The Ring My Son Pulled From the Lake

Then I tied the other end around the post at the end of the dock, because I have seen people lose a magnet on the first throw, and I was not driving back to Baxter.

The first throw came up with a bottle cap. The second came up with a rusty fishhook. The third came up with nothing but a fat clump of weeds, and Gunnar had to pick it clean.

We worked it like a grid. I would throw out, let it sink to the bottom, and drag it back slow along the muck.

Then Gunnar would move a buoy a foot and I would do it again.

By eleven my shoulders were burning. By noon the coffee can had nine bottle caps, three fishhooks, two treble-hook lures, a spoon, a busted dock bracket, a horseshoe, and a pull tab from a can old enough to have been Hector’s.

Gunnar lined it all up along the dock boards as it came out. He laid it in rows, like evidence. He wiped each thing on his jeans first.

Hayden came down after lunch. He did not say anything about Gilbert either. He sat on the edge of the dock and watched me throw for a while. Then he held his hands out.

“Let me spell you,” he said.

“I’ve got it,” I said.

“I know you’ve got it,” he said. “Let me spell you anyway. You’re throwing short. Your arm’s done.”

He was right. I handed it to him. He threw it farther than I could, and dragged it back the same slow way I had, and Gunnar moved his buoy, and we kept going.

Hayden is a lineman for the electric co-op. He is the kind of man who does not talk much, but when there is a storm he is the one up the pole at three in the morning.

I have always liked him. That afternoon I liked him more.

Around three he came up with a big chunk of iron that turned out to be a boat anchor.

An old mushroom anchor, crusted orange, with no rope on it at all. Gunnar laughed for the first time all day.

“Grandpa lost that in 1998,” Neva called from the lawn chair. “He blamed your uncle for a month.”

“I was four,” Hayden said.

“He still blamed you,” Neva said.

It was a small thing, but it got all of us laughing, even me.

Gunnar sat back on his heels and laughed with his hands over his face, and I think it was the first time he had breathed all day.

My phone buzzed a little after four. It was Gilbert. I looked at the screen for a long time. Then I walked up the dock to the shore and stood under the pines and answered it.

“Minnie,” he said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done it like that.”

“No,” I said. “You shouldn’t have.”

“Is Gunnar okay?”

“He went in after your ring,” I said. “He dove for it till Hayden pulled him out. That’s how he is.”

There was a long quiet on the line. I could hear a road under him, the sound of tires.

“Tell him I’ll call him,” Gilbert said finally.

“You can tell him yourself,” I said. “He has a phone.” And I hung up, and I stood there under the trees a minute until my hands stopped shaking. Then I went back down to the dock.

I did not tell Gunnar what his father had said. I did not tell him he was looking for a ring Gilbert had thrown away. I figured he knew that better than any of us.