The next June, on the second Saturday, the Brandt family reunion was held at Uncle Gene’s farm again, the way it always is.
Josh called Dad in May, the way he always does.
“Leon, you’re coming to the reunion. Gene’s smoking a brisket, and I need somebody who can actually catch a fish.”
Dad came. He brought a pecan pie from the bakery in Ozark.
But this year he didn’t stand off to the side. Uncle Gene put him on the smoker. Cousin Tyler, the one who walked the pond bottom until dark, brought him a lawn chair and a cold Dr Pepper and sat with him for an hour talking about the co-op. A couple of the little kids followed him down to the dock and asked him to teach them to fish.
He did. He baited their hooks and showed them how to cast. When one of them, a six-year-old named Maddie, caught a bluegill the size of her hand, he laughed so loud you could hear him all the way up at the barn.
Somewhere in the middle of the afternoon, I saw Cindy walking down toward the dock with a paper plate in her hand.
My whole body went tight.
She stopped at the edge of the dock, about ten feet from where Dad was sitting with the kids. She stood there for a moment.
Then she called out, “Leon? You want some potato salad?”
Dad turned around. He’d heard her clearly, from ten feet away.
“I’d love some, Cindy. Thank you.”
She walked the plate out to him, handed it over very carefully with both hands, and then walked back to the bank, well away from the edge.
When she passed me on her way back up the hill, she gave me a small, embarrassed smile.
“I’m staying off that dock,” she said. “Permanently.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it.
Late in the afternoon, when the sun was going gold over the hayfield and the old men were packing up their fishing poles, I walked down to the dock and sat beside my father at the end of it, my feet dangling over the brown water.
He was quiet, listening. Somewhere up in the pecan trees, a mockingbird was singing, running through its whole list: cardinal, blue jay, robin, gate squeak. Over and over.
“Your mama would’ve known every one of those songs,” he said quietly.
“I know, Daddy.”
He reached over and patted my hand, the way he always does.
“Thank you, sis,” he said. “For my ears.”
I didn’t answer. I just leaned my head against his shoulder, and we sat there together at the end of the dock in the evening light, listening to the mockingbird sing every song it knew.
He heard every single one.
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