Nine Suppers in a Bass Boat

The Ninth Night

On Saturday I made pot roast. Carrots and potatoes in the pan, onions underneath, gravy stirred over the burner that only works on high.

At ten to six I carried out the tablecloth and spread it over the bench. I lit the candle in the Mason jar. I set two places. I brought out the roast and set it on the bench between the plates.

Marlys was already in her lawn chair. Duane and Lyle had parked at the curb. Tyler and Amber came walking up the sidewalk from where they had left their car at the corner. Three cars were pulled over on the shoulder across the street, and the pastor’s wife was walking her dog again.

Rick was not in the garage. He was not anywhere I could see.

At six o’clock exactly the front door opened, and he came down the steps in his good shirt. The blue button-down he wore to Tyler’s wedding. He had shaved, and combed his hair wet, and he was holding a folded piece of paper.

He did not climb into the boat. He walked past it and stopped at the end of the driveway, where everybody could see him.

A white pickup pulled up behind Duane’s truck. A young man got out, maybe thirty, in a Hawkeyes sweatshirt, with an envelope in his hand.

“This is Jeff,” Rick said, loud enough for the street. “He’s from Ames. He’s buying a boat.”

Marlys set her coffee cup down on the step.

Rick unfolded the paper. “Karen,” he said. “Come stand by me before I sign this.”

I climbed out of the boat on the step stool and walked to the end of the driveway. It was the boat’s title. He laid it on the hood of Jeff’s pickup, took a pen out of his shirt pocket, and in front of the whole street, he signed it over.

Jeff handed him the envelope. Rick did not open it. He turned around and put it in my hands.

“It’s a cashier’s check,” he said. “Ten thousand two hundred. I lost eight hundred on it, Karen. That one’s on me.”

I looked down at the envelope and could not see it very well.

“I’m sorry,” Rick said. And this time it did not come out rough. It came out plain and clear, like a man saying his own name. “You saved six years for that kitchen, forty dollars at a time, and I took it for something to prove I was still somebody. I was wrong. Whatever’s left I’ll make up with overtime.”

Nobody on that street said a word. Then Marlys, from across the road, started clapping. Slowly at first. Then Duane did. Then Amber, and Lyle, and the people by the cars, and the pastor’s wife with the dog’s leash looped around her wrist.

Tyler did not clap. He walked up the driveway and put his arms around his father. Rick held on to him a long time.

Then Rick turned to Jeff and said, “One thing. Do you mind if we eat supper in her first? My wife made pot roast.”

Jeff laughed and said he did not mind one bit. So he ate with us, sitting on the back deck, and he said it was the best pot roast he had ever had, and I believe he meant it.

When the plates were empty, Jeff backed his pickup up to the trailer hitch. Rick and Duane helped him hook up and cross the safety chains and check the lights. Rick stood in the driveway with his hand on the side of that green and silver boat one last time.

Then he took his hand away, and Jeff drove it off toward Highway 65, and our driveway was empty except for a maple table and two chairs and my mother’s tablecloth folded over the back of one of them.