MISQUAH — The Klatch closed its book Friday morning. Sixty-one guesses at the name on the covered sign — written on the backs of receipts, one on a napkin, one in a child’s handwriting at a grandmother’s dictation — were folded into a business envelope, sealed with tape by Pat Reinholt in front of witnesses, and placed in the coffee tin behind the Daybreak’s register, where it will remain until Saturday afternoon. The envelope will travel four blocks to the brewery at 2 p.m. and be opened at the bar, aloud, immediately after the sign is uncovered.

The distribution, per the tally kept by the table and reported without comment: all seven lakes are represented, Big Pelican leading with nineteen and Loon Lake second with fourteen; Mud Lake received four, all four written by the same faction and one of them underlined twice. Eleven guesses are variations on Whitefish. Three guesses are “Cultured Cow,” whose adherents have been informed repeatedly that the Holts have said the flagship is named for a lake and who continue, in the words of one of them, “to like the odds.” One guess is illegible and has been entered as illegible.

At the brewery, the last week has been rehearsal. The opening crew has run dry service twice — pouring water, calling tickets, working the room — and Annika Holt reports the only real problem is that the trainees keep drifting to the front window to look at the sign. Jonas Holt has finished what he calls “the boring half”: cooler, taps, the walk-in, the last inspection. The county has signed off on everything a county can sign off on.

Which leaves the knot. The canvas over the sign was tied from the inside in July, by Jonas, and it has spent three weeks becoming the most discussed piece of rope in Pine County. The plan remains what it has been: at two o’clock Saturday, Jonas pulls it. “If it gives, it gives,” he said. “If it doesn’t, we have a ladder and a knife and sixty-two people watching a man cut down his own sign cover. Either way the name is out by five after.” Food will be available Saturday, the Holts confirmed again, “by arrangement with a neighbor.” The neighbor still has not been named. The line at the landing Thursday through Sunday continues to have no name on it either, and the town continues to be able to read.