Nineteen Firefighters in the Front Pews

The Boat

Harold walked across the fellowship hall to my husband. I did not follow. I watched from the bar table with Katie leaning against my side.

Mike saw him coming and set his coffee down. Tom Kessler stepped away to give them room.

I could not hear all of it. I saw Harold hold out his hand, and I saw Mike take it. I saw Harold say something with his head down, and Mike shake his head, and then Mike said something that made Harold laugh. Later Mike told me what it was.

“I told him he was right about one thing,” Mike said. “I did stink.”

Then Duane came over with his helmet still under his arm, and he said something to Harold that I could hear, because Duane does not know how to talk quietly when he means it.

“Harold, did you ever hear what happened in January? Out on Long Lake?”

Harold shook his head.

“A sixteen-year-old went through the ice while he was fishing. The Brandt boy. Fell in about sixty yards out, near dark.” Duane looked at Mike. “We went out after him in the rescue boat. The one with Marlene’s name on it.”

I had forgotten. Everyone had, except the fire department.

When Marlene died, Harold had asked that memorials go to the Ellerton Fire Department instead of flowers. The department used the money, a little over nine thousand dollars, toward an ice and water rescue boat. They painted her name on the bow in white letters: Marlene.

Harold had stood at the dedication in the fire hall that spring. He had not said much. I do not think he had ever asked what the boat did after that.

“Mike was on the line,” Duane said. “Rachel was in the boat. We had that boy out of the water in eleven minutes. He was home for supper the next night.”

Harold stood very still in the middle of the fellowship hall.

“Marlene’s boat,” he said.

“Marlene’s boat,” Duane said. “Your money. Mike’s hands. That’s how it works out here, Harold. You know that better than anybody.”

Harold sat down on a folding chair. He took a handkerchief out of his back pocket, an old cloth one with an H stitched in the corner that Marlene must have done, and held it against his eyes for a long time.

Mike pulled a chair over and sat down next to him. He did not say anything. He just sat there in his turnout coat with his elbows on his knees, the way he sits with a cow that is calving, waiting.

That was the moment I cried. Not upstairs in the church with everyone watching. Down in the basement, by the scotcheroos, watching my husband sit next to an old man who did not know how to say he was lonely.