The Bass Boat in My Machine Shed

The Text He Read on the Beach

Cole went back to Watertown early Monday morning. I packed him a cooler of leftovers and stood on the step in my robe while his taillights went down the gravel toward the highway.

Then I went to work and cooked for two hundred kids, and came home, and sat in the truck in the yard for a long time with the engine off, looking at the machine shed.

That night I went out with a flashlight. The shed smelled like cold dirt and old grease.

I found the corner of the tarp and pulled it, and a whole season of dust slid off onto my boots.

The boat looked the same as the day he parked it. Sparkle blue, the gel coat still shining under the dust.

He had put the seat covers on it before he left. Rick always did take care of his things.

I stood there a long time. I thought about the $6,000 I paid a lawyer to get a piece of paper. I thought about the little umbrellas in the drinks.

I want to be honest about what I felt, because I’ve been to church every Sunday of my life and I know what the Bible says about anger. I was angry. But under the anger I was mostly tired.

I went back in the house and opened the file cabinet in the spare room.

The boat title was right where I’d filed it in 2021, along with the trailer title, both stamped with the bank’s lien release.

My name. Only mine.

I didn’t sleep much. In the morning before work I sat at the kitchen table and wrote Rick a text.

I wrote it four times before I sent it, because I wanted it to be fair.

“Rick, it’s been three years. Pay me something on the $38,000 by Friday, or come get your boat and we will sign the title over to you. If neither happens, I’m going to sell it.”

Mid-morning, between the corn and the chicken patties, I checked my phone in the walk-in cooler where nobody could see.

It just said “Read 10:14 AM.” No answer came under it.

He read it on a beach in Mexico, with a blue drink in his hand. Then he put his phone back down.

I waited all week. Wednesday, nothing. Thursday, Brittany posted a picture of a sunset. Friday I checked my phone every time I took a tray out of the oven.

Friday came and went, and nobody ever answered me.

Arnie

My neighbor Arnie Lindgren has farmed the place north of me his whole life.

He is seventy-four, a widower, and he still drives his own grain truck in the fall because he says the hired kids take the corners too fast.

When Rick left, Arnie never said one word about it. He just started showing up.

The first winter, my yard was plowed every time it snowed, before I was even up. I never once saw him do it.

Arnie has a grandson named Jake who is twenty and works at the elevator. Jake had been saving for a boat since his junior year of high school.

Everybody in town knew it. He talked about boats the way some boys talk about girls.

Saturday morning I walked over to Arnie’s. He was in his shop with the radio on, greasing a hay rake that was older than me. He wiped his hands on a rag when he saw me.

“Coffee’s on,” he said. He always says that.

I sat on an overturned bucket and told him all of it. The $38,000. The three years. The phone call with my lawyer. The text Rick read on the beach and never answered.

Arnie didn’t interrupt once. When I was done, he poured me another cup and looked out the shop door toward my machine shed.

“That boat’s in your name,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“Both titles. Paid off.”

“What’s it worth?”

I’d looked it up the night before. A 2016 like that, with the 225 and the low hours, was selling for somewhere between thirty-six and forty-two thousand on the lists I could find. I told him so.

Arnie nodded slowly. He set his cup down on the workbench.

“Jake’s got about fourteen thousand saved,” he said. “I sold the fall beans and the money’s just sitting at the bank.” “I’ve been meaning to help that boy with something before I die anyway. I’d rather see it now than have him get it after the funeral.”

I told him I didn’t come over there to sell him anything. I came because I needed to say it out loud to somebody who wasn’t my son.

“I know why you came,” Arnie said. “Tammy, I’ve watched you do every bit of it alone out here for three years. Every bit. I’m sure.”

Then he asked me what number I wanted. I said thirty-eight thousand, exactly, not a dollar more. It was in the range. It was fair to him. And it was the number.

He understood without me explaining it. He smiled a little, one side of his mouth, and stuck out his hand. His palm was rough as a corncob.

“Monday I’ll go to the bank,” he said. “We’ll do it right. Cashier’s check.”

“Arnie,” I said, “you’re sure it doesn’t feel like taking sides?”

“I’m seventy-four years old,” he said. “I’ve been taking sides my whole life. Mostly I try to take the right one.”