"Real good," Old Sam said.

As if to corroborate his judgment, they heard a whoop off to port. Pete Petersen on the Monica had just hauled in what looked like a seventy-five-pound king, which was selling delivered to the cannery for three dollars a pound.

Kate looked at Old Sam. "We're going to need this deck pretty soon."

Old Sam nodded. "Get the knives."

Kate went to the focsle. A storage area formed where the bow came to a point, the focsle served as food locker, parts store, tool crib and junk drawer. It was black as pitch inside, and Kate held the door open with one hand while she fumbled with the other for the flashlight hanging from a nail on the bulkhead to the right. The focsle was so crammed that the flashlight didn't help much; she scraped her shin on a crate of eggs, caught her toe on a small cardboard box full of dusty brass doorknobs and snagged her braid on a bundle of halibut hooks before she found the sliming knives.

They were broad, sharp blades with white plastic handles, and when she brought them out on deck they got down to the almost mutually exclusive jobs of butchering out the halibut and salvaging Doug and Jim's gear. The four old women pitched in next to them, each producing her own personal knife in a gesture that reminded Kate irresistibly of the rumble between the Sharks and the Jets. The aunties' knives had long, slender, wickedly sharp blades with handles carved variously of wood, bone and antler, with which they outbutchered even Old Sam, who had only been doing this for a living for sixty years.

To everyone's surprise and to Jim's ebullient relief, the gear was in better shape than it had looked with the halibut caught in it. Doug said nothing as his brown, callused hands measured the gaping holes that would have to be mended before they could fish again. It wasn't like there was a net loft up on the nearest beach, either. Kate remembered that his wife, Loralee, had had a baby six months before, a Christmas baby named Eddie, a chuckling, fair-haired child with enormous blue eyes like his mother's and a jaw squared with a lick of his father's stubborn.

Doug must have felt the weight of her gaze and looked up, eyes narrowing on her face. Kate, who had a lively sense of self-preservation, refrained from offering sympathy. Doug would have taken it for pity and as a matter of pride refused any offer of further help, and if Kate knew her aunties, an offer of help was forthcoming.

Next to her Auntie Vi spoke. "You got needles and twine?"

Doug's gaze moved from the young woman to the older one. "What?"

Patiently, Auntie Vi repeated, "You got needles? You got twine?" He said nothing and even more patiently she said, "To mend your gear?" She gestured at the other women. "My sisters and me, you got needles and twine, we help mend." She waited.