The cake
When it was time for the cake, Carmen lit the candles and we all sang to him. It was a little thin, that singing, but we did it. My uncle sat there with that six and that zero burning in front of him, his tan cap in his lap.
“Make a wish, Grandpa,” Roland said.
Larry looked around the table. At Carmen, at Roland, at me. At Zach, who was sitting close to him with chocolate frosting on his chin. At Bobbie, who was sitting across from him in her orange rain jacket, the old knife back in its sheath beside her plate.
“I don’t need a wish,” he said. “I need to make something right. Bobbie, Zach. Listen to me.”
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The two of them looked up.
“Next summer,” he said, “I’m booking Royce’s boat. If he’ll have me, and I’ll beg him if I have to. And it’s not for me. It’s for the two of you. You and Zach, together, and whoever you want to bring. I’ll pay for it. And I’ll sit on the dock and wait for you if Royce doesn’t want me on board.”
Zach looked at Bobbie. Bobbie looked at me.
“Can I fish the whole time?” she asked.
“Every rod,” Larry said. “Every rod that fires is yours and his. I’ll just be the guy with the net, if I get to be on the boat at all.”
Bobbie thought about it in that serious way she has. Then she nodded. “Okay,” she said. “But you have to let me fillet everything.”
“Deal,” Larry said. And he blew out the candles.
The next summer
I will tell you how it turned out, because I know some of you want to know.
Royce was not easy to convince. Larry drove down to the marina that spring and stood on the dock by Royce’s boat for most of a Saturday morning before Royce would talk to him. I was not there. Carmen told me about it later.
He told Royce the whole thing. Why he did it, what happened at the cleaning station, what Zach did with the envelope. He told him it was for the kids. Royce listened, and when Larry was done he was quiet for a long time.
Finally he said, “The kids can come. You can come too, but you sit in the back and you touch nothing but the net. And if you so much as look at a fish wrong, I’m turning around.”
Larry said that was fair. He said it was more than fair.
They went out the second Saturday of August. Bobbie and Zach and Roland, and two friends of Zach’s from school, which I think was the part that got me the most. That boy, who stood at the edge of everything, brought two friends of his own onto that boat.
Larry sat in the back, like he promised, with the net across his knees. Bobbie told me he did not say one word all morning except “good job” and “keep your tip up.”
Bobbie caught a king of sixteen pounds. Zach caught one of seventeen. One of his friends got a big lake trout. They did not have a pot. Nobody even mentioned it.
When they came in, Bobbie filleted every fish on that cleaning station, with Zach working beside her. He was not as fast as she was, but he was good. Better than good. He had been practicing all year on the perch and walleye his dad brought home.