The Bass Boat in My Machine Shed

The Boat in the Shed

There was one thing Rick left behind when he moved to town, and it was the only thing he ever really loved besides fishing itself. It was his bass boat.

It was a 20-foot fiberglass bass boat, sparkle blue, with a 225 outboard on the back and a trolling motor up front.

It was a 2016. He bought it used in 2018 and babied it like a firstborn.

Rick’s credit was bad back then. He’d had a bad year in the seed business and missed some payments.

So when he wanted that boat, the bank in town wouldn’t loan to him alone.

They would loan to me, because I’d been paying my bills on the same day every month since I was nineteen.

So the loan went in my name, and Rick signed on as co-signer, and the titles came back with my name on them.

We paid that loan off in 2021, a year before he left. Most of it came out of my school checks, if I’m honest, because his commissions were always coming next month.

When Rick moved to town, he didn’t have anywhere to keep a boat. Brittany’s house had a single-stall garage.

So the boat stayed in my machine shed, on its trailer, under a blue tarp.

“I’ll get it out of your way soon,” he said. That was three years ago.

When the divorce papers were drawn up, Rick’s lawyer had him fill out a list of everything he owned.

Rick didn’t put the boat on it. I don’t know why. Maybe he forgot. Maybe he thought it was easier left off.

My lawyer asked me about it once. I said the boat was Rick’s, everybody knew it was Rick’s, and he’d come get it.

I didn’t want to fight about a boat. So it never went in the decree at all.

The Monday before I sold it, I called my lawyer’s office. He pulled the decree and read it twice. The boat wasn’t in it, and the titles said Tammy Ruud and nobody else. “It’s yours to sell,” he said.

Which meant that when the judge signed his name, the boat wasn’t Rick’s on any paper in South Dakota. It was mine. My name on both titles. Paid off. No lien.

I never thought about that for three years. I thought about it the night Cole showed me Cancun.