THE COLUMN AT THE PONTOON · readings and restatements · kept by the office of measures
The keeper of the column is the man who paints the daily line, and he is paid by the mark.
The oldest mark is hand-cut, deeper than the others, at a height no water has reached since. It carries no note. Nothing is claimed for it. A cut of that depth is two hours in the water for whoever cut it, the chisel over the shoulder between blows. The schedule holds no field for this. The depth holds it.
The winter the water took the steps: two rings. Cut by the ferryman’s father, by arrangement, the office supplying the chisel and the ferryman’s father supplying the reach. Payment is recorded as one crossing, waived.
The summer the river showed its bed: marked below zero. The office notes that a reading below the datum is not a reading. In the yearbook that summer stands as a space between two entries.
From the fourth ring upward the marks are plated. The hand-cut years end here. Eleven years on, the school began teaching the plated letters first.
The datum is tied to a plug in a wall three streets from the water, which has never been wet.
NOTICE OF RESTATEMENT. The datum is moved to the new pontoon. All heights are restated; subtract one ring. The great water of the second ring is restated at the first ring. Schoolwork submitted under the previous heights is marked to the previous heights, this year only. The column is not moved. The water is not consulted.
The third ring is still called the third ring by those who stood on the steps that winter. The office lists it at the second. Both marks are on the column.
The year the crossing ran at night: a small mark, low, off the scale’s line, cut where a child could reach, and beside it, fainter, a second at the same height made a year later by the same hand and not quite reaching. Not heights. Kept.
Marking the column is not permitted. The marks are kept.
NOTICE OF RESTATEMENT. Readings are taken from this date by the sensor at the new pontoon and posted to the app. The sensor speaks its height on the hour, in the voice. The column remains in service as furniture. Its readings are not readings.
In the spring the water came up to the fourth ring by the old heights, and the office recorded it at the third, and the third is not a height that requires notice, and none was given, and the boats ran, and two doors on the lower street took water. The schedule has a column for doors.
The present line is repainted each morning, at the height the sensor gives. On three mornings in the last year the brush was applied above the sensor’s figure, by a hand the schedule does not name, and the office corrected the paint the same day and did not ask. Paint, not a cut. Paint can be corrected. The brush hangs on the column by a string, and the string is renewed more often than the paint.
The small mark, the child’s, has been joined over the years by others, low, off the line, none of them heights, none of them removed. The office schedule lists them under furniture, care of.
The oldest mark keeps its height. On the schedule it appears as: mark, one, prior to datum, unattributed.
A restatement is scheduled for the coming year, the datum moving again, to the sensor’s own zero. Nothing is issued to the households. The column is where the office keeps what it has decided, and the office does not write to anybody about water. Under the new heights the oldest mark stands at a height the water has reached twice in living memory, and the schedule lists it, correctly, as unremarkable. People put their thumb in it, passing.