The Tower We Raised for Dad’s Sunday Net

“Eleven-fifty,” he said. “Mom told me what the tower cost. And whatever the concrete was. And I’ll pay your guys for the Saturday.”

“They wouldn’t take it from us,” Reinhold said. “They won’t take it from you.”

“Then I’ll pay for the concrete,” Tyler said.

Reinhold looked at him for a while. Then he took the envelope. Tyler turned to Dad. His face was red, and his voice was not steady.

“Mom says the house isn’t going on the market,” he said. “She told me this morning. She said if I bring it up again I can find somewhere else to eat Sunday dinner.”

“Your mother’s a good woman,” Dad said.

“I know she is.” Tyler looked at the ground. “I’m sorry, Emmerich. I cut it down because I wanted the money, and I told myself it was for her. And I said that thing about you being too old. I shouldn’t have said that.”

The two linemen were looking at the tower very hard. Dad got up from the picnic table. It takes him a while, with his knees. He walked over to Tyler and stood in front of him. He is shorter than Tyler by half a foot.

“You could have asked me,” Dad said quietly. “That’s all. You could have asked.”

“I know.”

Dad nodded. He put his hand on Tyler’s arm for just a second, and then he went back and sat down at the picnic table.

Tyler did not stay for supper. He drove back to town. The two men from the crew said goodnight and shook Dad’s hand, both of them, and one of them said, “Fair winds, sir,” which he must have heard from me.

The Next Sunday

The next Sunday, Dad came out to our place at noon with Florentine and another pie. At a quarter past one, Tyler’s truck pulled into the drive.

I was in the kitchen. I watched him through the window. He walked around the side of the house and up the porch steps, where Dad was already sitting at the little table, checking the frequency for the second time.

He stood there with his hands in his pockets.

“Emmerich,” he said. “Would you teach me the call letters? The way you say them. The Navy way.”

Dad looked up at him. Then he pulled the other chair up to the table.

“Sit down,” he said. “It starts with the alphabet. Alfa. Bravo. Charlie. You say it slow, so a man on a ship at night can hear you through the static.”

Tyler sat down. I stood at the kitchen window and watched them, my father in his black cap and gray cardigan, my stepbrother bent over the table beside him, and the tower standing behind them both in the April light.

At two o’clock, Dad leaned toward the microphone and tapped it twice. Tap. Tap. Tyler watched him do it, and I saw his lips move.

Then Dad pressed the button and called the net, and all five old sailors answered.