Dad’s Martin Houses Go Back Up

The Cover

Kyle did not stay for lunch. He went down to the slip and stood looking at his boat a minute, and then he climbed in his truck and drove off up the hill without a word.

Darlene came up and sat in the grass by Dad’s chair. She put her head against his knee the way she used to when she was little.

“I’m sorry, Daddy,” she said.

“You didn’t do anything, honey.”

“I’m sorry anyway.”

He put his hand on her hair. He left it there.

I sat down on her other side. She leaned against me. Neither of us said anything for a while. We just sat in the grass at the town lake, two grown women in our fifties with our heads near our daddy’s knees, and watched the martins.

“You didn’t call me,” she said finally, not looking at me.

“Daddy asked me not to.”

“I know. Kyle said.” She was quiet a minute. “I’d have done the same thing, if it was you. Don’t ever do it again.”

“I won’t,” I said.

Around two o’clock, Kyle’s truck came back down the hill.

He did not have the trailer this time. He parked in the lot and got out with a plastic bag from the farm store in Norman. He walked down to the dock without looking our way.

He took out a gray boat cover, the universal kind with the elastic hem and the straps that run under the hull. He spread it out on the dock and fitted it over the boat in the slip, front to back, and tightened every strap.

It took him twenty minutes. He did it well. Kyle does everything with his hands well.

Then he stood up and came over to us. He held the receipt out to Dad.

“Ninety-two dollars with tax,” he said. “Darlene was close.”

Dad took the receipt and looked at it and handed it back.

“Keep it for your records,” Dad said. “You’ll want to get a better one before summer. That kind’ll wear through on the rub rail by July.”

Kyle laughed, a real laugh this time. “Yes, sir.”

He looked up at the four white houses, all of them busy now, birds going in and out of every porch.

“How many you count?” he said.

“Twenty-two so far,” Dad said. “That’s a good start. More will come.”

Kyle nodded. He stood there a minute longer, with his hands in his pockets, looking up.

“If any of those poles ever need resetting,” he said, “I’ve got a post-hole digger and the county lets me borrow the auger truck.”

“I’ll call you,” Dad said. And he meant it.