The Fish Fry in Dad’s Driveway

But I knew who knew how, and I knew where a fryer could be borrowed, and I knew Dad’s old turkey burner was hanging on a nail in the garage because I had hung it there myself after Thanksgiving.

At five I got up and made a list on the back of an envelope. Cod, batter, oil, propane. Coleslaw, rye bread, potato pancakes, applesauce. Tables, chairs, plates. A second fryer. By seven I was at the kitchen counter with my coffee and the telephone.

I called the volunteer fire department first, because they keep folding tables in the back of their hall and rent them out for funerals and anniversaries. The chief is Marv Kessler, who also runs the hardware store on Main Street, and he answered on the second ring. “Jill. Something wrong with your dad?”

“Not exactly. I need four folding tables and a deep fryer, Marv. A big one. I’ll pay the rental and bring everything back Saturday morning.”

There was a long quiet on the line. Then he said, “Is this about Roger?”

I had not said a word about Roger. “How do you know about Roger?”

“Jill, there were eight men in that back room.” He let out a breath. “I figured Frank would be sitting home this Friday, and I’ve been trying to decide what to do about it since Tuesday. You have the tables.

I’ve got a thirty-quart burner pot left over from the pancake breakfast, too. Where are you getting fish?”

I told him I needed fifty pounds of cod and had no idea where. He said to call the restaurant supplier up in Manitowoc and tell them it was for a fish fry, and they would know what I meant. Then he asked whether I had told anybody else.

“No.”

“Good. I’ll tell them.”

“Marv, please don’t. I don’t want to embarrass him. I just want him to have a Friday.”

“Jill,” said Marv Kessler, gently, “your father is going to have a Friday.”

I should have known right then. I had told two people, Marv and the clerk at the supplier, and in a town of eleven hundred two people is a broadcast.

I spent three hundred and forty dollars on fifty pounds of frozen cod and another sixty on oil, propane, and flour. It was more than I had budgeted, and I did not tell Duane until the night before.

When I did, he looked at me a long moment over his plate of leftover meatloaf and said, “Where’s the second tank going to sit?”

“You’re not mad?”

“Jilly, I’ve spent six years trying to get your dad to quit eating alone. I’ll bring the extension cord.” I love that man. I want that on the record.

Friday came up cold and bright, the kind of October day Wisconsin seems to save for when you most need reminding that it can be kind. Frost lay on the corn stubble at seven and burned off by nine.

By noon the sky was a clean, hard blue with nothing in it, and the maples along the road still held most of their leaves, green gone a little tired at the edges, hanging on as if they did not want to miss anything.