The Rod She Handed His Son

Gale was still holding his bass with both hands, the way Iris had shown him, one thumb in its lip.

He said, very quietly, “Can we let him go, Dad? So he can get big?”

Forrest’s face just came apart. He did not cry loud. He is not that kind of man.

But he turned his head toward the water for a second, and his shoulders moved, and when he turned back his eyes were wet and he nodded.

“Yeah, bud,” he said. “We let him go. You’re the one who caught him, so you’re the one who gets to decide.”

Gale knelt down on the boards and slid the fish into the water, and it sat there a second beside the dock, finning, and then it kicked and was gone into the brush.

Gale stayed on his knees watching the water, the same way Iris had watched it from the boat.

Forrest knelt down too, next to his son, and put his hand on the back of his neck.

“That was a nice fish,” he said. “That was a real nice fish. You did that all yourself.”

“Iris helped,” Gale said, and he looked over at her like she had hung the moon.

“I know she did,” Forrest said. Then he looked up at her from down on his knees.

“Iris. Would you come out on the boat with me again? You and Gale. Next Saturday, if your mama will let you. I’d like to try that morning over.”

She did not answer right away. She looked up the hill, at me.

I want to be honest about that moment, because it is the part people get wrong when they tell this story at the bait shop. I did not want to say yes.

Part of me wanted to march down that hill and tell him he had used up his chances with my daughter on that point at seven in the morning.

But I looked at Gale on his knees on those boards, wet to the elbows and lit up like a Christmas tree, and I looked at my girl, who had handed her own rod to a boy who needed it, and I thought about what my dad would have done.

My dad would have let him try again. My dad gave everybody one more chance, and he used to say that was what fishing was for. You cast, you miss, you reel in, you cast again.

I nodded. Just once, from the top of the hill, and I hoped I would not regret it.

Iris turned back to Forrest. “Okay,” she said. “But Gale gets to run the trolling motor. The whole time. And you can’t touch anybody’s rod.”

Forrest laughed. It was the first real laugh I had heard out of him in a long time, the laugh he had when we were all younger and dumber.

“Deal,” he said. “He can run the whole boat if he wants. I’ll keep my hands in my pockets.”

Later, when the fish was all fried and the plates were stacked and the kids were down at the water again, Forrest came and found me by the cooler.

He had his wallet out. He held out three folded hundred-dollar bills and a twenty.

“For the rod,” he said. “I know it doesn’t fix anything. But it’s yours.”

“She asked me not to take it,” I told him. “She said if you pay for it, it’s still the one you threw.”