The Muskie in the Hardware Store Window

I don’t know exactly when Royce told him. I found out later from Margit’s mother that it was the Sunday after the window, the first week of October.

He had gone in and sat with his father and told him all of it. That Ingrid had caught it, that he had only netted it, that he had let the town believe otherwise all summer long.

His mother said he cried. She said it was the first time she had seen her son cry since he was a boy. And she said his father reached over with his good hand and put it on Royce’s knee, and left it there.

Ingrid was the one who did the last thing. Not me. In the middle of October she asked me if she could have a print of my photo from the dock, the one with both of them in it. I had it printed at the drugstore, eight by ten, and she sat at the kitchen table with it for a long time.

Then she turned it over and wrote something on the back with a ballpoint pen. She did not show me what it said. She put it in a big envelope and wrote Royce’s name on the front and asked me to drive her out to the lake.

It was a bright Saturday, cold, the maples gone red and gold along the road. Royce’s truck was parked by the cabin. He was out on the dock, pulling his boat lift for the winter.

Ingrid did not go out to him. She put the envelope inside the cabin’s storm door, where he would find it, and came back to the truck.

“Okay,” she said. “We can go.”

I found out what she wrote three days later, because Royce called our house. Margit answered. She listened for a minute and then handed the phone to me, and I could see her eyes were full.

“Arne,” Royce said. His voice was rough. “Is Ingrid there?”

“She’s at school,” I said. “She’ll be home at three-thirty.”

There was a long pause.

“She wrote on the back of that picture,” he said. “You know what she wrote?”

“No,” I said. “She didn’t show me.”

He read it to me. He had to stop twice.

“She wrote, ‘Thank you for the net, Uncle Royce. And for teaching me the figure eight. I couldn’t have done it without you. Love, Inga.'”

I had to sit down at the kitchen table.

“Arne,” he said. “I don’t deserve that.”

“No,” I said. “Maybe not. But she wanted you to have it.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry for what I did. I’m sorry I made you do all that. I’m sorry it took a window.”

“You should tell her that,” I said. “Not me.”

“I will,” he said. “I’ll come by Saturday. If that’s all right.”

“That’s all right,” I said.

He came by that Saturday in the middle of the afternoon. Ingrid was in the yard raking leaves with Margit. I was in the garage changing the oil in the car.

He got out of his truck and stood at the edge of the yard with his hands in his jacket pockets. He looked older than forty-five. He looked tired.