Mendocino Fire

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Among the son’s bright fucking ideas, that last summer they worked together, was the notion that since there was good money in sportfishing they ought to start taking out parties of tourists. Shug could savor a rank cigar, resting up his bad shoulder while doctors and lawyers baited hooks, and when a senator failed to reel in a big Chinook Shug could grin around the last skunky inch and salt the wound with “Wave bye-bye to your wallhanger, son.” Nate figured guys like that would secretly dig the condescension and come back for more, because no matter what he said or how he treated people Shug was indulged, a dispensation Nate had not inherited. He did get his share of the Dawe looks — lank black hair that came to a widow’s peak in front, large homely ears, definite jaw — but the mix could go different ways, in Nate a semicomic near miss, in his father strong-boned, remorseless beauty that misleadingly suggested great depth of character. Women, sure — the beauty of women was supposed to cause trouble, but Nate would not have believed such havoc could be wreaked by a man if he hadn’t witnessed the consequences firsthand. He was sometimes asked by unsmiling women how his dad was doing these days and had figured out that the right, if fallacious, answer was “Not so good.” Once as a kid Nate was given a packet of red licorice by a high-heeled out-of-town-looking woman who said earnestly, “I know he’s your father but he’s a liar.” And then: “You know better than to tell your mom where you got that, right? Yeah, I can see you do.”

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