The Big Picture Window That Never Came In

"Ma Bertie and Daddy Mac were still alive back then."

"You miss them like anything, don't you?"

"Like everything. And it seems like only yesterday. That was the little cabin he was making for her, so she could sit by the water, in that old rocking chair that was always breaking down from her weight and that he was always fixing, and look out and feel her soul in the waves being rocked like a child in a cradle. That was how he put it. And look at it now."

"He never finished it, did he?"

"The big picture window, it never came in. And now it never will."

It was the end of the mackerel season. There were only three in the bucket, and Noah had kept them because, well, almost any size was eating size, he had explained to Betty, who thereupon had made a face as if she understood but didn't really agree. Now his rod lay in the boat with the hook on the last of the jigs tethered to a line guide, the line taut and the rod bowed. On their way home he had brought them in close to the land to see the shed up close and reminisce.

"Will you ever be happy with me, boy?" Betty asked.

"Oh, I am," Noah said. "And I will be, too."

That was all they said while they tarried. Then the silence seemed to take matters in hand and muffle all the sounds. The hull on the small waves, the trees in the light breeze, their hearts beating high. Even the cry of their tempestuous youth began to seem to tail off.

At last the lament of a gull, far and lonely and soft, interrupted, and Noah started the motor and hauled in the anchor, and away they went.

28 November 2025
Texas Jim
Prospect, Nova Scotia