The Dock We Built Back for Dad

Brett hadn’t burned it. He had stacked it at the bottom of the pile under the planks, and it had sat there nearly three weeks waiting for a burn day that never came because of the dry weather. The county had a burning ban on since the Fourth. I have never in my life been so grateful for a burning ban.

We cleaned it up with a wire brush. We didn’t sand it, because sanding would have taken the letters. We set it on the end of the new dock and bolted it through with two half inch carriage bolts, right where it had stood since 1975.

Before we packed up, Kip borrowed my pocketknife. He knelt on the end of the dock for a long time with his back to me. When he stood up, there was one more line of letters under mine.

K.H. 2026.

The cuts were a little crooked. He had pressed too hard on the H. I wouldn’t change a single one.

“Don’t tell Grandpa,” Kip said.

“I won’t,” I said, and I didn’t.

I called Dad that night and told him the dock was done. I told him I’d pick him up at six in the morning, and he said church was at eleven and he’d go to the late one, and I said that was fine.

“How does it look?” he asked.

“Like yours,” I said.

He was quiet on the line a while. Then he said, “Bring a chair.”

I knew which chair. Mom’s lawn chair, the one with the gray and white webbing, was hanging in Leah’s shop where it had hung since the funeral. I hadn’t asked Leah for it. That night she brought it out to the truck herself and set it in the bed without a word.

She stood there by the tailgate. The sun was almost down over the far shore. She was looking at the dock.

“Troy,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not the one you need to tell.”

“I know,” she said. “I know it.”

She went back in.

I picked Dad up at six sharp on Sunday morning. He was waiting outside his building with his rod, his tackle box and his thermos, wearing his red plaid flannel shirt, the same one, I think, that he has worn fishing for twenty years. His white hair was combed wet.

We didn’t talk much on the drive. He watched the pines go by. When we turned onto the lake road, he rolled his window down, and the cool came in, and he breathed it.

The sun was up over the trees when we got there, and the whole lake was blue and still. The pines on the far shore stood straight and dark green, and there wasn’t a ripple anywhere except where a fish broke out past the weed line.

Kip had stayed over with Leah and was already down at the dock, sitting on the edge. He didn’t get up when we came down the hill. He just raised a hand.

I carried the lawn chair to the end of the dock and unfolded it and set it facing the water. Dad came behind me slow on his bad knees, one hand out for the rail that wasn’t there. He walked all forty feet.

He stopped at the end and looked down at the planks. He crouched, which costs him, and laid his palm flat on the cedar, and checked the gap between two boards with his thumbnail.

“Three eighths,” he said.

“Crown up,” Kip said, from the edge.