Tyler leaned down and felt around. I heard one bungee hook let go, and then the other.
He brought the tray up into his lap and frowned at it. “This isn’t leader.”
“Isn’t it,” said Mr. Lund.
Tyler turned it over to look at the top. Then he went still, and I knew he’d seen the printing.
He opened the lid.
I was behind him, so I didn’t see his face. I saw the back of his neck above his collar, and I watched it go red. I saw his finger come down on the first strip of tape and move slowly to the second. I could hear him breathing through his mouth.
“I remember this,” he said, to nobody. “It was sleeting. He wanted to quit and I wouldn’t let him.” His finger moved. “That northern. I had a Band-Aid on my thumb for a week and I showed everybody at school.”
He went down every row. It took a long time. Mr. Lund baited a hook he had no intention of using. I kept my hands in my vest pockets and my mouth shut, which is the hardest thing I have done in my adult life.
He got to the June one, the twenty-six incher that was bigger than his dad’s, and he gave half a laugh.
Then he got to the little cardboard box.
He read the tape. He read it again. And my big square son folded over that tray like somebody had cut a string, and put his forehead down on his fists, and cried the way he hadn’t cried at the funeral home or the church or the cemetery. The boat rocked with it. I could hear the rods rattle against the side.
I started to get up. Mr. Lund looked at me and shook his head about half an inch.
So I stayed in the bow. I’ve thought since that it was the kindest thing anyone did for my son that whole month, and it was done by a stranger with one small shake of his head.
When Tyler could talk, he talked to the tray. He still hadn’t turned around.
“He called me Labor Day weekend,” he said. “He said the walleyes were on the break and he’d bought something he wanted me to try. He said come up Saturday, we’ll be off the water by ten, Abby won’t even miss you.”
I hadn’t known that.
“I told him I had side work.” He wiped his face on the sleeve of his coat. “I didn’t have side work, Mom. I was tired. I wanted to sleep in. I figured there’d be another Saturday.”
“Oh, honey.”
“Ten days after that Saturday he was gone. And every time I pulled in your yard, there it sat. Like it was waiting on me. I couldn’t look at it. I thought if it was gone I could breathe.”
“Could you?”
“No.” He shook his head. “It was worse. Now there’s a dead spot in the grass and that’s on me too.”
He turned around then, finally, on the seat, so his knees were toward me. His eyes were swollen half shut. He was still holding the tray in both hands.
“I need to tell you about the money,” he said. “All of it. I don’t want you finding it out from Jeff.”
“All right.”
“I took nine days off when Dad died. For the hospital paperwork and the funeral and helping you with the garage. They gave me three days paid. The other six weren’t.” He swallowed. “Then the fuel pump went out on the truck on the highway, and when they had it up on the hoist they said both front wheel bearings were shot too. Eleven hundred and forty dollars. I had five hundred and forty in checking after rent.”
Eleven forty, less five forty. I did it in my head while he was still talking.
“Six hundred,” I said.
“Six hundred. And no truck means no job, I can’t get to Baxter on a bicycle.” He looked down. “I could’ve put it on a card. I could’ve asked Abby’s dad. I could have asked you.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because I stood next to you at that desk in the funeral home and watched you write the check. I saw what it was. I wasn’t going to be the next person with his hand out.” His jaw worked. “And because there was a boat I couldn’t stand to look at that would cover it to the dollar. It felt like it was meant to be. I wrote six hundred on that card because six hundred was what I was short. I never even thought what it was worth. I didn’t want what it was worth. I wanted it gone by supper.”
“Jeff told you he’d get you two thousand.”
“I know he did.”
“That’s fourteen hundred dollars you left on a cork board.”
“I know, Mom.”
I let that sit. He needed to hear the number out loud from me, and I needed to say it, once.
Then I said the other thing, the one I had driven around with for five days.
“I’m going to tell you something, and then I’m not ever going to say it again. That boat had your name on the card. But I was married to it for thirty-one years. I packed the lunches that went in it. I sat up for it when the weather turned. You don’t get to decide by yourself, on your lunch hour, what I can stand to look at in my own yard. I came home with a sack of groceries and found out from the grass.”
He took it. He didn’t look away and he didn’t argue.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I did it behind your back because I knew what you’d say.”
“What would I have said?”
“You’d have said wait.”
“I would have said wait,” I agreed. “And then I would have found you six hundred dollars, if I’d had to sell my mother’s china to do it, and you’d have hated that worse. So I’m not sure I’d have been right either.”
Mr. Lund cleared his throat. It was the first sound he’d made in ten minutes.
“If the two of you are about done,” he said, “there’s a lure in that box that’s been waiting since Labor Day, and I’d hate to see a man’s last purchase go to waste.”
Tyler looked down at the little cardboard box.
“It says next time,” he said.
“Well,” said Mr. Lund. “What do you call this?”
Tyler’s hands shook so badly he couldn’t get the knot. He tried three times. Then he held the line and the lure back over his shoulder toward me, without a word, the way he used to when he was six, and I tied it on for him. I can still tie a clinch knot. Mike made sure of that the first year we were married.
