He said he could talk a pack
of dogs off a meat truck but
what we noticed was how

straight and easily he stood
on the uneven rocks, how well
he told a story, just a straight

out story about the heart attack
a year ago and that he’d died.
He told us how they brought

him back, how he’d worked
his whole life to have—and here
he swept his arm out to the sea

in a gesture bigger than words—
to have this. When the doctor
cleared him for fishing, this

was the place he wanted to come
because of the history. He said
to walk all the way around the

point and we would find the
remnants of an old pier and he
wondered how they drove the iron

pilings into the rocks back then.
Teddy Roosevelt, Grover Cleveland
used to come to fish off that pier

and boys would come in their
dinghies to pick up the fish
and bring it round to sell. He

had been fishing for four weeks,
he had to call his wife twice
each day and one day he had to

meet her on the mainland so she
just could see him. He got lots
of albies and one time with a

friend, they got 47 stripers in
one day, all too small to keep.
He grinned and said the thing

about the meat truck. We had
been married four months and
ten days on the day we met him.

We had never gone so far around
the point. It was a fine bright day
and we went off to find the pier.