Three Long Blasts Below the Bluff

The phone call I did not make

Shane called me on Tuesday, a little after noon. I was off watch, sitting on a bench on the stern deck in the sun with a cup of coffee.

I almost let it ring. Then I thought about Jory saying his dad probably got called in, and I picked up.

“Hadley,” Shane said. He did not sound angry. He sounded like a man who had been up all night.

“Shane.”

“I heard about Sunday.”

“I figured you might.”

He was quiet a long time. On the river you get used to long quiet, so I let it be.

“I wasn’t working,” he finally said. “Not those last two. I want you to know I’m not going to lie about it anymore. I just didn’t come.”

“Why not?” I asked. I was not trying to trap him. I wanted to know.

“I don’t know,” he said. Then he said, “Yes, I do. I’m behind again. Four hundred dollars behind. I didn’t have money for the burgers or the gas or anything, and I didn’t want him to see me like that. So I kept thinking, next week I’ll have it together.”

I looked out at the river. A heron was standing in the shallows on the Wisconsin side, perfectly still.

“He doesn’t care about the burgers, Shane,” I said. “He’d have sat on the lock wall with you and eaten a peanut butter sandwich and thought it was the best day of his life.”

Shane did not answer that. I heard him breathe in, slow.

“I’m not calling to fight,” I said. “I’m done fighting. I’m just telling you what your son wanted. He wanted you. That’s the whole list.”

“I know,” he said, very low. “I know it now.”

Coming home

My hitch ended that Thursday. The crew change was at a landing below Dubuque, and a van drove four of us north on the river road in the afternoon. I got to Mom’s a little after three.

Jory was on the porch steps when the van pulled in, in his red hoodie, which I am fairly sure he had not taken off since Sunday. He came down the steps so fast he missed the last one.

I held on to him a long time in Mom’s yard. He smelled like barn cats and pancake syrup, and he was talking the whole time about the horn, and Pearl, and the man swinging his hat.

Mom stood on the porch with her dish towel over her shoulder and did not say anything. When I looked up, she just nodded at me, once, the way Dad used to nod when a job was done right.

That evening, after supper, Jory brought out his boat notebook and showed me the page. At the top, in his best printing, he had written the date. Underneath it said, Mom’s boat. 15 barges. 3 horns. I saluted.