The Jon Boat in My Driveway

The Trailer

I could have left then. I want you to know I thought about it. I had my son, he was warm, he was safe, and the boat was sitting on the gravel with its bow rope tied around a post.

I could have driven home and called Corey and let the Coles sort out the Coles.

But I kept looking at that boat. And I kept thinking about how Rusty would come out of the back room at dark, and find it tied right there, and put it on his trailer and drive home, and by Sunday dinner it would be a story about how Brandy overreacted.

His truck was parked in the lot with the empty trailer still hitched behind it, the way you leave it after you launch.

I walked over and looked at it. Two-inch ball. My truck has a two-inch ball too, because Corey and Rusty have been borrowing that trailer back and forth for ten years.

I have worked at a farm supply store for eleven years. I have hitched more trailers in that parking lot for old men with bad backs than I could count.

I did not need Rusty’s keys to take his trailer. You do not need keys for a trailer.

I cranked down his tongue jack until the coupler lifted off his ball. I unhooked his safety chains and unplugged his lights.

Then I backed my truck around, slow, with Eli watching out the open door and calling, “Little more, Mama, little more,” like he had seen his daddy do.

I dropped the coupler onto my ball, latched it, pinned it, crossed the chains, and plugged in the lights.

Darla stood on the porch and watched me with her cane, and I saw her nod once to herself.

Then I backed the trailer down the ramp until the bunks were in the water, and I set the brake and got out and waded in again up to my knees.

I guided that little green jon boat onto the bunks and walked back to the winch.

I was in my gray hoodie with my jeans stiff from the river, and I stood at the back of that trailer and cranked the winch strap one click at a time.

The boat came up out of the water slow and dripping.

That was when I looked up and saw Rusty.

The Doorway

He was standing in the doorway of Darla’s, in that old faded camo jacket he has worn every fall since high school, with a can in his hand.

He had stubble on his face, and in the late sun he looked older than forty-one.

He looked like a man who had just woken up and found out what he did.

He looked at the boat on the trailer. Then he looked at my truck, and he saw Eli sitting in the open door wrapped up in that striped towel, holding his bucket.

I watched him put it together. I watched his face fall in.

“Brandy,” he said. He did not come down the steps. “Brandy, he was fine. It’s slack water behind that snag. I could see him from the window.”

I did not stop cranking. “You could see him from the back room?”

He opened his mouth and shut it again. There is no window in Darla’s back room. Everybody on this river knows that. He knew I knew it.

“They started generating at two, Rusty,” I said. “Darla told you twice. The water’s been coming up for an hour. He’s nine. He doesn’t have his life jacket on. It’s under the front seat, where it’s been all day.”

He looked down at the can in his hand like it belonged to somebody else. He set it on the porch rail. His hand was not steady.

I want to be fair to him, because I have had a long time to think about it since. He did not yell. He did not try to come take the boat.

He did not tell me I was crazy. He just stood there with his hands open, like a man who had dropped something and did not know where it went.

“I’ll bring it back,” I said. I clicked the winch tight and hooked the safety chain to the bow eye.

“It’ll be in my driveway. When you’re ready to tell me why my son sat by himself on that river for three hours, you can come get it.”

“Brandy,” he said again. Just my name.

“I’m not going to say anything to anybody,” I said. “I’m not going to call anybody. I’m taking my boy home.”

I got Eli’s feet up out of the door and buckled him in, bucket and all, and I thanked Kim and hugged Darla.

Then I pulled up out of that lot with Rusty’s jon boat behind me and my son wrapped up in a beach towel beside me, and I did not look back at the doorway.