The weekend talk was that the Warden would reappear. He did not. Monday’s actual news at the sluice was a conditions report, filed by the Deputy of the Warden of the Sluice, of unusual thoroughness. Four leaves, both sides, by this paper’s count. It went to the Clerk of the Reed-Bed Subcommittee at the close of Monday’s hours and covers the first of May to date. In sequence: gate condition, water levels at three stations, sediment at the east channel junction, the state of the principal humidity gauge, and a final section the Deputy headed “the question of operational continuity.” That last one was new.
The technical findings are quickly told. The gates are “serviceable but worn at the lower hinge, left side,” which the Deputy lays to the high water of late April and the storm of the twenty-fourth. Levels at the three stations, upper, mid, and lower, are within seasonal norms. Sediment at the east channel junction is “not yet obstructive” but “trending.” The principal humidity gauge, installed by the Warden a season or more ago and not calibrated since, reads eleven drakes. The Deputy reproduces the figure without comment.
The final section is the one with reach. Under “Operational Continuity,” in the plainest language she has put in any public document this season, the Deputy records three things. The Warden’s office has been effectively maintained by the undersigned since the records review closed on the fourth instant. The Warden has not visited the sluice in person in the reporting period. And whether the arrangement is a temporary delegation or a de facto succession is a question she respectfully submits for clarification at the Subcommittee’s earliest convenience.
The passage uses no harder word than those. Not retirement. Not vacancy. Nowhere does it say the Warden has stopped doing his job. It observes only, with a precision the Deputy has been sharpening for years in the Warden’s shadow, that the job is being done by someone other than the Warden, and that the doing has gone unnamed long enough that a name might now be wanted.
This paper found the Warden at the upper sluice on Monday evening, in his usual place over the east channel, in reasonable health and tolerable spirits. Asked whether he had read the report, he said he had not, called the Deputy’s reports generally reliable, and pronounced the office well in hand. Asked what that meant, he shifted slightly and gave his answer.
The evening light on the channel is, on the whole, worth remarking upon.
This paper recorded the remark and added a honk of its own, at a volume the Warden appeared not to register. The report goes to the Subcommittee at its next session. The Deputy has said she will attend.