Chapter 21: Fishing

Floyd's POV

The pond belonged to a friend of Clifford's who had died in 2009, and Clifford still had the key to the gate.

It lay at the bottom of a long pasture, with a dock, a tin boat and an oak tree that had dropped half its leaves into the water.

I carried Clifford down the slope in my arms, because he wouldn't let me use the chair.

"I'm not a sack of feed," he said.

"You're lighter than one."

"Don't be fresh. Put me in the shade."

I set him in a folding chair at the end of the dock, with a blanket on his knees and the oxygen tank at his feet.

Meredith handed him a rod.

"If you hook anything big," she said, "you give it to Floyd."

"If I hook anything big, I'm going to keep it for myself, thank you. I haven't caught a fish since the Carter administration."

We sat in a row, the three of us, with our lines in the brown water.

It was a warm, still morning, and the only sound was a woodpecker somewhere in the oak.

"I want to say something," Clifford said, "and I don't want either of you to interrupt."

"Grandpa..."

"My girl, that was an interruption."

She closed her mouth.

"I lied to you both, and I used you both, and I would do it again."

He kept his eyes on his bobber.

"That's the first half. The second half is that I'm sorry, and you don't owe me a word about it."

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