POETRY : Ferry by Kar Johnson
Kar Johnson has been one of The Racket’s very favorite writers since they performed a piece in character–and costume–as the eternal being that is Willie Nelson. We were hooked. And ever since, Kar has brought their considerable talent to a wide variety of subjects. At our most recent The Racket Reading Series, Kar read this freshly minted piece about a ferry and death and how the most mundane moments suddenly become something quite different. It was captivating.
Kar recorded the piece for us and it’s incredible.
Give it a listen.
Ferry
by Kar Johnson
The ferry from the Giants game was delayed then canceled. We waited for the one that was set to arrive in one hour, so we kept ourselves occupied for one hour, had an iced coffee, read a book, sat on a bench in the plaza. Then one hour later we lined up with a one hour long line and we kept reading, joking, ignoring the radiating tenseness of the person behind us, tight as a wire, who wanted to know, needed to know, if we were going to make this boat. Of indeterminate age, somewhere between 13 and 33, his father, impassive in the back of the group, the determined calm of a dad two rum drinks into his Sunday, left his kid or adult son in charge of their travel plans. And the son, panicked as if dropped with only a knife and a compass into the wilderness of the Embarcadero, needed to know if we were going to make this boat. So, one hour late, we all got on the boat. A little rocky at the launch, children running down the aisles explicitly unattended, a bartender nicer than this morning’s had been. We made our way home, all joviality burnt off by this time, well over people, narrowing in on the comforts of our own bathroom, safe and prostrate on the living room floor when we found out
a man leapt off the canceled ferry,
refused life preservers,
let himself go.
I was in bed, so soft but for scratches on my belly I was tending, dirt beneath my finger nails from the dog’s leash on our twilight walk. No one told us about the ferry. We hadn’t asked why. No one had but the kid or man and his father whose hands were washed of the situation and risen in resignation. Estuary is a word I have always aspired to use and I saved it in my pocket until the appropriate moment. It must be lonely to drown in front of a group of people. To make them watch how lonely you felt. We were just sipping iced coffee on a bench. I wore a ball cap backward that made me look like a kid trying to be an adult. I read a book about obituaries. I read the thin columns, the round “o” and the sharp “t.” Divers have swept the estuary and haven’t found a trace of loneliness. I spilled the coffee looking for my ball cap and said “goddamn it.” And even after I heard a man screaming to himself on the plaza, in that one hour of easy occupation, I had said, “It’s days like this that make me love this place.”
