Alright

The truck was fine, actually, once it dried out. They built them different then. But the wrecker wasn't free. It was forty dollars, which was real money.

So my dad, without saying anything about it, got me on at Patterson's marina that summer, pumping gas on the dock. A dollar sixty an hour. I had to hand him the first forty.

Old man Patterson, he had one rule, which was you never let a boat leave without asking if they had life jackets. I thought that was the dumbest thing. But I did it. Every boat, all summer.

The day I handed Dad the last of the forty, he counted it and put it in his shirt pocket and he said, "Alright." That was it. Alright. And that was the first thing he'd said to me about the truck since March.