A year or so earlier, while fishing out of John’s motorboat on Baker Lake, Alex had asked to kill the first bluegill they caught. She’d seen her father do it a hundred times before. And while it was trickier in a motorboat than on a cement pier, you simply held the thing on the floor of the boat with a foot and your left hand and bopped it with the mallet in your right, and John had no qualms about letting Alex do it. He had seen her hammer nails with great precision and whack baseballs into center field; he didn’t think she’d have any trouble offing a six-inch bluegill with a single swing.

But she did. She let up with her foot a split second before the mallet struck, and the fish flipped in that moment, moving enough that Alex made only partial contact with the head, not nearly enough to effectively stun it. Blood poured from the fish’s gills and it thrashed hard against the bottom of the boat, continuing to impressively catch a few inches of air. Alex gasped and squeaked as the fish thrashed and bounced, and instinctively she slapped at the thing with her hand while it was in the air. She ended up batting the fish clean over the side and into the water. She held the mallet in her right hand and stared up at John with surprise, and then shame.

“It’s OK, hon,” he said gently. “You almost had him.”

Alex peered over the side of the boat.

John said, “Can you see him down there?”

Alex nodded. “He’s bleeding really bad.” She sniffed and added softly, “He’s swimming really slow in a little circle.” She looked up at her father with tears in her eyes. “He’s going to die.”

John said, “Well, he was gonna die either way.”

“But . . .” Alex peered back over the side, looking like she might try to reach in with her hand and scoop the fish out but realizing she wouldn’t be able to reach it. “But since I messed up, he’s suffering,” she said. She looked up at the sky and then wiped her eyes on her forearm. “I’m sad,” she said.

“It’s good to feel sad sometimes,” John said. “You did just fine, though, you did your best. I bet you’ll get the next one, and every single one after that.”

It was a good lesson, John thought. It was good to feel how bad it was for something to suffer unnecessarily.

Their fishing success today had been so quick and so surprising that John had almost forgotten his promise to try to find out if Alex knew anything about the Wheeling phone booth caller. He turned around to adjust the ice in the cooler behind him to make sure all their fish were covered, then he cast his line and remarked, as casually as he could manage, “Hey, by the way, you happen to know anyone from home who uses a pay phone?”