The Salmon at the Cleaning Station

Bobbie’s fish

The morning went on. Carmen got a lake trout. Roland got a small coho and talked about it for an hour straight. I caught a king of about eight pounds and was happy enough with it.

Bobbie waited. She was up for almost two hours, watching those rod tips, and nothing touched her lines. She never complained once. She just sat on the cooler in her orange rain jacket with her sandy ponytail pulled through the back of a cap and kept her eyes on the water.

At about ten thirty, with maybe an hour left before Royce would have to turn us in, the port rigger fired so hard the rod nearly jumped out of the holder.

“That’s a good one,” Royce said, and he was already throttling down. “Bobbie, you’re up. Let him go. Do not horse him.”

She did everything right. I want that on the record, because I was proud of her that day before anything else happened. She kept her tip up, she let the fish take line when it wanted it, and she reeled when it gave.

Three times it went on a long run and stripped line off that reel with a sound like a zipper. Three times she turned it back. Rufus talked her through it, quiet and steady, and Royce kept the boat sliding along to help her.

When it finally came up alongside, all of us saw it at once. Carmen said oh my gosh. Roland yelled. It was a big king, long and thick across the back, much bigger than Zach’s.

Rufus netted it on the first try and swung it over the rail. Royce hung it on the scale for a quick look before he put it in the box. Nineteen pounds, two ounces.

Bobbie did not cheer. She just stood there holding the rod, breathing hard, and looked over at me. That look is the reason I am writing any of this down.

Then Royce turned to reset the rigger, Rufus went to the other side to clear a tangled line, and my uncle stepped across the deck.

What I did and did not do

I know what some of you are thinking, because I have thought it a hundred times since. Why did I not scream at him? Why did I not grab him by his jacket right there?

The honest answer is that the fish was already gone, sinking out of sight, and yelling at a sixty-year-old man on a rocking boat full of children was not going to bring it back.

There were three kids on that deck. Roland was ten and already crying because he did not understand what had happened. Zach had gone white as paper. And Bobbie was standing there with the rod, waiting to see what her mother would do.

So I did the only thing I could think of. I took the rod out of her hands and set it in the holder. I put my arm around her and walked her to the front of the boat, by the cabin, out of the wind.

“Mom,” she said. Just that.

“I know,” I said. “I saw it. Royce saw it. Everybody saw it.”

“It was nineteen pounds.”

“I know it was.”

She did not cry. She is not a crier. She sat down on the bench and pulled her hood up and looked out at the water off the bow, and I sat with her with my hand flat on her back the way I used to when she was small and had a fever.

Behind us I heard Royce talking to Larry, low and hard. I could not make out the words over the motor. I did catch one line, though, because Royce said it twice.

“Not on my boat. Not ever on my boat.”