Under the tissue paper was a baby blanket, hand-knit in thick navy wool, with six names stitched along the border in white thread. Beneath it lay a photograph of six exhausted, bearded men standing on a dock in the snow, and in the middle of them, gray-faced and smiling, was Bernard. The man in the faded jacket set the photo beside the blanket. “Three days,” he said. “Captain gave us his share of the food and took every night watch himself. He lost eighteen pounds. None of us lost a finger.”
Then he turned toward Grayson, who was still holding his mimosa. “You don’t know me,” he said, “but I knew your father. Danny Whitaker. He was the youngest man on that boat.” Grayson’s face went white. “He was fishing that winter to pay your first year of college. On the second night, he told the captain he didn’t think he’d make it home. Bernard sat with him till sunrise and said, ‘Your boy is going to college, and he’s never going to have to do this.’”
I watched Grayson’s hand go to the edge of the table, as if the floor had moved. His father had died when Grayson was in his twenties. He’d always said his dad worked “on the boats for a while.” He’d never known whose boat. And now he was married to the captain’s daughter.
The fisherman pointed at the fourth stitched name on the blanket. Daniel Whitaker. “He’d want his grandbaby to have this,” he said. “Every one of us does.”
Grayson set down his glass and walked over to Bernard. He didn’t say anything about meetings or departments. He just said, “Thank you for bringing my father home.” Bernard put a big weathered hand on the back of his son-in-law’s neck and said, “He brought himself home. I just kept him company.” That blanket went home with the baby in the hospital bag, and Grayson has stopped calling it fishing. He calls it what Bernard’s crew always called it: going out.
