The Muskie in the Hardware Store Window

Then she turned around and looked at me, and her mouth was open, and her eyes were filling up.

“Dad,” she said. “Dad, that’s her.”

“That’s her,” I said.

She pointed at her own chest like she could not believe anyone else would believe it. “That’s my fish. That’s my name.”

I put my arm around her. She was shaking a little. Maybe it was the cold. I don’t think it was the cold. Wendell came out the front door in his apron with a cup of coffee in his hand. He stood on the step and looked at Ingrid, and he smiled the smallest smile.

“Good morning, Miss Kovalchik,” he said. “Your fish looks real good in my window.”

She ran to him. She hugged him so hard he nearly spilled the coffee. Wendell Strom, who has never hugged anybody in that store in forty-one years as far as I know, put his free arm around my girl and patted her back.

The coffee crowd started showing up at half past seven. The first one was an old guide, a man who has been running muskie trips out of Hayward for close to forty years. He stopped at the window, read the plate, and looked at the fish for a long time.

Then he turned and looked at Ingrid, who was standing beside me on the sidewalk.

“You catch that, young lady?”

“Yes sir,” she said. “Off my uncle’s dock. He netted it.”

He nodded slowly. “Twenty minutes, I heard.”

She looked at me, surprised. I had not told anybody. But in a town like ours, the truth has a way of getting around once somebody opens the door.

“Twenty minutes,” she said.

He took off his cap and held it to his chest for a second, the way men up here do for a good fish or a good woman, and then he put it back on and went inside for his coffee.

Two more guides came after him. They each stopped at the window. They each looked at the plate. They each looked at Ingrid and nodded, and one of them shook her hand like she was a grown man.

Nobody said Royce’s name. Nobody had to.

Royce came at seven-forty, a few minutes behind the rest, the way he does every morning of his life. I saw him coming up the sidewalk with his steel thermos mug. He was looking at his phone and did not see the window at first.

Then he did. He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. He stood very still. The men inside at the coffee pot had gone quiet, and I could see them through the glass, not looking at him, but not looking anywhere else either.

He walked up to the window slowly. He stood right in front of it. He read the plate. Then he turned and looked at Ingrid.

I had my hand on her shoulder. I did not say anything. Neither did she. He looked at her for a long time. His face was red, but it was not anger. I know what Royce looks like angry. This was something else.