My Brother and I Hadn’t Spoken in 15 Years. For Her 80th Birthday, Our Mother Entered Us in a 50-Mile Canoe Race. In the Same Canoe

She was bluffing about the will.

We both knew it.

We both showed up anyway.

At five in the morning on September 14th, a hundred and twenty canoes were lined up on the shore of Fall Lake in the fog. Thatcher arrived in a brand-new carbon-fiber racing canoe that probably cost more than my truck.

“We’re using mine,” I said.

“Mine weighs eighteen pounds.”

“Mine has been on four hundred trips through this exact route.”

“Yours has duct tape on it.”

“Yours has a price tag on it.”

Our mother was standing on the dock with a thermos and a lawn chair. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to.

We took my canoe.

Thatcher sat in the bow. I sat in the stern. In a canoe, the stern steers. He knew it. I knew it. Neither of us said it.

The horn went off.

For the first eight miles, we didn’t say a word.

We paddled well. That’s the strange thing. Our father put us in a canoe together when I was six and Thatcher was three. Our strokes still matched without trying. Left, right, switch. The same rhythm. The same lean on the turns.

At the first portage, we had to carry the canoe a quarter mile over rocks and roots.

I flipped it up onto my shoulders, the way I’ve done ten thousand times.

Thatcher took the back end.

Halfway across, he slipped on a wet rock and went down hard on one knee.

I stopped.

“You okay?”

He didn’t answer for a second. Then he looked up at me with mud on his expensive shorts.

“Dad used to make us race across this exact portage,” he said. “Remember? Loser cleaned the fish.”

“You always lost.”

“Because you always cheated.”

“I never cheated.”

“You started running before he said go,” Thatcher said. “Every single time.”

I stood there under the canoe with my mouth open.

He was right.