I want to say something about my husband right here.
Because a lot of people who heard about that boat later thought they knew exactly who he was.
They didn’t.
Rick has been a lineman for the rural electric co-op for thirty years.
He started at twenty-five as a groundman. Worked his way up through all the apprentice years to journeyman. For most of that time, he climbed wooden poles with steel hooks strapped to his boots and a leather belt around the pole.
When the ice storms came, he went. He went on Christmas Eve. He went on Tyler’s birthday.
One winter he was gone for eleven days straight. He came home with frostbite on two fingers and slept for a day and a half on the couch with his boots still on.
The summer of the derecho, he worked sixteen-hour days for three weeks. Setting new poles in fields where the corn was flattened like somebody had come through with an iron. He came home so tired he ate supper standing up at the counter, then went straight to bed.
In thirty-two years of marriage, he’d never asked for one thing for himself.
Not a new truck. Not a hunting trip to Montana with the guys. Not even a new recliner, when the old one tipped him sideways every time he leaned back.
His father was the reason.
Walt Schmitz farmed two hundred acres south of town. And he believed that a man who wanted something for himself was a man who was getting soft.
When Rick was fourteen, he saved up all summer from detasseling corn and bought himself a used Honda minibike. Red. Two hundred dollars.
The next spring, his father sold it at the farm sale. Without asking him. Without even telling him first.
Rick came home from school and it was just gone.
He told me that story once. The first year we were married. Sitting on the porch steps at his parents’ place after Sunday dinner.
He never told it again.
But I remembered it.
By the fourth night, it had turned into something.
Duane Becker and Lyle Ostrander came by. They’ve fished with Rick since they were all in high school together.
They’d heard about the boat at the co-op. Then they’d heard about the suppers at the Casey’s gas station.
They pulled up in Duane’s pickup at a quarter past six. Both of them stood at the end of our driveway with their seed caps in their hands. Like they’d come to a funeral visitation.
“Evening, Karen,” Duane said.
“Evening, Duane. Lyle. Have you two eaten?”
They looked at each other.
“There’s plenty,” I said. “It’s chicken and noodles.”
So I brought out two more plates.
Duane climbed in and sat on the front casting deck with his plate balanced on his knees. Lyle sat on the back deck with his feet hanging over the motor.
Four grown people eating chicken and noodles in a bass boat. In a driveway. In the middle of Iowa.
Marlys across the street with her lawn chair and her coffee. The Mason jar candle flickering in the cup holder.
Duane said it was the best boat he’d ever eaten in. Lyle asked for seconds. They talked about walleye at Saylorville Lake, and whether the crappies would be up in the shallows yet.
Rick laughed once. A real laugh.
Then he looked over at me. And stopped.
After Duane and Lyle drove off, Rick stayed sitting in the boat.
I started gathering up the plates. He put his hand on my wrist. Not hard. Just to keep me there.
“Sit down a minute, Karen.”
I sat back down.
The candle was down to about an inch. A semi went by out on the highway. The dog two houses down barked at it.
“I turned fifty-five in March,” Rick said.
“I know. I made the cake.”
“A letter came from the co-op in February. About my pension. What it’s going to be when I retire.”
He was looking down at his hands.
“I sat in the truck in the co-op parking lot and read it four times.”
“Was it bad?”
“No. It’s fine. It’s fair.”
He turned his wedding ring around on his finger.
“That’s what got me. It was fine. Thirty years of climbing poles in ice storms, and that’s what I had to show for it. A fair letter.”
I didn’t say anything.
I learned a long time ago that Rick talks when you let the quiet sit there.
See more on the next page
