The Whitefish Nets We Brought Back

On the Dock

He walked down the ramp slowly, hands in his jacket pockets.

I think he came down to see us empty. I think he had heard we were out there grappling all week, and he expected to see a tired widow with a deck full of torn net and nothing to show for it.

Instead he saw nine totes of whitefish lined up on Ingvald’s scale cart in the sun.

Ingvald weighed them one at a time while Lyle watched. He called each weight out loud, the way he always does, and wrote it on his pad.

When the last tote came off the scale, he added it up and said it plain.

“Nine hundred and four pounds,” he said. “At a dollar eighty-five. That’s a good Friday, Inga.”

It came to a little over $1,670. I have had better days on the lake. But I have never had a day that meant more.

Lyle had stopped about twenty feet away from us. He was looking at the totes, and then at the tug, and then at me.

Nobody said anything to him. Nobody had to.

Toivo set down his coil of line. He walked across the dock, not fast. He stood in front of Lyle the way a man stands in front of a stalled truck, deciding what is wrong with it.

“I told them,” he said. “All of them. Ingvald. Both the other families. The buyer from Ashland who comes up Tuesdays. I told them about the cut lines and the cashier’s check and what you said to her about nets going missing.”

Lyle’s face went white, then red.

“You can’t prove anything,” he said.

“I don’t need to,” Toivo said. “This isn’t a courtroom. It’s a dock. Everybody on it knows whose nets got cut, and everybody on it knows who wanted that license.”

Lyle looked over at Ingvald.

Ingvald was standing behind his scale cart, his pencil still in his hand. He did not look angry. He looked tired, the way a man looks when somebody he has known since grade school has disappointed him.

“That job on my boat,” Ingvald said. “It’s not there anymore, Lyle. I’m sorry. You’ll want to find another dock.”

That was all he said.

The men from the other two families had stopped working. They stood by their own boats, quiet, watching. Nobody shouted. Nobody threw anything. Nobody needed to.

Lyle stood there a long moment. He looked at me.

“Inga,” he said. And then he did not say anything else.

What I Said

I had thought all week about what I would say to Lyle if I ever got the chance. I had a dozen speeches ready.

When the moment came, I did not use any of them.

“Arne used to say you were the best net man on this dock when you were twenty,” I said. “Better than him. He said it more than once.”

Lyle’s mouth moved but nothing came out.

“We start mending for fall in September,” I said. “In the net shed. If you ever want to come down and pick up a needle, there’s a stool there. That’s all I’ll say about it.”

I did not say I forgave him. I was not there yet. I am still not all the way there. But I did not want to stand on that dock and grind him into the boards in front of everybody, either. Arne would not have liked that, and neither would God.

Lyle turned around and walked back up the ramp. He got in his pickup and sat there a while with the engine off. Then he drove away.

I heard later that he went down to Duluth for the summer, to work on the ore docks. I do not know if that is true. I have not seen his truck in the lot since.