COLLEGE KIDS

A number of years ago my wife Barbara and I sold our house, bought a motor home and hit the road. We worked our way slowly up the Pacific coast visiting friends, sightseeing and hanging out. It was July by the time we reached Washington and the silver salmon were running near the mouth of the Columbia. We holed up in a spartan campground near Ilwaco on the Washington side of  the river and I got outfitted with barrel bobbers, snelled hooks and frozen herring at a local tackle shop. The next day I caught a nice coho fishing off the large boulders of the Ilwaco jetty.

A week later  near the Canadian border I figured to get some final use out of my Washington state angler's license. Maybe slide our new canoe into one of the bays and pick up another salmon. So in the little town of Blaine I went looking for information at the only facsimile of a sporting goods store around, the Coast to Coast Hardware.

There was no one in the tackle section. No men around at all. Just two older women working on a Weed-Eater display. One was on an aluminum step-ladder struggling to hang the machine by heavy mono-filiment fishing line. I sidled up to her ladder.

"Excuse me, would you have any idea how the fishing has been?"

"Blanche?" she hollered over her shoulder.

Blanche reappeared from the storage room with a long handled framing hammer.

"Blanche, how's fishing been?"

Blanche passed the hammer up to Marge and sized me up. "What are you after?" She stepped right next to me as if trying to guess by my scent.

"Salmon, steelhead, sea run cutthroats. Whatever's in," I said backing away.

"Slow." She motioned for Marge to move her nail our farther and triangulate the suspension.

"They must be catching something," I prodded.

"There might be a few but it's slow. Real slow. Been slow all year."

"Well, what have they been using?"

"I don't think much of anything's been working, eh Marge?"

"How's this look?" Marge held the line out. Leaning. Precarious. I found myself holding onto the ladder.

"Fine," Blanche said. Then she turned back to me with a look that suggested only a peevish discussion could follow.

I pressed ahead. "Are there other tackle shops in town? Maybe someone's heard how it's been in the last few days." Suddenly the ladder flexed. Marge lashed out awkwardly with the long handled hammer, fanning on the nail and punching a clean hole in the ceiling. Drywall dust and chipped paint settled on my arm.

"Damn!"

"Don't worry about it. Try closer in"

Marge fished another nail from her teeth, held it at a comfortable distance and set it with a single temperate blow.

"Marge, anyone down to the marina know about fishing since Dave Gundarson's laid up?"

"Dave Gundarson? There's a human tragedy." Marge climbed down the ladder. She was older than I'd thought and her lipstick, Senior Citizen Red, scrawled two fantastic arches above her mouth like some garish entry to a 1940's tunnel of love. "Crabbing out on Lou Myrek's boat," she said out of the tunnel. "Some college kid on the winch. Didn't catch Dave 'til he was halfway through the pulley. Damn kid was probably asleep. Or even drunk."

"A real shame," Blanche said.

"Dave never got right."

"No, he's not right yet."

"College kids!"

"Mind or body."

"Like a crab himself now."

"Yes. All hunched over on that broken side."

"Don't blame him for drinking."

"I can't blame him."

"A real pity though. Never missed a day's work in all his life."

"Wife and kids run off to Texas. Back to her family, I guess."

"Never missed a day and never complained."

"Anyway, she couldn't stand it. And the two boys just barely along in grammar school."

"College kids!"

"No one deserves that. She should have stuck with her man."

"Come up on vacation with their daddies and think it'd be a lark to crew a boat."

Blanche looked at Marge. "Don't any of 'em know work or responsibility."

"Had it all handed."

"Hook, line and sinker."

"And bait."

"Especially bait."

The Weed-Eater hung there green and shiny and ready for action. It seemed out of  place in that rugged rural community with few lawns. The forest pushed right up to where salt grass and sand dunes meet the ocean. I thanked the ladies and headed out of the store. Blanche followed me. At the door I turned to nod goodbye.

"It's been slow here," she said in a distant thoughtful way. "Real slow."