Our Love Will Go the Way of the Salmon by Cameron Pierce Read Free Book Online Page A

he let them buy what they needed anyhow. After all, he was awake and if he turned them away, they would just wait out in the parking lot until opening hour.
    Never in his thirty-seven years running the bait shop had anyone ever barged in before six with a fresh catch to show him. At that hour, the night fishermen were heading home, too exhausted to pay Doug a visit, although they’d later bring in photos of any notable catches to tack on the bait shop walls. Most other diehard fishermen had either launched their boats by six or else they were swinging by Doug’s to pick up some essential item before hitting the water. This young man, with his claims of an extraordinary catch, had piqued Doug’s interest. He was probably some out-of-towner who’d caught a big sturgeon.
    Doug sipped his coffee and approached the Dodge truck where the man stood, waving him over with frantic gestures.
    “Well, what’ve you got?” Doug said.
    The kid lifted the lid on a big red ice chest and Doug peered inside. The cigarette fell from his mouth when he saw what was in there. A blue-eyed fish with human-like arms and legs, a mouth full of jagged teeth like a shark’s, and a crimson dorsal fin that looked as if it were meant to cut through steel.
    “Thought you’d want a look,” the kid said.
    “Where in hell did you catch this?”
    “The Harbor. Between Burnside and Steel Bridge. That hole where the water drops to ninety feet. I was fishing for sturgeon off the floating walkway there, the Esplanade.”
    Night fishing for sturgeon was prohibited but never mind that. This was one weird-ass fish.
    “So what do you think,” the man said.
    Doug lit another cigarette and studied the young man, seeking any sign of a ruse, but the kid appeared to be telling the truth. He’d caught a weird-ass fish and he’d taken it to Doug. That was the beginning and the end of his story.
    “So…”
    “Odds are, this thing is one of a kind. Just another superfund mutation. Then again, maybe not. Maybe there’s more of them. So we’re gonna go inside and call ODFW. They won’t open for another couple hours and it likely won’t be a couple hours after that before an officer swings by. In the meantime, you’re gonna take me out and show me exactly how you caught this thing.”
    The kid looked like a deer in the headlights. “I ain’t going out there again. I told you where I caught it. I’ll give you the rest of my bait if you want. I was just fishing a whole squid off the bottom, the way I always do for sturgeon. Nothing different.” He shook his head insistently. “I’m done fishing that goddamn river.” He pointed to the creature in the ice chest. “When I pulled it up—it spoke.”
    “What do you mean it spoke?”
    “Before I bonked it, the damned thing spoke to me.”
    Doug scoffed, lit another cigarette.
    And then, as if on cue, the creature raised its head from the bed of ice and spoke in perfect English.
    Doug felt a hand on his elbow and he knew it belonged to the fish.
    The fish with hands.
    “Excuse me, sir?” So it was a polite fish. “Sir, are you all right?”
    The young man was talking. The fish remained lifeless in the ice chest. Doug slammed the lid down and flipped the latch, sick of looking at the hideous thing.
    “Are you okay?” the kid said.
    “I’m fine,” Doug said, forcing a distant grin. The pain splintered his left arm like lightning, spreading up into his neck. His heart felt like it lay outside his chest, heavy as if ready to give birth, and the air surrounding it was made of pins and needles. His knees went wobbly. “Better call an ambulance,” he said.
    As he plummeted to the cold gravel, he felt certain he caught a glimpse of the creature popping out of the ice chest like a jack in the box.
    It’s not so bad , he thought. Whether he referred to death, or the fish, or the pain within, he did not know.
     
     
     
    After the pain broke, Doug found himself as someone else. He was driving on a strange