A young ferret fleeing the law takes refuge on a riverboat, and if the river works powerful enough changes in him, freedom’s yet in reach.

 Today’s story is the first of two parts of “The Baptism Is Long But The Song Is Everlasting” by Rob MacWolf, who is beginning to be concerned that all his stories have the same theme, and you can find more of his stories and poetry at rob-macwolf.sofurry.com.

Today’s story will be read for the author himself, and features musical production and backup vocals by @SigmaPlusJOmega on Twitter.

You’re listening to The Voice of Dog.

Today’s story is the first of two parts of

“The Baptism Is Long

But The Song Is Everlasting”

by Rob MacWolf,

who is beginning to be concerned that all his stories have the same theme,

and you can find more of his stories and poetry at rob-macwolf.

-macwolf.sofurry.com.

Today’s story will be read for the author himself.

Please enjoy “The Baptism Is Long

But The Song Is Everlasting”

by Rob MacWolf, Part 1,

read by the author himself.

“And what makes you think he set foot on my boat?” Captain Achelous Salimahum Fitzulmo kept his arms crossed and his paws carefully still.

Only his tailtip stirred.

He hated having to wear his jacket when they made port but the shorebound and suchlike businessfolk

had to have some way to tell who was in charge, didn’t they?

“You questionin’ my authority, sir?”

The bloodhound sheriff was tall, and gaunt,

skin and bones but if the bones were all of unbendable steel.

Now he’d spoken, he had a voice like granite echoes in an empty mausoleum.

It was easy to see why he’d let the plump starling handle the talking up till now.

“Now there,” the plump starling put up a hand to the bloodhound’s arm as if to hold his partner back,

though thought better of actually touching him,

“Nobody’s questionin’ anything, ‘cept myself and my colleague questionin’ the whereabouts of the fugitive in question.”

“Well,” the otter eyed the sheriffs, weighing their moods.

The starling looked flushed and flustered,

and if he’d been alone Fitzulmo would’ve wagered a month’s profit

this fella could be talked into turning around and leaving the Irene’s Goodnight to load her cargo in peace.

But the bloodhound clearly wasn’t the kind of man who could be talked out of anything.

He dressed more like a preacher than a sheriff,

wore perfectly round dark glasses,

and it was hard to believe the fellow had any eyes behind them at all.

“I don’t hold with stowaways, so if you think I got one, you’re more’n welcome to see for yourself.

I’m just sayin’,” Captain Fitzulmo stepped aside

to let the lawmen board,

“If he were on my boat,

I’d know.” The sheriffs swept onto the deck,

heavy boots sounding hollowly in the hold.

The crew—otters, nutria, muskrat

—sweated shirtless and barefoot as they sang the barrels and crates into the hold: Well when I was a baby the river flooded wide My mother stirred the wreckage and discovered me inside If wiser or more fortunate she’dve left me where I lay But she had

no choice to keep me, all else had washed away.

Well when I was a young boy,

the river called my name. I followed him. He broke my heart, he mended it again. Now some

would say I ran away, but twas the river’s plan,

He handed me a tiller and made me a riverman.

(You take unto the river, boy, the river

makes you a man) “Is it strictly necessary, Captain,”

the starling’s eyes were pained,

“for them to be making so much racket?

And for them to be in such a state of indecency?”

Now I am like the river for he’s loved many men. However much they leave his bed they can jump right in again. The frigid lakes, the babbling streams, they’ll tell you he’s a whore, But however many rivermen, there’s always room for more. (However many rivermen, there’s room for ‘nother score.)

“Why, that fellow,” he averted his eyes theatrically as a beaver hauled himself over the railing with one hand and shook riverwater out of his fur,

“is nude as the day he was born!”

“Course he is,” Fitzulmo snorted,

“you expect a man to swim in waterlogged clothes and still get any work done?

Anyway, you here to preach Sunday School at my crew, or look for a stowaway?”

“He ain’t up here,”

the bloodhound pronounced, like a dirge, through a nose eagerly in the air,

“I’d smell him.” “Perhaps he’s below?”

offered the starling.

He didn’t sound hopeful, which was no more than he deserved.

“This fella you’re after, what was his name?” Fitzulmo made idle conversation as he guided the lawmen past the cargo stacked on the hold ramp, “And what’d he do that’s so dire?” “Tiberius MacClarence.

Day laborer on diverse farms.

His parents’ sundry financial obligations,”

the starling adjusted the badge on his lapel,

which had been knocked askew on the barrel of maple sugar he’d squeezed past,

“were unexpectedly called due this last month,

and they proved quite unable to meet them.

Naturally, the magistrate saw there’d be no sense in sending them to debtor’s prison, for then the debt would never be paid at all!

So their son was remanded to custody in their place.

Only till the debts are settled, of course!

But young people never see reason, do they?”

The sheriff shook his feathered head gravely at the folly of youth. Fitzulmo acknowledged a young fellow mightn’t be likely to see the reason of that.

“How’d he escape?”

“He didn’t,” the bloodhound paused, glared at Fitzulmo.

“I’m still on his trail, so he ain’t escaped yet.

An he won’t. No man escapes me.”

Which seemed to be all there was to say on that subject.

He followed the sheriffs all over his own hold.

The starling didn’t seem to have any more idea than the otter what the bloodhound was doing or how long he’d be.

“So there, Captain, have you…

been working a riverboat long?”

sighed the starling as the bloodhound peered behind a pile of wool bales for the third time.

“Born on one,” Fitzulmo replied.

“And, uh, how do you find the life suits you?”

“I’d hope I like it well enough, by now.”

“That sounds fascinating,”

said the starling as if it didn’t.

“Tell me, how long before you hope to retire?

Take to quiet respectability?”

“He ain’t here!” the bloodhound bayed, indignant, offended,

and saving the otter from having to answer.

“I told y’all that an hour ago!” Fitzulmo said.

“What do you mean,” the other sherriff cut him off,

“he ain’t here?” “I can’t smell him nowhere on the ship!”

growled the dog through clenched teeth.

“Does that mean I can get underway?” Fitzulmo said,

“she’s loaded, current’s pullin,

and every boat what gets to Louisiana ahead a’ me

knocks my prices down!”

“I don’t understand,”

the starling grumbled as he stepped off the gangplank,

“Our informant said she clearly saw him board this vessel.”

“Well, maybe she didn’t get as good a look as she thought she did,

or she wanted the reward money, or she jes thought lying’d be funny, sure

I wouldn’t know.” Fitzulmo nodded up to Cairo at the helm,

and the green heron whistled for the crew to begin casting off.

“I smelled him,” The other sheriff muttered, grim as a gravedigger,

“when we come on the boat.”

“I suppose,” Fitzulmo could have danced in frustration, but no, still wearing the damn coat, got to be gentlemanly,

“He might’a dove off, swum for the opposite bank?

Could be on the Kentucky shore by now, if he was a strong swimmer.

More likely he’s sleepin on the bottom of the river, t’ be honest.”

“You’ll check in with a telemancer, Captain,”

the Starling cupped his feathers around his beak

to shout as the crew poled the Irene’s Goodnight

off the dock to take the current,

“when you reach your destination?

In case there are any developments?”

“That’s like to be at least three’r four weeks,” Fitzulmo was counting the seconds in his head till he could relax,

“but if’n you insist, officer!”

The starling turned to walk away,

but the bloodhound stood watching on the bank,

baleful stare burning into Fitzulmo through dark glasses

till the otter turned to step behind the cookshack.

Then he could peel the heavy captain’s jacket off,

feel the cool humidity the river exhaled slide through his back fur,

shiver in relief.

He was on the river again.

He was home. “All’s well, cap’n?”

Aitkin asked. It apparently still hadn’t occurred to the beaver to put on pants, but Fitzulmo didn’t bother to remind him.

“All clear,” the otter answered.

“Let’s see to our passenger.” He and Aitkin hauled up the Irene’s Goodnight’s fenders:

wooden barrels wrapped in rope, hollow and buoyant,

the sort of place a canny lawman might suspect a riverboat of hiding smuggled goods.

The last one was pretty heavy,

but they’d each been lifting cargo for years and it didn’t take long before it too lay on the deck,

dripping muddy-smelling water.

Fitzulmo reached down,

gave the top of the wooden fender a twist.

There was a click,

and after a moment the entire thing opened.

Out crawled a ferret,

wet, bedraggled, and plainly frightened.

His clothes were soaked, a cloth cap was jammed over his ears, and he was shivering.

“Now then,” said Captain Achelous Salimahum Fitzulmo,

“the hell’re we gonna do with you?”

“You really landed us in it this time!” Early wheezed.

The old cook sat on the edge of the ‘upper deck,’ which was what he insisted on calling the cookshack roof,

dangled his wrinkled but still vibrantly orange legs over the side.

Fitzulmo frowned at the killdeer,

but it wasn’t worth uncrossing his hands from behind his head or sitting up.

“I done nothing of the sort, old man.

He’s just another runaway to the river, ain't he?

We seen dozens like him and we’ll see dozens more.”

“Don’t you lecture me about riverways, sonny, I been shippin’ on the Irene’s Goodnight longer’n you and I’ve-”

“Forgotten more’n you know about what it means t’be a riverman,” Fitzulmo and Cairo finished in unison with Early.

“Old man’s got a point, cap’n,”

said Cairo, in the same monotone drawl the heron would use to say

‘my neck itches’ or

‘there’s a tornado bearing down on us.’

“We know fer a fact he’s got sheriffs after him an all.

Hard to make a run downriver pay if we all get arrested.” “Which is why they ain’t gonna find him.” Fitzulmo said with as much authority as he could while lying down.

It wasn’t much. But the feeling of sun-warmed wood on his back,

the gentle sway of the boat beneath,

the sounds of cicadas made indistinct with distance,

the smell of the batch of biscuits Early had pulled out of the dutch oven,

didn’t those all matter more than captainly authority?

What was the point of captianly authority if it meant you had to skip all the best things about the river?

“How the hell d’ye reckon?”

Early snapped. The old kildeer really was gonna make him sit up, wasn’t he?

“Cairo,” Fitzulmo said as he did,

“what’s our next port?” “I’d

-a hoped you’d know, cap’n,”

said the heron leaning on the tiller.

The otter gave him a sharp look.

Damn the bird and his sarcasm.

“Well then. It’s Maysville,

then Cincinnati after.”

“And that’s four days away, five if’n a headwind comes up.”

The otter gestured toward the front of the Irene’s Goodnight.

Aitkin was hanging the ferret’s soaked clothes up to dry.

The lad himself was sitting by the railing,

wrapped in a blanket.

Someone’d given him something steaming to drink in a tin cup.

“Don’t think I caught yer name, mate!”

The beaver said, cheerfully, as he hauled the last of Tiberius’s clothes into the air like a flag.

The ferret hunched in the rough blanket the big otter, who seemed to be in charge, had tossed him.

“Uh, Tiberius MacClarence,” he ventured.

The beaver leaned back on his tail,

hands in the pockets of the pants Tiberius had talked him into putting on.

He seemed to be trying to come to terms with that one.

“Well, that’s a mouthful. What’d yer ma call ya?” “Uh,

Tiberius.” “Oh. What about yer pa?”

“Tiberius. Or Mr. MacClarence, if he was mad.

Or if he was tryin to talk some farmer into hiring me fer the day.”

These were not, judging by the beaver’s expression,

particularly useful answers.

“You got anything shorter?

Like… when the cap’n wants me, he just yells,”

the beaver grinned, then bellowed at the top of his lungs,

“Aitkin!” The nearest riverman,

a nutria, dropped his fishing pole with a curse,

slipped into the water to retrieve it,

and resurfaced, dripping wet and glaring daggers at the beaver.

“Sorry Natch!” The Nutria ignored him, stalked away to strip off his sopping clothes. Aitkin turned back to Tiberius.

“You know you’ll dry faster if you drop the blanket and lay on it?

Sun can’t reach yer fur through that.”

The ferret clutched the blanket tighter.

The beaver shrugged and continued.

“Well, we oughta come up with a name for you as is easy to bellow, if’n the cap’n needs to.

So let’s see… where yer from,

what’s the name of the river?”

Tiberius felt as if he’d missed a step.

“What river?” “Well, everyone’s gotta live near a river, right?”

Aitkin shrugged, “Or how else’d they get anywhere?”

The ferret decided this wasn’t worth the effort.

“I guess the closest was the Shenandoah?”

“Then what say we call ya Shen? Short for Shenandoah?” grinned the beaver, with the confidence of a man to whom it has never occured

that folk might be named after anything other than rivers.

“Oh, I don’t know…” Tiberius winced and stared into his cup.

Some kind of broth, tasted like it had rough whiskey in it.

“Ma and Pa didn’t hold with goin’ by nicknames.

They always said we were on our way to bein’ a respectable family, and respectable folk don’t go by nicknames none.”

Or smoke, or drink, or swear, or play cards.

Or let themselves be seen in the company of indecent ruffians such as riverboatmen. Though

apparently respectable folk DO run up secret debts they don’t tell their kin about, then turn those kin over to the law in their place.

Apparently respectable folk

don’t even tell their kin this sort of news to their face,

they leave it to whatever sheriff hauls you out of gaol after a terrified and sleepless night

spent sure you were about to be hanged.

Apparently respectable folk

leave their own flesh and blood

to make a run for it,

hungry and homeless.

That’s all fine. But absolutely no nicknames! “I feel like Shen suits you well enough,” Aitkin was saying when he looked up.

“Don’t think nobody else aboard’s from there, so there ain’t like to be no confusion.”

“You give him that soup?”

Fitzulmo asked. “I did,”

Early lit a foul-smelling corncob pipe,

“Lad was frigid and scared and

best I could find out hadn’t eaten in three days.

Sainted Ma Fenimore in heaven ain’t gonna look down and watch her son turn away a soul in need.”

“How is that different from givin him passage?” “Because the law ain’t gonna come down on me fer givin a man a cup of soup!”

“Yes they would,” interjected Cairo.

“You say you know the river better’n anyone,”

the otter lay back, folded his hands on his belly,

made himself comfortable again,

“though I’ll note:

of the three fellas up here, you aint the one that’s the captain and you ain’t the one at the tiller.

But wouldn’t you agree the river works powerful changes in a man?”

“Yes…” the killdeer answered, suspicious.

“Why, even shorebound folks know to come to the river for their baptizin.”

“I suppose…” “And this fella ain’t a fool.

He talked Aitkin back into his breeches,

no mean feat.” “That don’t prove nothin.”

“And having four, maybe five, days of the river oughta be sufficient to make a decent start on his education?”

“I ain’t rightly certain of that.”

“Well, I am, and I’m captain,

so I say wait and see. I’ll wager a jug of rum that by the time we hit Vicksburg, he’ll belong to the river firmly as any a man of us.

So much that a sheriff could look him in the face and not recognize him.”

“Not sure I’m eager to test that last bit, cap’n,”

Cairo croaked. “You’re on.”

Early spat over the rail into the water.

“River’s my witness.”

Tiberius gulped down the rest of the broth,

winced at the burning taste.

Yup, definitely whiskey.

“What kinda fella would be named Shen, anyway?”

“Well,” the Beaver’s face was in deadly earnest,

“I’d reckon he’d have a good singin voice,

he’d be quick at the oars and poles if it’s time to get into port,

and he’s a hell of a shifter when a fella needs a fella to walk backwards down the plank with the other half of a barrel or a bale.

And I’d hope maybe he wouldn’t mind sharin a hammock, of a lonely night or two?”

The ferret felt himself blushing again.

But the whiskey was doing its best to encourage him, and he could see how having a new name

might be useful for someone on the run from the law,

and it honestly didn’t look like respectability was on the table any more anyway.

“Well,” said Shen, “I been told I got a good enough singin’ voice.

Supposin’ we start by learnin’ me that part of the job?”

“Sure can!” Aitkin grinned,

“Give a listen and follow after me:”

Now when you’re on the river he can take you anywhere Just listen to your riverman, and pay your easy fare. And those who cheat a riverman will face the river’s wrath, For they’ll be headed overboard, and bound to take a bath. Now aint no thing needs carryin that riverboats can’t hold: We’ll take lumber, iron, cotton bales, take silver, and take gold. We’ll take your salt or sassafras, your grain or whiskey too. And when you’re in a hurry, boy, we’ve saved some space for you. (We’ll

take your goods and cargo, boy, and then we’ll take you too.)

“Now you philosophical gentlemen’ll excuse me,”

Early pulled himself to his feet,

stretched his wings till his shoulder popped, “but some of us got work to do, and apparently an extra mouth to see about feedin.”

“Go on then,” the captain answered,

“Afore your sainted Ma takes umbrage.”

The kildeer bustled down the ladder,

back into his cookshack.

The heron sank back into a gently swaying, meditative reverie,

eyes playing like reflections across the water ahead,

weight balanced on the long tiller.

The otter watched a ferret spend the evening

learning to tie knots from a beaver,

grow comfortable in his drying fur,

in the pants and cloth cap he reclaimed,

without the shirt he didn’t bother with,

and in his new name,

as if he were breaking in a new pair of boots.

Well here’s your stop, fine gentlemen, take care now where you step. There’s mud upon the riverbank, there’s tar upon the deck. Your fine clothes are all dirty now and not fit to be seen. But if you were a riverman the river’d wash you clean. When they docked in Cincinnati, the otter,

who Shen was doing his best to think of as ‘captain,’

told him to lay out the fenders and tie off to the dock.

He watched carefully, though, how the nutria, Natch, and the muskrat, whose name was harder but he finally remembered it was Weiser,

poled them close enough in before the dockman tossed a rope.

Shen did his best to catch it as if it weren’t his first time.

He’d been afraid of the loading, the unloading.

From the way the crew

—the REST OF the crew, he corrected himself

—talked about it, he was afraid it’d be bone-breaking, back-crushing, soul-destroyingly hard work, he’d fail miserably, he’d be exposed as a fraud and told he would never make a riverman.

But it proved to just be lifting and carrying.

No different than he’d done as a farmhand, easier, even,

because there wasn’t as much of it.

Aitkin explained they almost never unloaded anything, this leg of the trip,

“see, the farms upriver, they’re mostly lookin’ to sell goods downriver, so they sign

papers with the capn’,

load up their grain ‘r wool ‘r whatever it is,

then we sell it at a big port

downstream! And then somehow, cap’n sends some a’ the money back to the farmers, and gives us our pay outa the rest.

I dunno how, don’t really care so long as I get mine.”

Which was why after loading a dozen or so barrels,

Shen spent the rest of the morning lounging on the deck, watching captain Fitzulmo pace on the edge of the dock like a restless animal.

A couple times the captain struck up a conversation with passerby

—a big clydesdale in overalls, a puma in a preacher’s collar,

a coyote who was likely some kinda vagrant witch or conjure-man looking to sell unlawful spells

—but mostly he fretted for a couple hours till he sent Weiser to the tavern

to fetch everyone back so they could depart.

Shen hadn’t gone. He didn’t want to give any lurking sheriffs the chance to get between him and the Irene’s Goodnight.

“There a problem, cap’n?” the ferret brought himself to ask.

“Oh, nah,” the otter reassured him,

“I’d like a full hold, just float all the way to Louisiana without stoppin, but gossip says they had a dry spring,

we probably ain't getting it till Louisville, maybe even Memphis.”

“You just seem uneasy, is all.”

“Cause I wasn’t on the river.” The captain peeled off his jacket with evident relief.

“Make sure we’re ready to cast off soon as everyone’s back aboard, Shen.”

“Aye captain.” And wasn’t it a pleasant surprise how natural saying it felt.

Well here’s your stop dear madam, here is where you’ll stay. You’ll see that there’ll be dancing yet upon your wedding day. And there’s your happy ending. Don’t keep it waiting long. But such ain’t for the likes of me, I must be rolling on.

"Let’s get you a feel for her, lad,”

the captain gripped Shen by the wrist, when the ferret got to the top of the ladder,

and pulled him up to the cookshack roof.

The green heron, who if he had let go of the tiller even once since Shen had set foot on the Irene’s Goodnight then the ferret hadn’t seen it,

looked at him through half closed eyes.

eyes.“You ever steered a boat before?”

“Can’t say as I have,”

Shen answered. “Well, you’re about to.” Captain Fitzulmo said, before Shen could say the part about how he wasn’t sure this was a good idea,

“Cairo, you been up a day’n a night’n then some, get to your damn hammock.”

“Don’t run us aground or nothin”

was apparently what Cairo said instead of goodnight.

“I really don’t wanna run us aground, though,”

the ferret whined the second the heron was out of earshot.

“Calm down, lad, she’s easier than she looks,

and the river aint tricky here.”

The otter made room beside the long wooden beam.

“Take a grip and I’ll show you.”

Shen set his hands to the smooth wood.

The tiller was easily the length of a whole tree, and about as heavy,

and even with his arms around it the ferret couldn’t see how he was supposed to move the damn thing.

But then the captain was right behind him, was moving his shoulders, shifting his arms,

pulling him back against the otter’s chest.

“Like that. Lean back into it.

Let the tiller hold you up. You don’t steer with your arms, you steer with your weight. You don’t push a boat through the water, you just slide her sideways into a current’ll put her where you want her.”

His arms wrapped around Shen to reach the tiller himself.

He smelled like sweat and sun-worn wood and sweet water.

“Now she’ll turn whatever way the back end, in the water, pushes. Which means the front end goes the other way, got it?

So to go port,” Shen felt the otter’s muscles roll and his fur shift against his back,

“you go starboard.”

The Irene’s Goodnight drifted,

gently, toward the left bank.

“And to go back starboard,”

the Captain pulled against Shen’s shoulders, leaned him, made him hang his weight on the tiller, and miraculously he felt it respond,

“you go port.” “Don’t it get confusin,

backward-like?” Shen could feel the captain’s breath, moving in the otter’s chest, against his back and side.

“You get used to it.

If it’s bogglin’ you, think on it like you’re bracin’ against the tiller

and pushin’ the boat with your feet.”

That made it make more sense, Shen found.

And every mile that slipped by on either bank

Fitzulmo let go a little more,

till Shen held the tiller himself and the captain’s hands were just hovering

close enough to his shoulders

to barely feel at the edges of his fur.

“Reckon you got the basic idea, then?”

The otter ducked to the other side of the tiller.

“Reckon so, captain,” the ferret answered. “Reckoned you would,”

said Fitzulmo. “Cap’n,”

Shen hesitated, “you ain’t plannin on me…

takin this over,

are you? Cairo ain’t goin nowhere, is he?”

“What? No! What? Hell no, boy!”

the otter laughed.

“Cairo knows this river better’n the back of his hand, I ain’t lettin him go nowhere!

You just oughta know how,

is all. Every riverman oughta.

Fact you caught on swift is proof you’re meant to be a riverman, but I ain’t gonna look to you to steer.

Least not alone. Least not for a long while!”

“I don’t know as it’s so funny, cap’n,” Shen blushed.

“Just seemed in a hurry to turn me inta the genuine article fore I barely been a prentice, is all.” And if Fitzulmo shot Shen a sharp, guilty look then, one that wondered if someone had talked too much about Vicksburg

and jugs of rum to be won,

Shen was too busy staring down the length of the tiller to catch it.

So the otter just reassured his pupil: no, there was no hurry,

the river don’t hurry so neither should a riverman.

And anyway there was still all the business of reading the surface ahead,

seeing how the standing waves meant submerged logs or rocks, the cross-current ripples meant a bank of silt or sand.

And by then he was behind Shen again, arm past his face to point forward,

other hand on his shoulder,

bare chest to bare back,

pressing body and brawn on the tiller with him and next to him,

and so Shen’s momentary concern was soon entirely washed away,

like mud in a river. Now a riverman

knows how to drink.

A riverman can brawl. And in his rolling hammock he can find no sleep at all. A riverman knows how to sing, he’s singing all night long. He has no need to learn the words, he sings the river’s song.

(So join him in his hammock and you’ll sing the river’s song.) Shen lay atop Aitkin.

The beaver had pulled their shared hammock

—and hadn’t it been a surprise to learn the offer to ‘share a hammock’

was both practically permanent and mostly because the Irene’s Goodnight

didn’t HAVE any unoccupied hammocks

—up on the deck, tied it off between the clothesline and the bow railing.

It was gonna be a beautiful night, he’d said,

and summer was always short enough.

You had to sleep under an open sky whenever you got the chance.

Shen knew well enough what Tiberius MacClarence’s mother would have said.

Night air outdoors was how you got the Scarlet Fever

—well, that and eating watermelons

—and without a shirt?

Or shoes? And with this ruffian wearing nothing at all, not that that was unusual for him?

Might as well pick out your headstone now and save time!

But Shen was finding he didn’t have much of a good opinion of Mrs. MacClarence or her medical advice.

So the ferret relaxed,

his feet stuck over the end of the hammock,

the back of his head on the beaver’s belly,

the beaver’s hands on the ferret’s chest,

and looked at the stars.

“I once had a shipmate,” Aitkin mused, “said there was a story about how the Milky Way up there was all campfires.

Everyone who’s ever died, while they’re makin the trip to heaven or hell,

makes em when they stop for the night.

Gotta wonder what kinda river they’re travelin, if it goes either place.” “What

makes you think it’s a river?”

Shen asked. “They’re travelin’ ain’t they?

What else’d it be?”

“Supposin we find the fella who told you the story, then,”

Shen stroked the rough fur on Aitkin’s forearms, “and ask him? Where’s

he gotten to?”

“Assumin’ the story’s true,” Aitkin waved a hand at the river-shaped cloud of stars,

“at a campfire up there somewhere.”

Shen felt Aitkin’s grip on him tighten.

On the other end of the deck, Natch and Early and the two taciturn otters whose names Shen finally had learned

—Sven and Rufus, brothers they claimed, though they looked nothing alike,

from somewhere up the Mississippi headwaters they called ‘the cabin’

—were playing cards by lantern light.

The only time they were audible was when someone swore over the jingling of pennies and buttons changing hands,

or the occasional general laughter when someone added an article of clothing to the pot.

Otherwise Aitkin’s breathing, the distant sound of crickets, and the comfortable silence of the river beneath were all there was to hear.

“You were,” Shen said, cautiously,

“sweet on him?” He felt the beaver nod.

“I get sweet on a fella

pretty easy, I guess.”

Aitkin admitted. “Reckon you mighta noticed.

Don’t often wind up havin’ em sweet on me back, but I take things easy.

I figure, I got the fella I’m sweet on in my arms, and he don’t mind bein there?

Still better’n a lot o’ folk do.”

Shen was trying to figure what, if anything, to say, when another sound interrupted his thoughts.

A tin whistle, or some other kind of cheap flute.

A tune slow and not a little bit sad.

Every few notes, one would hit just a little wrong,

but the song went on as if it paid a wrong note no mind.

He was almost invisible in the darkness, but atop the cookshack roof,

technically still steering by leaning his elbows on the tiller as he played, Shen could just make out

the starless outline on the night

that was the Captain.

“And yer sweet on the cap’n,”

Aitkin said, without accusation or bitterness.

Shen twisted back to face the beaver,

and slid to the side,

where the hammock held them tight together.

Aitkin chuckled, shifted himself to make more room,

stroked silence into the ferret’s cheek before Shen could put together an answer.

“I ain’t dumb, Shen.

Folks think I don’t bother learnin’ things I don’t care to know, and true enough, its’a mess a trouble to no purpose.

But I can see what’s plain plain enough.” “I don’t… Aitkin, I ain’t gonna jes…

I mean, I couldn’t...

I’d never… drop you, or nothin’”

Shen stopped and started four or five different denials in a hushed whisper, but could find what he meant in none of them.

“An thank you kindly,”

Aitkin chuckled. “Gives me a chance to maybe persuade you some.

Ain’t gonna ask you to stop bein’ sweet on the cap’n.

Seen the appeal m’self.

But maybe you can find yer way to gettin a bit sweet on me, too.”

Shen found his head resting on Aitkin’s shoulder,

wondered when he’d done that.

“I guess I maybe could,”

he said, “I learnt a powerful many new bits of work, of late,

oughta be able to add one more.”

Shen felt Aitkin’s lips find his forehead.

“Jes listen to me.

Said we’re out here to enjoy the summer night, and all we do is jaw at eachother.”

“Well then,” the ferret nuzzled the beaver’s neck,

“shut up and let us enjoy it!”

“You comfy?” “I got you, don’t I?

Who needs a feather bed, they got a big lug like you to sleep on?”

Then they were, in fact, quiet. And for the rest of the night, there might very have been very few things in the world, as far as they were concerned.

The cool smell of river water.

The sound of distant, innocent insect song.

The closer, more bittersweet music of a cheap tin flute,

inexpertly played.

And eachother. But for one of them, there was also the captain,

and the ghost of who he had been

before the river. For when

I was a young boy, the river called my name. Couldn't help but follow him once the river’d made his claim. I washed the road dust off my feet, I bid the shore goodbye,

And I will be a riverman until the day I die.

This was the first of two parts of

“The Baptism Is Long

But The Song Is Everlasting”

by Rob MacWolf,

read for you by the author himself,

which featured Musical production and backup vocals by @SigmaPlusJOmega on twitter. Tune in

next time

to find out whether Tiberius,

and the things from which he is fleeing,

have disappeared as thoroughly as Shen hopes.

As always, you can find more stories on the web at thevoice.dog, or find the show wherever you get your podcasts.