Maybe an inch taller than Kate, with broad shoulders and arms roped with muscle, Tim was flushed with pleasure and triumph and had fish scales caught in his eyebrows. "Am I first up?"

"I don't see any other fish in our hold," Kate said.

He peered down the open hatch. "No shit?"

Kate grinned. "No shit."

An answering grin split his face, clear-skinned and topped with straight brown hair that flopped into his eyes. For just a moment Kate allowed herself to fall in love with his cleanlimbed youth, his obvious ability, his sturdy self-sufficiency and his joy in his work. "Come on," she said, slapping his shoulder. "Let's pitch us some fish."

The boom swung over the side, and Kate let out enough line to lower the brailer, a wide tube of netting suspended from a circle of steel, to the deck of the Esther. Tim donned rubber gloves and stooped to pitch fish into the brailer until it was full, when Kate swung the boom back over the gunnel and centered the brailer over the Freyas open hold. She recorded the weight of the fish from the scale attached to the boom (an innovation for the old girl; thanks to her antediluvian skipper, the Freya was moving into the twentieth century just as the century itself was moving out), tugged on another line, and the bottom of the brailer opened up and salmon cascaded into the Freyas hold in a silver stream, redeemable on shore for groceries and school clothes and rent and boat payments.

There was a shout to port when Tim, dizzy with delight at the final count, went into the galley to get Sam to write up his fish ticket. Kate looked around to see Yuri Andreev and the Terra Jean warp alongside. Yuri had evidently managed to catch a few fish in spite of not being able to cork Joe Anahonak.

It was late for kings, but the Esther had brought in three and the Terra Jean five, so Kate limbered up the small scale and weighed each individually, reporting the results to Old Sam, ensconced in bleak formality at one end of the galley table. Tim was seated a respectful distance down the bench, the four aunties between, sitting like little brown birds in a row, steaming coffee mugs in their hands, eyes bright and inquiring.

Old Sam never joked with the fishermen as they came aboard to deliver; he'd spent seventy-five summers fishing and tendering on the waters of Prince William Sound and he took the business seriously, as seriously as he took his reputation for fair dealing. If Old Sam wrote a fish ticket that reported Tim Sarakovikoff had delivered five thousand pounds of reds to his, Sam's, hold, then by God there were five thousand pounds of reds with Tim's brand on them to be delivered to Kamaishi Seafoods in Cordova, the same five thousand pounds for which Tim would be paid hard cash money at the going rate per pound at time of delivery when he got back to town, or at the end of the season, whichever he preferred.