The Crappie Supper on Dale Hollow

We ate on the top deck as the sun went down behind the bluff. Eight of us on folding chairs and the edge of the slide and a cooler lid, paper plates on our knees.

The fish came out of the basket white and flaky and buttery, and the potatoes were charred on the edges. It was the best supper I have ever eaten, and I have eaten a lot of suppers.

Jonah told the story of his thirteen inch crappie four times. Each time the fish got a little bigger. By the fourth telling it was nearly the size of Kip.

Carter told Una about Pawpaw’s trees. Una asked if Pawpaw put fish there for her too, and Carter said he put fish there for all of us. He just didn’t know our names yet.

Tillie heard that, and she got up and walked to the far rail. I went and stood with her. We didn’t say anything. We watched the water go copper and then gray.

“He’d have loved this,” she said finally.

“He’d have hated that we spent twenty-two hundred dollars on a boat,” I said. “He’d have said the tent was fine.”

She laughed and wiped her eyes. “He would have said exactly that.”

When it got dark, Jarvis and Jed sat out on the back deck with a flashlight and talked a long time. I don’t know everything they said.

I know Jarvis told him about two maintenance openings at the cabinet plant. I know because the next morning I found the names written on a paper plate, stuck to the refrigerator with a magnet shaped like a bass.

We stayed on the houseboat the rest of the week. Jarvis ran the rental boat back to the marina the next morning, and Lenny met him on the dock.

Jarvis told me later what Lenny said. “Well. Did she feed him?” When Jarvis said yes, Lenny just nodded and went back to work.

Every morning that week I took the kids out at daylight in the houseboat’s little tender and fished Daddy’s coves. Jed came every single morning. On the second day he admitted he had never caught a crappie in his life.

On the third morning he caught his first one. Ten and an eighth inches. Jonah measured it on the cooler sticker and declared it a keeper, and Jed let out a whoop you could have heard in Kentucky.

He was a different man that week. Lighter. A thing out in the open, it turns out, is a lot easier to carry than a thing in the dark.

He and Tillie did a lot of talking, mostly on the top deck late at night. Sometimes her voice got sharp. Mostly it was low. On the last night I saw them on the end of the slide, holding hands.

On the last morning, Jed drove the boat in. He backed it into our old slip, slow and careful, and Lenny stood on the dock to catch the lines.

There were people on the dock that morning too. Change-over Saturday again, new families with new coolers and new kids in life jackets. Marinas are small towns. Some of them had probably heard.

Jed climbed down and walked straight over to Lenny with his hand out. “I owe you an apology too, sir. That was your dock I made a scene on.”

Lenny shook it. “Son, I’ve seen a lot worse.” He looked over at me and the kids. “You got a good sister-in-law. You know that?”