THE COLUMN AT THE PONTOON · office of measures
The winter the water took the steps: two rings. Cut by the ferryman's father. The office supplied the chisel; the ferryman's father, the reach. Payment: one crossing, waived.
The oldest mark is deeper, at a height no water has reached since. Two hours in the water for whoever cut it, the chisel over the shoulder between blows. No field for this.
The summer the river showed its bed: below zero. Readings below the datum are not readings. That summer is a space in the yearbook.
From the fourth ring upward: plates. Eleven years later, the school taught the plated letters first.
The datum is tied to a plug in a wall three streets from the water, which has never been wet.
RESTATEMENT. Datum moved to the new pontoon. Subtract one ring. The great water of the second ring is restated at the first. Schoolwork under the previous heights accepted this year only. The column is not moved. The water is not consulted.
Those who stood on the steps still call the third ring the third. The office lists it at the second. Both marks remain.
The year the crossing ran at night: a child's mark, low, off the scale's line. Beside it, a second at the same height, made a year later by the same hand, not quite reaching. Not heights. Kept.
Marking the column is not permitted. The marks are kept.
RESTATEMENT. Readings now taken by the sensor and posted to the app. On the hour it speaks the height, in the voice. The column remains in service as furniture. Its readings are not readings.
In spring the water reached the old fourth ring. Recorded at the third. No notice required; none given. The boats ran. Two doors took water on the lower street. A man carried his mother upstairs in the dark. The schedule has a column for doors.
Sava, Measures, submits the old fourth ring and the two door numbers. Warning requested. The public-notice clerk returns it: no qualifying rise. Measures has already marked the street warned. Sava crosses that out. The entry returns at the next printing.
He takes the returned notice down in his belted canvas satchel. At the first door there is nobody in. He waits.
The keeper paints the sensor's height each morning, paid by the mark. On three mornings a hand the schedule does not name painted higher. Corrected the same day. No inquiry. Paint, not a cut.
Beside one higher line, a hand has written: THE NEXT OFFICE WILL ANSWER TO US. The shopkeeper scrapes off the words. He raises his stock above the paint.
Sava asks him to put the notice in the window. The shopkeeper lays it there, facing inward.
The iron-gray cat from the fish market puts a paw at the wet line. “Here,” she says. The keeper paints beneath it. A man with a scraper pushes him off the step. Sava catches the tin. A second man holds out the order: REMOVE TEMPORARY MARKS. Measures. Sava's stamp.
“Not that line.”
The scraper catches the keeper's knuckle. He takes the tin from Sava and pours the paint over the order. The cat has gone under the shop's shutter.
By noon the street is calling it the High Line. The keeper is told to invoice for cleaning.
More marks beside the child's. Entered under furniture, care of.
Next year the datum moves to the sensor's zero. Nothing issued to households. The oldest mark will stand at a height reached twice in living memory. The schedule lists it, correctly, as unremarkable.
People put their thumb in it, passing.