The Fish House Twenty Two Men Rebuilt

“He sold his sled to a fellow in Onamia. The new Polaris. He told me it was the only thing he had left that was worth anything.”

“Did he say anything about the boy?” I asked. “No,” said Ron. “He did not.” “Did he ask about me?” Ron was quiet for a moment. “No, Dan. I’m sorry. He didn’t.”

I nodded. I had thought I would feel something big, standing there. Vindication, maybe, or grief.

What I felt was a flat, cold tiredness, like the end of a long storm shift when you finally take off your climbing gear and realize you cannot feel your legs.

He had paid the money. He had not picked up the phone.

I have not spoken to my brother since. I have not looked for him, and he has not looked for me. When he is ready to say it out loud, I will be at my own table with the coffee on.

On the last Saturday in February, with the thaw coming, Walt’s grandson Tyler came out to the flats.

He is eleven years old and had never had a house of his own, because his father had left and his mother cleaned rooms at the casino and there was no money for runners.

He was standing at the edge of the ice with a hand auger and a bucket and a face that was trying not to want anything.

Gavin saw him from the door of the new house. He looked at Tyler, and at the old red house, and I saw him think it through, the way he had thought through the rafters.

He walked over and held out the key to the red one.

“It’s got a good heater,” Gavin said. “It’s got a window I put in myself. There’s a list on the back of the door. You have to read it before you go in.”

Tyler looked at the key. He looked at Walt, who stood by the fire barrel with his arms folded and his face shut like a barn.

“For how long?” Tyler asked. “Until March,” said Gavin. “Then we’ll see.”

They pulled both houses off the lake a few days ahead of the state’s March deadline, with a little water already standing in the low spots on the ice.

The red one went home to Walt’s yard, on loan, and the new one went into our pole shed beside the empty frames of everything Gavin is going to build next.

I walked into the shed that evening to turn off the lights, the way I always do. The new house was sitting there on its crooked runners with the door open.

I looked at the back of it. Twenty-two names in pencil, one on top of another, in a fourteen-year-old’s careful hand, and at the bottom, in smaller letters, one more line I had not seen before.

It said: “Next year, 10 by 16.”

I turned off the lights and stood there in the dark for a while. Outside the sky was just starting to turn that deep late-winter blue.

Somewhere down the road a truck was going by, not slowing, not stopping, and I stood in my shed with my hand on the door frame and watched its taillights go.

It was not the Ram. I checked.

My son has already drawn the plans for next year. They are on graph paper on the kitchen table, and Emma has colored in the roof.