Spring Tide (2 page)

“Yeah, I know, I know,” Rudy grumbled. “Chicken livers are your favorite.
Been that way for sixty years.”

“Turkey livers are even better, but ain’t no place that sells ’em around here.”

“Then go with the chicken livers,” Rudy concluded, waving the carton under the old man’s nose. Then he nodded at Stef to let her know he had seen her come in.

“I would, but you’re charging three times what they cost in the supermarket. I can get a pint of chicken livers for a dollar fifty at Centro-Mart.”

“That’s because these chicken livers are all ready to go.” He shook the carton again at the old man. “We’ve done all the work already. They’re wrapped in mesh and tied
off,
cut just the right size for your monster cat. Just put them on the hook.”

“I can cut and tie ’em myself and save three dollars if I buy ’em at Centro-Mart,” the old man argued.

“Then buy the damned things at Centro-Mart!”

“I would, but that means going to Stockton, which is
gonna
take me an hour and three gallons of gas round trip and end up costing a whole lot more. And you know I don’t like driving into the city. Why don’t you sell ’em both ways instead of trying to rip off senior citizens on a fixed income? Used to be you could buy just plain chicken livers in here.”

“People want convenience,” Rudy said.

“People are wasteful. Next time you get a batch, just put some aside for me and don’t mess with ’em. And while you’re at it, why don’t you sell turkey livers?”

Stef went through an arched doorway to another room containing at least a dozen large fish tanks. She peered at a school of silvery minnows swimming in unison across the front of one tank. Another had dozens of pale shrimp climbing all over one another.

“I got a solution for you,” Rudy announced. “When Thanksgiving comes around and turkeys are going for ten cents a pound, buy yourself a truckload of them, take out all the livers and freeze them. You’ll be set for the year. Then roast up all the turkeys and invite the whole town over for Thanksgiving.”

“You’re an ornery cuss, you know that, Rudy?”

Rudy shoved the carton of chicken livers at the old man. “Here. Consider that your birthday present. I’ll hold some back whole for you next time. Now get outta here, Dad. I’ve got a real customer.”

The old man grunted and left the store.

“Need some bait?” Rudy asked, walking up to Stef. “I just hope you’re not looking for
turkey livers, that’s
all I got to say.”

She laughed. “No. That was your father?”

“Yeah.
Rudy, Senior. He built this place.
Retired now.
And in all the years he ran this place, he never sold turkey livers.” Rudy grinned and snorted good-naturedly, looking up at her through his turbulent eyebrows. “Now what can I get you?”

“I was told you had Fish and Game maps of the Delta.”

“Yeah, sure.
The whole Delta?
  Is that the one you want, or just this area?”

“The whole Delta, all the way to the San Francisco Bay.”

He chuckled,
then
led her back to the front of the store where he slipped behind the counter. On one end of it was a big plastic jar labeled Ida’s World-Famous Beef Jerky. Stef opened the jar and took a piece out.

Rudy put a map on the counter. “That’s the one. Shows every river and all the feeders, all the navigable sloughs and cuts, location of gas pumps, pump-out stations, marinas, stores, everything you wanna know.” He opened the map and spread it out between them. “Here we are right here.” He pointed to the town of Stillwater Bay, situated in the middle of dozens of snaking blue lines.
“Head west from here on the Sacramento River.
On to Suisun Bay, then you sail right into San Francisco Bay. That’s the direct route. You’ll be there tomorrow.”

Stef ripped off a bite of the jerky with her teeth. It was moist, tangy and peppery.

“Or you can wind your way through all these little channels,” Rudy said, tracing small blue waterways with his index finger, “find some hidden fishing holes, and maybe make it to the Bay in five years.”

She nodded appreciatively.
“How much?”

“Six dollars.
And a dollar for the jerky.”

“This is good. I’ll take another.” She handed him the money and helped herself to another strip of jerky.

“I’ll tell Ida you said so.”

“Ida’s local?”

“Yep.
She’s my wife.
Makes that out of London broil.
Nice and lean. The marinade, that’s a secret. She won’t even tell me what’s in it.”

 Stef scanned the map, noting the vast network of waterways branching out from several rivers on their way to the Pacific Ocean, creating hundreds of islands amid the flowing tendrils. As Rudy suggested, a person could spend years exploring all those twists and turns.

“What kind of boat you got?” Rudy asked.

“Houseboat.
Forty-foot Crest pontoon.”

“Crest pontoon? What year?”

“Seventy-five.”

Rudy whistled.
“A classic!
Nice. So you’ll be exploring a bit. Doing any fishing?”

“I might,” said Stef uncertainly.

“What’ll you go for?”

“I don’t know. What do you suggest?”

His face lit up at the question. “Most folks go for either stripers or catfish. If you want a surefire thing, go for cats. You can catch a cat with a bare hook around here, but I recommend bloodworms. Some people swear by chicken livers.” He laughed. “If you want an adventure, you can try for sturgeon.”

“Sturgeon?”

“Oh, there are some scary fish out there.”  His wide eye grew even wider,
then
he stepped over to a wall of photos and pointed at one. “Look here. That’s Whitey Wilson with a three hundred pounder.”

Stef peered at the photo. A bowlegged old man stood beside a hanging fish that was bigger than he was. “He caught that out here?”

“Yep.
Whitey’s passed on to a better place years ago now, but he used to buy his bait right here every Sunday morning.
Caught that one with ghost shrimp.
Nowadays, if they’re bigger than six feet, you gotta put ’em back. A fish like that might be two hundred years old.”

“Are you kidding?”

“Nope.
Sturgeon are
slow growers, but they live a long time. They come up here in spring to spawn, so that’s when you can catch them.”

All of the photos on the wall around Whitey Wilson and his sturgeon were of anglers with their catches. There were men, women and children, some of the children barely walking age, proudly displaying their fish. One little, dark-haired girl in a yellowed photo held a line with two fish hanging off two hooks. Must have been a memorable day for her, Stef mused, noting the girl’s huge grin.

“You need a fishing license?” Rudy asked.

“Not today. I’ll just take the map. Thanks for the advice.”

“Any time.”
He folded the map and handed it to her.

She left the shop, emerging into the bright sunlight squinting.
Her boat was a long way from exploring the sloughs and rivers of the Delta, but she wanted the map to remind her of what she was working toward. It would help her imagine her future, leisurely exploring the maze of waterways, listening to frogs croaking and geese honking, enjoying the solitude, so far, far away from the crazy streets of East Bay cities and the reminders of why she no longer had a life there.

If only she could quit having nightmares, she could really leave all of that behind.

She walked to her bike, looking across the street at the rows of pleasure boats rocking gently in their berths. Each slip contained somebody’s means of escape. Beyond the marina, the wide, greenish gray river lay sparkling under the hot afternoon sun, its distant bank lined with slender tule stalks.

She glanced at the map in her hand, sucked in a deep breath and thought,
This
is my salvation
.

Wind decorated the surface of the water with a regular pattern of inch-high ripples that sparkled in the early evening sunshine. Jackie paddled steadily, matching Gail’s pace, moving her kayak unhurriedly upstream. Like always, Jackie had her eye out for wildlife, a muskrat or river otter if she was lucky, but more likely a great blue heron would appear in the shallows near the shore, its slender head cocked to keep one eye on the water, waiting for a meal.

At a fork, Gail’s bright yellow craft veered right into Duggan Creek and Jackie followed. They entered a narrower waterway shaded by large overhanging trees where the sunshine didn’t penetrate. Jackie had been here plenty of times before and knew the likelihood of seeing herons was high, but fishermen, so plentiful on the banks of larger sloughs, were rare. This stream off of Georgiana Slough cut through acres of grazing grassland with few inhabitants other than cattle. She saw cows now and then, wading down to the shore to take a drink or cool off. But at this time of the evening, she didn’t expect any cows. They would have headed back to the dairy by now to be milked and fed.

It was quiet except for the sound of their paddles cutting the surface of the water and the occasional croaking frog that always went silent as they approached. Duggan Creek was narrow but deep, so it flowed slow and smooth-surfaced. It was still swollen with spring
rains,
though it was late May and there had been no rain at all since April.

Plowing the way ahead, Gail wore a red baseball cap over her curly blonde hair and a sleeveless blouse that revealed her pale upper arms and the distinct line where the short sleeves of her Fish and Game uniform fell. Below that line, her arms were already thoroughly tanned from working outside much of the time. By mid-summer her face and arms would be dark brown. At forty-two, she was lean and sinewy, shaped like an athlete, a long-distance runner, not a wrestler, straight up and down with no curves. But Gail wasn’t a runner. She was just naturally skinny, blessed with an efficient metabolism. Her wife Pat complained bitterly on a regular basis that she and Gail ate the same diet, yet she kept getting fatter and Gail got even thinner.

Gail and Pat were Jackie’s best friends, the three of them making up the core of Stillwater’s lesbian community. Gail had been in town five years, since she started working for Fish and Game, but Jackie had known Pat all her life. Their families were neighbors. The Wongs had been in Stillwater Bay since the beginning. They were one of the families who had settled here when the Chinese arrived in the 1800s to build the vast levee system.

Recalling Pat as a child, Jackie remembered the thin, willowy girl who gave the appearance of extreme fragility, an impression enhanced by her pale skin and petite build. Despite the look, Jackie knew Pat as anything but fragile. She was quiet and docile most of the time, but messing with her was a bad idea. She could turn ruthless in a second, as more than one playground bully had learned. Jackie herself had made the mistake of pulling her hair once when they were little and had ended up on her back on the ground with the wind knocked out of her and her nose bleeding. That was the last time she’d even considered tangling with tiny Patricia Wong.

Despite their long-term acquaintance, Jackie had never guessed Pat might be gay. Pat claimed she had never guessed it either…until Gail showed up. Gail was her first lesbian romance and, by all appearances, would also be her last. They were a solid, well-matched couple.

“How was your day?” Gail asked without turning around.

“The kind I dread,” Jackie replied. “I had to put a cat down.”

“Oh, that’s lousy.”

“It was. A little girl and her mother brought in their orange tabby. He’d been hit by a car and there was nothing I could do. The girl looked at me with big round watery eyes like she was expecting a miracle.” Jackie sighed.

“Sorry about that.”