The Fishing Pond in the Back Pasture

The First Sunday

The first Sunday in May, we had just sat down to dinner after church when I heard tires on the gravel. Steve looked out the kitchen window and set his fork down.

“Karen,” he said. “Come look.”

It was Ryan’s pickup, coming up the lane slow. I could see two little heads in the back seat, bouncing.

I did not even take my apron off. I went out on the porch, and Ryan got out, and he looked a little sheepish, the way he used to look when he came home with his jeans soaked from the frog hole.

Addie climbed down out of the truck like a little lady, careful of her church shoes. Beau just fell out, and hit the ground running, and he did not stop running until he got to the pasture gate.

“Grandma! Which way is it?”

“Down the hill, baby. Past the trees.”

He took off before I could say anything else. Addie walked behind him, holding her hands together in front of her, looking at everything, the way she does.

Steve had the poles ready. I did not know he had bought them. He had two little spinning rods in the machine shed, one for each grandchild, with red-and-white bobbers already tied on, and a tub of nightcrawlers in the old fridge.

“When did you do this?” I whispered to him.

“March,” he said, and did not look at me.

We walked down that hill together, all five of us, the first time in I could not say how long. Ryan carried the worms. Steve carried the poles. I carried nothing but my whole heart in my hands.

Beau was already out on the end of the dock when we got there, lying on his stomach, looking down into the water.

“There’s fish in there!” he yelled. “Grandpa, there’s real fish!”

“I know,” Steve said. “Your grandma put them there.”

Beau looked up at me like I had done a magic trick. I will carry that look with me to my grave, and I hope I am buried with it.

Sundays

Neither of the kids caught a thing that first day. The bluegill were still small and the water was still cold. But they did not care one bit. Beau caught a stick and Addie caught the dock boards twice.

Ryan sat on the end of the dock and watched them. He did not fish. He did not say much. Every so often he would reach over and fix a tangle for Beau without being asked.

When they left, Addie hugged me around the waist and said, very seriously, “Can we come back next Sunday?”

“You can come every Sunday,” I said, “as long as you want.”

And they did. Every Sunday after church, Ryan’s truck would come up the lane around one o’clock. Sometimes we ate first, sometimes we went straight to the water. I started making two pies on Saturday nights.

Brooke never came. Not once in May. Ryan would say she had a headache, or she was at her sister’s, or she needed a quiet afternoon. I never asked. I just said, “Tell her I said hello.”