The Disappearing Dwarf by James P. Blaylock

Author:James P. Blaylock [Blaylock, James P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781936535620
Publisher: Jabberwocky Literary Agency
Published: 2012-06-25T06:00:00+00:00

13

S. N. M. Quimby, Haberdasher

Jonathan slogged out across the river bottom and up onto the bank that looked far muddier than it actually was. He climbed to the top with little difficulty. The fog began to clear along the shore although it still hung thick out over the river. He saw that the river flowed across from his right to his left as he stood on the muddy bank facing it. So he’d made it. He was on the northern shore. The moon shone clearly through scattered high fog. There was still scarcely any breeze, something Jonathan was thankful for. The cool night air against his wet skin gave him a case of the shivers.

The land roundabout looked hospitable enough. Lights from a handful of farmhouses dotted the distant landscape. It was late, perhaps nearing midnight, but not so late that Jonathan couldn’t find some sort of warm spot to spend the night. Pulling on his shoes, he climbed down the embankment to the river road and sloshed along it for a hundred yards or so. Then it occurred to him that he’d be wiser to hike along the top of the embankment, mud or no mud, so as to have a view of both the river and the road. It seemed certain that wreckage from the ruined riverboat would float ashore and that others besides himself would have swum for it.

By and by he began to see bits and pieces of wreckage on the river – planks of wood, a ruined cot from one of the cabins, kitchen debris – all of it bobbing along placidly yards from shore. When he glimpsed the first bit it seemed to Jonathan that he should do something – swim out and salvage it or something. But then he determined, of course, that there would have been no point in it. More than anything else he hoped that Gump or Bufo or the Professor or Miles would come paddling along, them and old Ahab.

He began whistling when he saw the first of the wreckage drift past. He knew that Ahab could hear him whistle from a long way off, and he was certain that if Ahab were within whistling distance, he’d find his master by hook or crook. Jonathan went on whistling at intervals, trudging along toward a farmhouse that fronted the river road some mile or so away. He stopped now and again to survey the river, and once when he did, he realized that a light glowing on the river side of the road hadn’t anything to do with the farmhouse as he had thought. Someone had a lamp set up atop the bank to cast light out along a strip of deserted shore. Several big pieces of debris sat in the lamplight. Jonathan hurried along toward it.

When he was almost upon it, a long rowboat pulling for shore appeared on the dark river. Jonathan had lost some of his fondness for rowboats, but this one was something of a welcome sight.

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