…a framed photograph from the glove box of his car. He set it on the table next to Walt’s compass.
It was an old snapshot of a man in a yellow rain jacket, standing on a dock, holding up a small brass compass and grinning. Behind him was the Lake Erie ferry.
“That’s my dad,” Kyle said. His voice was strange. “He died when I was fifteen. That picture was taken the day after the storm in 1999. He was one of the people who went over the rail. He told me a deckhand pulled him out of the lake with a rope and wouldn’t even tell him his name. So he gave the guy the only thing he had in his pocket. His father’s compass.”
He picked up Walt’s compass and turned it over. On the back, in tiny worn letters, it said: “J.M. — True North.”
“James Mercer,” Kyle said. “My grandfather. My dad looked for that deckhand for years. He said he never got to say thank you properly.”
Walt didn’t say anything for a long time. Then he said, quietly, “Your father had a broken leg. He kept apologizing for being heavy.”
Kyle sat down. He didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. My wife, Walt’s daughter, was crying. Kyle’s wife, my sister-in-law, had gone very still.
“I’ve been coming to Thanksgiving at this table for six years,” Kyle said finally. “I made fun of you every single time. And you had my dad’s compass in your pocket the whole time. Why didn’t you say anything?”
Walt shrugged. “You never asked what I did. You just told me.”
He slid the compass across the table to Kyle. “It’s yours. It always was.”
Kyle shook his head and slid it back. “Dad gave it to you. He’d want you to keep it.”
They went back and forth like that for a while. Finally, they agreed that Walt would keep it, and that one day it would go to Kyle’s son, along with the story. The whole story. Including the part about the boy scout jokes.
Kyle doesn’t call himself a wealth coach at family dinners anymore. Last summer he took his son out on the Lake Erie ferry for the first time. He sent us a photo from the deck. Him and his boy, both holding up a little brass compass, grinning.
