The Last Ferry to Mercer Island

The summer of ’67, the year I turned eighteen, was thick with the smell of diesel and salt off the ferry docks. Mercer Island was our world, a speck of green in the gray sound, and the ferry was the only way off. That’s where I remember Tommy, not from classrooms or hallways, but from the deck of the ferry, leaning over the rail, his laugh cutting through the fog like a gull’s cry. We’d shared a few jokes, a few smokes, but I knew him mostly as the kid who could mimic the captain’s voice and make the old ladies blush. I didn’t know he’d enlisted until the summer of ’69, when a letter from my mother, folded and creased from its long journey, found me in a muddy camp in the Mekong Delta. The paper smelled faintly of her perfume, but the words were all ash and grief. Tommy, killed in action, it said. Killed somewhere in a jungle I’d never seen, his body likely rotting in a soil that wasn’t his. I remember staring at the rain on my tent flap, thinking how cruel it was that he’d traded one wet world for another. I didn’t cry. I was too numb, too tired. But I felt something crack inside, a seam of guilt for every time I’d taken the ferry home, for every time I’d complained about the fog, for every time I’d had the luxury of just being alive. Years later, after I’d come home, after the war had faded into a bad dream, I moved back to Mercer Island. The ferry was still there, but it was a different boat, sleeker, quieter. I’d take it sometimes, just to stand on the deck and watch the water churn, trying to remember what Tommy’s voice had sounded like. And that’s when I saw him. It was a night in late October, the kind of damp, bone-cold night that made you want to stay indoors. I was on the last ferry, the one that ran at midnight, heading back from the mainland. The deck was nearly empty, just a few commuters with their heads down. I was leaning on the rail, looking out at the black water, when I heard a sound that stopped my heart. A laugh. It wasn’t a normal laugh. It was the laugh I’d heard a hundred times on old ferries, in crowded halls, the laugh that was so distinctly Tommy’s—a wheeze, a snort, a hiccup of glee. I turned, my breath catching, and there he was, at the opposite rail, his back to me, a silhouette in a worn leather jacket, a cap pulled low over his face. I knew it was him. I knew it, even though he’d been dead over a year. ‘Tommy?’ I said, my voice barely a whisper. He didn’t turn. He just kept staring at the water. I walked closer, my footsteps echoing on the wet deck, my heart pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat. ‘Tommy, it’s me, Mark.’ Still nothing. I reached out to touch his shoulder, and my fingers went through him. Through. It was like touching fog. And then he turned. His face was young, smooth, unlined by war or worry, just as I remembered from those high school days, but his eyes were wrong. They were black, like two holes punched in the world. His mouth was open, but no sound came out. And then, softly, he spoke, but it wasn’t from his mouth. It was like the words came from all around me, from the water, from the wind, from the creak of the boat. ‘I missed the ferry,’ he said. ‘I’ve been waiting for you.’ I stumbled backward, my legs giving out, and I hit the deck hard. The other passengers looked up, startled, but they saw nothing. They saw me, a middle-aged man, having some kind of fit. But I saw Tommy, still standing there, his black eyes fixed on me, his hand now extended, palm up, as if asking for something. ‘I didn’t make it home,’ he said. ‘But you did. You always made it home.’ And then he was gone, dissolved into the night like the fog he’d come from. I scrambled to my feet, my chest heaving, and I ran to the other side of the ferry, looking for him, but the deck was empty. The only trace was a faint smell—diesel oil, salt, and something else. Something like gunpowder. I’ve taken the midnight ferry many times since that night. I tell myself it was a hallucination, a grief-struck mind playing tricks. But every time I stand at the rail, I feel a presence, and sometimes, when the fog rolls in, I hear that laugh, that unmistakable Tommy laugh, and I know the dead aren’t really gone. They’re just waiting for a ride. And the ferry always comes.