Every Pontoon on the Cove Flew One

After

That night the whole cove tied up off Heath Hagen’s dock for the fireworks over the main channel. Boats rafted up four and five deep, kids swimming between them with glow sticks, somebody’s radio playing the same old country songs Brady used to sing along to off key.

Willa handed me a paper plate of fried crappie and sat down next to me on the edge of Heath Hagen’s dock with her feet hanging over the water.

She had not been to a fish fry in a year. Agnes Hagen brought her a plate too and did not say a thing about it, just patted her on the back on the way by.

After a while Willa said, “Marsha came up to me at the gas dock this afternoon. She said it was the best parade the cove ever had.”

She was quiet a second. “She said it wasn’t because of anything I did.”

“She’s right,” I said. “It was because of something we did.”

Willa looked at me sideways, and then she bumped my shoulder with hers, the way a sister would.

When the fireworks were over and the boats were pulling away into the dark, I took Brady’s flag down off my rail the way he used to.

Drew held one end and I held the other, and we folded it together on the dock, two long folds and then the triangles, thirteen folds in all, until only the stars showed.

Evan was sitting in his chair at the end of his own dock, watching us in the dock light.

When we finished, Drew walked it over to him without being told, and held it out with both hands.

Evan took it. He looked at the new hem, his own stitches, red on red and white on white.

He turned it over once and ran his thumb along the stars. Then he handed it back to my son.

“That’s yours now,” he said. “You fly it next year.”

Drew carried it up the steps to the house like it was made of glass. I stayed on the dock a while with Evan, the two of us not saying anything, listening to the last boats drone off down the channel and the frogs start up along the shore.

It is going in the console on the boat now, with the life jacket whistles and the sunscreen, where Brady kept it.

Thirty-three other flags are rolled up in thirty-three other consoles around that cove, waiting for next summer.

And next Fourth, at nine sharp, a boy who will be twelve is going to clamp his father’s flag to the back rail of a silver pontoon by himself.

I already know where Willa’s boat will be. Right beside us, out front.