I went down the rows. A rubber frog with one leg gone. A yellow jig with the feather chewed to a stub. Nineteen of them, one for every fish of Tyler’s that Mike thought was worth retiring a lure over, across twelve summers. The last one with a date was a plain gold hook and a spinner blade.
T. 6-18-16. Walleye, 26 in. Bigger than mine. Hasn’t let me forget it.
Tyler was seventeen. That was about the last summer he went out regular. After that there was a job, and a girl, and then a different girl who turned out to be Abby, and a truck payment, and all the usual things that happen to a boy.
In the twentieth compartment was a lure still in its little cardboard box. A perch-colored Shad Rap, never wet. The price sticker from Jeff’s was still on it. The tape over that one was newer and whiter than the rest.
T. Next time.
I sat down on the dock. I sat with my boots hanging over the water and that tray in my lap, and Mr. Lund picked up his sponge and went back to the bilge and gave me all the time I wanted.
Thirty-one years, and the man still had a drawer I had never opened.
“He never showed you that,” Mr. Lund said after a while. It wasn’t a question.
“No.”
“Or the boy.”
“No. Tyler would never have sold it. He’d have sold the truck first.”
Mr. Lund wrung out the sponge. “Then I expect he ought to be the one to find it,” he said. “Same as I did.”
He held out his hand, and I gave the tray back, and he strapped it up under the seat again. I heard both bungee hooks catch.
“Six-thirty tomorrow,” he said. “Tell him to dress warm. And I won’t take your fifty, so don’t fight me on it.” He almost smiled. “I’ll take the bars. I’m old, I’m not stupid.”
I went and got them out of the car.
Getting Tyler there was the part I had been dreading, and it turned out to be the shortest conversation of the whole week.
I called him that evening. I said, “I need you someplace at six-thirty tomorrow morning, and I need you not to ask me why.”
“Mom, I’ve got…”
“I haven’t asked you for one thing since the funeral,” I said. “Not one. I’m asking now. North shore, the green cabin past the Bible camp road. Wear your insulated bibs.”
It was quiet long enough that I knew he had figured out where the boat was.
“I can’t get in it,” he said.
“You come and tell me that at the dock, then. But you come.”
He came.
I was there at a quarter after six with a thermos. Mr. Lund already had the gas can in and three rods laid along the side. Three, I noticed, not two.
Tyler’s truck came down the drive slow. He parked it facing the lake this time, because there was no other way to park, and he sat behind the wheel for a full minute with the engine off. Then he got out. My son is a big, square young man who hangs ductwork for a heating outfit in Baxter, and that morning he walked down the dock like a boy being sent to the principal.
He didn’t look at the boat. He looked at Mr. Lund.
“Sir,” he said. “If you came to tell me I shorted my mother, I know it.”
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.