The Dock We Built Back for Dad

Saturday morning of the second weekend, Alvah came across the bay at seven in his old fishing boat, slow, the way he does everything now. He tied up to the end of our third section like he had been doing it all his life.

He had a thermos of coffee and a four foot level and nothing to say except “Morning.” He sat in his boat and held the level on the legs while I set them, and he did that for two hours without being asked.

At nine a woman named Hulda walked over from two cabins down with a pan of rhubarb bars still warm and a jug of lemonade. She is a retired kindergarten teacher, and she spoke to Kip like he was still in her class and he answered her like he was.

“Your grandpa built my steps,” she told him. “In 1981. They’re still there. You make sure this one lasts as long.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Kip said.

At ten, Seldon came. Seldon is eighty-four and walks with a cane and has not been down a hill without help in two years. His grandson brought him in a side by side along the shore road and set a five gallon bucket upside down in the shade for him.

Seldon put on his reading glasses and took Dad’s drawings from Kip and read the numbers out loud to us, one at a time, in a voice like an auctioneer’s. “Cross brace, forty-eight and a quarter. Bolt hole, two inches in.”

We built the last two sections in one day with four extra pairs of hands and one extra voice, and I would put that dock against any dock on that lake.

Brett came out once. He stood at the top of the hill and looked at all of them. Alvah in his boat. Hulda on the shore with her pan. Seldon on his bucket. Not one of them looked up at him. Not one of them said a word.

They didn’t have to. He went back in the house.

Around three in the afternoon, Kip went up to the brush pile to throw away a cut-off. He was gone a while. When he came back down the hill, he was carrying something against his chest with both arms, careful, like you carry a baby.

It was the old end post.

Dad had set a post at the end of the old dock, a four by four cedar post that stood up about three feet over the deck, to tie boats to and lean against. It had been weathered gray for as long as I could remember. I had never looked at it closely in my life.

Kip turned it so I could see the side that faced the shore.

Carved into the wood, in letters cut with a pocketknife, was G.H. 1975.

Under that, in letters a little smaller, was L.H. 1981.

Under that, T.H. 1984.

I sat down on the shore. I just sat down right there in the sand. I had leaned against that post a thousand times. I had tied a hundred boats to it. I had never once turned it around.

“He carved us,” I said. “When we were born. He came out here and carved us.”

Hulda had come up behind me, and she put her hand on my shoulder and didn’t say anything, which was the right thing to say.