She called off the numbers and he took them down. "Well, come on in then, Mr."

"Meany," the man said. "Calvin Meany."

"And don't forget your goddam permit card like the last three assholes pretending to be fishermen who came on board," Old Sam growled.

Meany walked aft to the galley door, reaching in his back pocket for his wallet. Auntie Joy was standing in front of the door. He paused, looking down at her. "Have you given any more thought to my proposition, Joyce? We could make a lot of money together, you and me."

Auntie Joy stepped to one side without answering. He shrugged. "Think it over. It's the right thing to do, for both of us." He opened the door and stepped inside.

Kate looked from the closed door to her aunt. "What was all that about?"

Auntie Joy looked at her and through her. "Nothing."

"Nothing? What do you mean, nothing? What's that guy talking about, the two of you making money together? How did you meet him? What does he want?"

"Nothing," Auntie Joy said again, her voice as stony as her face. She turned as if to go back in the galley, hesitated and then walked around Kate to climb up into the bow. Mutt watched her go by, and then padded after her, sitting down to lean her shoulder against Auntie Joy's knee. A worn, gnarled hand came down to rest on the dog's head.

Kate looked from them to the drifter. The boy was hauling buckets of water up over the side and splashing them over the deck of the drifter. He raised his head to find Kate watching him. His mouth set in a thin line. "What are you looking at?"

The Joanna C. pulled up to the Freyas starboard side and Kate was spared the necessity of a reply.

The fishing period was over at six sharp that evening. They took their last delivery at seven-thirty, the rest of the boats hauling their last loads into Cordova themselves. The Freya's galley menu offered up deep-fried beer-batter halibut cheeks at ten o'clock that night. The heart of the great fish was still beating on the railing, a dull red, humping lump of flesh in the slanting rays of the sun, single-minded, single-purposed, inexorable, as the four old women clambered down into their dory and set off for the mouth of Amartuq Creek.

They weighed anchor and were in Cordova by one a.m. Kate and Sam donned boots and rain gear to climb into the hold with three members of the cannery's beach gang, there to fill the brailer lowered by boom from the cannery dock. One brailer at a time, they emptied the hold, and when the last fish had gone and the hold had been hosed down and the hatch covers replaced and the Freya had been refueled and moved to her slip in the small boat harbor, the heart beat on beneath the rays of the rising sun. Fishermen and beach gang and fuelers alike were awed by it, by the sheer force of nature it personified. They moved around it, careful not to touch it, speaking in whispers.