The Stern Seat at Seventy One

She said that halfway home, on the county road past the cheese plant, her dad pulled over onto the shoulder and turned the engine off. He did not say anything for a while. He just sat.

Then he asked her if she would let him make it up to her. She said she did not know how he would.

The next morning, the Tuesday after Labor Day, at a quarter to seven, I heard a truck in my yard.

I looked out the kitchen window. It was Trevor, in a clean work shirt, with Greta in the passenger seat. He came to the back door and knocked, which he never does. Family just walks in.

“Ansel,” he said. “I traded my route to another driver for the morning. Would you mind if I borrowed your canoe? Greta wants to show me that bend.”

“It’s your canoe as much as anybody’s,” I said. “It’s hanging where it always hangs.”

He nodded. He started to go. Then he turned around on my step.

“She says you counted to twelve and yelled hut,” he said.

“She yelled hut,” I said. “I mostly groaned.”

He smiled at that. It was the first time I had seen him really smile in ten days.

I stood at the kitchen window with my coffee and watched them take that green canoe down off the rack and carry it toward the truck, Greta in front, Trevor behind. She was telling him something with her free hand, the way she does.

Signe called me later that morning. She said Trevor had gone out to the landing with Greta at seven, and done the four-mile loop twice, with Greta calling every switch. She said he came home that night and sat with his arms on the kitchen table for an hour, sore all over, and did not complain once.

On Sunday, at church, during the last hymn, Greta stood next to me in the pew. It was the old one my mother loved, the one about the river. Greta does not really sing. She mostly hums.

Halfway through, she bumped my arm with her elbow. I looked down.

She had written something on the back of the bulletin in pencil and was holding it so I could see.

“Dad wants to race next year,” it said. “He asked me something.”

I raised my eyebrows at her. She just pointed at the hymnal, because Pastor was watching, and went back to humming.

After the service, out on the church steps in the September sun, Trevor came over with his hands in his pockets. He shook my hand. Then he turned to Greta, and he asked her again, right there in front of me and Signe and half the congregation, like he wanted witnesses.

“Next year,” Trevor said, “would you take the stern? I’ll paddle bow, and you can tell me where the sand is.”