All You Need to Know
Noah retreated to the ramshackle fort on Moon Island that his friends and he had cobbled together around a large old slanting tree. Usually he would have come by boat but now the back bay was frozen so he had walked across over the ice. Usually his friends would have come along too. Instead he had only his dog and a diary from his grandma Big Bertha. Inside the fort, among the exposed roots of the tree, he huddled with Sir Barksalot in the enclave that was theirs and lit the tarnished lantern that hung there and with a clumsy mittened hand thumbed the lock of the diary free.
All he had left of his family were these pictures and memories and a few other mementos. His father had left his mother and on a drunken solo voyage along the coast managed to fall overboard in the darkness and drown. Big Bertha had expired contemplating her roses in a lawn chair in her own backyard. His granddad Little Mac had been found with his hands on the wheel in the driver's seat of an old car abandoned in a field on the opposite coast in California. And his mother only days ago had been shot and killed by a bullet meant for someone else while out dancing.
Nevertheless, he had not come to mourn or lament but to contemplate. He turned the diary's pages till he found a photo by his granddad. Then he read what his grandma had written to go with it.
"Our Mac was out again today with his camera. When he got back with this, he clapped on his thinking cap and began to philosophize. He said the lines may go this way and that. It doesn't signify. He said the ice might lock you out of all you love. He said that doesn't matter either. All you need to know is ain't it beautiful."
Noah pulled the moth-eaten tea cozy that had been his granddad's thinking cap down further over his ears, both for the warmth and to facilitate the connection.
"All you need to know," he said again, "is ain't it beautiful." And although he wasn't certain what they meant, the words lit a little fire inside. Seeing Sir Barksalot shivering, he gathered the dog close. "You see, Barkie? You feel that? All we need to know is ain't it beautiful."
He rocked back and forth with his eyes closed and the dog in his arms.
"That is all. That is all. That is all."
4 March 2022
Texas Jim
Hacketts Cove, Nova Scotia
www.granitecoast.ca