Tuesday after work I did what a person does in a town this size. I went to the bait shop.
Jeff has run that shop since his dad had it, and Mike was in there three mornings a week for as long as I can remember. There’s a cork board by the door with index cards on it. When Jeff saw me he came around the counter wiping his hands on his jeans.
He didn’t make me ask.
“Don Lund’s got it,” he said. “North shore, the green cabin past the Bible camp road. He’s had it out every morning since.”
“So there was a card.”
Jeff pointed at the board. There was a thumbtack still stuck in the cork with a torn corner of index card under it.
“Tyler put it up at seven yesterday when I opened. Sixteen foot Alumacraft, twenty-five Evinrude, trailer, six hundred dollars, today only.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Connie, I told him. I said, Ty, that’s a two thousand dollar rig all day long, and I’ll hold the card a week and get it for you. He said he didn’t want a week. He said he didn’t want men coming around the yard kicking the tires and telling him stories about his dad.”
That landed on me harder than the six hundred had.
“Don came in for minnows at eight,” Jeff said. “Read the card twice. Asked me if it was a joke or if the kid was in trouble. I said I didn’t know. He went and got his checkbook.”
“What’s he like?”
“Don? Drove propane for the co-op thirty-one years. Lost his wife a while back. Never shorted anybody a gallon that I heard of.”
Wednesday I worked a double. Thursday night I made a pan of Special K bars.
Where I come from you don’t go to a stranger’s house and ask a favor with your hands empty. I pressed the cereal down with a buttered spoon the way my mother did, and melted the chocolate chips and butterscotch chips together for the top, and while they set I took the grocery envelope out of the drawer.
There was a fifty and two twenties and some ones in it. I took the fifty. I folded it once and put it in the pocket of my quilted vest, and I snapped the pocket shut so I wouldn’t lose my nerve and put it back.
Friday I got up at five-thirty and drove around the lake.
It was a gray morning with no wind at all. The water was flat as a plate and the same color as the sky, and the pines on the far shore looked black. Most of the cabins had their docks pulled already and stacked on the bank for winter. The green one past the Bible camp road still had its dock in.
And there it was, tied alongside.
I knew it from the road. Same dent. Same bare metal along the rails. Same coffee can full of concrete with an eye bolt set in it, which Mike poured himself for an anchor because he said a store anchor was thirty dollars of somebody else’s profit.
I left the bars on the seat of the car. I don’t know why. I think I wanted to see the man’s face first.
An older man in a cap was sitting on the back seat of the boat with a big yellow sponge, working water out of the bottom and wringing it over the side. He heard me on the dock boards and looked up.
Specialty: Quiet Comebacks & Personal Justice
David Reynolds focuses on stories where underestimated individuals regain control of their lives. His writing centers on measured decisions rather than dramatic outbursts — emphasizing preparation, patience, and the long game. His characters don’t shout; they act.