“Mr. Lund?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’m Connie. That was my husband’s boat.”
He took his cap off. Then he didn’t seem to know what to do with it, so he put it back on.
“I wondered if somebody’d come,” he said. “Ma’am, the boy’s name was on the card. I checked it against his license. I asked him twice was he sure, and I told him the motor was worth what he was asking for the whole outfit. He said he knew that.”
“I know you did. Jeff told me. I’m not here to take it back.”
That surprised him. He set the sponge down on the seat.
I folded my arms so he wouldn’t see what my hands were doing.
“I’ve got fifty dollars in my pocket,” I said, “and a pan of Special K bars in the car. What would you charge for one Saturday?”
He squinted up at me. “For you?”
“For my son. The one who sold it to you. I want him in that boat one more morning, with somebody on the tiller who knows what he’s doing. I don’t want it in my yard. I don’t want it back at all. I just want him to sit in it once more before it’s all the way gone.”
He didn’t say anything. A loon called from someplace out on the flat water, and the boat nudged the dock post, that hollow knock an aluminum boat makes.
“I buried my wife three years ago in March,” he said finally. “Jean. I sold her Buick eleven days later to a kid from Pine River, because I couldn’t walk past it in the garage.” He looked out at the lake. “I have looked for that car in every parking lot since.”
I had nothing to say to that. I just nodded.
“So I don’t guess you have to explain your boy to me,” he said.
Then he bent down, with a grunt, and reached up under the middle seat.
“Before I answer you, you’d better see what I found Wednesday.”
I heard a bungee cord let go. He came up holding a flat plastic tackle tray, the kind with a clear lid and little square compartments, about the size of a cookie sheet. The lid had gone cloudy with age. He held it out to me over the gap between the boat and the dock, and I had to unfold my arms to take it.
“It was strapped up under there behind the foam,” he said. “You wouldn’t see it unless you were on your knees sponging. I opened it to see if there was a name. Then I put it back how I found it, because it sure wasn’t mine to move.”
There were twenty-four compartments. In most of them lay a single lure. And on the inside of the lid, over each one, was a strip of masking tape with ballpoint writing on it.
I knew the writing before I could read it. Mike printed everything in square capitals, the way he labeled the parts bins at the shop.
The first one was a tiny pink jig, hardly bigger than a pea.
T. 7-3-04. Sunny. Pink jig. Cried when we let it go.
Tyler was five that summer.
T. 5-14-05. First walleye. 15 in. Opener. Sleeting. He wouldn’t go in.
There was a red and white spoon with tooth marks in the paint.
T. 8-9-09. Northern, 31 in. Bit his thumb. Didn’t cry.
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.