The Pontoon Key on a Sparkler

The hitch

The next morning, Logan’s uncles were in our driveway at seven o’clock.

Dale and Kenny came in Logan’s pickup, a white Silverado with a two-inch ball already on the hitch, because Dale said there was no sense in letting a gift sit by a garage.

Dale had drunk sweet tea all night, he wanted me to know, and he was fit to tow. He said it three times.

Paige and Logan came behind them in her little car. Paige had the pontoon key on her own key ring already.

The Teagues keep a boat slip at a marina down on the Bagnell Dam end, and they had made a call that morning. There was room on their dock for one more until our lift part came in, or until the young ones had a dock of their own.

I stood on the porch in my robe with a cup of coffee and watched four grown men figure out how to hitch a trailer.

Bill came out in his work boots and his reading glasses. He walked all the way around the trailer before anybody touched it. He checked the tire pressure. He checked the bearings by hand.

“Bearing buddy’s dry on the left side,” he said. “Give me ten minutes.”

Dale and Kenny looked at each other, and then they stood back and let him. Bill went into the garage for his grease gun and came back and took care of it on his knees in the gravel.

Then he checked the safety chains, crossed them under the tongue the way you are supposed to, and hooked up the lights. He had Logan stand at the back and call out the brake lights and the blinkers.

“Left. Right. Brakes,” Logan called.

“Good,” Bill said. “Now you do it, and I’ll stand back there.”

He made Logan hitch it himself, start to finish, while he stood there with his arms crossed. When it was done, he walked around it one more time and slapped the trailer fender twice.

“She’s yours,” he told Paige. “Don’t let him back it down a ramp till he’s practiced.”

“I’ll back it down,” Paige said. “I’m the one Tammy taught.”

They pulled out of the driveway slow, the pontoon swaying a little on the trailer, Paige hanging out the window of her car behind them waving at me like a little girl.

Bill stood beside me on the porch until they were out of sight around the curve.

“That’s a good boy,” he said about Logan.

“That’s a good girl,” I said.

“I know it,” he said. “You did half the raising. More than half, some years.”