The sky was clear. There was no wind. It was a different kind of day, and Nathaniel was glad to be out in it. He baited a hook for Ezra and showed him how to lower the squirming eels over the side of the boat where schools of minnows swam in familiar sweeping patterns. Hooks set, Nathaniel leaned back along the seat with his head propped on his rolled-up shirt. The boy leaned over the edge of the boat and peered into the water. He waited silently for a nibble on his hook, then the tug that meant he’d caught one.
Nathaniel saw Jacob in the boy’s scrawny arms, in his silent determination to catch a fish. But he’d stopped worrying himself with questions of who was to blame for losing Jacob or what if he’d done something different or what if they hadn’t taken the trip at all. The accident had settled into his being like a familiar portrait on the wall, a memory he visited every day but that didn’t puncture him in the same way.
Nathaniel closed his eyes against the glare. When he turned away from the sun and looked toward his father’s house on the hill, he thought he saw Meredith in the yard, a spyglass in her hand. He stood in the boat, shielded his eyes with one hand, but there was no one there. How his heart had lifted at the thought of her!
“Uncle, I had a nibble, then it was gone.”
“Next time, it’ll be a tug,” he said, patting Ezra on the shoulder. “You’ll feel it, and you’ll flick the line. Then you’ll catch him.”
Sails swept along the horizon like fins against a deep-blue sky. Nathaniel watched the business of the bay with a sense of relief. He’d always hated the way men worked, but watching the boats now, imagining seamen hauling nets full of fish over the rail, he felt compassion for their duty. He’d never have to work, and any work he’d done so far had been perfunctory.
“I’ve got one. I’ve got one,” the boy squealed.
The line grew taut, and Nathaniel helped him haul the fish in slowly. He guided Ezra’s hands in his own. “You gotta feel it fight on the other end of the line,” he said. “Let it tire itself out, then you slowly reel it in.”
He helped Ezra pull the fish close to the boat where it swam in desperate circles, so close the rainbow sheen of the scales shone up at them, the hectic rhythm of the gills, and the dull, beautiful look of the eyes. There was life in him, Nathaniel thought. The sun burned Nathaniel’s eyes, and he squinted against the glare as he cut the fish loose.
They watched the fish swim down into the murky depths.
“Let’s catch it again,” Ezra said.
• • •
Hours on the boat, and the boy grew exhausted. His skinny shoulders slumped over, and he struggled to keep his eyes open. Nathaniel placed the boat cushions in the shelter of the bow to create a makeshift bed, and he told Ezra to rest there while he rowed them in. “I’m not tired,” Ezra said.
“Just for a few minutes,” Nathaniel told him. Ezra, lulled by the sweep of the oars and the motion of the boat, fell sound asleep, his body curled into a fetal position on the cushions, so much like Jacob at that age, trying not to sleep while his brothers did the work.
When Ezra woke up, they were coming around the jetty into the harbor. Nathaniel threw his back into rowing them against the tide. He stayed close to the jetty where the tide didn’t run as fast, and when Ezra woke, he nearly leapt up. “I don’t want to miss anything,” he said.
Nathaniel let him onto his lap where he could practice pulling on the oars. They rowed like this across the harbor to the thin spit of beach where Nathaniel anchored the skiff. He rowed knowing where the beach was without turning around, because he’d seen so often the row of boats that let him know he was there. When they neared the beach, he rowed hard onto the shore, and when he turned around to climb over the side of the boat, there was Meredith getting herself up from the sand. She was a little shy as she wiped her hands across the sandy bottom of her skirt, looking at him to see if her presence was welcome here.
“You made it,” she said.
Nathaniel kicked the anchor in the sand and tried to think of what to say. Are you coming back to me? He stood before her, and she looked down at the boat, then up to his face until she met the safety of his gaze. He held his arms open for her, and she stepped into them, dropped her head onto his chest. Ezra gathered the fishing gear from the boat and stacked it against the rocks. He worked back and forth from the boat to the jetty, then he pulled the oars in and slid them under the seats, coiled the loose ropes, and pushed the boat out into the water where it could float in the tide.
“I did all the work,” he said to Nathaniel.
“Yes, you did.”
“So let’s go,” the boy said, and Meredith laughed, and they walked up the harbor road toward the Boyd house, each of them carrying a fishing pole, a bait bucket, or the canteen that had been emptied hours ago.