Chapter 4: The Plate

By six o'clock the line for the trout ran back past the bait shed.

The Altar Guild had cleared the way, and after them the town came down the hill.

Men in feed caps came, and the high school cook, and the whole crew from the hardware store.

A girl on a bicycle brought a pie she said her mother had made before the phone calls started.

"She said to tell you the phone calls were stupid," the girl said.

"Thank her for me," I said.

I watched the crowd swell while I carried plates, staying busy so I didn't have to think.

By half past six it was over two hundred people.

Lasse stood at the grill with fish smoke in his beard and did not say a word about the numbers.

Every few minutes he slid a fresh tray onto my table without my asking.

The oldest woman at the Altar Guild sat at the head of the longest bench and ate with her hat on.

"Your mother would have put a fish on that cake herself," she told me.

"She'd have put it on in sugar," I said.

"She would," the old woman said, and almost smiled.

Around seven, the news arrived from Hill Street, the way news does in a town of two thousand.

A boy in a Fire Department T-shirt came running down the pier, out of breath.

"They're doing it in Mrs. Lindholm's backyard," he told the nets man. "Eleven people, and the pastor. And there's a whole tent with nobody under it."

"Eleven," the nets man said, and took a long, satisfied bite of potato.

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