The Empty Seat in the Green Jon Boat

Newt Fry

I walked the bank downstream as far as the willows would let me, which was not far. The White River in April does not have much bank to walk.

Past the bend it is buckbrush and backwater and mud that will pull your boot off.

I went back up to my Jeep and drove the river road with the window down, stopping at every place I could get a look at the water.

Nothing. By noon I had called the bait shop, the boat ramp at Des Arc, and two men from church who live on the river.

Newt Fry called me back a little after one. Newt is 74 and has lived in a river house on stilts two miles below the sycamores since before my daddy was born.

He was Grandpa’s friend. He came to the hospital every day those last three weeks.

“Jeanette, honey,” he said. “Your granddaddy’s boat is hung up in a willow sweep about a hundred yards above my dock. Ollie spotted it from the porch. Bow’s tangled in the limbs and she’s taking a little water over the low side. You want us to fetch her?”

I said yes, please, and I would be right there.

By the time I got down his drive, Newt and his grandson Ollie already had their own boat in the water and a yellow tow strap around Grandpa’s bow cleat.

Ollie is sixteen and built like a fence post. He was waist deep in the river in waders, sawing at willow limbs with a pruning saw.

I pulled my boots off and went in with him. The water in April is cold enough to make your shins ache.

We got the last limb off the stern and the boat swung loose, and Newt eased her out of the sweep with his motor at idle, the strap groaning.

We ran her up onto the mud below his dock and the three of us tipped her and drained her.

My tackle box was still on the seat. My thermos of coffee was still upright in the bow, which made Ollie laugh.

The cushions were soaked. The prop had a blade bent nearly flat where it had dragged across a gravel bar.

Newt did not say anything for a while. He just picked up the bow line where it was still knotted to the cleat and held up the end so I could see it.

It was the same as the end I had in my Jeep. Fanned out. Sawed.

“That’s a knife,” he said. “That ain’t a log and it ain’t a snag. I’ve seen a lot of rope come down this river, Jeanette. Somebody stood on that bank and cut your granddaddy’s boat loose.”

I said I knew. He looked at me under the bill of his cap. He did not ask who.

He had fished that same stretch of river for fifty years and he had been to Monte’s funeral. He did not have to ask.

“Well,” he said finally. “Boat’s fine. Hull’s fine. You’ll want a prop.”

I tried to give him forty dollars for his gas. He would not touch it. I tried to give it to Ollie instead, and Newt said, “Don’t you dare, that boy owes me for a transmission,” and Ollie just grinned and climbed back into the river to get his saw.

His wife Lucille came down the porch steps with a pint jar of fig preserves and pressed it into my hand. “Your granddaddy loved these,” she said. “You tell your aunt I’m praying for her.”