Full Measure

Chapter thirty-four

Just after sunrise Patrick was readying his boat at the Glorietta Bay launch. I’d Rather Be was an aged fourteen-foot aluminum skiff with a dependable Honda engine and an outdated Lowrance fish finder. His hours were complete, his license issued, his insurance current. He could guide two anglers. Salimony had kicked in five hundred and twenty dollars toward the boat and Messina four hundred and forty more — self-imposed fines for the rumble in Iris’s home. They’d helped him shake her down and rebuild the Honda and now she was sound.

The late March morning was cold, with wispy white clouds circling in from the northwest. Rain tonight, he thought, and a shiver wavered down his back. He was nervous enough as it was this morning. He checked the radio and the life preservers, the lunches, and the electric motor. Checked them again. The seat pads were new and had set him back nearly a hundred dollars, but he’d saved five times that by refinishing the casting decks himself. I’d Rather Be reminded Patrick of his older dog, Jack — youth gone but still some good years left ahead. Like Jack, I’d Rather Be was optimistic and can-do.

He sat in the captain’s chair and strung up the extra rods with fresh leader and flies. Ted was more present with water, boats, and fish. Patrick tried hard to let only the good memories squeeze in, and sometimes this worked. Sometimes he believed that he had done right by Ted. He told himself that he had helped Ted accomplish his one big thing, the thing he would be remembered for, and that Ted had made the world a small fraction better by this final act. Patrick also told himself that helping Ted be remembered for acting on his own was the best small dignity Patrick could give him. But sometimes he didn’t believe any of that at all. Sometimes he felt that he had never known or loved his brother fully. And became his murderer. And let Ted take the blame, thereby acquitting himself. At night his dreams broke him down and in his waking hours Patrick put himself back together.

Sangin still ran through everything he did, just more quietly. He flinched less, saw fewer ghosts, remembered less ugliness. But the only time he was really free of Sangin was when he was fishing or with Iris, or lost in thoughts of his boyhood, which, having ended at age seventeen, now seemed magical and important.

Sangin and Ted. Ted and Sangin.

The difference is Sangin meant nothing to you and Ted meant everything. Family was why you served. Family past and family present and maybe family future. And your own small glory: be a man. Get some.

His phone throbbed in his pocket and he braced himself for a last-minute cancellation.

“You’re working I trust,” said his father.

“Yep.”

“Rain tomorrow. A piddling half-inch.”

“Did you blade that one track on the north side?”

“Pat, listen to this. I woke up way before the sun this morning, like I always do. I got coffee, checked the plumbing, and the computer news. Soon as there was light I went out to the groves and did the standard drive through. You will not believe what I found there, Pat. You will not.”

Patrick checked his watch. “You better tell me soon because my sports just got here.”

“Life. I saw life in the trees that the good lord and his mud bath left us with. Of course, that’s only half of the trees I had before, but I’m pleased to still own that half, free and clear. Green on most of them, Pat, budding out and more to come! We can make it through this year cashing out the last of the investments, just barely. Then we pray for no late frost or high winds in early fall — neither of which would surprise me, given my reputation upstairs. And now the Farm Credit Bank will loan against my forty acres of life, believe me. My trees are going to get us through. Your mother, of course, is pleased. Got up early and dressed herself this morning very carefully, like she used to. She’s starting to seem like... Caroline again. I’ve won, Patrick. I have won!”

And his father was starting to seem like Archie again, too, thought Patrick. The months of darkness were beginning to admit light. “I’m off to work, Pop.”

“You and Iris on for dinner Saturday?”

“We’ll be there.”

“Fresh fish would be nice. Catch a big one for your mother and brother.”

The two men came down the dock bedecked in new fly-fishing gear — boots and waders and belts and vests — none of which they would even need on the boat. But what was wrong with that? Patrick guessed each at roughly twice his age. They walked fast, talking and laughing as good friends do. Patrick saw the glimmer of the rods in the new sunlight and identified their high-end makers by color and sheen. The reels were shiny new and the lines were rigged for river trout.

First timers, he thought, just like me. Love is what you do.

He offered his hand and welcomed aboard the first customers of his life.