Chapter 9: Fish Fry

The Elks Lodge fish fry has one rule that nobody ever wrote down.

Stileses sit on the west side of the hall, and Hennings sit on the east.

The long strip of linoleum between them hasn't been crossed on purpose since 1987, except to get pie.

I walked in on Saturday night with a paper plate in one hand and my husband's fingers in the other.

It was the first time I had held his hand in public.

He looked down at it.

"You can let go," I said.

"I'm not going to let go."

"Good."

The hall was packed, about a hundred and fifty people eating catfish at long tables under a mounted elk head.

The fryers were going in the kitchen, and the whole place smelled like hush puppies and bleach.

The noise dropped as we walked in.

A table of Stiles cousins looked at their plates.

On the east wall, an old woman in a Henning-blue cardigan lowered her fork very slowly.

"Which side?" Colby whispered.

"The pie table."

"That's in the middle."

"I know."

We stood at the pie table together, and I put a slice of pecan on my plate and a slice of peach on his.

Nobody had ever stood there that long without moving to a side.

I could feel the whole room leaning.

The man with the microphone was the Exalted Ruler, a round, kind man in a vest.

He had been running announcements since I was in diapers.

When he got to the raffle numbers, I walked over and asked to say something.

He looked at me.

Then he handed me the microphone.

It squealed.

"Hi," I said. "I'm Casey Stiles. Most of you know my grandfather."

Someone near the front said, "Amen," and this time no one shushed him.

"In 1987 my great-grandfather and Colby's grandfather shook hands on the creek bottom," I said.