Free The White Oak by Kim White Page A

standing on opposite sides of the wide pier. The boatswain is a thin man with rotten teeth and pockmarked skin. He holds a metal rod with a cord on one end and a red laser on the other. He places the rod in each soul’s mouth to scan his or her coin. The scanner’s cord plugs into a black metal machine that sits at his feet. Next to it is a tattered cardboard box full of valuables he’s confiscated from the immigrants: wallets, engagement rings, watches, family photos, books, shoes, and items of clothing. The wealthy get a pat-down, and the poorer ghosts do too. As I watch him work, I realize he’s not looking for money. When he takes something, he studies the shade’s face. If he doesn’t see enough distress, he keeps searching until he finds the item that soul loves most. It’s usually a humble object that was slipped into the casket by a loved one—a special flower, a child’s drawing, or a favorite book. A young man ahead of me begins to sob when the boatswain confiscates a crumpled note that was clenched in his fist. It’s cruel and unfair, but the shades are too afraid of the ferryman to protest. I hide Sybil’s silver necklace inside my dress.
    The ferryman stands opposite the boatswain. He is at least seven feet tall, with a body so muscular it looks deformed. In his left hand, he holds a black bullwhip as thick as the ropes used to moor the boat, and almost as long. Its coils are piled on the pier like a python that’s ready to strike. As I stare at the monstrous ferryman, his skin seems to heat up and he’s suddenly as red as a lobster. “Minotaur,” I whisper, “do you see that?”
    “I have to go,” he replies, disappearing.
    When I look again, the ferryman’s brilliant color is gone and he is sooty gray again.
    The shades shuffle along with their heads down, stopping in front of the boatswain to open their mouths and submit to the scanning.
    I step up in the queue. Behind me the nervous man is now muttering to himself and weeping. Ahead of me the quiet old women in black maintain an implacable demeanor as they pause before the boatswain, who says “What’s in your pockets?” They silently turn their empty pockets out. “What do you carry with you into the underworld?” he asks.
    “Memories,” one of the crones says evenly.
    The boatswain gives them a hard look. “Those will be taken from you soon enough,” he mutters, scanning their coins and waving them on. I try to move closer to them, hoping to seem like part of their group so I can slip by the boatswain without incident.
    The soul I rescued from Asphodel is curled around my ankles like a blue mist. He sees his chance and darts toward the ferry while the boatswain harasses the woman with the baby. He flattens himself against the ground and seeps along the pier like a stream of blue water. But the boatswain sees him out of the corner of his eye. “Fare dodger!” he yells, pointing at the specter. The ferryman raises his massive arm and the whip uncoils and flies through the air. It arcs up and descends on the specter like a serpent striking, picking him off the dock as if he were a wet rag. The ferryman snaps the whip and sends the soul screaming into the river, where his watery body immediately dissolves into the muck.
    While the ferryman is busy with the specter, the boatswain tries to steal the baby from the woman in line ahead of me. “Take my money instead,” the mother pleads, trying to give her purse to the boatswain. He ignores it and pulls at the baby’s foot. The child screams. “Look sir,” the woman says, prying the child’s mouth open. “He has a coin of his own. He is a passenger like all the others.”
    “What’s holding up the line?” the ferryman calls out, pointing his whip at the boatswain.
    The boatswain quickly scans the baby’s coin. “Go on then,” he says, giving the mother a shove that sends her stumbling toward the ferry.
    I am next in line. I lift my tongue and keep my eyes down, but the