Ike Moseek sniffed at the gust, hunting for the waft of Chinook in the Big's breeze. He cast again, thirty yards out into the current, hopeful. As a Quaish, Ike had rights to run nets on the Big, but he preferred to cast on the shore from the bench beneath the Upriver Bridge. It was the social part he liked, elbow to elbow with neighbors, talking salty, telling jokes, ribbing, sharing wise cracks. Brotherhood.
Ike sniffed again. Beside him sat Pete Petrovich, who sat staring into the water. "Gee, Ike, you have the sniffles?"
"Naw," he replied. "Just trying to find cousin salmon. I'm starting to feel it, P.P. They're getting closer, way up past Panther Creek, getting closer."
"I sure hope so, Ike."
"Trust me, boy. They'll be here before you finish your Thermos."
Pete continued to feel the mesmerizing power of the current on his eyes and breeze upon his skin. He thought on the agenda of the next week's council meeting, catching wind of a couple bits of trouble. One of P.P.'s responsibilities was refuse and recycling.
It had been a long-standing policy not to recycle glass, for the weight, for the added labor, and in reality, for tradition. "Stupid, myopic tradition," he thought. P.P. would be seeking a motion to recycle glass and to sort by brown, green, and clear. He knew the city workers would resent it, feeling he was the wet-nosed officer among noncoms, and that inevitable confrontation bothered him. He also overlooked the operations at the cemetery, and Sheila Berry was pressuring him to install security cameras as a means of proactively fighting vandalism, especially the rash of graffiti that had sprung up during the summer.
For Pete, for all those assembled on the bench, angling was the antidote to the rest of the world. There was the subsistence aspect, of course, but here his cares blew off in the breeze. City politics. He liked his fellow councilors all just fine, but each brought a separate style, a separate perspective, and often these were troublesome.
Pete imagined the smell of the salmon on the barbecue, could sense the lemon, the thyme, the dill, the cracked pepper, all complementing. He puckered his lips, thinking, "Why can't politics be like cooking?" Then he chuckled, remembering the idiom of too many cooks spoiling the broth. Pete found himself nodding. It was easy to speak of the ideals of democracy if one had never been publicly elected to serve constituents. If one had, surely there was a moment when he or she dreamt fondly of the benefits of authoritarian rule, of a dictatorship, benevolent, perhaps, but certainly more streamlined, more efficient than meeting after meeting after meeting.
Pete's attention drew to the passing train, it's soothing cadence, and his nodding grew to a kind of rocking.
Ike nudged P.P.
"They're just about here, buster! Brace yourself!" Then Ike heard the train approaching from the west across the Big. Its rhythm on the tracks spoke to him, "bump bump, bump bump," and he thought back to the powwow he had just returned from in Lapwai. "Oh, those fancy dancers," he mused silently. That made him reflect on his childhood gatherings at the Isle of the Craggies. He heard the drumming of his uncles, "bump bump, bump bump." He could smell the berries drying against the log, could smell the smoked salmon.
"Ike!"
Pete elbowed Ike, whose pole dipped low toward the lapping water.
"Your cousins have come a calling!"
Pete's pole then jerked in his grip, and he yanked back, setting the hook. The men laughed, beginning the joyful work of reeling in the fish.
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