It was nothing. The girl was telling me that she had left her little brother in the Legos store to play while she shopped, and we were laughing about that, and I was trying to get her number until my friend Kid Cab interrupted us and told me that my ride—him and his pristine old Cadillac—was leaving. The girl recognized Kid Cab. I could see it in her frown. She was holding a small shopping bag full of shampoos and body lotions, and she took a step back, called us assholes, flashed some Eighteenth Street shit, and bolted. I thought it was funny, but Kid Cab reminded me she ran with one of Santa Ana’s biggest cliques. One of our rival cliques.
So I forgot about the girl until a month later. I was with my friends in the parking lot of El Curtido. Our stomachs were full and we were just getting into Kid’s car. Around the center aisle a small SUV busted a hard left and came at us. I could see the girl riding shotgun, pointing and smiling like she had while she joked about her little brother. The driver wasn’t letting up and rocketed right into the grill of Kid’s Caddy before we could get out of the parking stall. The impact busted Kid Cab’s head on the wheel. The guys in back got thrown onto the seat, pinning me against the dash. When I looked up through the cracked windshield, I saw the SUV steaming, the inflated airbags like a couple clown cheeks. And I saw that girl and her Eighteenth Street boys running off, flashing signs and middle fingers and big-ass grins.
I wanted to tell Kid I should never have tried talking to her, that I was sorry about his car, but he was unconscious, and I was unable to say anything.
I sat on the picnic table and watched for maluksuks, pointing and asking Go-boy if that was one, or if that was one. He was still in the water, scrubbing the tarp. He wasn’t amused, and I couldn’t seem to find a way to make things right.
“Shouldn’t you count fish?” Go asked.
“That’s a dead one,” I said. “Right? Come on, dude, just tell me.”
Go turned away and went back to scrubbing.
This would keep up all summer. Anytime we were near water I’d ask Go if that fish was a maluksuk, or that fish. He’d say, “You should know.” And then later that summer I’d point at a seagull and ask if that was a maluksuk. A husky leashed to a steel pole in a dog lot. A Lund fishing boat in the river. A rusted bike. Is that one? He’d be trying to fix his AMC wagon and I’d ask him if it was a maluksuk. He’d laugh, say, “Poor.” Say, “For real.” What about that girl? That house? Is this village a maluksuk?
It was rare to hear a boat on a weekday morning. It was still out of sight, getting louder and quieter and louder again as it curled around each bend in the river. Go-boy came to the shore, dropping his waders on the ground and ducking into the kitchen to start organizing in case it was someone important. I climbed the tower.
A flatboat with an old guy and two Native girls pulled up to shore. The guy had gray hair that had been disrupted by the boat ride. His glasses were little bull’s-eyes and he had too much skin around his neck, like a flat tire. He was Mr. Larsen, our boss. He yelled up to me that he needed Go-boy.
One of the girls was wearing big sunglasses and they both looked college-age, intern-age, and full of confidence and self-respect.
Go came out of the kitchen and the girl without sunglasses said, “Hey, Go.” She smiled. She was sitting behind the boat’s steering wheel, holding both hands at twelve o’clock. Go smiled. It was Valerie—his girl.
“I have . . . wait,” Go said and disappeared.
Mr. Larsen put Go’s waders on.
Go-boy came out of the kitchen with the ulu he’d made and walked to the edge of the water, leaned forward over the bow of the boat, and handed it to Valerie. She smiled, said, “For me?”
“I need you in the river,” Mr. Larsen said.
The girl with Valerie said the ulu was the coolest ever.
“Quyaana,” Valerie said as Go put waders on.
Go-boy and Mr. Larsen went stomping through the river, carrying baby-food jars labeled with strips of magic tape. I watched them from the tower. They were taking samples from the deep water and samples from the shallow water. Go-boy snuck another look at Valerie as she admired her new ulu, reading the inscription.
The two girls stayed in the boat. They laughed, repeating something a little kid had said. Near the motor was an old cooler with no lid, and inside were three fresh salmon. Traces of blood were smeared along the white walls.
I climbed down the tower and from the embankment said hey to the girls.
Low clouds had moved in above us. The water now looked black. Down our same shoreline, evergreens were tipped out over the river, suspended in this position, still alive, waiting to fall.
The girl nearest to me said, “How you like Unk?”
She was wearing those goggle sunglasses and her black hair was pulled back. They both wore jeans and small retro t-shirts under zip-up hoodies, just like girls back in LA.
“Fine,” I said. “My mom’s an Ayupak. We just moved here from California.”
“I know.”
“Yeah?”
“For real,” she said, and they smiled. “We’re cousins, you and me.”
Valerie snuck another look at Go-boy as he came out of the river. She was holding the ulu, testing the sharp edge against her fingertips. She looked ready to use it, but Go wasn’t catching her glances.
I asked her how he’d gotten the nickname Go-boy.
“He couldn’t pronounce J’s very good when he was little,” Valerie said. “So he couldn’t say his name—Joe. He said Go.”
From the kitchen tent Go-boy yelled to me. I turned and told him to wait so I could hear the rest of the story, but the girls were already talking about something else, and all I could do was leave.
Mr. Larsen was in the kitchen reading through our fish counts. He said the numbers for kings seemed way too low. He said he’d counted more fish from his boat in five minutes than the logs had recorded in three days. He was exaggerating. The salty peanut smell still hung in the open, and the tin can was still spilled under the table. Go-boy gave me a nervous nod. The yellow air had heated from the sun. It was dense and still.
Mr. Larsen sat in front of us with the fish logs—notebook paper inked blue and black. Go was next to me, on one side of a small card table. He was rubbing the top of his forearm, smearing part of the tattoo that the river hadn’t blurred. I was peeling back part of a tear in the table’s vinyl covering. Next to it someone had written, BEING BORED. Mr. Larsen’s circle glasses reflected the pages in front of him.
Larsen said the river was full of fish, yet some of our shifts had recorded next to nothing. It was affecting the total count, which Fish and Game needed to be accurate in order to open and close the commercial season. Mr. Larsen said we were supposed to sign our names on each separate log. He asked, “And how can there be maluksuks already?”
“I lied!” Go said. “I wrote in guesses! I falsified the counts!”
Go-boy talked fast and loud. He talked about late shifts and exhaustion. He talked and talked, and I didn’t think there was any way he could be covering for me—not after I’d skipped a shift—so I was confused.
I said, “Man, there’s maluksuks already.”
I knew Mr. Larsen was talking about my shifts. And Go knew he was talking about my shifts. It was obvious I didn’t know how to count fish, but since neither of us had signed our logs, Mr. Larsen didn’t know who to blame. When Go-boy had trained me he’d said he didn’t believe in each of us writing our name on the fish logs because he thought we were accountable as a group, not as individuals.
“It