The Fish House Twenty Two Men Rebuilt

And at the bottom, underlined twice, the total, and under the total in smaller letters, the words I did not know were there until Ron told me later what he had read.

It said: “Built by Gavin, paid for by mowing. If you are reading this, be kind to it.”

The door opened. Ron came out slowly, ducking his head under the frame, and he stood for a moment on the ice with his back to all of us.

He wiped his face with his sleeve and looked out across the ice a while longer.

Then he turned and walked straight toward Gavin.

I started forward. Walt put a hand on my chest, gently, and shook his head, and I stopped.

Ron stopped in front of my son. He is a big man, and the boy was looking up at him with his chin level and his face calm, holding the carpenter’s pencil the old man had given him.

“Gavin,” Ron said. “I read your door.” “Yes, sir.” “Mr. Dahl’s lawn. You did that one for free.” “He was sick,” Gavin said. “His son was in Arizona. Somebody had to.”

Ron nodded. He looked down at his boots and then up at the roof, where two men were fitting the last sheet of tin. He looked at the twenty-two faces and the long line of trucks on the shore.

“I paid your uncle three thousand dollars for a house I thought was his,” he said. “That is on me. I should have asked more questions. That is not what I’m sorry about.”

Gavin waited.

“I’m sorry I put a price tag on it,” Ron said. “Eighty-five dollars a day. I rented it four times. A family from Eden Prairie slept in it last weekend.” He took a long breath. “I’m sorry it took me this long to walk out here.”

He turned to me. “Dan, have you got a tow strap?” “I’ve got two,” I said.

“Then you and me and a couple of these fellows are going to move a house.” He looked at the new frame.

“It comes off my row tomorrow after church, and it goes back to where it came from. No charge. What I paid is between me and the man who took my money, and it is not between me and you, son. I will set it right next to this one, if the boy will have it.”

He put out his hand. Gavin looked at it for a second, then shook it, a firm short shake like a man closing on a lumber order.

“One more thing,” Ron said. “The four rentals. Four days at $85. That is $340, and I would like you to have it.”

“I don’t need it.” “I know you don’t. Take it anyway. That house earned it.”

Gavin looked at me. I nodded. He took the envelope and put it in the pocket of his flannel shirt, next to the sandwich bag with Emma’s twenty-three dollars, and I thought about the two things sitting there against his chest.

Then Ron Pelletier did a thing I did not expect. He took off his gloves and picked up a hammer from the ice and said to Walt, “Where do you need me?”

“Roof,” Walt said. He went up the ladder with the hammer in his hand.