The Jon Boat in My Driveway

The Towel

When the bottom of the boat scraped the gravel at the foot of the ramp, I picked Eli up out of it and held him against my chest.

He was not wet, thank the Lord, except for his sneakers. But he was cold all the way through, the deep shivering kind that comes from sitting still in a river wind for three hours.

He would not let go of the bucket. I carried him and the bucket both up to my truck, which is a tan Chevy with a hundred and ninety thousand miles on it, and I opened the passenger door and started the engine and turned the heat all the way up.

There was a striped beach towel behind the seat from the last swim of the summer, at the city pool in August.

I had been meaning to take it in the house for two months. I have never been so glad of my own bad housekeeping.

I peeled off his damp jacket and wrapped him up in the towel, head and all, and I sat him sideways on the seat with his feet hanging out the open door so I could see him and he could see me.

Kim came and stood by him. Darla brought him a hot chocolate out of the machine in a foam cup.

“Let me see your fish,” I said.

He lifted the lid on the white bucket. Down in the bottom, in about four inches of water, was a channel catfish no longer than my hand, finning slow and steady.

It was the ugliest, most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

“I kept dipping new water in,” Eli said, through his chattering teeth. “With my hand. Every time I counted to a hundred. So he could breathe.” He looked up at me.

“I didn’t want him to be scared too.”

I had to turn around and look at the river for a minute. Kim put her hand on my back. Nobody said anything.

That boy sat by himself on cold water for three hours with no grown-up and no life jacket, and the thing he worried about was a fish.