The Bait Shop I Would Not Sell

Chapter 6

The Carlow Classic was the real prize and I had never once had a shot at it, because it had always run out of the Carlow Lodge, and the Lodge was the first shoreline Glen Dermott had bought.

So when I called the tournament committee about hosting the weigh-in and the morning launch out of my shop, I was really calling to take a jewel out of Glen’s new crown. I knew it. They knew it. The lake is small.

The committee chairman was polite and uncomfortable. “Ruth, we’ve always worked out of the Lodge. Mr. Dermott’s put a lot into the place. New docks, a real parking lot. You’ve got, forgive me, a gravel lot and one dock.”

“I’ve got the best launch on the north end at first light,” I said, “and I open at four, and every man in this tournament has bought bait from me since he was a boy. You run it out of a fancy new dock and they still have to drive to me for leeches at dawn. Run it out of my place and it is one stop, in the dark, with coffee.”

“It’s a lot of boats,” he said. “Eighty, ninety. Can you handle the bait for ninety boats before sunup, alone, at your age.”

There it was again. At your age. I have heard it so many times now that it has stopped stinging and started sounding like a dare.

“I handled this lake the morning Earl died and I opened anyway,” I said. “I can handle ninety boats. Give me the Classic and I will show you a weigh-in this lake talks about for ten years.”

He said he would bring it to the committee. He did not sound hopeful.

Three days later Glen Dermott came into my shop for the second time.

He did not lay down a paper this time. He bought a coffee, which was a first, and he leaned on my counter like a man settling in for a reasonable conversation between adults.

“I hear you’re trying to take the Classic,” he said. “Ruth, come on. That’s not a fight you win. I just put sixty thousand into the Lodge docks. You can’t compete with that.”

“I’m not competing with your docks,” I said. “I’m competing for the fishermen. Different thing. You bought the building they used to launch from. You didn’t buy them.”

Something flickered in his face. For just a second I think he saw it, the gap in his plan, the thing money had not bought.

Then he covered it. “I’ll make you a new offer,” he said. “Twenty-six thousand. And here’s the part you’ll like. You stay on and run it. I keep you as manager. Salary, no risk, no four a.m., no books. You get to keep your little place and I take the worry.”

And here is the thing I want you to understand about Glen Dermott, because the story is easy without it and true only with it.

He meant that as a gift. He thought he had found the answer that let me keep my dignity and let him have his shoreline. In his mind he had solved me. He looked almost pleased, waiting for my gratitude.

I thought about it longer than you might expect. Twenty-six thousand and no four a.m. is a real temptation to a tired seventy year old woman who misses her husband and whose knees do not love that ladder.

Then I looked out the window at the sign, primed white now, waiting for its new letters, Earl’s ghost coat sealed underneath it.

“No,” I said. “Because the day I take your salary, this stops being Earl’s shop and starts being your asset with his name on it. And I would rather open at four for the rest of my life than let that happen.”

He set his coffee down. He was not angry. He was something worse for me. He was certain.

“You’ll see it my way by fall,” he said. “I’m not the bad guy here, Ruth. The water’s moving one direction. I’m just offering you a boat.”

He left. And I stood there knowing he fully believed he was the kindest man on the lake, and that this, somehow, was the most dangerous thing about him.