Arne’s Reason
He told the rest of it sitting on the sand with his wet jeans and his head down, while Grandma sat beside him in the towel. I sat on her other side. Dad, who had come around in the car with my cousin driving, stood behind us with his good hand on Arne’s shoulder.
That morning in June of 2003, Arne said, he and Grandpa had been out at first light for walleye. Grandpa had been reeling in, laughing about something, and then he put his hand on his chest and said, “Arne, row.”
“So I rowed,” Arne said. “I rowed so hard I tore the oarlock out of the gunwale. Half a mile. I’ve done the math a thousand times. If I’d been faster. If we’d been closer to shore. If I’d had the motor on. I’ve never been back out there. I can’t even look at that boat.”
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Grandma put her hand on the back of his neck, the way you do with a little boy.
“You rowed him in,” she said. “You did everything a person could do. The doctor told you that. I told you that.”
“I know you did.”
“But you never believed me.”
“No,” Arne said. “I guess I didn’t.”
“Well, believe me now. And believe this, too.” Her voice got firm, the voice that used to stop us cold when we tracked sand in the cabin. “You don’t get to hide my things, Arne. I’m your mother. I’m not your worry. You don’t get to stand on my dock and call me an embarrassment because you’re afraid.”
He took it. He did not argue and he did not make an excuse. He just nodded, over and over, looking at the sand.
“In front of the kids, Arne,” Dad said quietly from behind him. “They’ll remember that.”
“I know,” Arne said. “I’ll tell them. Tonight. I’ll tell every one of them I was wrong.”
And that night, he did. Before the fireworks, he stood up on the porch steps of the cabin and said it in front of all of us, kids and all, plain as a weather report. Nobody made him. That was his consequence, and he paid it himself.