the willow tree stump in our backyard, in the middle of his post-run stretch. He’s wearing running shorts and an old Adidas tank top. A sweatshirt, a fishing pole, and a foam cup of grubs sit at his feet. He presses his hands onto the stump, arms straight, one foot forward, and one foot back, keeping his back leg straight with his heel on the ground.
Dad cut the willow down at the end of our first summer in the house. He said he was tired of tripping over its roots and having to deal with its constantly shedding limbs. But if the sun hits him just right when he’s shirtless, you can make out the faint scars on his back from when Grandma Eleanor took a switch to him as a child.
My father has the pronounced calves of a marcher-turned-runner. Mom once even said, “I married your father for his calves.” I don’t know whether it’s ironic, hereditary, or just weird, but calves are the first thing I notice in girls, too. Calves can make or break the deal for me. I don’t ask for much—a slight athletic curve about halfway down the calf, the mere suggestion of something beyond just weekend laps around the mall. Not too skinny, so waifish eating disorder types need not apply, but not too big either, especially those thick, knee-to-feet, vintage Catholic nun “cankles.”
Okay, that’s weird.
The air has a cold edge to it. Dad puts his sweatshirt back on. He’s owned this sweatshirt, hooded and navy blue with “Notre Dame” scrolled in faded orange-yellow across the chest, as long as I can remember. I had a matching sweatshirt when I was about five or six years old, back when Dad and I used to bundle up for our early morning walks on his aunt’s tobacco farm in Kentucky. At the end of our walks, we’d sometimes spend hours at a time just sitting in the barn. Black and white dairy cows would poke their heads around the barn door to say hello. Tomcats would chase mice across the straw-covered floor. There would be rows upon rows of sweet-scented tobacco leaves curing in the rafters.
I miss those childhood years; those years when in the depths of quietness the world seemed to talk to me more.
“You’re up early, son.”
“It’s a big day.” I yawn, stepping off the porch. Our lawn slopes into the water, so I walk sideways toward my father. I hold two cups of black coffee in my hands.
“Big day as in the first day of your last week as a junior?”
“No.” I hand Dad his coffee. “My first day as a senior.”
“How so?”
“It’s kind of a loophole. The seniors get the last week of school off, so the juniors get a head start—”
“At being prima donnas?”
The old man is sharper then I give him credit for. “Exactly, Pops.”
Dad finishes his calf stretches. He stands straight up and then crosses his feet. He sets down his coffee, reaches for his toes. A noticeable grunt.
The grunting is something new with him—when he stretches, when he stands up after lying down on the couch, or after a long car ride. I’ve never perceived Dad or Mom as old or even getting old. Grandparents are old, parents are just…well, parents.
“Still battling those shin splints?”
“Just a little tight. How you doing these days?”
“My shins are fine.”
“That’s not what I meant, smart aleck.”
Smart aleck? Early morning. Fishing poles. Black coffee. Grunting. Only my father and his uncompromising sense of goodness can throw out an aleck when the sheer maleness of the moment all but requires an ass.
“I figured that wasn’t what you meant. I’m doing great.”
“Really?”
The man looks unconvinced. I’ve been pretty discreet. Haven’t I? “Yeah, Dad. Couldn’t be better.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
Dad picks up the fishing pole and an unopened plastic baggie of fake worms. He breaks open the bag. The sound of crinkling plastic reminds me of Uncle Mitch and his Merits. I smell smoke, even though there isn’t any.
“Something on your mind, son?”
“You hear from Uncle Mitch lately?”
“What makes you ask that?”
“He left town in kind of a hurry.”
“Just one of those things, I suppose,” Dad says. “He got a job offer on the other side of the country the same day Aunt Ophelia served him with annulment papers. Guess he just needed a clean start.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
“Looks like I have to be.”
Just as when Uncle Mitch called him to say he was moving, Dad seems remorseless, cold even.
“Dad, everything all right?”
He raises his chin and takes a deep breath, almost as if he’s caught a scent. “You think you know people, and then…”
“And then what?”
Dad is silent. I can’t read his face. I don’t know if he’s searching for the words or refusing to search. He threads the fishing line into the eyehook on the end of the plastic worm.
“Dad?”
“Ahh, don’t listen to your old man.” He casts out his line. “Time to see what’s biting this morning.”
The implication here is that today’s catch might be some big mystery, but both Dad and I know he has a 125 percent chance of catching a bluegill. Twenty years of hand-feeding has mollified these fish—the near-literal manifestations of fish in a barrel. And yet the bluegills thrive, overwhelming the pond, eating the hatchlings of the largemouth bass and crappie trying to hide in its deeper locales.
I start to make my way back to the house. Dad reaches out, grabs me by the arm. “Hey, you don’t want to at least wait for the first catch?”
“No thanks, Dad. Gotta go get dressed, pick up some people.”
He flicks the pole, reels in the line a couple feet. “At least wait a few minutes.”
“Where’s Grandpa?”
“Still in bed.”
“His hip?”
“His hip, his knees, his blood pressure, his cholesterol—take your pick.”
A small moment of recognition. “He’s not going down without a fight, Dad.”
Dad nods, gazes out across the water. Our house sits on the north side of the pond. The location affords us a nice view, especially now with the sun dropping lower in the sky on summer’s eve.
“Seeing your grandpa go downhill so fast is tough to watch,” he says. “I feel so powerless.”
I pat him on the shoulder. “You’re doing all that you can, Dad.”
“Am I?” he asks. “My hope and prayer for you is that you never have to see me like that, after life has beaten me down.”
“Speaking of down,” I say, pointing to the red-and-white bobber dipping below the surface. “Looks like you got one.”
Claire lives in my neighborhood, so I picked her up first. Beth was next, then Hatch. The Subie ferries us to McDonald’s to meet the rest of the seniors, or at least the ones that matter.
It’s been an interesting few weeks leading up to today. Prom was awkward at best. A complex confluence of events led me to take the Johnson County Fair Queen as my date. Not that complex—Laura had ripped my heart out of my chest cavity and thrown it in a Cuisinart, Beth had said yes to her ex-boyfriend Tyler before they broke up and didn’t have the heart to back out, and Dad’s sales manager at the dealership had a hot seventeen-year-old daughter who happened to be