The Deep, The Blue

Noah thought they had an understanding, him and Bustah Moove. Yes, he was sober, as always, and the rapper was very high, like a kite in the clouds whose string had been severed. He kept inhaling tiny spoonfuls of cocaine from the vial on the gold chain around his neck and drinking bourbon from a hip flask and vaping cannabis, the unpleasantly skunk-like fragrance of which seemed to seek Noah out no matter which way he turned the boat to avoid it. Nevertheless, there was the dead tree they had witnessed, that they both knew was magic, whose radiant relief they had both felt in their bones as it dispelled the illusion of time.

But for the rapper it was something more. It was not an illusion. Time ending meant something else had replaced it. He began to babble. “This is heaven, this is paradise. The deep, the blue. The deep, the blue. It doesn’t matter what she said. What she did. You can’t hurt Superman. The deep, the blue. My home!”

Noah said, “Yes, I think that it can be your home. You want to buy a house in the village. It’s very peaceful there, and I will be your friend.” Yet though he could steer the boat clear of shoals, he could not steer the conversation back to the navigable waters of sanity. Moove was no longer answering him. He seemed not even to hear him. Shouting one more time, “The deep, the blue,” Moove leapt out of the boat into the sea.

*****

“So,” said the officer taking Noah’s statement. “you think you saw the dead tree at the end of time. That’s what you want me to write down.”

The rapper was gone in the ambulance. The lights from the officer’s car were still traversing and coloring the crowd that had gathered. Noah was still in his dripping wet clothes.

“I don’t care what you write,” Noah said. “It’s just something we saw. It’s just something I said. Look, I jumped in. I pulled him out. Can I go change? I’m freezing.”

*****

The next day they called him a hero. They wanted to see the great tree. The rapper called from the hospital. Noah got a reward. There was no tree, the rapper said. Noah agreed. The rapper never came back to the village. Noah turned down every single reporter. There wasn’t a story, he said. He went back to the islands, and the tree, by himself. For an hour he murmured, “The deep … and the blue.” The small waves, lapping at the boat, returned no echo. He thought he heard the tree say, “That’s enough. Go home.”

He went home.

24 March 2026
Texas Jim
Prospect, Nova Scotia