Some ponies say it's no skill to pull a canal barge, but Mersey knows better. Even algae on the bottom makes the barge pull differently than when it's clean, and its momentum can be a help or a hinderance, depending on the situation.
Locks, docks, and opposing traffic all need to be dealt with, as well as an extra barge in Fens Junction that's going all the way through to Stroudwater. If that wasn't enough, she's got to look after her brother and keep him out of trouble, both on the canal path and at the public house.
She poked his shoulder to wake him up, then headed downstairs to start making coffee. Swanky wouldn’t get out of bed until he smelled the coffee even though she knew he was awake: she’d heard him grumble under his breath.
It was good to have a morning routine. Mersey opened the dampers on the stove and tossed in a fresh log. She set the percolator on top of the stove and scooped the grounds into the brew basket like she always did. Water came next, poured over the grounds to get them ready to brew.
While she waited for the coffee to start going, she ran a brush through her mane. She could curry her coat, too, but didn’t bother. The harness would just mess it up again. Currying was an evening task. She wasn’t vain enough to worry about some sleep matting in her coat.
Swishing her tail didn’t get all the snags out; she was still brushing it into order when she heard hoofbeats echoing on the staircase. A moment later, Flash Lock stepped into the kitchen, her mane and coat also mussed from sleep. Working ponies weren’t vain ponies.
“Morning, Mersey.”
She nodded in reply and went back to work on her tail.
Flash would make breakfast, oats for her and then something else for Swanky and herself. Neither of them ate oats very often, which was silly: a good day started with oats.
As the percolator began burbling, a heavy set of hoofsteps sounded on the stairs; Swanky had finally roused. His mane was tossuled and his fur was clumped, and Mersey was ready with a brush. She had to look after her brother.
•••
Flash made eggs and Mersey sneaked a few off Swanky’s plate, just a couple bites. She had her own small mug of coffee too. She didn’t really like the taste: acidic and bitter. But it made her feel alert and perky. Too much and she got nervous, started shifting around on her hooves. A few sips were plenty.
Flash and Swanky chatted about the load and the weather and what traffic might be like on the canal, and Mersey listened to them talk. Then breakfast was over, and they disappeared through the connecting door to the warehouse to start loading the boat.
Meresey yawned as she collected the dishes, and piled them into the washbasin. She plunged them into the warm, soapy water and scrubbed them vigorously with her washcloth, getting all the little scraps of food off. Washing dishes was calming work, and a proper bookend to a meal.
Once they were all arranged in the drying rack, she slipped into the adjoining tack room. It was time to put on her harness. First she inspected it, making sure all the straps and traces were in good condition. Other ponies had broken their harnesses before, and she’d seen plenty along the canal and around the city which were ready to break. When she and Swanky got their first pass-me-down harnesses, her father had told them that if they took good care of their equipment it would last a lifetime and never let them down. While that obviously wasn’t true of a foal’s harness that would be outgrown, their eventual adult harnesses ought to last forever.
Getting into it was the final part of the morning routine, a chance to both do a familiar task and to mentally prepare herself for the day’s work. She’d looked outside and read the newspaper already, she knew what the weather was supposed to be. She could see how the canal was running from her bedroom window, and she’d gauged coal barge traffic from what had gone past since she woke.
There wouldn’t be any passengers riding on their barge today. Sometimes there were, and she had mixed feelings about them. Having a routine was good, and passengers changed that routine. Cargo was quiet and stayed where it was put; passengers wandered around and got in the way and talked too much.
•••
Sometimes passers-by made fun of her or Swanky, sometimes they said that towing a barge was no skill at all, that it was slow and plodding and she’d just put her head down and ignore them. Knowing when to pull and when to let the barge drift, knowing how to anticipate stops and let the barge coast neatly into a lock or a basin, that had taken her months to learn. Every time she got it wrong, she knew Flash was frustrated: messing up made more work for both Flash and for herself. If there were other bargees around, mistakes provided plenty of opportunity for light-hearted ribbing. At first she’d been frustrated and offended by the casual insults tossed about, then she’d gotten used to them and would just ignore them. She was learning. Nopony plowed a straight furrow their first time, either.
Those days were long past; water under the hull. Now she was a veteran, honed by years of experience; by the time their barge reached the tunnel, she already knew how it was going to handle.
It wasn’t like hauling a plow on the farm, or even a wagon. Everything changed every day. Even the algae that grew on the hull made a difference: it made the barge feel sluggish. Every six moons, she hauled it into a dry lock and the three of them set it on blocks and spent all day scraping the bottom.
It wasn’t a pleasant task, but it was a good change of routine, and it was nice to see the bottom of the barge sparking clean at the end of a long day.
Back on the farm, equipment had gotten maintenance on regular schedules. That was the way to make sure that everything was still working, and to spot little problems before they became big problems.
•••
Sometimes they went past Stroudwater, far enough up the canal to see coal loading docks. She’d watched towponies haul a barge into position and then stand there until it was loaded, then pull it out only to be replaced by another a few minutes later.
They didn’t have a crane with a lever to dump a cargo in their barge; the three of them worked to load it, rolling barrels down the gangway or carrying boxes on their backs. For sacks, they used the clever wooden panniers Flash had: a quartet of hooks to hang the sacks on, braced so they wouldn’t fall off even though there was no belly band.
Mersey helped load, and since she pulled for the first leg Flash would cut her off when the barge was almost full. Enough time to use the privy—another side effect of morning coffee—and then put on her harness and hitch herself to the barge.
The routine didn’t always go to plan, but on days when it did, she was just starting to fasten the towrope to her harness as Flash and Swanky tugged the gangway off the barge.
Swanky always pulled on the bow rope to get the barge moving, giving her a little help even if she didn’t need it. Everything fell into place as she felt the harness tighten against her shoulders, as she felt the resistance of the barge against her, as her hooves dug into the towpath. Pulling a plow was hard work since the soil fought back. Water didn’t; once she overcame its initial resistance and got the boat moving, the work got much easier.
She turned her head, making sure that all the lines had been cast off. Not that she didn’t trust Flash and Swanky to do it, but one of the lines might get snagged. She’d gotten plow harnesses caught up when she was a filly, and the barge had more lines than the plow had traces.
Everything was clear. Flash had a tangle of rope beside her and a hoof on the tiller, while Swanky was coiling the bow-rope on the deck, not in a neat spiral like on pleasure boats that valued appearance over convenience, but instead in a handy loose bundle that could quickly be tossed ashore as the need arose.
Mersey turned her head forward and concentrated on her task, pacing her steps to align with the reluctant pull of the barge behind and the surges in the tow rope. It always took a moment for things to align, for her to get in pace with it, and then everything would lock in—she’d know how the barge felt, how the rope stretched and pulled back, how the minute current in the canal was running.
As it grudgingly sped up, so did she, establishing an easy walking pace she could keep up for hours, the resistance of the barge fading away as it gained momentum. The barge settled into its track as Flash gave the tiller one gentle push—a moment of resistance as the bow tried to counteract its crosswise cut before settling down on its appointed course, and now there was nothing but the towpath in front of her, a familiar route.
It wasn’t far to the tunnel—and then they’d be out of the city. Out where the air was fresher and the sun brighter, where she didn’t have to constantly hear all the noises of traffic and trains and industrial equipment. Having a house and warehouse in the heart of the commercial district, right next to the canal, was convenient for hauling loads in and out; if she’d had to stay there every day she would have quit. There were some ponies who just towed barges around Manehattan, and she didn’t understand them at all.
•••
Swanky stopped the boat near the mouth of the tunnel, and got out to hang a lantern on her harness. Sometimes there wasn’t traffic in the tunnel and they didn’t have to stop, and he’d trot down the towpath to put it on her. At first she’d liked it, since it gave her assurance that the path didn’t suddenly just drop off into the water. Now that she was familiar with the tunnel, it was just a minor annoyance, but a routine annoyance.
Just like locks—in an ideal world, the canal would be flat and level forever, and she could tow the boat all day without ever having to stop, without ever having to close and open gates. That was the one thing she missed the most from the farm: she could put on her plow and then just work without stopping until the field was all plowed.
Two coal barges came through heading downstream and then it was their turn. She took the slack out of the line and set her hooves as the line stretched and pulled back, the elasticity pulling the boat free from its mooring. It took her a few steps to match the pace, and then she was in time with the surges from the line, and then there weren’t any as she crossed through the cut stone portal and into the tunnel.
The air inside the tunnel was cool and musty, and it always seemed the same no matter what the air in Manehattan was like. She didn’t like the smell, but at the same time it was familiar, and a buffer between the city and the country.
Mersey kept her head down, not because she needed to see the path in the dim light of the crystal lamp, but because the ceiling was stupidly low and she was a big mare. She’d banged her head on it a few times, places where the roof of the tunnel had settled or else the ponies excavating it had gotten lazy.
•••
To her mind, the trip didn’t really start until they were on the other side of the tunnel, out of the sounds and smells of the city and into a proper canal.
By her estimation, they were the first barge out of Manehattan—she hadn’t seen any pass their warehouse, and only Hucknell had a dock between them and the tunnel. They weren’t usually early risers; while they occasionally towed supplies out of Manehattan, mostly it was strings of empty coal barges bound for the mines which arrived when they got there and not a moment before.
The cluster of early morning Manehattan-bound traffic meant that the lower gates would be set for them, unless there was a barge in the locks already.
As she got closer, she saw that the gates were closed. It was still too far to see if the lower paddles were open, and too far to feel the current . . . but as they got close, she spotted a towpony trotting to the gate wheels, and a few minutes later felt the gentle tug of current on the barge.
There was always competition for the locks, and it was best to be ready to get in before the barge that was in the locks could leave, assuring themselves a spot. While it was polite to let rising traffic into the lock before closing the gates, some companies tried to run the water up with the lock empty if they had other company traffic behind them, speeding their loads and slowing everypony else down.
The colliers rarely did; there was no real competition to get coal to Manehattan faster than the other barges. As long as it got there before the yards were empty, that was good enough.
There was no way to know how many boats were in the locks, not until the gate opened. She slowed her pace; she knew how fast the water in every lock lowered, and how much clearance would be required for outbound barges. She knew it was easier to keep her boat in motion rather than let it stop and have to get it moving again—if the barge stopped, Flash would help push to get it underway, and every time she did, Mersey felt like she’d failed. A good trip was one where the barge only had to stop inside the locks, although those trips were really rare.
Mersey felt the towline slack across her back, and then dip into the water as the barge coasted. She didn’t like it when the rope got wet, but not everypony locked through at the same pace. She hadn’t recognized the towpony at the gate and had no idea how quickly she’d get her boat out.
She heard Swanky behind her, the solid thump as his hooves landed on shore, and then he trotted past, up the slope to the top of the gates. He glanced down into the lock, nodded at Mersey, then made his way across the top of the downstream gate.
He’d barely crossed before the gate started to swing open, and she picked up her pace. It was easy with no pull on the rope.
The outflow from the lock gates swooshed past and a moment later caught the barge, slowing it even further. That was a disruption in the sounds of the canal, but a known one, an expected one. Her brother hadn’t signaled her that there was a boat on their side, so she started walking again, feeling as the rope came back out of the canal, hearing the droplets of water being squeezed out as it pulled tight, feeling the drag as the barge came under tow again.
A few shouts came from the lock, towpony and bargee preparing to get underway. The gates were nearly open, and the tossed towrope snaked out almost as quickly as the towpony made her way to the path. She caught it in her teeth then fumbled it as she tried to hook it to her harness.
Different companies had different ideas on the towrope. Some thought it was best to have a short rope, which meant that the towponies had to unhook themselves to work the locks. Others preferred long ropes, letting their towponies run around while staying hooked up. A few locks wouldn't allow it, the stairs were in the wrong place.
Flash liked a long rope. She said it was easier to shorten it when needed than to lengthen it. That had been a strange departure from pulling farm implements which always followed close to her rump, but Mersey had gotten used to it. Barges responded slowly anyway, so the extra rope wasn’t a hindrance.
She watched as the towpony finally got the towrope hooked on her harness and started pulling the slack out; the bargee pushed against the upper gates to help the barge get moving.
If it was still in the locks when Flash’s barge was in, they’d help push it the rest of the way out. Everypony on the canals helped each other, though sometimes begrudgingly. It was the only way to keep traffic moving. Swanky was watching, and he’d go down and lend a hoof if needed, but she got the rope on before he had to.
Their barge was gliding into place as the opposing towpony fetched up against the end of her line and skidded on her hooves before regaining her footing.
Mersey could sympathize; she still remembered the first time that had happened to her.
The rudimentary ‘towpath’ inside the lock was made out of the same stones as the rest of the lock, wet and slick with algae. It was just there to give her someplace to walk before she boarded her barge, and not all the locks had them, since they were a danger to descending barges—they could catch their hulls on the stones and tip over as the water drained out.
There were bollards inset into the lock walls in case they needed to tie their barge off. Mersey had never seen anypony use them—it would be impossible for a descending barge to tie to them, and a rising barge would capsize itself if it were tied off.
She waited until the barge had bumped off the upstream gates and then jumped aboard, turning and pulling her towrope up behind her.
Up above them, Swanky shoved the lock gates shut. Some of the locks on side-canals were rarely used and had stiff gates; all the ones on the collier routes were easy to work.
There was a loud thud as the two gates slammed together, and she felt the barge move under her. Swanky trotted around to the upstream paddles and started turning the lever, and then the barge was moving backwards, bumping against the downstream gates as the water started filling the lock.
She watched the stone ‘towpath’ vanish under the water, turning greener and greener until it disappeared completely, and then she just watched their slow ascent as the canal boat gyrated in the canal, dancing on the currents. Flash occasionally twisted the rudder to get its stern in line. It was something they’d done hundreds of times.
As it neared the top, the currents eased off. The nose of their barge was still close to the towpath, close enough for her to jump.
Mersey checked to make sure the rope wasn’t tangled in anything, then hopped off the side of the barge and onto the towpath. There was already another barge waiting to enter—both Swanky and their towpony were leaning on the gate arms, forcing them open before the water could fully equalize.
While she started getting her barge underway, Swanky was spinning the paddle gates shut again. When they were in place, he waited for the barge to come to him, then jumped aboard.
After the first set of locks, Swanky would be napping in the cabin and she’d be in charge of the gates and valves, hitching and unhitching as needed. For these, she had nothing to do but wait.
•••
There was a time when the towpath through the forest had made her nervous. The ponies who had built the canal had considered the obvious advantages of a straight route versus the practicality of the actual terrain in front of their muzzles and made the best compromises they could; the route was mostly a series of broad, sweeping curves—much like the natural course of a river—with occasional straight sections where they had to cut through hills or build over low spots.
More to the point, she couldn’t see all of it. Back home on the farm, she could see the boundaries of the fields, and could keep track of where she was when she and Swanky pulled plows or harrows. Even when the crops were high and they were working the cultivator, she always knew where she was and how far she had to go. On the towpath, there had been no way to know. It was a chaos of trees and bushes and vines and ferns and weeds and whatever else felt like growing, and when she’d started, she didn’t know how to keep track of it all, or what the landmarks were.
Now she did, and it was as familiar as any field. Just like Flash Lock knew the waters and how they acted upon the boat, she knew the forest and the path. She knew what stayed the same and what changed on every passage.
Her nostrils flared as she closed on the wrecked bridge. Nothing was left of it but the heavy stone abutments, and a pile of mossy stones which had once been the counterweight for the drawbridge. Flash had told her that bargees burned it down because it was in the way, and even now she could still faintly smell the fire. Whatever timber the flames hadn’t claimed, moss and decay had.
There was always a curious eddy in the water beneath the former bridge. It might have been something as prosaic as fallen timbers, or as exotic as now purposeless bridge spirits.
She tapped a hoof against a weatherworn foundation stone tumbled onto the path, as she always had, and continued on. The towrope tugged for an instant as the barge hit the eddy, and then it was free.
The land around the canal changed past the ruined toll bridge; now it was marshy. Sometimes in spring the towpath would be muddy and she’d have to keep her nose down to see the soft spots, to keep from tripping over somepony else’s shoeprints. It was not unlike the fields of home; the soil was always soft when they tilled it in the spring.
Sometimes gravel got dumped in the worst spots. Sometimes it was properly graded and sometimes it wasn’t. Flash said that a few of the coal companies would occasionally tow a barge or two full of overburden down the canal and try to level off the path.
Keeping the towpath smooth was as important as keeping the water depth in the canal.
There wasn’t really any definite line between the forest and the marsh. In dry years, the forest extended further west; in wet years, it didn’t. Lots of dead trees still stood in the marshy water, their trunks and few remaining branches almost bone-white, victims of too much water, or too many nutrients in the soil.
Some sections of the canal that bridged low spots had earthen banks, and a few others were walled in with quarry stones, neatly stacked and almost watertight—they were always damp, and moss grew thick on the north-facing sides.
•••
Mersey slowed as they approached the Fens rail yard. A fully-loaded barge was tied to the dock; a sign on its stern said “West.” That was a load, maybe.
Flash saw it, too, and angled the barge across the canal. There wasn’t any oncoming traffic to worry about, and the towline was plenty long enough. Mersey had to shift her angle as the boat drifted across the canal; now the rope was pulling her rump sideways.
As Flash straightened, there would be a big pull and she’d hold her place, standing as a temporary anchor for the barge to pivot around, then she could start moving again once it had established itself along the opposite bank.
Once the barge was on its new course, Flash put her hooves to her lip and whistled; even though Mersey knew it was coming, she flinched. It was almost as loud as the steam locomotives that shouted in the rail yard.
When she’d first started pulling the barge, the yard didn’t come so close to the canal. The dock had been there, but there had been a screen of trees that dampened down all the sounds of the trains; now she had no choice but to look at the ranks of railroad cars that were going to put her out of a job someday.
She tried not to think about that too much, tried not to consider how every year she’d been towing the barge, the towpaths and the canal had gotten a little worse, a little less maintained. They’d towed some of the loads that helped the railroad expand, dropping them off at this very dock–the railroad didn’t have an efficient way to get the timbers it needed for bridges. Yet. All too soon that would come; the railroad was quickly expanding to reach new markets, faster than anypony could dig a canal there. The fact that they could get away with shoddy wooden trestles for a train to crawl across instead of a proper stone bridge like the canal used was insulting.
A pony poked his head over the rail yard embankment, then trotted down the ramp to the dock. Mersey knew him; he was one of the two ponies who ran the barge operation at Fens Yard.
•••
Stopping and starting was hard; keeping the barge moving wasn’t all that difficult. The canal had no current to speak of, and once it got moving the barge wanted to keep moving. The only times she felt she really had to work was when they were locking through; for the rest of the journey it was easier than pulling a plow.
When she was a greenhoof on the canals, she hadn’t appreciated Flash’s skills at boat handling, but now that she was wise and experienced, she did. The helmsmares on some barges constantly crashed into the banks, or made unnecessary stops and turns, and their towponies had to work harder to get the barge through. The colliers were the worst offenders; it was anypony’s guess about where one of their barges was going to go. She’d seen one of them crash headlong into an opposing boat at Oakton, and she’d overheard plenty of grumbling from their towponies.
Flash never seemed to make a mistake or a miscalculation. There had been a few times when she was first learning that things hadn’t gone as well as they should have, but it had never been Flash’s fault.
“Hoy, Mersey, new barge.”
She flicked her tail; she’d already knew.
“Through to Stroudwater.”
That was unusual; railroad barges usually got left in Oakton. More work for her, and more for Swanky in the afternoon . . . maybe they could pull together.
She missed that from the fields. Taking turns made sense, and having an extra pony on the boat to handle lines or lock gates or whatever was needed was more efficient than having two ponies in tandem on the towpath, but it was always nicer to have her brother at her side.
Most of the time, she didn’t really need to look back at the barge. She and Flash were a good team who didn’t need to know what the other was doing. She could see the other barges on the canal, or the set of the lock gates, and knew what Flash would do. A new barge was tricky. She estimated its weight compared to theirs, glanced back to make sure that the railpony had cast off all the lines, and again to see that Flash had looped her towrope around its bow bollard.
And she kept her eyes back as the rope went taut, as the jerk went through her harness, even though she’d stopped and braced herself. Ropes were springy, and hooking up to the previously stationary barge had recoil.
Then the barge was following along. Flash waited until it was moving and then started to pull in the towline. Some ponies liked to keep their towline long, but that required a second pony to steer the trailing barge; Flash liked to pull them tight so she could steer both of them from her barge.
It was heavier than she’d expected. Not unmanageable, but she was going to be working hard for the rest of the morning. They probably wouldn’t be able to coast through Oakton.
That was a problem for later.
A freight train rushed by on the other side of the canal, the engineer whistling out her warning. Mersey snorted at it and dug her hooves in, feeling the odd syncopated double tug of the pair of barges through her harness. For now, at least, they could still haul cargo where the train couldn’t.
•••
Mersey’s stomach was grumbling by the time they got to the bridge basin. This was routine; her tummy knew this was where they’d have lunch, one side or the other. Judging by the Manehattan-bound traffic, it would be lunch before the bridge today.
Delays always frustrated her, but she’d learned this was a good one. It was a natural midpoint on the journey, and it was where the upbound and downbound canal traffic most often intersected. They could stop and get lunch, let a bunch of downbound traffic pass, and have a clearer canal on the rest of their trip, which meant less competition for locks and sometimes an easier passage through Oakton and Lock Lake.
They settled in along the bank, fifth in a line of upbound barges. She could see all the way across, see all the Manehattan-bound traffic on the bridge and queued up on the other side, almost all the way to the end of their basin. A glance back at two more upbound barges behind them, one all the way back at the turn in the canal–they’d wait for that to come up.
Everypony knew the routine, knew how it was supposed to work. The food boats knew; as soon as Flash had tied them off, the food boat bumped up against their gunnel, and as they passed Flash and Swanky’s food onto deck, Swanky himself came out of the cabin, rubbing sleep out of his eyes.
A pegasus filly landed on the towpath in front of her, setting down a paper sack of porridge, then flew off again, back to the food boat.
Sometimes she’d eat on the barge. It was tied up, she didn’t have to stay on the towpath. She didn’t even have to drop the towrope if she didn’t want to, as long as she was careful to not snag it on the cabins or railings.
There were mixed feelings on the etiquette when it came to eating on the towpath. Most experienced towponies preferred being ready to pull, because you never knew when one of the waiting barges on the other side might have a problem, and the bridge would open to the upbound side early, and then everypony else would be mad if you weren’t ready to go.
That had only happened to her once, back in her first season of towing. She’d gotten the barge moving fast enough to not cause a delay, but had had to sacrifice most of her lunch as a result. Swanky had kept it for her, but as much as she hated wasting food, she just couldn’t eat cold porridge.
The basin on the upper side was nearly empty, and she watched as the last barge proceeded across the bridge.
Flash had told her and Swanky that some ponies were scared of how high the bridge was, but she liked it. Walking across it was like flying, but with good, solid ground underhoof. She could look out over the edge and see everything in the valley. Sometimes there was even a train passing by underneath–as much as she hated them for what they represented, looking down on one from above was neat.
Did the train ponies look up at the canal boats passing overhead?
The crossover gate was slippery. She’d long since learned that she couldn’t do any pulling as she crossed the canal to the wrong-side path, so she let the barge do the work for her, coasting up and slacking the rope. If there was a lot of flow in the canal–which sometimes happened after heavy rains–she really had to be careful to keep momentum up. Clogging the bridge with a stalled barge would get her yelled at.
She had the slack back out in time to feel the barge hit the trip-rollers, to feel the gentle tug as the mechanism resisted and then let the crossover path swing aside, and then it was following along like it should again.
The trees slowly dropped away, and then the valley was in full view, and she was up where the birds and pegasi soared.
Sometimes the valley would be shrouded in fog, and that was really neat, too. It was like she was walking on a cloud.
•••
The bridge stood in stark contrast to some of the rest of the canal. Everywhere else the towpath wasn’t always well-maintained and sometimes weeds overgrew the banks–even little trees that could snag a towrope weren’t always cut down as quickly as they should have been–everything on the bridge was kept in perfect shape. The stonework was cared-for, the crossover gates well-adjusted, and the towpath was raked several times a day to keep it smooth. There was never a lull in activity that she’d seen, so the rake was towed along with barge traffic.
She’d gotten to follow it once, the first pony on the freshly-smoothed surface. It was almost as good underhoof as being the first pony behind a snow roller.
•••
As the other side rose up to meet them, Mersey watched the towpony in front of her cross the canal, and as the stern of the barge cleared the gate, watched to make sure it went back into position. So far it always had, but if it didn’t, she would have to be ready to swim across.
It clicked back into position, and it looked right, but as always she gave a sideways push with her forehoof to make sure it was latched. She’d seen a pony fall off it before, and she claimed it wasn’t latched. Maybe she was just trying to blame the gate for her clumsy hoofwork, but it hadn’t occurred to Mersey until then that the gate might not always latch itself back into place, especially since this one closed against the current.
•••
There had rarely been a day that Oakton wasn’t complete chaos, and today was no different. They’d beaten most of the usual cluster of barges, which could mean that today was going to be an easy day on the canal, or that somepony was doing a bad job of routing barges across the viaduct, or that one of the up-canal locks was broken.
She didn’t need to be told what to do; forward progress was her job, and she kept pulling until she was stopped by a flyboat that was tied up on the shore.
Flash saw it, too. “Hoy, Mersey, drop the line.”
She turned and released the latch on her harness, letting it fall into the water. Flash kept her hoof on the tiller, aiming for the company docks.
Mersey trotted ahead. Without the barge holding her back, she was light on her hooves.
The dock had a capstan, and a pegasus line-handler. Sometimes when they got out of Manehattan late, or had made a lot of stops on the way, they had to wait their turn for the winch. Most of the time, they didn’t.
Learning the route had taken months. The canal was mostly straight, and Flash didn’t regularly serve any locations off the main canal, but just the same she’d had to learn all the docks and other stopping points. Now she knew them, and knew when they loaded cargo where they would have to stop; she knew where they might pick up something else.
Sometimes they could coast by the winch, but not today. The center hold was full of barrels and crates to be delivered to Oakton, and that meant she was going to winch. Not to mention the other barge behind them, slowing them down.
Wind Waker, the pegasus on rope duty today, was a former Wonderbolt. He knew her, he knew her boat, and he didn’t need to be told where to fly the rope.
She nuzzled his shoulder once he’d landed back beside her, and plucked a loose feather off his wing, spitting it onto the dock. She liked him; he always got the rope right and would loop the extra turns around the capstan so she didn’t have to work as much. Sometimes when they were roped up but had to wait to pull in, he’d bend her ear with tales of the Wonderbolts.
Today there was no competition at the dock, and she pushed into the windlass while he guided the rope, preventing tangles until it was pulled taut.
Winching in the barge wasn’t the same as towing it. Pushing with her chest was uncomfortable, and she had to concentrate to keep from tripping over her hooves as she made the tight circles on the worn wood. She’d wondered why there wasn’t just a clip to attach to her harness, but then she’d seen a couple of unharnessed workponies off one of Treskow’s barges using the windlass.
Even on the windlass, the rope would slack in and out just as much as it did when she was pulling, but she got almost no feedback. Her first time, she’d almost gotten confident that she was getting it right, then the rope slacked and she’d tripped over her hooves and gone down in a tangle. Wind Waker had chuckled and offered to help her up, but she’d shaken her head and gotten back to her hooves. She hadn’t trusted him then; she thought he was mocking her.
Her cheeks burned with the memory. How many ponies had Wind Waker seen fall at the capstan? Dozens? Once their barge was winched in, he’d unspooled the rope and tried to clip it back to her harness, but she’d just yanked it out of his grip and clipped it on herself, stomping off towards their warehouse with her tail flicking in anger.
The next time they’d approached, she’d hesitated; she held the line on her harness longer than she should have and let the barge drift to a stop before reluctantly plodding down to the capstan. Wind Waker had already looped it around the drum and was working in the extra slack from the still-moving barge. She waited for the insult, waited for him to call her a stupid farmpony or a green-hooved rookie. Maybe he’d call out to his friends on the other barges so they could mock her, too.
But he didn’t. He hadn’t said a word as she’d pushed up against the sweep, or as she started reeling in their towline. And when it had been done, he’d kicked off the ratchet on the capstan, let the rope slack before he’d pulled it off. This time he’d offered her the clip.
As she’d walked across the rough planks of the dock, barge in tow, she’d turned to wave at him before continuing, and the next time–and every time thereafter–let him clip the barge back to her harness.
•••
Mersey slowed down as the lead barge got close to the dock. Her brother was waiting on the stern, rope in hoof. He expertly looped it over a cleat on the dock and tugged the stern in, also arresting the barge’s forward momentum.
That did nothing to slow the trailing barge.
Some of the canal companies didn’t worry too much about that and let their barges bash into each other; some of the canal companies had decided that splintered timbers and scraped paint was just the cost of doing business. Some of the canal companies had invested in extensive fendering on their barges to absorb the hits, and Mersey had watched a tandem of coal barges pulled by an enthusiastic but unskilled team collide hard enough to wreck their fendering and the fantail on the lead barge.
Flash Lock wanted professionalism, and the barge or barges undamaged at the end of a tow. Mersey knew full well if her carelessness damaged the barge, she was going to have to fix it herself, or pay for a boatwright to fix it.
Swanky knew that, too, and he also knew that pulling their stern against the dock hadn’t changed the course of the trailing barge—he’d waited until the towline had slacked, letting it coast ahead on its original course, clearing their stern.
He trotted to the starboard side of their barge and looped another length of rope he’d laid out over its bow cleat, letting it slowly pull the bow in as it ran by at no more than a walking pace. Mersey knew that trick, too; the secret was in the loop of line, causing extra friction, a sort-of brake.
That also tugged the bow over. He slacked and unlooped the line once the two barges were close and dropped a second line over an aft cleat, pulling the stern in and then trotting to the front to wrangle the bow before the two barges could collide.
Just like that, it was done. There’d be a few scrapes on the rub rail, nothing that a little touch-up paint wouldn’t fix.
•••
While Swanky finished mooring the barges, Mersey unfastened her line and made her way to the warehouse. The laborers there would have seen them arrive—they were always watching what happened on the canal, even if they pretended not to know.
When she’d first started, Flash had to come ashore and roust out the dockworkers, but now Mersey could do it. She poked her muzzle into the open loading door and then walked through the warehouse, until she located Cucuzza Verde.
He was busy directing a sorting crew, so she waited until he’d finished shouting orders before simply pointing out the open door to their barge.
“Ah, Mersey, my love.” He nuzzled her cheek and she blushed. He did that to all the bargees and towponies and yet there was genuine warmth behind his words. “Are we unloading both your barges?”
She shook her head—the railroad barge was going through to Stroudwater.
“Just yours?”
She nodded.
“And do we have anything we need to load in?” He turned to a clipboard bursting with papers that was dangling off the edge of his desk.
Mersey didn’t know; Flash hadn’t told her. They usually loaded cargo in Oakton, but not always. She shrugged.
“Boss mare forgot to tell you, eh?” She watched as he started to flip through the sheets, amazed as always at how he did his job. Hers was simple by comparison; all she had to do was pull the barge from one place to another, and set locks and turn capstans as required. All she had to do was help load the barge at the start of the day and unload it at the end of the day, and help in the middle if that was needed, too. She didn’t have to juggle around barrels and boxes and whatever else from dozens of shipping companies going to dozens of different customers.
“Looks like we do! Wine, flour, and flowers . . . quite the mix you’re hauling. And we’ve got three—no, four consignments coming in. I’ll roust up a crew, my dear.”
When she was young and green, she’d helped the warehouse crew. Even though that wasn't technically her job, it didn’t feel right to just be standing around when other ponies were working.
She still didn’t like it. The fact was that her duty was now done; she’d worked her towing hours and earned a break.
•••
It was a working break; while the stevedores unloaded the cargo bound for Oakton and loaded in new cargo for Stroudwater, Flash discussed how they were going to get back out of their docks.
“We could wait for the tug,” Flash said, “or we could pull out backwards, there’s nopony on the other side of the canal right now. If it stays clear, we’ll have enough room to get the sterns into the canal and then straighten out.
Mersey perked her ears up. Sometimes they got pulled out by the tugboat and she knew Flash didn’t like it, even if she was pragmatic enough to use it when she had to.
“We’ll want to be fast, so we don’t choke up the canal. Mersey, if it’s okay with you, I’ll have you pull with Swanky since we’ve got two barges. Once we get going forward, you can bring the line aboard with you, so long as there aren’t barges tied up on the docks—I didn’t see any when we came in.”
Mersey nodded. She didn’t mind a little extra work after she was supposed to be off-duty, especially if she’d be pulling with Swanky.
She turned and bumped him with her rump, then tapped a hoof on his barrel to remind him that he needed to put on his harness.
He sighed—he liked waiting until the barge was almost full before putting it on, but if there was something wrong with it then they’d be delayed and Mersey didn’t like that.
The two of them went to the forward cabin, walking across the railroad barge to keep themselves clear of the ponies loading their barge, and Mersey helped her brother put on his harness. Once she was satisfied it was on right, she tied on a second tow rope.
“Be easiest if you were on the canal side,” Swanky said. “So once we get going you can jump aboard and not tangle my line.”
She nodded.
“And if we’ve only got one or two barges to get around, and if traffic’s light, we could also pull from the other side of the canal.”
They’d done that a couple times at Oakton. Usually it was too busy, but depending on who was tied up where and how much barge traffic there was, Flash could zig-zag across the canal, letting whichever pony had a clear path pull.
When she’d first started pulling the barge, Mersey hadn’t appreciated how much of an advantage its momentum could be: if there was a single barge tied on shore, Flash could cut the bow in to the towpath, close enough that she could board, and then coast past the boat and still have enough speed to drop her off on shore again.
There weren’t that many docks that were in the way, but there were some, like the railroad dock in Fens Junction that was in their way when they headed to Manehattan.
There wasn’t anything more they needed to do on the barge, not until it was loaded. Mersey took up a position on the roof of the aft cabin, watching the action in the canal.
•••
Theirs wasn’t the only company that switched towponies in Oakton. The ones that were the most amusing to watch were the coal companies; they had their own dedicated docking spaces along the towpath—since they didn’t load or unload any significant cargo, they didn’t get warehouse space, just some unused straight spots where bollards had been fitted.
As often as not, the barges would crash into one another as they docked, and then it was utter chaos as the morning crew unfastened the towlines and unhitched from each other, only to be replaced by a parade of ponies from the packet boats.
Both Treskow and the Mount Carbon Navigation Railroad had company boarding-houses in Oakton which cut down on some of the chaos, or was at least one fewer barge to crash into the others. If things went to plan, the new crew would be standing by the docks, all harnessed up and ready to go. If they didn’t, the barges would dock and a runner would trot to the company house to find them.
When the switch went well, it was a thing of beauty. Treskow attracted more qualified ponies, and when they were on their game they could switch without the barges ever actually stopping.
Mount Carbon had once had an entire team fall in the canal, one after the other. She could only assume that they’d rented a boarding house because they didn’t trust their crew to not fall off a packet boat, or else they’d accidentally sunk their packet boat.
The barge didn’t steer the same when it was going backwards. That wasn’t her problem, but she knew it just the same.
Being alongside her brother in harness was a familiar, comfortable sensation, even if it was wood underhoof rather than the rich soil of the farm where she’d grown up. Instead of a doubletree and equalizers, they had two separate lines which were their own complication—there was a different kind of feedback, and it took them a few steps to get in the right rhythm.
There weren’t many barge companies that would attempt a reverse move into the canal. It took skill; the barge didn’t behave the same way when it was going backwards. Especially if there was a second barge tied alongside the first.
Mersey knew that if it worked out right, everypony watching would be impressed at their skills. If it went badly or blocked any other barge traffic, ponies would be annoyed, would grumble about them hogging the canal and causing delays.
Her hooves skidded on the wooden dock and she dug her caulks in as the rope tugged and then released. As the barge started to pick up speed, Flash angled the rudder over, guiding the stern away from the dock.
A few minutes later, they reached the end of the dock, and she and Swanky leaned into each other and braced—they’d have a brief break as Flash swung across the canal and rearranged the ropes on the barges for towing. She glanced up and down the canal—there wasn’t any traffic nearby, and nopony had taken any of the dock spaces on their side of the canal, leaving the towpath completely clear.
As soon as she saw Flash trotting back down the deck of their barge, the towrope for the railroad barge in her mouth, she snorted and put her head down, then started pulling. Swanky dug his hooves in and followed suit, the two of them getting yanked back hard as they arrested the momentum of their barge. She could feel her shoes trying to peel off her hooves, and she took a couple quick backsteps, anchoring in every time the rope slacked. They should have turned; stopping a barge was easier when it was muzzle-on.
Too late now.
The stern bumped off the canal wall, giving their barge a little forward momentum on the rebound, and she and Swanky took advantage of that, yanking the ropes tight and pulling in tandem to get it moving the right way.
A string of Mount Carbon barges were slowly trundling towards their docking spot, all the towponies watching in interest as the railroad barge bounced off the canal wall and wallowed until its towrope pulled tight.
That wasn’t as hard a pull; they had the momentum of their barge also tugging on its towrope. Flash leaned on the tiller, bringing her barge across the canal while the railroad barge reluctantly followed along. She’d tied them close, and Mersey looked back just as Flash looped a rope over her tiller to keep it straight, then jumped onto the bow of the railroad barge, trotting back to its cockpit to steer it clear of the canal wall.
There were a few ponies on the canal who loved showboating. Mersey wasn’t one of those ponies, and yet she waited to board their barge until they were almost abreast of the Mount Carbon tow, ensuring that all their towponies could see how a proper towpony did it. While her brother pulled, she stood in place, coiling the towrope as the barge moved, and then it was just one step onto the bow of the boat.
In the past, she’d jumped too far; she’d underestimated and overestimated the barge’s speed, how much correction she’d need—she’d stumbled and fallen but never fallen in the canal. Now it was second-nature, she stepped off the towpath and onto the barge as if it had been stationary, never wavering on her hooves.
Before hanging her harness on its hook, she looked it over, checking every strap and buckle. Swanky didn’t know, but she checked his, too, just to make sure it was okay. She knew he wasn’t always good about that—sometimes he left it in a complete tangle, and she fixed it for him.
That done, she stepped back out of the cabin and looked forward to Swanky. It had been nice to tow in tandem, even if was only for a short while. Not only for the bonding, but—most of the time she was in Oakton, she had nothing to do.
Some ponies liked to go into town and browse at the stores, or spend time in the pub until they were called back to their barge. She knew how long it would take to unload and put new cargo in.
She didn’t like leaving her brother behind. Who knew what kind of trouble he could get in without his big sister to watch over him? He might go run off after a stallion who would steal his bits or break his heart—there were plenty of attractive stallions along the canal.
Mersey watched him until they were out of town, and then she stretched out on the foredeck, letting a hoof dangle in the canal. The sunshine was warm on her back, and the rocking and tugging of the barge was soporific
•••
Mersey didn’t sleep, although to anybody who was watching it would have seemed she was. Her eyes were closed but her ears were still alert, taking in the sounds of the boat in motion. She knew where they were just by the noises of the canal, she knew when upbound barges passed by the sounds of their team and the splash of their wake, and she listened to the chatter of the ponies along the canal.
She heard and felt as they approached Stroudwater; Flash didn’t have to tell her.
Flash told her anyway. “Hoy, Mersey, Stroudwater.”
Her ears turned of their own volition, and she got to her hooves.
“You wanna run the railroad barge to its dock?”
She nodded. She didn’t like leaving her brother behind, but it was more efficient, and if she was quick on her hooves she could get back to their warehouse in time to help unload the barge. Oakton had a crew of laborers for that; Stroudwater didn’t.
“Get your harness on, and I’ll have a bill ready when you are.”
Mersey snorted—she could be ready in under a minute. There was a reason her harness got hung just so. Especially since it was simpler than a farmpony’s.
•••
The invoice was tucked into a pouch on her harness. She stood on the stern and waited until they were close to the side path, then it was time. Flash called out: “Swanky, stop.”
He did, and the rope slacked as the barge started to overrun him—which was counteracted by Flash pulling back on the tow-rope between the two barges.
Once that rope had slack in it, Flash yanked it off the towing cleat and hooked it to Mersey’s harness, then shoved the tiller hard over, bringing the stern of their still-moving barge towards the towpath.
Jumping the short chasm between the barges was easy, and Swanky didn’t need any orders to start pulling again; he’d turned his head to watch as the transfer was made.
Mersey didn’t start pulling right away, just walked along to keep the towrope from slacking out too much. They needed to put some distance between the barges—Swanky was pulling hard and she wasn’t doing anything yet, just calculating distances and momentum of the two separate tows.
There was nopony to steer hers, but she was headed in a straight line and it would follow along. A shorter line would be nice; Flash could have pulled it in closer—Mersey considered the advantages of letting the barge catch up to her, she could hop aboard and re-tie the tow-rope.
At the same time, it was carrying almost enough momentum to make it to the railroad docks without her help. She knew what it weighed, knew how it would pull against the current, even knew about how fouled the bottom was.
She didn’t know that the railroad ponies had forgotten to tie the rudder straight, not until it crashed into the bank and yanked her to an unexpected stop. Not the first time it had happened to her: towropes were stretchy and could yank a pony off her hooves. Mersey felt her harness pull tight and braced her hooves as the towline grabbed it and skidded her on the towpath, then she turned to see what had gone wrong.
The barge had caught a piling, recoiled, and now was on its way again. She snorted at it and dared it to misbehave again—for now, it was tracking along the splintered weather-worn wooden rub-rail, but angling for the bank. Flash had been correcting with her rudder; Mersey didn’t have that luxury.
A challenge was a welcome change. She could see the docks ahead on the other side of the canal. Her intention had been to just toss the towrope over as she got close, but that wouldn’t work if the barge was misbehaving.
Swimming the canal wouldn’t hurt her harness but it would get the invoice wet, so she pulled ahead while watching as the barge scraped along the piling; once it was more than halfway past she turned and trotted back down the towpath, eyeballing where the bow would fetch up.
She jumped aboard just before it did, but didn’t make it to the stern fast enough—the whole barge shuddered as it slid against the rough-cut stones that made up the canal walls.
Un-looping the tiller rope was foal’s play, and even with the shore contact, she had enough momentum to angle the barge across the canal. Once it was on course, she shoved the tiller back, hooked the rope around it again, trotted down the length of the barge, leapt to the opposite bank, and started galloping to take out the slack in the rope.
The jerk as the rope caught rattled her bones, and came with aftershocks as the inertia was equalized. The bow pulled over then straightened out, guided by the off-center tiller. She was crabbing the barge. If she’d had to tow it like that the whole length of the canal, she’d have sore legs, but it wasn’t for much longer; she was practically at the railroad dock.
•••
She kept the towline attached as she arrived, looping it around a piling as she walked back. The stern was swinging out, so she jumped back aboard and went down the deck, letting her rope slack as the barge turned.
Mersey was midships when she had enough slack to toss it over another piling, and with two points of contact she could bring the barge back in line, tugging it into position as the friction around the piles stopped its forward momentum.
Once it was at its resting point, she tied it in place and then went off to find a supervisor.
•••
Without an invoice, she was free to swim the canal.
•••
Mersey swam across the canal, angling towards one of the sets of steps inset into the walls, put there for the benefit of ponies who found themselves in the canal—whether by accident or design—and also for all the ducky birds who liked to float in the canal. She’d jumped in just across the canal from them; she knew better than making the rookie mistake of jumping in just anywhere and having to swim further than the stairs—or worse, land on a rotten piling or an old embankment stone. She knew where most of the obstacles in the canal were. The worst offenders got dragged out, the others just were avoided by ponies in the know. Occasionally they were marked, usually by a boat company that had hit the obstruction one time too many.
Usually Mount Carbon; they loved overloading their barges.
She shook herself off, then trotted along the towpath until she’d caught up with Swanky.
Mersey nuzzled his flank and then fell in step beside him.
“Hey, sis.” He bumped shoulders with her. “You have a good nap?”
She nodded.
•••
Swanky slowed his pace as they approached the company docks. As he passed the first bollard, he looked back to see where the boat was.
It was still trailing along but catching up, carried by its own momentum. Flash was leaning the tiler over, angling the barge towards the bank.
Mersey left her brother’s side and trotted back to the bollard—normally she’d handle the bow rope, but she couldn’t do that while on shore.
Flash tossed the line to her and she wrapped it around, looping it over itself to hold fast—both she and Swanky had had to learn how to tie several different boat knots.
Flash left her position at the stern and headed up to the bow. She tossed the bow rope to Swanky, who’d dropped the tow line in preparation to receive it.
Mersey watched in satisfaction as their boat slid into its spot.
•••
Once the barge was secured, Flash opened up the warehouse and set out the gangplank while Mersey and Swanky took off their harnesses.
He left it tangled, like she knew he would. She would fix it after dinner, like she always did.
They didn’t have a crew to help them unload the barge; she and Swanky got to do that. Flash would help when she finished with paperwork.
Sometimes they got dinner first, it depended on when they arrived. Mersey didn’t like an irregular schedule, but that couldn't be helped.
They always unloaded barrels first; those were easier and gave them more room to deal with crates and sacks.
Mersey tipped the barrels one at a time and rolled them up the gangway; once they were on the dock, her brother rolled them into the warehouse and set them out for each consignee.
By the time Flash had finished with her paperwork, all the barrels were on the dock, and they’d switched to carrying crates—she and Swanky would take turns loading a crate onto their sibling’s back. The unladen pony would push a barrel into the warehouse.
Flash concentrated on the sacks, sorting them into their appointed place in the warehouse.
Some of the other towponies complained that their captains wouldn’t help unload. Mersey thought that was foalish; if everypony worked together, the job got done faster.
Once the hold was half-empty, they started carrying in the new shipment—there was no sense in returning to the boat empty-backed.
There would be more cargo to load in the morning—there always was. The livery ponies would arrive while they ate dinner, taking away some of the deliveries and bringing more goods to be shipped. For now, though, all the outgoing cargo was loaded on the boat, and everything was battened down for the evening.
Flash grabbed a stack of paperwork off her desk—there was a good chance she’d see some of the consignees at the inn, and it was always faster to deliver them direct. Sometimes, Mersey and Swanky also got to run invoices, especially at the end of every moon. Some ponies didn’t like paying for delivery unless they were reminded, muzzle to muzzle, and then they’d grudgingly hoof over the bits.
There were a couple of customers who were intimidated by Mersey, something Flash used to her advantage. They’d make their excuses and Mersey would just tap the invoice again and before too long they’d sputter and stammer and eventually get out their bits.
Maybe they didn’t like big mares.
•••
Some days they went straight to the inn for dinner, other days they went to the bathhouse first. Mersey was clean enough—in fact, she hadn’t completely dried off from her swim in the canal. Swanky had salt in his fur, white stripes where his harness sat. Common enough among the working class, he wouldn’t look slovenly among the group.
She was about to point him to the bathhouse, then she heard his stomach rumble.
It could be overlooked; a quick pass with the curry brush to sort of tidy him up and that would be good enough.
“It’s fine,” he protested.
Mersey shook her head, then tilted her muzzle first towards the brush and then the canal. Either or.
Swanky sighed and stood in place as she brushed him, just a quick pass to make him look presentable, and then the three of them headed out the door together, Flash in the lead with her two towponies following: another familiar path, another familiar journey.
•••
The inn was always a boisterous place. Too loud for Mersey’s liking, although everypony was friendly and she heard lots of good gossip.
Not all the ponies who frequented the inn were bargees, but most were, and the bulk of them sat at the big central table. It was a familiar place, and even if she didn’t like all the noise, their oats were delicious.
Even after she’d gotten a bowl, she followed her brother through the food line, watching what he put on his plate.
The three of them sat down together, Swanky and Maresy on one side of the table, while Flash sat on the other. She looked around for new faces before sticking her muzzle into her bowl of oats. Nopony at first, and then a cluster of Mount Carbon towponies swaggered in, acting like they owned the place. She snorted and was about to turn her attention back to her oats when she felt Swanky shift around on the seat next to her. He had his eyes on a stallion in the middle of the group, tan with streaks of coal and sweat in his coat and a short-cropped tail.
She could see some scars on his flanks and concluded that he hadn’t always been a canal pony, maybe he still wasn’t. Farmponies and wagonponies cut their tails short; bargeponies didn’t. There was no advantage to it, there was nothing on the harness back there to snag.
She hadn’t seen him on the towpath before. That wasn’t unusual with Mount Carbon, either they had lots of ponies rotating through different jobs, or they just couldn’t keep canal ponies. One of the mares at Treskow said that Mount Carbon’s supervisors just gave them a number because it wasn’t worth learning a name.
Mersey didn’t think that was true, but it might be. Still, she did recognize a mare in the crew, also a former farmpony who was almost as big as her. She had a brilliant orange coat and straw-colored hair which she liked dying different colors.
Swanky was still distracted by the stallion, so Mersey took the opportunity to steal some of his spinach.
The group sat down next to them; now Mersey was rubbing shoulders with a green-coated mare with a plate piled high with food. Her hooves were chipped and her shoes worn. She looked too lightweight to tow a barge—Mount Carbon didn’t pay enough to attract the best ponies, so they often settled with having several lightweights in front of their barges.
A lot of the rookies started out moving barges in the loading docks or ferrying empty strings of barges up the canal.
Towponies like that either got strong, quit, or they spent their careers towing small packet boats and lighters.
The crew was gossiping among themselves about hoofball and stallions and none of that was of any interest to her. She did perk her ears when one of the mares announced that somepony had crashed a coal barge into the downstream gates at Lock Lake—that was worth remembering, in case they were damaged.
Swanky kept eating and occasionally glancing over at the Mount Carbon stallion, while Flash had started chatting with River Dreams, who ran the Bridgewater Inland Shipping Company. She’d started out with just a tub boat and now had a fleet of three barges and a half dozen lighters.
Her boats were a familiar sight on the canal: they’d set out from Manehattan with several lighters stringing along behind the barge, trailing out like ducklings following their mother. Those would be dropped off to serve smaller customers where a big barge couldn’t fit, or where there wasn’t enough cargo to justify it.
Mersey glanced over at the rookie seated next to her. Maybe that was a job for her; she looked like she’d be fast on her hooves.
•••
Swanky spared one last look at the Mount Carbon stallion as they were leaving the tavern; Mersey saw where he was looking and shoulder-checked him.
“What, he’s cute.”
She nipped him on the shoulder.
“See if you still think he’s cute when you’re fishing him out of the canal,” Flash said. “A Mount Carbon stallion? Doesn’t River Dreams have any good looking stallions on her crew?”
Mersey nodded, while Swanky shook his head.
“Well, maybe you’ll get another chance to look at him at the bathhouse.”
•••
Like many things on the canal, the bathouse had seen better days. A few consolidated barge companies offered their own company bathhouse either near the boarding house, or consolidated within. Treskow’s was actually nice; Mersey had used it once. If Mount Carbon ever decided to build one, it was likely to be a buoy border in the canal.
Flash hadn’t wanted to spend the bits to build her own for her small crew, but she’d been smart enough to negotiate free access in exchange for hauling their limited cargo—occasional barrels of minerals for the mineral bath, soaps and shampoos that could be purchased, brushes for the pony who forgot to pack her own. A few crates and barrels every now and then; the only time it had been an inconvenience was when they’d already had a completely full cargo and had to load a few barrels into the forward cabin. Mersey didn’t like that change in the routine, but understood why it was necessary.
Swanky complained about it for a week, since he had to climb over a barrel to get to his bed.
•••
Hot water and a full belly was the very height of luxury, bordering on decadence. It would be too easy to lose herself in the comfort, but she still had to watch out for Swanky, make sure that he got himself clean, so she’d point to spots he’d missed or get them herself if they were hard to reach.
There wasn’t as much gossip in the bathhouse, but there was some. Not always easily overheard with the white noise the showers made, but Mersey was a good listener.
When she was clean, she shut off the water and shook herself off then started towling Swanky off—he hated being wet, and sometimes complained that he’d decided to work a job around water all the time.
He had fallen in the canal once; he’d been too busy focusing on a stallion pulling on the other side and not as focused on what his towrope was doing. That was a mistake he’d never repeated . . . it got to be second nature; the pony and the barge were one.
Mersey was still offended that he’d swum to the opposite shore so he could be ‘rescued’ by the other stallion. He was such a disaster stallion, that was why she needed to look after him.
•••
By the time they got back to the warehouse, liveryponies had already hauled off some of their cargo. That was something that Mersey and Swanky used to have to do, until Flash hired a couple of stallions to work off-hours. They still occasionally had to haul cargo when they carried a big load or when it was a priority cargo, but for the most part the Aire & Calder wagon stayed inside the warehouse, gathering dust.
Every year, she and Swanky would shine it up and tow it through Stroudwater for the annual Summer Sun parade. That was always fun.
Not as fun as Canal Days, though; Oakton had a barge parade. Last year, Treskow had even cleaned up one of their coal barges and paraded it through the canal, along with a packet boat for tourists to ride.
They walked around the warehouse and to the dock; Mersey boarded last just in case Swanky decided to gallop back to the inn.
He did hesitate on the gangway, so she bumped him with her muzzle to get him moving again. That stallion was long gone; maybe he’d be worthy of a second look when they were back in two days, but she doubted it. Mount Carbon couldn't keep crews. Two days hence there might be a different stallion for him to ogle.
Flash slept in the aft cabin; she and Swanky got the forward cabin. While Swanky stretched out and settled into his bed, Mersey took the opportunity to straighten out his harness, untangling the straps and letting it hang properly.
He booped her nose and she stuck her tongue out at him.
Once Swanky had laid down in bed, she put a blanket over him, then she settled into her own bed, letting the gentle rocking of the barge put her to sleep.
