Markers

“Well, you’re not getting rid of me.”

“I don’t want to get rid of you.”

“You could’ve fooled me.”

“But I didn’t, did I?”

They were in Noah’s skiff, heading out of the harbour. Instead of passing the channel marker as he usually did, though, Noah stopped right in front of it and stared quizzically at it, as if it were blocking their way.

“We can still turn around, you know,” Betty said, facing him from her seat in the bow, her breeze-blown blonde hair curling around her cheeks, a couple of strands in her mouth making her spit to get them out. “We can still get a ride. We can get there in time. The game will barely have started. And my friends will be there. And they’ll be happy to see me. You too, I imagine, ‘cause it’ll mean that you care.”

With the incoming tide, the boat drifted back. Noah sped up just enough to bring it back into place.

“You know,” he said, “It’s good to have markers. Even though you know your way, it’s good.”

“What are you talking about this time? Noah, can’t we just have fun? If we have to go out on the ocean every chance you get, do you always have to start, you know, philosophizing?”

She picked up the binoculars Noah kept in the boat and looked back into the harbour. She could see the trash truck. She could see a team of men re-shingling a roof. She could see two young mothers pushing their babies in strollers up the road.

She could see people living their everyday lives.

Noah sped up to bring the boat alongside the marker and then laid his hand on it. The look of concentration on his face made it look as if he were taking its pulse.

“Well,” Betty said, “Is it alive?”

“In a way,” Noah said. “I can feel it moving. It moves me. I can feel it moving memories I have. Stuff that comes up that I still have to … lay to rest, somehow. Mainly my father. You know he kidnapped me. You know he drowned along this coast.”

“I know. They say his corpse smelled like rum. Even after three days.”

“It’s an old story, I know. And I know there’s nothing to it anymore. I’m not sad. Not too much, and only once in a while. But while it’s still with me, it helps to be out on the water, you know? All this space, you know? Above us and below.”

Betty picked up the binoculars again and, turning them backward, regarded Noah.

“Are you trying to make me look far away?” he said.

She moved carefully backwards in the boat until she was right in front of him before putting the binoculars down. “Yes,” she said. “It doesn’t work.”

“Here,” he said, “you steer for a while.” And he relinquished the outboard’s control arm to her. And he moved carefully forward to the bow to take up her former position. But not before holding her to him for a moment and kissing her neck.

“Never forget the markers,” he said, once in place. “You never know. They might tell you something new.”

She could have turned them around and gone back. She knew instinctively he wouldn’t have objected. But suddenly the open water and far horizon worked a magic on her and instead she headed on for the islands, as they usually did, meanwhile saying, with her chin tilted up and a slight smile on her face, “May all the beings be happy,” as he usually did.

26 November 2025
Texas Jim
Prospect, Nova Scotia