The Boy Who Sat Still At Sunrise

The dock

We could not keep it out of the water long. I filled the five-gallon bucket we had brought along with lake water and eased the fish in head first, and Asher sat with both arms around that bucket the whole way back like it was a baby.

I ran the motor slow and steady. It was less than five minutes back across the bay and around the point.

The sun was all the way up now, and the lake had that bright early-morning shine.

Todd and the boys were down at the main dock loading their boat for the last morning.

Todd had his coffee and the tackle box. Newell was carrying the rods. Rollo was eating a granola bar.

Newell saw us first. He watched me tie up at the end of the main dock, and he watched Asher reach down into the bucket with both hands and lift that bass up into the sunshine. Then he dropped the rods right there on the boards.

“Whoa,” Newell said. “Whoa. Rollo. Rollo, come look.”

Rollo came running so fast I was afraid he would go right off the end into the lake. He skidded to his knees next to the boat.

“Asher, is that yours? Did you catch that? By yourself?”

“I caught it by myself,” Asher said, “and my mom netted it, because that’s teamwork.” He said it in his regular voice now, not loud, just proud.

Todd had stopped at the top of the dock. He was standing there with his coffee, looking at the fish, and I watched him do the math in his head.

I did not say anything to him. I did not have to.

The screen door slapped up at the cabin, and here came Grandpa down the hill on his cane, faster than any man should move on a new knee.

He had his brass scale in his free hand. He must have been watching from the window.

“Hold it up for me, son,” he said. “Steady now.”

He hooked the scale through the fish’s lower lip, careful, and lifted, and the needle swung and settled, and he held it up in the sunlight where everybody could see.

“Five pounds,” Grandpa said. He squinted. “And one ounce.”

Nobody said anything for a second. Then Rollo said, “That’s bigger than Newell’s. That’s way bigger than Newell’s,” and Newell said, “That’s bigger than anybody’s,” and he did not sound sore about it at all. He sounded amazed.

“Biggest fish of the weekend,” Grandpa said. He looked straight up the dock at Todd when he said it.

Then he looked back down at Asher. “Your grandma would have written that one down in ink.”