Red Salmon

 

 

Red Salmon

 

 

Becky Cassidy wiped the damp hair from her forehead with the back of her latex-gloved hand, grabbed another salmon from the tub to the left of the cutting table, and dropped it in front of her. With a mind-numbing monotony, alleviated to a great extent by her MP3 player and its ear-bud blaring Anya tunes into her head, she deftly sliced the head from the fish with the razor-sharp filet knife and slit it open from stem to stern. Cutting, pulling and cleaning out its entrails, Becky scraped these and the head into the tub to the right of the table. She grabbed the gutted fish by the tail and tossed it into the tub behind her. Almost unconsciously, she reached for another, humming to herself.

Several of Becky’s classmates were heading off to college at the end of their senior year. Others were escaping the confines of their small fishing village and heading to the big city of Portland to seek their fame and fortune. Becky was going nowhere. Her father’s charter fishing business had taken a severe hit during the recession, and their primary income—their salmon fishing catch—had been dwindling yearly. It wasn’t just the competition from the more prominent and better-financed charter and fishing companies but the increasing scarcity of the salmon fields themselves.

Becky had never paid much attention to the heated discussions in school about global warming and climate change. Maybe those things were affecting the salmon population, but all she knew was that there were fewer and fewer of them every year. She prayed that her father wouldn’t have to sell their boat and close his business. Although many of her friends teased her about the drudgery and mindless boredom of the fishing business, Becky didn’t mind at all.

The charter boat had been her father’s life and the lifeblood of their family. Becky’s mother had passed away over five years before, and David Cassidy had taken over dual parenting duties and provided for his daughter as best he could. The recession had forced her father to let the deckhands go, one by one, until only Becky remained to help.

She paused and adjusted the volume on her MP3 player. Their boat, The Jenny Dear, named after their mother, was gently rocking in concert with the waves caressing the marina and their pier. Sometimes Becky couldn’t help but resent having her youth chained to the fishing business. But if the salmon died out—she hung her head in shame, smothering the thought. Her father would be out of business. It was better to pray for something to save the salmon; then, they could hire more help. Cut, slice, gut, monotonously over and over—

The knife’s motion ceased its downward arc, and her mind was forced to emerge from the self-induced autopilot. She stared at the partially filleted salmon before her. Odd, she mused; the salmon was a distinct shade of red. She must be getting tired. Becky was accustomed to pink salmon. But red?

She shook her head in resignation and reached in to pull the innards out. She let out a yelp. “Ouch! What the hell?”

Becky grabbed her hand to see if she was cut but didn’t see any damage to the latex of the glove. With more caution, she opened the slit in the large salmon to get a closer look at the entrails to find out what had poked her. She moved aside a large sac of crimson salmon eggs, which was somewhat of a surprise; the salmon had been producing fewer and fewer eggs, and many of the fish had become sterile.

Using the knife and her fingers, she probed into the entrails. There was a quick hitch in her breathing as she paused and peered closer at the gutted fish. “What the hell?” she repeated. Her eyes grew large, her mouth rounding into an ‘O’ of shock. She took a step back, the knife dropping and clattering to the tabletop. Becky stood staring at the mutilated fish in confusion, failing to hear the footsteps approaching on the wooden pier. Someone was talking to her, but the words hadn’t registered.

Finally, her father’s voice pierced her stunned mind. “Becky, are you okay? What’s the matter? Are you hurt?”

She glanced at her father, who had scaled the ladder on the side of The Jenny Dear, clambered over onto the deck and was looking at her with concern. She turned off her MP-3. “Dad—the salmon—something’s wrong with the fish. I’ve never seen anything….” Her voice trailed off as she stared at the workstation.

Her father looked from her to the table, then walked over to take a closer look. “What do you mean something’s wrong with the fish?”

“Inside, in the guts. But be careful; something poked me. And the salmon is kinda red, and the egg sac—”

Becky’s whiskered, gray-haired father bent over the table, picked up the knife and prodded around inside the fish. After a minute, he stopped, stood and frowned. “Well, I’ll be damned.” Long seconds passed before he looked at her, his expression resigned. “Maybe it’s true, ‘better red than dead,’” he continued his voice a shadow of itself.

“What did you say?” she asked.

“Better red than dead… just an expression,” he mumbled, frowning. “The pacifists used it in the old days of the Cold War… you know, the nuclear arms race between Russia and America back in the 80s. Red was the color/symbol of communism. But that was before communist Russia collapsed in ’91, and it became a moot point. It was somewhat like an ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ thing. No Russia, but it looks like that kind of mentality is back.

He muttered something else unintelligible about school and history before continuing. “I read something about this a while back but had no idea things had gone this far. Look at the size of those egg sacs!” He rummaged in a nearby junk drawer for several seconds before returning with a magnifying glass and tweezers. “Come here, Becky.”

Together they peered into the fish’s innards.

Their heads almost touching, he whispered, “See these almost invisible filaments running here… and here?” He separated several minuscule pieces that resembled spokes, cogs and gears, then something with an almost microscopic blinking green light. “They did it. We’ve screwed up the environment, but they still found a way around it, at least with the salmon. Seems like we’ll be staying in business after all. But at what cost?”

Becky peered through the magnifying glass, her own frown unfolding. Maybe her prayers had been answered, which would save her dad’s business, but she was bothered by her father’s impromptu history lesson. His last question echoed in her mind, “But at what cost...?”

She squinted through the magnifying glass at the nearly illegible words on the tiny cog: “Made in China.”

 

 

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Impressum

Texte: John C. Laird
Bildmaterialien: Public Domain Pictures
Lektorat: Alexandra Laird
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 31.07.2012

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