Tours of the Black Clock

7

MARC DID NOT GO to Samson the next day either, or the next. He continued sailing with old Zeno back to the island, hiding on deck and never stepping ashore. Zeno put him to work collecting the fares; it also became his job to yell at passengers who leaned too far over the side, and lie to them about things in the river. It might be alligators one week and piranha the next. The old man filled Marc in on how to operate the boat through the sophistication of the currents. Sometimes, on the trip over, the fog would clear enough for a moment so that Marc could see the whole of the island as he’d never seen it. Beyond the island, beyond the interminable river in which the island rested, he might almost have believed he saw the river’s other side; in the distance a red train crossed on its tracks high above the water. The dust out over the plains were the herds of short-haired silver buffalo that had begun appearing out of nowhere at the turn of the century’s final decade. “You don’t eat one of those,” Zeno said, “however hungry you are. Light you up like a city boulevard.” Past the end of the island was the old rubble of a small shelter that had been built on wooden pillars out over the river; it was charred black from a fire that had taken place before Marc was born. The boy believed he could still see the smoke of the inferno. It was something nobody, including his mother, talked about. Know anything about that fire? he asked the old man. “Not something I talk about,” the old man muttered.

T.O.T.B.C.—2