Noah Takes His Seat
Minnie watched as Noah played on the snowy back porch with the toy ship made of matchsticks and thread and paper sails that his Daddy Mac had made for him before he died.
Having watched a movie about an ill-fated polar expedition, the boy had set the toy ship among the drifts and was dramatically narrating its circumstances so that his aunt could hear him in the kitchen even with the sliding door to the porch closed.
"No sooner had repairs been effec...effec...no sooner had his ship been fixed than the captain of the White Cloud set sail, eager for adventure! Here you see the good ship on an expedition to the North Pole, trapped in the ice in a howling gale!"
With his back to Minnie, Noah neither saw nor heard her clap her hands together in appreciation at his performance. Nor did he see her hands go to her face in dismay as his dog came leaping through the snow to snatch the matchstick ship in his jaws and thrash it back and forth, crushing it entirely.
Noah himself had no immediate reaction. He stayed crouching while Sir Barksalot romped away with his prize and disappeared. Then he stood and turned and slid the glass door open and left it open as he came inside and sat down at the kitchen table. He looked right at Minnie who was at the counter where she had been slicing potatoes, but he did not seem to see her there.
"Grandson," he announced to the room at large, still with his narrator's dynamic delivery, "you make me proud! You might have cried but you didn't. You might have chased your Barkie down and tried to hurt him, but you didn't. You remembered what I told you. Now you're going to be all right. You're home and you are going to be all right!"
Then he got up and turned round and looked back at the chair and said, "Thank you, Daddy Mac. I will. But it was still a ship to me." And then he trudged off through the snow after Barkie, leaving the door still wide open and the cold air blowing in.
Sliding the door shut and the chair back in under the table, Minnie said, "Yes, thank you, Daddy Mac. I don't know why. I don't know what you told him. But he's a pea from your same pod and yes, I think we're going to be all right."
And then she went back to slicing potatoes and only cut herself once and that only slightly because her hands were not shaking that much.
7 March 2022
Texas Jim
Prospect, Nova Scotia
www.granitecoast.ca