Red Salmon by John C. Laird (children's ebooks free online .txt) 📖

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 in to a great extent by her MP-3 player and its ear-bud, blaring Anya tunes into her head—she deftly sliced the head from the fish with the razor sharp knife and slit it open from stem to stern. Quickly cutting, pulling and cleaning out its entrails, she scraped these and the head into the tub to the right of the table. Grabbing the gutted fish by the tail, she 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 serious hit during the recession, and their main income—their salmon fishing catch—had been dwindling more and more each year. It wasn’t just the competition from the bigger 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. Possibly those things were affecting the salmon population; all she knew was that there were fewer and fewer of them every year. She fervently prayed that her father wouldn’t have to sell their boat and close down his business. Although many of her friends teased her about what they considered the drudgery and mindless boredom of the fishing business, Becky didn’t mind at all.

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

She paused and adjusted the volume on her MP3 player. 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 salmon business.  Maybe 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. She suddenly stopped and stared at the fish partially fileted before her, her mind finally emerging from the self-induced autopilot that it had been on. Very odd she mused; the salmon was a distinct shade of red. She must really be getting tired. Pink salmon, maybe, but red? Becky shook her head in resignation and reached in to pull the innards out. She let out a yelp. “Ouch! What the hell?” She shook her hand and looked closely to see if she had been cut, but didn’t see any damage to the latex of the glove. She cautiously 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 in itself was somewhat of a surprise; the salmon had been producing fewer and fewer eggs, many of them apparently having become ‘sterile’.

Using the knife and her fingers, she gently began probing into the guts of the fish. Peering closer, she paused and repeated herself. “What the hell?” Suddenly her eyes grew larger, her mouth rounded into an ‘O’ of shock. She took a step back, the knife dropping and clattering to the table top.

  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 were failing to register. 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 work station.

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 began prodding around inside the fish. After a minute, he stopped, stood and frowned. “Well, I’ll be damned. Maybe it is 'better Red than dead'.”

 “What?” she asked.

“Better Red than dead," he mumbled. “Just an expression the pacifists had back in the old Cold War days between Russia and the U.S. You know, the nuclear arms race? It was kind of like a ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ type thing?" He glanced up at his daughter's blank expression and smiled. "Anyway, Russia is out and China is in, but at least we're not on the brink of a nuclear holocast."

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

Together they peered into the fish’s innards.

He continued. “See these almost invisible filaments running here…and here?” He separated several miniscule pieces that resembled spokes, cogs and gears, then something with a nearly microscopic blinking green light. “They did it. We're screwing up the environment but still found a way around it with the salmon. It looks like we’ll be staying in business after all.”

Becky peered through the magnifying glass, her own frown spreading across her face. Maybe her prayers had been answered, but she wasn't so sure about the 'better Red than dead' thing.

She could barely make out the writing on the miniature cog: “Made in China”.

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Text: John C. Laird
Images: Public Domain Pictures
Editing: Alexandra Laird
Publication Date: 07-30-2012

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