Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson Read Free Book Online Page A

waters and dropped their nets into the currents salmon swam. The nets hung down like curtains in the dark water and the salmon, unsuspecting, swam into them.
    A gill-netter passed his night hours in silence, rocking on the sea and waiting patiently. It was important that his character be adapted to this, otherwise his chances of success were dubious.At times the salmon ran in such narrow waters that men had to fish for them in sight of one another, in which case arguments brewed. The man who’d been cut off by another man up tide might motor abreast of the interloper in order to shake a gaff at him and curse him up and down as a fish thief. There were, on occasion, shouting matches at sea, but far more often a man was alone all night and had no one, even, to argue with. Some who had tried this lonely sort of life had given up and joined the crews of purse seiners or of long-line halibut schooners. Gradually Anacortes, a town on the mainland, became home to the big boats with crews of four or more, the Amity Harbor fleet home to one-man gill-netters. It was something San Piedro prided itself on, the fact that its men had the courage to fish alone even in inclement weather. An ethic, with time, asserted itself in island souls, that fishing alone was better than fishing other ways, so that the sons of fishermen, when they dreamed at night, dreamed of going forth in their lonely boats and hauling from the sea with their nets large salmon that other men would find impressive.
    Thus on San Piedro the silent-toiling, autonomous gill-netter became the collective image of the good man. He who was too gregarious, who spoke too much and too ardently desired the company of others, their conversation and their laughter, did not have what life required. Only insofar as he struggled successfully with the sea could a man lay claim to his place in things.
    San Piedro men learned to be silent. Occasionally, though, and with enormous relief, they communicated with one another on the docks at dawn. Though tired and still busy, they spoke from deck to deck of what had happened during the night and of things only they could understand. The intimacy of it, the comfort of other voices giving credence to their private myths, prepared them to meet their wives with less distance than they might otherwise bring home after fishing. In short, they were lonely men and products of geography – island men who on occasion recognized that they wished to speak but couldn’t.
    Ishmael Chambers knew, as he approached the knot of mengathered before the Susan Marie, that he was not a part of this fraternity of fishermen, that furthermore he made his living with words and was thus suspect to them. On the other hand he had the advantage of the prominently wounded and of any veteran whose war years are forever a mystery to the uninitiated. These latter were things that solitary gill-netters could appreciate and offset their distrust of a word shaper who sat behind a typewriter all day.
    They nodded at him and with slight alterations in posture included him in their circle. ‘Figure’d you’d a heard by now,’ said the sheriff. ‘Probably know more ’n I do.’
    ‘Hard to believe,’ answered Ishmael.
    William Gjovaag tucked his cigar between his teeth. ‘It happens,’ he grunted. ‘You go fishing, it happens.’
    ‘Well, yeah,’ said Marty Johansson. ‘But Jesus Christ.’ He shook his head and rocked on his heels.
    The sheriff brought his left leg down from the piling, hitched his trousers at the thigh and brought his right up, then settled his elbow on his knees.
    ‘You see Susan Marie?’ asked Ishmael.
    ‘I did,’ said Art. ‘Boy.’
    Three kids,’ said Ishmael. ‘What’s she going to do?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ said the sheriff.
    ‘She say anything?’
    ‘Not a word.’
    ‘Well, what’s she going to say?’ put in William Gjovaag. ‘What can she say? Jesus Christ.’
    Ishmael understood by this that Gjovaag disapproved of journalism.