The Fish Fry I Held on the Road

Word Gets Down the Road

A gravel road is a small town stretched out thin. Eleven families on ours, give or take, between the highway and the dead end at the Sorensons’ hay ground.

I did not send anything on the phone. I just drove it, door to door, Eli in the passenger seat, Saturday afternoon.

We stopped at the Vogels’ first because they were closest. Mrs. Vogel came out wiping her hands on a towel and I told her straight. There was a game feed last night and it did not go the way it should have, and so we were frying walleye at the end of our lane around five, and we would be glad to see them, bring a lawn chair, no need to bring a thing.

She looked at Eli standing there in the yard, and I think she had heard already, because news like that moves faster on a gravel road than any truck. She said, “We will be there. I will bring a bean salad.” And that was that.

We went the whole length of the road.

The Sorensons were next, and Dale Sorenson leaned in the truck window and asked what the occasion was. I told him there did not need to be one. He grinned and said he would bring a folding table.

Old Cliff Dumond had been at the feed the night before. He had watched the whole thing from two tables over.

He got quiet when I asked him. He took his cap off and turned it in his hands.

“I wondered when somebody would stand up to that man,” he said. “I will be there. I will bring my appetite.”

The Ellises had four kids and said all six of them were coming. The mom asked if she could fry some of her own crappie alongside my walleye, and I said the more the better.

Pete, of course, was already in. He said he was hauling his own fryer over so we could run two baskets at once and keep the line moving.

“How much fish you got?” he asked.

“All of it,” I said. “The whole freezer.”

He whistled. “That is a lot of evenings on the Lund.”

“I know it,” I said.

By then Eli had stopped asking if he had ruined anything. He was reading the list of families off his fingers, counting plates in his head, a boy with a job.

By four o’clock I had a cooler of pop, a fryer coming up to temperature, a dishpan of breaded fillets, a boy vibrating with purpose, and a hand-lettered sign Eli had made with a marker and a scrap of cardboard. It said Fish Fry in big uneven letters, and under it, smaller, Everyone Welcome, and I staked it at the mouth of our lane where the gravel met the road.

Dana stood on the porch with her arms crossed, watching me set it. I could not read her face.

“My father is going to hear about this by morning,” she said.

“I know it,” I said.

“Good,” she said, and she went in to get the folding tables.