such small things. He's forgotten much, but not everything that's useful.