SoMa Literary Review - Northern California Short Stories

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Northern California Short Stories
Monterey to Mendocino
San Francisco to Truckee

By R. G. Larsen
Outskirts Press 288 pp
ISBN: 1598004166

Excerpt from the short story:

How I came To Know Bert Buehler

By R. G. Larsen

The excitement was what brought us here day after day. Owning a boat, selling our catches too cheaply, and surviving inextricable turns of fate were not why we came her; finding and catching fish was. Anything else was just a giant hole into which we poured our money and time and, sometimes, our lives. I thought of us being caught in a giant maelstrom that sucked down most fishermen even if it left a few of us bobbing like pieces of flotsam, lamentable vestiges of a noble and once viable livelihood now pitted incomprehensibly against twenty-first century agribusiness and fish farms. We would lose. That was certain. But for now, we hunted salmon. For now, we were alive...

Despite the radio chatter, the half lies, and the coded messages, cautions were exchanged with grave solemnity. The brotherhood of the lost, after a fashion, still had its honor, and we would fish together nobly into economic and physical extinction with our booms out and our holds full of fish and secrets, because the latter was as much a part of our lives as what outsiders saw. Fishing communities are close-lipped. A fisherman sometimes sees things at sea that he does not fully comprehend, mysterious things, things difficult to talk about...

I conjured up a frightening picture of Gino with his lines down and stabilizers not in place trying to maneuver close to the cliffs, not noticing the horizon, focused on his fish, not feeling the rhythm of the smaller waves because his boat was too big. I envisioned smaller waves compounding with deeper, darker swells, sweeping in and increasing in mass, coming even quicker, rising up, and bumping against an undersea elevation to change directions. The big wave, the one we all watched for, would come faster and harder, an unseen, out-of-control freight train from an odd quarter, hitting the Cape Mae amidships or from the stern. I imagined the sudden roll in darkness with lines tangled up, objects and men flung and twisted, and then silence. I shuddered.

Also by R. G. Larsen on SoMa Literary Review:

Homeland Security, No Springs – Honest Weight, Bite Me, A Serious Buyer, Ceiling Spiders, Final Procedure, The Observer & Macklin & Marci

R. G. Larsen was born in San Francisco. He received his BA at S.F. State and MA at U.S.F. He started writing fiction about five years ago, and now lives in Santa Rosa.