P. Alderman - A Killing Tide

He wasn't merely impressed, he was in awe, his respect for her skills having increased ten-fold in just the last five minutes. He knew the Columbia River bar was the most treacherous stretch of water in the Lower Forty-Eight, but until he'd experienced it, he'd had no clue. Waves battered them relentlessly, crashing over the trawler in a crazy jigsaw pattern, tossing the boat about like a toy. A person had to be crazy as a loon to tackle this every day. No wonder she wasn't worried about the occasional intruder in her home—the guy would have to be armed with an Uzi to make her even break out in a sweat.

"You do this every day," he said, breaking the tense silence that still remained between them.

"Most days, yeah." Her response was absent-minded. "This is pretty calm today."

He nearly laughed out loud. The swells were over ten feet. And how long would it take the trawler to break apart if she made a mistake? No more than a few minutes, max. He couldn't even think about what it must've been like for her that night fifteen years ago. He fought down the urge to demand that she turn around and take them back to port where she'd be safe—to demand that she never do this again. To tell her that he couldn't handle it if she went out and never came back. "You need counseling," he said instead.

She shot a quick grin at him. "Nah. I had counseling, right after the shipwreck. It didn't stick."

He shook his head.

She gestured at the horizon with one hand. "This is all part of a tradition—going back, for most of us, at least three generations. I may have left this life behind, and I may have had some bad experiences out here, but I'm discovering that it's still a part of who I am."

He couldn't deny what she was saying—his brothers who fished back East felt the same way. They faced harsh conditions, but nothing like this. "Why not dock the trawler somewhere farther down the coast?"

"All the good mooring basins have river bars." She paused to listen to the radio for a minute, then continued, "Other than the fish processing in Coos Bay, the buyers are all right here in Astoria. The river bar is an inconvenience—" she rolled her eyes at the understatement—"but it's a fact of life."

"And death."

"Yeah." She pushed the trawler up and over another vertical wall of water. "Gary has always said that you have to be lucky, each and every day you're out here. Because if you aren't, all the skill in the world won't make any difference."

She fell silent, her face unaccountably sad.

Michael's family had been lucky—they hadn't lost anyone in more than fifty years. But he'd seen the effects of such tragedies on the other fishing families back East. He'd always been in awe of their acceptance of the hardships they put up with, year after year.

The waves suddenly lessened in intensity, and the rough water changed texture. They'd left the river bar behind and entered the Pacific. Kaz's shoulders visibly relaxed, and she turned to him with a slight smile that was perhaps a peace offering. "We've got about 45 minutes 'til we reach the pots. Let's use it to get warmed up—it'll be our last chance."

He wanted to touch her, to rub those proud shoulders and soothe the rest of the tension out of them. Looking at her made him ache to help her. But he held back. Instead, he said, "I'll bring you some more coffee—I'm going to wait a bit."

"While you're down there, throw on hip boots and a sou'wester, along with rubber gloves. You don't want your hands icing up when we start lifting the pots."

#

Hugging the coastline, they traveled south until they came to a string of buoys whose colors matched the black and green stripes painted on the sides of the Kasmira B .

The weather, Kaz noted worriedly, was getting nastier. The wind had picked up, and there was considerably more sleet and snow mixed in with the rain. She cut the engines down to a low rumble as they came alongside the first buoy. Then she came out on the deck, dressed in hip boots, pulling on her gloves.

Michael was already kneeling alongside the railing. He glanced up at her. "I'll lift and rebait—you steer the trawler."

She shook her head, moving the hydraulic block that they would use to haul the pots out of the water into position. "It would be better if we had a second crewman, but you're stuck with me. It'll go faster if I help."

They worked in surprisingly companionable silence for the first twenty minutes or so. Michael had slipped easily into the rhythm of the work—lifting the pot while she chopped the frozen bait with a cleaver, working with her to throw back the females and undersized males, then baiting and dropping the pot back into the water, only to repeat the process with the next one down the line. Every so often, she stopped to readjust their position along the lines, then come back out on deck to help.

The catch was looking good, thank God. The business needed the money—this was only their second lift of the season. If production stayed this steady, it might cover some of the repair expenses they'd already incurred. The catch a few days ago had been much lighter; she'd begun to wonder whether she'd have to move her pots to slightly deeper water. They were at twelve fathoms now—a good depth in most years.

She glanced sideways at Michael. He was working steadily and not saying much, evidently content with the screech of the gulls, the lap of the water against the hull, and the sound of the wind. They were both icing up from the freezing spray and sleet, though, and would need to take a break soon.

He was good. Almost as good as Bjorn's son. And they were progressing much faster than she could on her own.

She'd never felt this kind of easy companionship with Phil, not in the three years they'd been together. She'd always had to struggle, to concentrate on making the relationship work. With Michael, though, everything felt natural. She was starting to depend on him, look forward to the time they spent together. And that was very scary indeed.

It was becoming harder and harder to lie to him, even through omission. He'd been right when he'd told her that she'd have to trust someone. She came to a decision. Once they were back in port, she'd sit down and level with him. Tell him everything.

She stopped chopping bait to listen to the chatter on the radio for a minute. The fishermen had been talking continuously for the last half hour, joking with each other, reporting fake locations meant to confuse the larger, commercial trawlers who might horn in on their catch, and generally keeping each other company. She recognized almost all of the voices—Svensen's, Bjorn's, those of Jacobsen's crew, and others. Svensen was nattering on about something having to do with too many dogfish in his net when she stopped what she was doing to stare intently at the radio.

Michael straightened from throwing crabs over the side. "What?"

She listened for another few moments and then shook her head, perplexed. "Nothing, I guess. It's just that Svensen gave out a location that wouldn't fool anyone—it's too close in to shore. I thought he was smarter than that."

"Maybe not. How well do you know him?"

She shrugged. "We grew up together, but I'm not all that fond of his type."

"Type?"

"The kind of fisherman who only gets into the business for the money," she explained. "He fell into an inheritance, bought up several trawlers from folks who'd tried their hand at fishing and had failed, and put a lot of crews behind hauling big catches, fast. Make the money and get out—that's his attitude. Guys like him don't last through the lean years, because they fail to meet their expected profit margin and there's no love of the work to see them through. From what I hear, no one expected him to make it this long."

"What about the other guy you were talking to earlier?"