They begin pulling together slowly, wreathed in the steady pulse of their breath. They can’t see Boo or Jumbo. The net is still heavy against their arms, loaded and bowed out twenty yards from the tip of the island downstream, piled high with riverwashed logs and grown tall with highbush cranberries. The sagging weight pulls Simon’s back out flat above his bent legs as he tries to rein it in. He starts to tip over so he brings his foot up and down ahead to check his tumble. His torso saws back and forth as the net starts to slip back into the current. The whole weight of it is steady and sluggish. Simon and Ned struggle and still the net bends toward the island, where it will be swept into the waterlogged trees and weedy branches.

Simon is desperate. If the net touches the island it will wrap completely around it and they will have nothing. His breath shoots short and wet. In the water he sees the leaded line snaking slowly toward the channel. He picks up his foot and steps on it as his hands scramble for a hold on the top line. It slides steadily under the hard heel of his rubber boots. He wraps the line around his foot and jams it as far down in the mud as he can, cigarette-stomping it deeper and deeper into the river silt.

“What the hell are you doin?” asks Ned.

Simon is about to tell him he is stopping the net when his leg is jerked out from under him and he slaps flat into the water.

Ned pulls back and Simon struggles to his feet and grabs the net again with his hands. He finds the rope and starts pulling hard.

They see Boo and Jumbo coming out of the river fog halfway to shore and Simon pulls, and Ned pulls and the body of the net slowly comes out. They see the first fish. It is a walleye, caught fast, and it flails with its jeweled tail and turns in the stuttering current, pulled sideways for the first time in its life. It twists and bulges against the spidery net, Simon sees eggs sliding from its belly with each spasm. Simon and Ned keep pulling. The net comes easier. With a low whistle Jumbo and Boo drop their end clear of the island and it trails down the current and straightens, listing like a bridal train studded with gigantic Devonian pearls. Jumbo and Boo huff through the shallows and nod at Simon and Ned, and bend to clean the fish from the net and put them in the washtub, which soon rides low and level in the river’s collar.