Chapter 6: What the Stern Said
I waited until the marina had fully disappeared behind us and there was nothing in any direction but open water and sky.
Then I walked over to my father and touched his shoulder.
"Dad.
Come look at something."
He followed me to the stern without asking why.
That was always how he was.
He trusted first and asked questions later, if at all.
He stood beside me and looked at the name on the boat.
He read it once.
Then he read it again.
His hand came up slowly and touched the brim of his hat, and then he lowered it again without doing anything with it.
"Who did this?" he asked.
"The marina owner.
His daughter saw the post I made online.
About the fishing trip."
"What post?"
"I wrote about you," I said.
"About the lake when I was a kid.
About what those mornings meant.
I didn't expect anyone to read it."
He was still looking at the stern.
"People read it," he said.
"A lot of people read it."
He was quiet for a long moment.
"I don't know why," he said.
"It was just fishing."
"Dad."
"It was just sandwiches and an old car and a lake."
"Dad.
Look at me."
He turned.
"It wasn't just fishing," I said.
"It was never just fishing.
You know that."
He looked away again.
Out at the water.
"I just didn't want you to feel like you were missing something," he said.
"Other kids had things we couldn't give you.
I knew that.
I thought about it a lot." He paused.
"I just wanted you to have mornings that felt good."
"They felt good," I said.
"They still feel good.
Every single one of them."
He nodded slowly, but he didn't look at me.
I let the silence sit.
Then Tommy's voice came from behind us.
"Ray.
Get over here.
Gerald is lying about a fish and someone needs to call him on it."
Dad turned.
The corner of his mouth moved.
"How big?" he called back.
"He says forty pounds."
"Gerald," Dad said, walking back toward the group, "no fish you ever caught weighed forty pounds."
Gerald threw his hands up in protest and the whole deck laughed, and my father dropped back into his chair and was immediately in the middle of it, and for a while the morning was just noise and coffee and sunlight on the water.
I stayed at the stern a little longer.
I looked at the four words.
I thought about the drive over that morning, Dad in the passenger seat with his hat on his knee, telling me about a trip we'd taken when I was seven — a trip I barely remembered but that he could describe in complete detail.
The sandwiches.
The color of the sky.
The fish I'd caught and immediately wanted to throw back because I felt sorry for it.
He had remembered all of it.
Every detail of a morning that cost him almost nothing and that he had carried for thirty years like something precious.
The captain appeared beside me.
"There's one more thing," he said.
I looked at him.
"I told you on the dock.
There's something waiting for him out here." He nodded toward the water ahead.
"About twenty minutes north.
You'll see it when we get there."
"What is it?"
He shook his head slightly.
"It came together this week.
A lot of people were involved.
May you like
I don't want to describe it." He paused.
"I think it needs to be seen."
