The Catfish Off Grandpa’s Old Dock

Nobody saw it happen. They found the boat upside down in the cattails. Brittany was the one who had been told to watch her.

Kevin told me that, and then he said, “So go easy, Mom. When she gets funny about the water, that’s what it is.”

I had always gone easy. I had never once pushed her to come down to the dock.

I had never once made Mason go near the water without me standing right there with a hand on his collar.

But going easy and giving up a child’s whole Saturday life are two different things. I knew the fear was real.

I also knew that what she had told Mason, that his grandma’s world was gross, was plain wrong. A boy should not be taught to be ashamed of the people who love him.

So I did the only thing I could think to do. I prayed about it.

I prayed about it every Sunday in our pew at the little brick church on the county road, and most nights besides.

The Saturdays went by. November turned into winter. Kevin worked through a long ice storm in January, sixteen-hour days for nine days straight, putting the lines back up from one end of the county to the other.

I took him supper in a cooler when his crew was working my road.

He was gray in the face from no sleep, but he hugged me in the ditch with his hard hat still on.

“Mason misses you,” he said. “He asks about the pond.”

“I miss him too,” I said. And that was all either of us said, because Kevin had enough on him that week, and I was not going to add one more thing.

Spring came. Then the spring storms, two bad ones back to back in April, and Kevin was gone again on long days.

I saw Mason at church at Easter and at his school program in May. He had grown two inches. He hugged me hard both times.

At the program he whispered, “Grandma, do you still have the worms?”

I told him those worms had moved on, but I had plenty more where they came from. He giggled behind his hand so his mother would not hear.

The first week of June, I was at the feed store buying mineral for the cows, and there was a flyer pinned to the corkboard by the register.

The county kids’ fishing derby, at the state lake, the second Saturday of June.

I read it twice. Ages four through fifteen, split into three age groups. Seven in the morning until eleven.

Weigh-in at the table by the boat ramp. Trophies for the biggest fish in each group, and a new rod and reel for the winners.

Free to enter. And down at the bottom, in small print, it said that children under sixteen do not need a fishing license in Illinois. I already knew that, but I read it twice anyway.

The girl at the register, Lena, had gone to grade school when I was cooking there. She saw me looking at it. “Mrs. Mueller, you want a form? They left a stack,” she said.

I took one. I sat in my truck in the feed store lot and filled it out on my knee.

Name: Mason Mueller. Age: eight. Parent or guardian. I sat there with the pen over that line for a good while.