The Whitefish Nets We Brought Back

Monday Afternoon

We tied up at the commercial dock around one. Toivo went to the fish house to tell Ingvald we would not have fish that day.

Ingvald runs the fish house at the end of our dock. He buys from us and from the other two licensed families who still fish out of Bayfield. He has known Arne since they were both in grade school.

I went home and got Arne’s grapples out of the shed.

He had three of them, hand made from rebar, four hooks each, bent and welded by Arne himself the winter Pete started. They were heavy, maybe 15 pounds apiece, rusty orange from sitting.

I carried them down to the tug one at a time. I remember my arms shaking on the third one, and I remember not caring.

Pete had already gone to the hardware store and bought 600 feet of new rope on his own money. He did not tell me what it cost. He just coiled it on the deck and stood there.

“We’re going after them,” he said. It was not a question.

“We are,” I said.

Toivo came back from the fish house with his cap in his hand.

“Ingvald says he’s sorry,” he said. “And he says Lyle has been in there twice this week, asking about the price of whitefish and how a man goes about buying a tug.”

None of us said anything for a minute.

“And,” Toivo said, “Ingvald said he told Lyle he’d give him a job running his own boat this summer. Lyle’s been telling people he’s going to be back on the water.”

That told me everything. Lyle did not just want a license. He wanted to come down to that dock and be somebody again. He wanted it badly enough to cut a widow’s nets.

I am ashamed to say I felt sorry for him for half a second, standing there on the deck with Arne’s grapples at my feet. Then I picked one up and handed it to Pete.