Up at Butternut Lake: A Novel by Mary McNear

Author:Mary McNear [McNear, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780062283153
Google: AaBUAgAAQBAJ
Amazon: B00DB3D3AM
Publisher: Harper Collins
Published: 2014-04-08T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 20

Need help, buddy?” Walker asked.

Wyatt shook his head. “No, I got it,” he said, frowning in concentration. He was holding a fishing hook in one hand and a wriggly pink worm in the other.

Ordinarily, Walker preferred to fish with lures, but he’d decided that fishing with live bait would be more exciting for someone Wyatt’s age. What he hadn’t counted on, though, was how hard it could be to get a worm on a hook when your hands were as small as Wyatt’s. Not that Wyatt complained. He didn’t. He just kept trying.

“It’s harder than it looks,” Walker said now, encouragingly. He marveled, once again, at Wyatt’s determination to do everything by himself.

Wyatt pinched the worm tightly between his thumb and his index finger and guided the end of the hook through its midsection. “There,” he said, with satisfaction, getting ready to cast off.

“Now, remember what I told you,” Walker said, leaning forward in his seat.

Wyatt nodded, then put his rod over his right shoulder, and, after a slight wobble, cast his line over the water in an almost graceful arc. When his hook hit the water, the red-and-white bobber Walker had attached to the line floated on the surface. If a fish took the bait now, the bobber would bounce and slide on the water, alerting Wyatt to its location.

“And now we wait,” Wyatt said solemnly, borrowing a phrase from Walker.

“Hopefully, not too long.” Walker said, smiling and thinking, as he had for over a month of Sunday mornings now, what a cute kid Wyatt was.

Wyatt was sitting now in one of the two seats in Walker’s fishing boat, dressed in a sweatshirt, blue jeans, a Minnesota Twins baseball cap, and red Converse sneakers. His chin was resting on the voluminous padding of the bright orange life preserver Walker had strapped him into, and his feet, which didn’t reach the bottom of the boat, dangled off his seat.

This was one of the things that had surprised Walker the most about Wyatt, he reflected now. How small he was. All young children were small, of course. But it was one thing to observe their smallness from a distance, and another thing to see it up close and personal.

It made Walker feel protective of Wyatt in a way he’d never felt protective of anyone before. It made him take extra care in fastening the straps on Wyatt’s life preserver, in helping him in and out of the boat, and in driving him around in the boat, too. Normally, Walker liked to drive fast. But with Wyatt beside him, he steered cautiously around the lake’s bays and inlets. Like an old man, he thought. Or like a father.

But no sooner had he had that thought than he pushed it away. Wyatt could do better than to have him for a father. Wyatt had already done better, he was sure. He wouldn’t be such a sweet kid, Walker figured, if his dad hadn’t been a nice guy. A guy who knew what Walker couldn’t imagine knowing.

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