Skiff

The hold was full of well-iced silvers, reds and chums still barking and watching me through one petrified eye. I'd thrown each and every one of them from the Natives skiffs into the brailer trying hard to look like I knew the difference between them better than I actually did. I'd shoveled all the ice too.

A good day of physical work out on the river and I was a hundred dollars less poor. The captain was happy with the haul. My face was sunburned, the wind carried a chill, my sweat and the slime were staring to dry, and fish scales adhered to my forearms. An August evening on the Kuskokwim, and we were heading up river with a full load.

I wanted to get to know this river - to be fluent, sure-footed and handy on it.
I wanted to do it quickly.
I wanted a particular Yup'ik girl back in town to think well of me.

When it first appeared in the distance, moving downriver, I could not be sure what I was seeing. It was clearer as it approached but it didn't make sense. A skiff with it's outboard motor in the water, still running, carrying only a sweatshirt and a few fisherman's items. Wet footprints. It passed us with a certain willfulness, like a horse that had thrown its rider.

The river is a silty brown and cold. Its channels are deep. It rises and slacks with the tide. It provides and extracts life. The fisherman wore rubber boots, probably, rain pants with suspenders, maybe a rain jacket too. No life jacket of course.

It felt a little colder. The sun was setting in the middle of the night, and the tundra darkened all around. I stood thin upon the deck.

"Slowly", she said.  Her dark eyes twinkled with mischief and stared with all seriousness.