The Old Lund on Dad’s Reef

The dock

Most of the crowd had drifted up to the pavilion for the potluck when I went back down to the Lund to load her on the trailer.

The wind was still blowing, and the waves slapped against the pilings.

I was coiling the anchor rope when I heard boots on the dock boards behind me. Slow, heavy steps.

I knew them before I turned around. Dwayne walks like Dad did, like a man who’s been on his feet in a mill for forty years.

He stopped a few feet from me and looked down at the Lund.

He had his hands jammed in the pockets of that green rain jacket. His face was red from the wind, and maybe from something else.

“Oscar’s boat,” he said. “Roy always said he’d fix it up for you.”

“He never did,” I said. “So I did.”

He nodded. He looked at the net lying on the seat, at the initials on the handle.

He reached down slow and touched them with one thick finger, the way you’d touch something you weren’t sure you were allowed to.

“I was there when he burned those in,” he said. “In the garage. He about set the workbench on fire. Smoke all through the garage.”

I didn’t know that. I had been fourteen and hadn’t paid attention to who else was in the garage.

Of course it was Dwayne. It was always Dwayne, sitting on an upturned bucket with a can of pop, watching his big brother work.

Dwayne’s reason

He was quiet a long time. Then he sat down on the edge of the dock with his boots hanging over the water, the way he and Dad used to sit at the end of the day.

“I fished beside your dad for forty years, Kari,” he said.

“Forty years. And you know what I never had? A boat of my own. A real one. I always had an old beater or a seat in his.”

“Aunt Deb,” I said.

“Deb was right. Two boys, then college, then the mill cutting hours. There was always something. Roy never minded. He’d just say, get in, and I’d get in.”

He picked at a splinter on the dock board.

“When he died, that boat sitting in the shed, I couldn’t stand it. Taking it out felt like I still had him. Like we were still going fishing Saturday.”

He looked up at me. His eyes were wet, and he didn’t hide it.

“That stuff I said at the meeting,” he said.

“About a woman. That was garbage. I never thought it. I’ve watched you fish since you were a kid. You’re better than me and you always were. I said it because I didn’t want anybody asking me the real reason.”