My father held the unspoken version of this story along the bridge of his shoulders: This is how we face and cast to the river — at angles. This is how we court uncertainty. Here, he taught patience before violence — to hold, and then to strike. My fingers carry the stiff
memory of knots we tied to keep a 40-lb. King from panicking into the deep current of the stream. Back home, kneeling at the edge of the tub with our kills, he showed the way to fillet a King: slice into the soft alabaster of the pectoral, study the pink-rose notes
from the Pacific, parse waste and bone from flesh. Then, half asleep, he’d put us to bed, sometimes with kisses.