A Nickel for the Ferryman

Waiting for his boyfriend on a sweltering summer afternoon, Jamie's anxieties about their future are interrupted by a woman whose worldly possessions rattle in a wire cart, and who seems to know more about him than she should.

The air in the Church Avenue station was a physical presence, something you had to push through. It was thick enough to taste, a humid cocktail of hot steel from the rails, and garbage. It coated the tongue and the back of the throat. Overhead, the long fluorescent tubes hummed a single, monotonous note, their light a sickly yellow that seemed to stain everything it touched, from the greasy, off-white tiles to the sweat beading on Jamie’s forehead. The heat was a living thing, radiating from the platform in waves, making the already-grimy air shimmer.

Jamie was trying to merge with a tiled pillar, pressing his back against the cool, slick ceramic. It offered a moment of relief, a small circle of not-miserable in the vast, oppressive heat of the underground. His t-shirt, already damp under the arms and across his chest, clung to his skin. He pulled out his phone, the screen glaringly bright in the subterranean gloom. It was the tenth time in five minutes. Maybe the eleventh. He’d lost count.

No new messages. Nothing.

The screen showed the last exchange, a monument to their current state of affairs. Ben’s message, sent twenty-three minutes ago now, was a curt ‘5 mins out’. Five minutes from when he sent it? Or five minutes from some theoretical point in the future? With Ben, the laws of time were more like friendly suggestions. It used to be part of the whole package, the whirlwind charm of a boy who moved through the world untethered by things as mundane as clocks or plans. Jamie had loved that, had been drawn to that chaotic energy. Lately, it just felt like carelessness. A disregard specifically for him.

His thumb, acting of its own accord, began the familiar, masochistic ritual of scrolling up. He swiped through their history, the blue and grey bubbles a geological record of their emotional landscape. A month ago: long, rambling paragraphs typed out late at night, full of stupid inside jokes and earnest declarations that made his cheeks burn even now. Two weeks ago: the sentences got shorter, the response times longer. Last week: clipped, functional, transactional. ‘Can u pick up milk?’ ‘K.’ ‘See u later.’ A thumbs-up emoji in response.

The fight. It was always just ‘the fight’ in his head, a single, monolithic event, even though it had been a series of smaller skirmishes. The final one, about a party he’d seen pictures of but hadn’t been invited to, was the one that had broken the truce. It wasn't the party itself, not really. It was the casual omission. It was the photo of Ben with his arm slung around someone else, laughing, looking for all the world like he hadn't a care, while Jamie was at home, re-reading their old messages and feeling a pit of dread opening in his stomach. The fight hung between them now, a vast, unacknowledged silence in their texts, a chasm they were both pretending not to see.

A violent, metallic shriek tore through the station’s drone, making him jump. He looked down the platform. A woman was wrestling a shopping cart down the short ramp from the turnstiles, one of its front wheels locked at a permanent ninety-degree angle. It screeched and scraped against the concrete, a sound like tearing metal. The cart was piled impossibly high with black garbage bags, a teetering, lopsided tower of possessions bound by a spiderweb of bungee cords and frayed yellow rope. A stained lampshade without a bulb was perched on top like a sad, forgotten crown.

She was one of the neighborhood’s constants, a piece of the local scenery, like the peeling murals or the perpetually broken payphone. He’d seen her a hundred times, shuffling along Ocean Parkway, talking to herself, or sleeping on a bench near the Parade Ground. A ghost in a floral headscarf and too many sweaters, regardless of the season. He’d never been this close to her before. Close enough to see the fine network of cracks in the cart’s plastic handle, close enough to smell the faint, musty scent of damp wool and rain that clung to her.

With a final, protesting groan from the cart, she maneuvered it next to a trash can not five feet from where Jamie stood. She moved with a slow, practiced deliberation, her motions economical and precise. Every gesture was honed by years of repetition. Her face, beneath the faded scarf, was a landscape of deep-cut wrinkles, but her eyes were small, dark, and intensely alert, darting around like a sparrow’s. She ignored him completely at first, her attention focused on the contents of one of the bags. The loud crinkle of the plastic was a percussive sound in the waiting quiet of the platform.

Jamie’s shoulders tensed. He immediately busied himself with his phone again, pretending to read an article, angling his body away. Don’t make eye contact. Don’t engage. It was the first rule of city survival, a mantra drilled into him since he was old enough to ride the subway alone. Mind your business. Look straight ahead. Become invisible.

“Waiting on someone is a special kind of hell, isn’t it?”

The voice was like gravel being stirred with a wooden spoon. It was so unexpected, so close, that Jamie physically flinched, his head snapping up. The woman was looking directly at him. A crooked, mostly toothless smile stretched her thin lips. Her eyes, he saw now, weren’t just alert; they were ancient, holding a kind of knowing that made his skin prickle.

He managed a tight, jerky nod, a noncommittal gesture he hoped would signal the end of the conversation. He stared intently at a peeling poster on the opposite wall, a grinning lawyer promising millions for his clients’ pain. Please don’t talk to me again. Please.

It didn’t work.

“You hold your breath,” she continued, her voice a low rasp. She’d pulled a bruised-looking apple from her bag and was examining it with the critical eye of a jeweler. “Every time the tunnel rumbles, you think, ‘this is it’. Your heart does a little stutter-step. Your whole body gets tight, coiled up, ready. And when it’s not the right train, when it’s just the express roaring through on the other track, it’s like all the air goes out of you at once. A little death, each time.”

She took a bite of the apple. The crunch was obscenely loud, echoing off the tiled walls. Jamie just stared at her, his carefully constructed wall of urban indifference crumbling. His brain struggled to reconcile the disheveled figure before him with the terrifying accuracy of her words. That was it. That was exactly it. The tightening in his chest, the knot in his stomach every time he heard the distant roar of an approaching train, the wave of hollow disappointment when it wasn't the F. How could she know that?

“I’m just waiting for my friend,” he mumbled. The words felt like a lie in his own mouth, thin and flimsy.

“Friend,” she repeated, the word rolling around in her mouth as if she were tasting it. “That’s a nice word. A safe word. But it ain’t the right one, is it, son?” She took another bite of the apple, chewing slowly. “Your shoulders are all hunched up to your ears. Your thumb’s been rubbing the side of that phone so hard I’m surprised it hasn’t started smoking. That’s not friend-waiting posture.” She paused, her dark eyes pinning him in place. “That’s ‘my-whole-world-is-balanced-on-the-point-of-a-pin’ posture.”

A hot flush crept up Jamie’s neck. His mouth went bone dry. He felt suddenly, terribly exposed, as if the grimy station walls had become glass, the humming lights turning into spotlights. He was just a kid on a platform, but he felt like she could see every stupid, hopeful, terrified thought in his head.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, the denial weak even to his own ears.

The woman let out a chuckle, a dry, rattling sound like dead leaves skittering across pavement. “Course you do. You’re holding on so tight, you’re strangling the poor thing. Love ain’t a bird you can keep in a cage, you know.” She gestured with the half-eaten apple. “You gotta leave the door open. If it’s meant for you, it’ll stay and sing. If it ain’t, it’ll fly off. Either way, the cage just ends up empty. The only question is how long you’re gonna sit there staring at it.”

Her gaze was so sharp, so direct, it felt like a physical touch. It sliced through his practiced teenage nonchalance and laid bare the frantic anxiety underneath. A surge of anger, hot and defensive, rose in his chest. It was a violation. Who was this woman? What right did she have to sit there, smelling of old fabric and city rain, and dissect his life with such casual, brutal precision?

“You don’t know anything about me,” he snapped, his voice coming out sharper, more brittle than he’d intended.

“I know the look,” she said, completely unfazed by his tone. She finished the apple in another two bites, then tossed the core in a perfect arc into the trash can without even looking. “Seen it on a thousand faces on a thousand platforms. This city,” she swept her hand out, encompassing the whole grimy, humming station, “is full of people waiting for trains that are never gonna take them where they really want to go. They just stand here, getting older, getting tireder, waiting for the doors to open on a place they’re only dreaming of. The trick ain’t about patience. The trick is knowing when to stop waiting and find a different platform altogether.”

She stopped talking and began to rummage in the deep pocket of one of her many cardigans. The silence that fell between them felt heavier than the humid air. Jamie watched her, his anger deflating into a wary, confused curiosity. The rumble of another train, the wrong train, vibrated up through the soles of his sneakers. He didn’t feel the little death this time. He was too focused on the woman’s gnarled hand as it emerged from her pocket, closed in a tight fist.

She opened it. Lying in the center of her wrinkled, life-lined palm was a coin. It was a nickel, but it was old, the metal a dull, tarnished silver-grey. The buffalo on one side was worn almost smooth, its powerful shape reduced to a soft, ghostly hump. The profile of the chief on the other side was similarly faded, the proud features blurred by the passage of a million other hands.

“Here,” she said, holding it out to him. Her voice was softer now, less gravelly. “For the ferryman.”

Jamie stared at the coin, then at her face. His brain fumbled for a response. “I… I don’t have any money,” he stammered, thinking she was asking for a handout.

A flicker of something—amusement, maybe pity—crossed her face. “It’s not for me, you daft boy. It’s for you.” She pushed her hand closer. “For the next part of the journey. You’re gonna need it.” Her eyes held his, and for a split second, the world seemed to warp. They didn’t look old and clouded anymore. They looked ancient and impossibly clear, like looking down into a deep, still well. He felt a dizzying sense of vertigo, as if he were falling into them.

He didn’t know why he did it. Every instinct for self-preservation, every rule of the city, screamed at him not to. But he reached out and took the coin from her palm.

The metal was shockingly warm against his skin, almost hot. It felt heavy in his hand, far heavier than a simple nickel ought to be. It seemed weighted with history, with decisions, with consequence. He closed his fingers around it, the raised, worn edges of the coin pressing into his flesh.

At that exact moment, the roar he had been waiting for finally came. It wasn't a distant rumble this time, but a deafening crescendo of sound that filled the entire tunnel. A graffiti-slathered F train exploded out of the darkness, its brakes screaming in a long, metallic wail as it ground to a halt. The force of its arrival sent a gust of hot, foul-smelling air blasting across the platform.

The doors slid open with a loud, pneumatic hiss.

And there he was. Framed in the doorway of the first car, bathed in the train’s flat, interior light, was Ben. His dark hair was a mess, falling into his eyes. He had his headphones slung around his neck, and he was staring down at his phone, a wide, unguarded laugh on his face. He looked up, his eyes scanning the platform, and they found Jamie’s.

“Jamie!” he called out. His voice, even from across the platform, was bright and clear. The laugh transformed into a smile, that same easy, lopsided smile that had made Jamie’s stomach feel like it was full of startled birds the first time he’d ever seen it.

Just for a second, the crushing tightness in Jamie’s chest dissolved. It was just Ben. That was his Ben. Everything was fine. He was being stupid, paranoid, dramatic. He felt a smile, a real, relieved smile, spread across his own face. He took a step toward the open doors of the train.

Then he remembered. He glanced over his shoulder, back to where the old woman had been sitting by the trash can, a half-formed 'thank you' on his lips.

The spot was empty.

The bench was bare. The squeaky, overloaded shopping cart was gone. He scanned the length of the platform, his eyes darting toward the ramps, the stairs. Nothing. She wasn't shuffling away. She wasn't disappearing into the crowds. She was just… gone. As if she had been a mirage, a hallucination conjured by the oppressive heat and his own spiraling anxiety.

But the nickel was still in his hand. It was real. It was solid and undeniably warm, a small, heavy secret in his clenched fist.

“Yo, Jamie, come on!” Ben’s voice cut through his confusion. He was beckoning him onto the train, the easy smile starting to curdle into impatience. “Doors are closing, man.”

The electronic chime began its insistent, repetitive warning. The rubber edges of the doors trembled, ready to slide shut.

Jamie stood frozen on the platform, the space between him and the train suddenly feeling like a mile-wide canyon. He looked from Ben’s expectant, slightly annoyed face, glowing under the train’s harsh light, to the old, heavy coin in his palm. The world narrowed to those two points: the boy he thought was his future, and the impossible object from a woman who might not have even existed.

The chime grew more urgent. He felt the weight of the choice, a physical pressure in his chest. For the first time in a long time, he wasn’t sure which train he was supposed to be on, or if he was meant to be waiting on this platform at all.