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read it twice before she believed it.
    The Freya was Old Sam’s seventy-five-foot fish tender. It had to be as old as he was, if not older, but he’d put a fresh coat of copper paint on the hull every spring, had renewed the varnish on the trim every winter, and had serviced the engine once a year like the Freya was going to sprout wings and require recertification by the FAA. According to Old Sam, who had taken the trouble to seek out her provenance, the Freya had started life as a herring tender in Seldovia, owned and operated by Alaska Year Round, which when the herring were fished out had put her up for auction. There followed a varied career hauling passengers and freight between Cordova and Seattle in the 1920s, mostly for the Kanuyaq River & Northern Railroad and Kanuyaq Copper, contracting with the U.S. Navy to provide support to their bases in the Aleutians in the thirties, and a brief but exciting period during World War II when she hosted training missions for Castner’s Cutthroats.
    Old Sam had bought her in 1950, and continued hiring her out to whoever had deep enough pockets to haul freight or fish. In later years it had been mostly the latter. You name the species, if there was a market for anything with fins or shells, Old Sam had a positive genius for getting a hold full in time to fetch the highest price per pound.
    Kate had long thought the Freya was the love of Old Sam’s life, that he’d had a stronger romantic attachment to her than even to Mary Balashoff. Which made his handing it off to Petey Jeppsen nothing short of astounding.
    She’d sent a note to Mary Balashoff on her set net site in Alaganik by way of Mary’s family in Cordova. She still felt guilty for not going down in person. Mary and Old Sam had been an item for as long as Kate could remember.
    “I know what you’re thinking, girl,” Old Sam had written, “and I know what those goddamn women’ll say.” Kate identified “those goddamn women” as the four aunties without any difficulty. “They’ll say I should have left it to somebody with my blood, or at least tribal blood. They’ll be all pissed off because Petey’s white and his family ain’t even been in the Park more than one generation. Well, there ain’t nobody with my blood who wanted her enough to work summers on her. I thought about leavin’ her to Martin—”
    Kate’s own blood ran cold.
    “—hoping maybe owning something of value might jump-start him out of the general worthlessness he’s adopted since grade school, but realistically you just know he’d sell her to the first person with enough cash to rent him a lifetime stool at the Cordova House. And if he couldn’t sell her he’d let her sink at the dock. I’m going to be too busy to haunt anybody who mistreats her and you got other fish to fry. So let Petey have her. At least this summer he learned to tell her bow from her stern, and he might just treat her right. That’s about all I can make sure of from here.”
    She could almost hear the old man cackle.
    He’d added a postscript. “Make sure to fetch the compass off the bridge before you hand the Freya over to Petey. You learned to steer on that compass, and I want you to have her. Petey can get one of those goddamn GPS things.”
    Old Sam’s compass. Kate put down the will and stared off into space. Well did she remember standing at the big wooden wheel on the Freya ’s bridge, turning it one spoke at a time and waiting for the bow to answer as she watched the floating dial of the compass slowly revolve beneath the glass. The antique brass compass was set on gimbals in a square teak box. No speck of tarnish was ever allowed to mar the brass, and the wood gleamed with polish, the special care of the skinny, cranky Captain Bligh standing at her shoulder. No one else was allowed to touch it.
    Jackie Wilson segued to Ray Charles, drowning in his own tears. Tears seemed to be the order of the evening. Kate blinked her eyes clear again. She’d