Leaving Protection by Will Hobbs Read Free Book Online Page B

Incan wall.
    My boss noticed I was admiring the view. “No finer cape in Alaska,” he grunted, “unless it’s Edgecumbe, north of Sitka. Addington and Edgecumbe were both named by Captain Cook. Did you know that?”
    â€œI didn’t,” I admitted.
    â€œSeems like somebody who might be a teacher in southeast Alaska would at least be interested in the history.”
    â€œI am,” I protested. I thought of that Russian plaque of his. I was way interested in that piece of history.
    We managed to boat a few more fish. Just as I flopped a big king into the bin, I looked up and there was the Julie Kristine right across from us. And there she was, Julie Kristine herself, waving just like she’d said she would, then pumping her fist up and down to show she was excited about me landing fish. Her son, Bear, was doing the same. Her father, as big a man as Torsen, was a blur of motion on the far side of the cockpit, gaffing a king.
    I waved back, and hollered so loud they might have even heard me.
    Tor just stared as he popped his pain pills and washed them down.
    I missed being on a family boat. No question, they were having a lot more fun.
    Eight P.M. and the Storm Petrel was still on the drag, even though the fishing had gone completely dead. I sat at the wheelhouse table looking over the bow, and Torsen sat in his captain’s chair behind the wheel, staring straight ahead. I could pretty well guess what he was thinking. His back hadn’t seized up on him, and if it wasn’t going to, hiring me had been a mistake. I was like a weed in a perfect garden, just an annoyance. Every time he turned around, I was right there.
    The Storm Petrel was a bigger boat than my family’s, but it sure felt smaller. And this was only our second day.
    Tor studied a pink booklet, the tide tables, while glancing occasionally to the bow. From inside the wheelhouse of a troller, the fishing is easily monitored even though you can’t see the trolling poles. There are ropes rigged from the poles down to bungee cords that connect to the bow with little bells attached. When you’ve got fish on, the bungees jump and the bells ring.
    These tattletales, as they’re called, had nothing more to tell that day. Dusk found us anchoring in Steamboat Bay, around the north point of Noyes Island. Torsen,back on his regular schedule, was asleep by nine-thirty. I stayed up only a few minutes longer to tabulate my earnings for the day, about seventy-five dollars.
    On our third day the early bite off of Addington was promising, with Tor landing fish in a dense fog. I felt vindicated: he wouldn’t have been able to fish at all without a deckhand in the wheelhouse to watch the radar monitor. I also did the steering, from the captain’s chair, avoiding phantom boats that were close but invisible.
    The fog lifted late morning. With the tide out, the fishing was worse than poor. Tor was back in his captain’s chair, rubbing his beard and staring over the bow. Something about his expression reminded me of an Irish lord, a spiny rockfish that scares off predators with its looks.
    I killed the downtime reading one of his Alaska books.
    If I could have charted Tor’s moods, it would have been one crazy graph. Over lunch, to my surprise, he started talking about himself and his family. He was born in Bella Coola, British Columbia, a fishing community founded by Norwegian immigrants. “It looks exactly like a fjord in Norway,” Tor said fondly. “Huge cliffs and hanging waterfalls above the valley floor. Better than Norway on account of the gigantic red cedars.”
    Tor still had two sisters living there, and a third who had moved to Florida. “Were you ever married?” I asked.
    â€œYes,” he said slowly. “Her name was Marie. Her folks had moved up to Bella Coola from Washington State when she was a couple years out of high school. Bought the town’s only general store. I used