“Striker there!” yelled Joe from the stern and we looked up from the net to see a flashing tail thrash at the cork line as a fresh salmon slammed into the wall of the net. I cheered.
Another fish jumped south of the net, and I wondered as it leaped again, driving toward our net, and it rammed in splashing and thrashing. “Striker!” I cried, but the fish was small and squirted through to jump again north of the net.
“Just a stupid humpy,” sneered Joe.
“How do you know?”
“Humpies almost always squirt through. They’re like you, too small to be worth anything.”
“All fish are money fish, Joe,” Dad said, “even little pinks. Just like Sam here. He’s kind of a humpy.” He tousled my hair and laughed. He called me “Humpy” all summer. Then everybody did.
Humpy Barger, a good name for a salmon fisherman, I figured. No one else in the family had a nickname; I treasured it as my father’s gift. I would be like I remembered him, standing spraddle-legged in the boat with sleeves cut off at the elbows and the patched rain pants hanging down over rubber boots. A scruffy beard, the battered dory, and the magic smell of the salmon summer I wouldn’t have because my boat was empty.
Leaving the beach was the first step in letting myself leave this place on Cook Inlet, these people in their log cabins and trailer houses, these woods full of mystery. The town I was leaving wasn’t really a town at all. A person driving through Ninilchik would see a gas station, a café, and a couple of churches. The houses were strung out along the highway or hidden on bad back roads too muddy to drive much of the time in the spring.
There were people there too, people with names and lives mixed with mine, kids I’d been babies with, like we were hairs on the same head. I knew people’s trucks and jeeps and carryalls; I knew their skiffs and winter coats, which men smoked Camels or rolled their own Prince Albert, who made the best sticky buns and the worst pie. All these important things wouldn’t matter any more. Even Becky.
Becky was the only girl in my class that looked like she might be a woman someday. All the others were gawky little girls with silly faces and skinny legs. But Becky filled out her jeans, and her sweaters didn’t lie flat on her chest. Right after Christmas I got to sit by her during a movie about Holland.
“I wish I had a coat like that,” I said, pointing to a boy in a blue short jacket like the kid on the paint cans.
“You’d be so cute,” she teased.
We giggled and she touched my arm. With this kind of encouragement I began to perform. I named each strange character after someone in town. It was the best of my eighth grade antics, and sitting with Becky in the near dark was close to total perfection. After that day she sat by me during school movies and gave me secret glances in class. She let me give her a piece of ivory that I found on the beach, and she wore it around her neck on a chain.
When Dad died and I came back to school with that everybody’s-looking-at-me feeling, she acted normal as ever. She and Harry Munson were the ones who just treated me the same as ever. Harry was either my best friend or worst enemy depending on the day, or even the time of day.
Harry was born and raised in Ninilchik but had some magic that made it seem that he was from somewhere else, somewhere far away enough to be unreal, somewhere like Seattle or California. He was tall and athletic with natural waves to his hair, and he kept it combed like a high schooler. His clothes were from the catalog, not homemade or hand-me-downs, and he wore loafers.
Harry and I invented the game “Run the Gauntlet,” which made us leaders in the school, and we tended to swagger. Run the Gauntlet was a reenactment of the challenge used by the Iroquois and Huron Indians in my late night readings. The captured warrior was given a chance of freedom by running between lines of angry people armed with fists, clubs, and feet. The warrior had only to reach the end of the brutal lines and run to freedom. It seemed the perfect game for us middle schoolers.
We were playing our daily version of the game and I was the captured warrior. I dashed at the narrow opening in the line, knocking down two seventh graders right at the start. Bart and Jimmy scored good hits on my back. I was twisting and dodging my way to daylight when Harry stretched out a long leg and tripped me. I went down hard in the packed snow. The laughter and jeers were part of the game. When Harry leaned down to help me up, I saw Becky laughing with the others.
“By the way,” Harry said, “did I tell you Becky was at church last night? We held hands all through Pastor Peterson’s slide show about his trip to Jerusalem.”
The truth of it didn’t matter to me, or him. Saying it, imagining it, was enough. I came up swinging and caught Harry by surprise with a fist in the stomach. He nearly fell and I pranced in front of him with my fists raised. “Come on, you liar!” I snarled. He stuck out his chin and charged.
“Liar? Nobody calls me that.”
Any friendship between us melted into rage. We pushed and thumped and slugged until we were both dirty and out of breath. Finally I threw one lucky punch that caught my best friend in the nose and drew blood. Our classmates were whooping and yelling then were silent. Only then did I realize that the other kids were running for school and the principal was running for us.
“I know losing a father is tough on a boy,” said Mr. Morris, the fat principal, staring at me over his eyeglasses from behind his metal desk, “but you’ve got to learn to sit on that anger and let things pass. I know these are rough times, with your dad gone and all, but look at you, brawling with one of your pals like this.”
I looked at him confused and irritated, and my jutting lower lip probably showed it. What did my fight with Harry have to do with Dad?
He turned to Harry. “Mr. Munson, I’d appreciate it if you would show some consideration for a grieving friend. You have got to understand that Sam needs us, each and every one of the people in his life, to help him through this. He has enough challenges right now.”
Neither of us was sure what he was talking about, but it was obvious that we weren’t getting in trouble. Mr. Morris shook his head in surrender and waved a tired hand.
“Go on now, get back to class, and let’s have no more of this.”
That afternoon we had another movie in class: Barges in the Rhine.
“Did you get in trouble?” Becky whispered, leaning close so I could feel her hair brush my arm.
“No, but no thanks to you.”
“Me? What did I do?” We both jerked around when Mr. Scott paused mid-sentence and everyone stared right at us.
The dreary monologue about hauling coal and wheat through Europe continued. “Harry told me,” I hissed.
“Told you what?”
“About last night. You sitting with him at church.”
“So!”
I waited a full three slide frames before I delivered the crushing blow. “That’s why I hit him.”
Fighting with Harry got me through that last couple of months. Hardly a day went by that we didn’t have some kind of shoving match, and sometimes they turned to full-blown fistfights. Of course, he said he won most of the fights, but Becky didn’t give back the piece of ivory, and she didn’t sit by him during any of the movies.
Mr. Morris did a lot of coddling, patting me on the back and letting me off easy when I acted up in class. One time he held me in class during recess. He sat on the edge of the desk and