I spent Sat­ur­day morn­ing con­sid­er­ing odor­if­er­ous tow­ers of fish clothes. How thread­bare was too much so? The same $3 Val­ue Vil­lage hood­ies and blood-browned T‑shirts sur­round­ed me, sort­ed into piles des­tined to serve yet anoth­er sea­son. The grown-up voice in my head scold­ed every moment frit­tered away on some­thing that fell so far below the more urgent jobs to pre­pare our house for renters. Real­ly, you’re pack­ing all of your socks now? And all your clean unders? You’re not ship­ping out for anoth­er month – don’t think you’re gonna want some of those before then?

Prob­a­bly. But the house tasks height­ened the ever-present thrum of anx­i­ety in my chest, unlike the sooth­ing whis­per of an undershirt’s thin cot­ton, its ribs stained sepia with the ancient mem­o­ry of hal­ibut slime, and the cer­tain­ty of stuff­ing my boots tall with rolled socks.

When the phone rang, Joel’s warm Hey bud­dy! tone car­ried between rooms. I kept put­ter­ing, only mild­ly curi­ous until his sud­den down­shift into  dis­may brought me scam­per­ing forth with raised eyebrows.

“Oh, dude, that sucks. You have any idea what you’re gonna do?” To me he mouthed, “Jefe.”

One of our fish­ing friends. We’d played on the docks as kids, chas­ing gulls through the chan­nel in his skiff. I’d watched him grow into a lov­ing hus­band, devot­ed dad, skilled fish­er­man – a gen­uine­ly good guy. Both Joel and I had long­lined with his fam­i­ly many years ear­li­er, lead­ing to our affec­tion­ate Span­ish moniker, “the boss.”

“Well, would you guys be inter­est­ed in hav­ing Tele on board?” He paused. “Okay, give us a few min­utes to talk about it, and we’ll call you back.”

Joel crutched up to the kitchen to fill me in. Their long­time deck­hand had to leave with­out warn­ing. The boat was iced up, bait­ed, and ready to go – ready, except for crew. In their sud­den time of need, our friends thought of us, cur­rent­ly in our own. “He said they want­ed to help us out, if you were free to come up.”

Secur­ing a spot on a long­lin­er is a com­pet­i­tive, cov­et­ed oppor­tu­ni­ty for deck­hands. Alaska’s hal­ibut and black cod com­mer­cial fish­eries are man­aged through an indi­vid­ual fish­ing quo­ta sys­tem, where fish­er­men own the right to catch a par­tic­u­lar poundage. With the pounds that Jefe had to fish, both Joel and I knew that this job could make the dif­fer­ence for us.

I lev­eled my most seri­ous eyes on his. “I can’t leave you right now – can I?”

There are moments when life forces you to stand taller, more firm­ly root­ed, than you think you can. Now, hands grip­ping the gray padding of his “sticks,” Joel nod­ded with new resolve. “I mean, I don’t want you to. It’ll be real­ly hard, going through this with­out you. But I also know that it’s the absolute right thing to do, and that a month of strug­gling will be so tem­po­rary, com­pared to how much this will help us next win­ter. We can’t not take this opportunity.”

“But I need you to know you’re my first pri­or­i­ty. I won’t go if you’ll feel aban­doned. We’ll be okay, no mat­ter what.”

“Yeah, but this will make it so much eas­i­er. You have to go, bud­dy – I’ll be okay.”

Before this went any far­ther, I need­ed to talk with Mar­lin, the cap­tain I’d already com­mit­ted to for July through Sep­tem­ber. Going to Alas­ka now would mean I wouldn’t be avail­able in Wash­ing­ton to help him with any pre-sea­son preparation.

“Go! Take it!” Mar­lin chuck­led, “Shit, maybe I should call Jeff back and grab that job myself. No, that’s great, Sis. Meet me in Sit­ka at the end of June. We’ll be fine.”

This is the gift that is our fish­ing fam­i­ly – boat kids grown up togeth­er, look­ing out for each other’s well­be­ing as adults.

Joel and I stud­ied the Pacif­ic Fish­ing cal­en­dar on the kitchen wall. “Okay, it’s Sat­ur­day after­noon. I’ll get the house packed up in the next day. You’ve got a phys­i­cal ther­a­py appoint­ment on Mon­day, I’ll take you to that, then we’ll move you down to your folks’ place and I’ll fly out Tues­day.” At least I don’t have to wor­ry about pack­ing my fish stuff, I thought.

The dizzy­ing sched­ule skipped off my tongue, but get­ting to an island, with out-of-state access monop­o­lized by one air­line, isn’t that sim­ple. I frowned at Alas­ka Air­lines’ web­site. “There aren’t any seats left for Tues­day. They’ve got space every oth­er day this week, but not Tuesday.”

Back to the phone. Would Wednes­day be okay? Like all fish­er­men, my employ­ers under­stood the real­i­ties of island life. “Don’t apol­o­gize – noth­in’ you can do about it! Wednesday’s great.”

Three min­utes and $528 lat­er, I had a one-way tick­et to a sud­den job.

The next few days spun by accord­ing to plan. Good thing there hadn’t been a Tues­day flight; I need­ed every minute of that spare day. Run­ning full throt­tle kept me ahead of my anx­i­eties, but when I paused to catch my breath, they caught up, too. Yeah, Joel can han­dle the work of his recov­ery – I mean, what’s his alter­na­tive? – but still… Leav­ing my best friend in his time of great­est need? Skip­ping out on so many of our house respon­si­bil­i­ties, dump­ing every­thing in oth­er people’s laps? I won­dered if my con­trol­ling, micro­manag­ing self could accept this les­son in let­ting go.

More deeply embed­ded vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty lived a few lay­ers down. While the fish­ing life feeds my writ­ing, I’m not sure the oppo­site is true. Soft­ened by a win­ter parked in front of a com­put­er, would my body ral­ly to be strong enough, tough enough, fast enough? Com­pe­tent enough? It always has, I told myself. And so did Joel’s – until it didn’t.

Only one way to find out.

After cross­ing off the last, most impor­tant thing on my list…

…leav­ing was the only thing left to do.

Those of you who’ve been here through pre­vi­ous sea­sons know how Hooked goes when I’m Up North: unpre­dictable, spot­ty ser­vice, sud­den depar­tures, quick turn-arounds, and this busi­ness of hav­ing a real job con­spire against reli­able con­tact. Mean­while, Cap’n J’s at the helm of the Ner­ka Face­book page; you can check in with him over there for any of our lat­est news. I’ll be in touch, friends — be safe and be well.