The Boy Who Sat Still At Sunrise

The questions

The boys could not get close enough. They were both on their knees on the dock now, leaning over the side of the boat, and the questions came out of them in a flood.

“Where’d you catch it?” Newell said. “What were you using? Was it a crankbait? Dad says crankbaits are best for big ones.”

“A nightcrawler,” Asher said. “On a bobber, three feet up, on the north side of the bay by the lily pads. Grandpa told me. Largemouth come shallow at sunrise because the little fish are there.”

“How’d you know it was a largemouth and not a smallmouth?” Rollo said. “I always get them mixed up.”

Asher held the fish a little closer to him. “See its mouth? The top jaw goes all the way back past its eye. On a smallmouth, it stops under the eye. That’s the easiest way to tell.”

Rollo leaned in and looked, very serious. “Huh,” he said. “It does.”

“How did you get it to bite?” Newell asked. “We were out there all day yesterday and all we got was a pike.”

“I was quiet,” Asher said. “Fish feel sound through a line on their sides. It’s called the lateral line. So if you’re loud in the boat, they know. I sat still for a whole hour. My mom timed it.”

Newell looked at me. I nodded. “One hour, near enough to the minute,” I said. “I’ve never seen anybody sit stiller.”

Up at the top of the dock, Todd had not moved. He was holding his coffee cup, but he was not drinking it.

He was watching his own two sons on their knees around my boy, asking him questions like he was the smartest person on the lake, which that morning he was.

I did not look at Todd for long. I am not a person who keeps score, and I did not want to start that morning. But I saw his face.

He did not look angry. He looked like a man who had just heard a sound he could not place, and then realized it was his own voice from the day before.