The Morning We Saved Eleven Hundred Fish

The Mud Hole

I could not hear everything Harlow said to Rodney. I did not try to. I picked up my coffee again and stood at my fence and watched the frost burn off the yard.

Then Harlow walked back to his pickup, got in, and rolled the window down. He waved the dump truck around in a wide circle on the grass.

The flatbed backed all the way down the lane because there was no room to turn it.

Inside of ten minutes, they were gone. The lane was empty. There was nothing left but the tire marks in the frost and the long bowl of gray mud and my stepbrother standing at the edge of it.

Rodney stood there a long time. He did not move. He had his hands hanging at his sides, and he was looking down at that mud like it was the bottom of something.

Nine thousand dollars, gone in ten minutes. And a pond he had killed for it, sitting dry and stinking in the sun. And a stepbrother across the water who had watched the whole thing.

After a while I went in the house and got ready for my service call.

The Truth

Rodney came to my back door on Wednesday afternoon, about four o’clock. The sun was still bright on the trees on the far side of where the pond used to be.

He had his hat in his hands. He looked worse than he had on Saturday. Bess saw him through the window and took the boys into the living room without a word.

“Can I talk to you a minute?” he asked.

I stepped out onto the porch and shut the door behind me. We stood there, two grown men, him forty-seven and me forty-four, and neither one of us knew how to start.

“I’m behind on my girl’s support,” he finally said. His daughter is twelve. “Eight months. The state sent a letter saying they’re going to take my license if I don’t catch up by December. If they take my license, I can’t drive the truck. If I can’t drive the truck, I can’t pay anything at all.”

I did not say anything. I let him talk.

“The contractor offered nine thousand cash for the clay. That’s most of what I owe. I thought…” He stopped. He turned his hat around in his hands. “I thought if I just did it and it was done, you’d be mad, but it’d be done. I figured you’d yell at me and get over it.”

“And the fish?” I said.

He looked at the ground. “I didn’t think about the fish,” he said. “I swear, Barrett, I didn’t think about them once. Not until I saw that mud on Saturday and there wasn’t a single dead one on it.”

What I Said

“You could have asked me,” I said. “If you’d come to me and told me you were in a hole, I’d have helped you. You know I would have.”

“I know,” Rodney said. “That’s why I didn’t.”

That was the truest thing he had ever said to me. I understood it, too.

It is a hard thing for an older brother to go hat in hand to a younger one. Even a stepbrother. Even when the younger one would have said yes.

“Dad built that pond with me,” I said. “Wade named the biggest bass in it after him. He carried that fish two miles with his hand on the cooler lid. He’s fourteen.”

Rodney put his hand over his eyes. He stood there on my porch with his hand over his eyes, and his shoulders shook once, and then he got hold of himself.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, Barrett. I don’t know what else to say.”

“That’s enough to say,” I said. “For now.”