Chapter 10: The Johnboat

By breakfast the clip had a hundred and twenty thousand views and a hashtag.

By lunch, forty people had unsubscribed from Front Street Notices.

By supper, a man whose mother's obituary I'd written had emailed me: "disgrace."

Reuben's campaign manager, who is also his secretary, who is also sixty-six, called four times. Reuben let it ring.

"She'll say I should apologize," he said.

"Should I?"

"For what? Opening a curtain?"

He came home at eight with a bag of fried fish from the diner and set it on the table without a plate.

"Get your shoes," he said. "The ones you don't mind getting wet."

"Why?"

"Because you've only seen this town from the land."

The boathouse smelled like gasoline and river mud.

The johnboat was flat and green and dented, with an outboard motor older than both of us.

He held it steady with one boot while I stepped in.

We went out into the dark with the motor muttering and the lock falling away behind us.

The river at night is wider than you think.

He steered us south, downstream, along the town side.

There was the bluff with every window of the Eckert house lit.

And then the floodwall, gray concrete, a mile long.

From the water you couldn't see Front Street at all.

Only the backs of the buildings showed over the wall.

The bakery's chimney. The barbershop's satellite dish. The bar's neon fish.

The brick side of my father's store, with the painted sign that said PRITCHARD HARDWARE in letters three feet high.

He cut the motor.

We drifted.

At the foot of Front Street, the floodgate stood open in the wall.

Three long steel barges were tied up in front of it, nose to tail.

ECKERT on every one, in white paint.

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