The Boy Who Sat Still At Sunrise

Letting it go

“We should let her go,” Asher said finally. “She’s been out long enough. If you keep them out too long, they get hurt inside.”

Grandpa lowered himself down to sit on the edge of the dock, bad knee and all, and swung his legs over toward the boat. “Come here, son. I’ll show you how.”

Asher held the fish out over the side, and Grandpa put his big hands under Asher’s small ones, and together they eased that bass down into the water.

Grandpa showed him how to hold it upright and move it slow, forward and back, so the water ran through its gills.

“Wait for her to tell you,” Grandpa said. “She’ll kick when she’s ready. Don’t you let go before.”

We all waited. Even Rollo was quiet. The lake lapped against the side of the boat, and somewhere up in the pines a woodpecker was going at a tree.

Then the fish flexed once, hard, and Asher opened his hands, and she was gone, a long green shadow sliding down into the dark water under the dock.

“Bye,” Asher whispered. “Thank you for coming up.”

Grandpa sat there on the edge of the dock a minute with his hands still wet.

He wiped his eyes with the back of his wrist and said the sun was in them, which it was not.

My phone buzzed in my sweatshirt pocket. It was ten after seven. Trevor had come off his shift at six, two hundred miles south, and seen the picture I sent from the bay.

His text said, “Is that our boy.” No question mark. Then a second one. “Is that our boy holding that.”

I wrote back, “Five pounds one ounce. Grandpa weighed it.” He called before I could even put the phone away, and I held it out so Asher could tell his dad about the lateral line, which Trevor had heard about forty times and listened to like it was the first.

Todd

While Asher was on the phone, Todd came down the dock. He set his coffee on the boards. He did not say anything to me.

I did not say anything to him. There was nothing I needed to say that the morning had not already said.

When Asher handed my phone back, Todd crouched down at the edge of the dock, so his face was level with my son’s.

He moved slow, like a man who knew he was the one who had to come the whole way across.

He did not make a speech. Todd was never a man for speeches.

His jaw worked a second, and he looked down at the water where the fish had gone, and then back up at Asher.

“That was a heck of a fish, Asher,” he said. “Biggest one I’ve seen come out of this lake in a long time. Your grandma would have been proud of you. I am too.”

Asher nodded. He did not look Todd in the eye, because he does not do that much, but he was listening. I could tell. His hands were very still on his knees.

“The boys and I are going out one more time before we pack up,” Todd said. “There’s room in the middle seat, if you want it. And your mom, too, if she’ll come.”

Rollo said, “Yes. Yes, Asher, come on.”

Asher looked at me. I nodded. I did not trust my voice, so I did not use it.

Todd cleared his throat. He glanced out toward the point, toward the bay with the lily pads, and then he looked back at my son, the boy he had left on the bank two days running, and he asked him straight, like he was asking a man who knew.

“So tell me, buddy. Where should I cast?”