The Fish House Twenty Two Men Rebuilt

Gavin had earned his nod. He was fourteen years old, and he had mowed thirty-four lawns across two summers, a few of them every week, at twenty-five dollars a cut, plus a winter of shoveling driveways before school.

Every dollar went into a coffee can on his dresser, and every Sunday night he counted it. By the time he was done, the can had paid out $1,900 for the whole project.

So I stood there on the bare ice with Walt and my son, and I got my phone out of my coat, and I called the sheriff’s office.

Deputy Nate Olson picked up. I have known him since he played linebacker in high school, and he was kind about it, which I will always remember.

“Dan, I want to be straight with you,” he said. “A fish house has no title in Minnesota. No registration, nothing like a car. What it has is a name and an address painted on the side, and I’m told your brother’s name is the same as yours.”

“The name on the side is Gavin’s,” I said.

“I believe you. But if Rick sold it and wrote a receipt, and the buyer paid in good faith, what I’ve got is a family matter and a civil one. I can come out and take a statement. I can’t take the house.” He paused. “I’m sorry, Dan. I wish I had better.”

I was not going to hand my son a lawsuit against his own uncle and call it justice.

“Dad,” Gavin said. His voice was very even. “Can we go home?” We went home.

My wife, Jen, met us in the kitchen. She had been home since noon with Emma, and she took one look at the two of us in the doorway and turned the burner off under whatever she was cooking.

I told her. She listened with her arms folded and her eyes on Gavin, who stood by the back door still in his boots, and when I was done she crossed the kitchen and put both hands on the sides of his face, and he let her.

“You did nothing wrong,” she said. “Do you hear me?” “I hear you,” he said. “Go wash up. I’ll make you an egg sandwich.”

Then I called my brother. It rang six times and went to voicemail, his gravelly recorded voice telling me to leave a message, and I stood there with my thumb over the screen and could not think of a single word fit to leave.

I said, “Rick, call me.” I texted the same thing. Then I texted, “Where is Gavin’s house.”

Nothing came back, not that night and not at breakfast.

Rick is three years younger than me, forty-one now. He had worked at the pallet plant in Onamia for eleven years. In October they cut his hours, and then they cut him, with a handshake and a cardboard box for his locker.

He was behind on the truck payment and behind on his lot rent, and he had a daughter in Mora, Kayla, nine years old, whom he saw every other weekend and paid support for whether he could or not.

I knew all of that. I had slipped him two hundred dollars in November and three hundred at Christmas, and he took it with his eyes on the floor and said he would pay it back.