It didn’t matter if a customer hired a first-year guide or someone as skilled and practised as Lucky Petersen, the cost of going out in a guide boat was always the same. Sure, it helped to know who to ask for, and some people had been coming so long, they reserved the guide they wanted, but the resorts all charged the same amount. It was perhaps the most democratic thing about the whole place. It drove Troutbreath just a little crazy. He didn’t want to undercut the competition; he wasn’t that kind of guy. But he knew for a fact that people would pay almost anything for a chance to go out with Lucky any day of the week. Why not maximize the earning potential?
This was becoming even more of a problem with Gilly. The word was out. The women had been coming back to the dock, day after day for most of the summer, with more fish than most of the men. The men were finally beginning to catch on. Going out fishing with the “cabin girl” had become something to brag about. Gilly was turning into a rare and desirable commodity. Unfortunately, unlike the herring swimming around in the reserve box, there was only one of her.
Her notoriety finally caught the attention of Heck Tydesco. It was only a matter of time before he wanted to be seen out fishing with “That Cabin Girl.” Troutbreath turned him down at first; Gilly was already fully booked, after all. Heck simply offered her next clients a trip up to see the glacier in his helicopter and suddenly she was free that day.
Gilly was in the Near Side again, with Heck in the boat. It was just the two of them that morning. He had her all to himself and no doubt was looking forward to letting everyone know. The Near Side was still producing some great fishing and after the incident with Herbert Crane, no one but fishing guides went there. It was a big ebb tide that day, and as the velocity of the current began to build, people started leaving the hole with a fish on.
Then I saw Heck hook into something, and he and Gilly left the back eddy and quickly followed some monster into the main channel. His rod was bent over double and Gilly moved beside him to let the drag off a little. She expertly steered them through the whirlpools that formed, the rod bouncing and whipping this way and that as the salmon tried to shake out the hooks.
From where I sat, it looked like the fish wanted to sound, to get onto the bottom of the channel where it could sit and sulk. I knew this could be dangerous. The fish might snag and break the line on the rocks around it. Gilly got up again to tighten the drag right down and try to force the fish to come up. With so much line out, the line had enough stretch that just pulling on it wouldn’t cause it to break. Gilly’s boat was soon almost out of sight as they worked the fish.
A little while later I left the Near Side to head back for lunch. On the way I saw Gilly and Heck still out in the middle of the passage. The water there was much calmer and they drifted with the tide. They were both looking down at something on the floor of her boat. Curious, I took my guests over to have a look. I was sure we would see a tyee.
I pulled alongside. It was a big fish all right. Judging from the head, it must have been close to fifty pounds. But that’s all I had to go by: the complete head of a very big salmon, plus a backbone and ribs and a huge tail. The backbone spanned the width of the boat, and the ribs stuck up into the air. It looked like all the flesh had been stripped away with a big melon baller. At the edges of flesh on the head and tail were round bite marks, evidence of a school of dogfish.
Heck sat staring in disbelief.
“Ain’t that the goddamnedest thing you’ve ever seen, Dave? Look what they did to my beautiful fish. Gilly, she put me on a good one, but I just couldn’t get it in the boat for her. She did everythin’ she could. She was hitting the butt of the rod and we were pulling but them damn dogfish, there was just too many of them. We couldn’t get it up, Dave, we just couldn’t get it to come up.”
His voice trailed off, choked with emotion. Tears welled up in his eyes as he looked down at the ruin that was his tyee.
Gilly wasn’t mad about losing the fish, and she didn’t blame the guest, as many guides might. Neither was she frozen and tight-lipped, not knowing what to do or say in the presence of such raw emotion. Instead, Gilly regarded him with a depth of compassion I had never seen on the face of a guide before.
It occurred to me that for Heck right now, Gilly was the best guide he could have. On top of all her experience with fishing and knowledge of these waters, she brought her own unique set of skills to the job. Of all the guides on the water around Stuart Island that day, she was the only one with any experience being someone’s mother.
Gilly sat and waited as Heck wrestled with unfamiliar emotions, letting her boat drift in the current. There was something soothing about the rocking motion of the boat moving gently in the current. Gilly must have used this on her own child. She noticed as this understanding slowly took shape for me. She smiled and gave a nod, as if to say, yeah, it’s okay, I’ve got this.
I let my boat slip quietly away and left them on their own.