River's Reach: Coming of Age Amid the Fish War

By David Scott Richardson

"…a thought-provoking and engaging tale…beautifully crafted to combine history and personal growth…" – Munir Muhammad for Readers' Favorite

 

ADVENTURE. HISTORY. AWAKENING. Life is good for high school senior Alex Haugen. He has a group of buddies to fish the Nisqually River with, his membership on the football team guarantees status with his peers, and he's recently set his sights on Amanda Schneider – an engaging blend of brains, beauty, and personality. He's beginning to think that the lead cheerleader and star lineman go together like burgers and fries.

Learning that his dad participated in the latest fishing raid at Frank's Landing, Alex's curiosity is piqued. The more he reads, the more he realizes how little he knows about the deep-rooted conflict between the Washington State Game Department and local tribes. The state claims the right to enforce conservation measures and the tribes claim that their treaty rights supersede state regulations.

Alex has strong convictions about conservation but wonders if there's more to the story. Indian netting can't be the only reason fish are in decline. Strident and entrenched certainties dominate both sides of the fishing controversy, and Alex begins to resent that a side may have been chosen for him at birth.

Chancing conflict with his dad – an officer with the game department – Alex's quest for understanding rouses discovery of his own voice and the courage to stand apart from his parents and peers. Along the way, he befriends Charlie McCallister, a Nisqually Indian his dad arrested in a raid.

Amanda, whose mom does pro bono work for the tribe, is a social justice warrior at heart. As the fish war heats up, her readiness to support the tribe clashes with Alex's reluctance to rock the boat with his father and threatens to drive a wedge in their blossoming romance.

Charlie, Amanda, and the Nisqually River form the key catalysts for Alex's awakening as the story unfolds against the backdrop of a nation gripped by the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and the seismic tunes of rock 'n roll.

This novel is suitable for MG/YA and the young at heart. It contains no gratuitous language, but there are a few swear words, in keeping with the characters and story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Scott Richardson
• Release date: Sep 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9798988647935

David Scott Richardson

After teaching sixth grade for twenty years, David Scott Richardson found the time and motivation to write this story, which he’d been thinking about for years. He previously held positions in mental health and legal services and worked with developmentally disabled people. His fishing experience and interest in declining salmon populations flesh out the characters’ connections with the river. In whole, he drifts along with the river current much like Alex does. His second MG/YA historical novel is currently underway.

Book preview

Before the river had a name

and people came to live by its waters,

the river flowed.

When people are gone

and names forgotten,

the river will flow.

Chapter 1: Shots Fired

The caption under his picture in the North Thurston High School football program read, Alex Haugen, Right Guard, 6’2’’ – 218 lbs .  The black and white photo concealed the red hair inherited from his dad’s side of the family. He’d been teased about his ginger locks from the first day of elementary school but came to value the distinction they gave him.  The brief bio made no mention of his sixth sense for reading river water or his keen intuition about where to cast a steelhead lure to entice a strike.  Neither did it reveal that he was starting his senior year without a car, a girlfriend, or a clear plan for college.  These meager facts couldn’t predict his later involvement in the fishing dispute between the Nisqually Tribe and the State of Washington.

If the local authorities wanted to complete a dossier on him, they could simply make a discreet stop at the Dairy Freeze and begin asking questions.  If Alex was there at the time, he’d be easy to spot – surrounded by friends in a booth with three more people than it was designed to hold.  By no stretch was Alex a football hero; linemen rarely are, and he recognized that he’d signed up for the anonymity of the pig pile.

Football fans, disgruntled by the team’s lengthy loss record, said that the most heroic thing the team ever did was to keep showing up for games.  Their sarcasm wasn’t lost on Alex, but he aspired to a different sort of heroism – one that didn’t require an adoring public that only knew him from the football field.  The clique of players strutting the halls of North Thurston High School gathered followers like the Pied Piper and pretended they were on a roll toward the state championship.  They were indeed on a roll, but it wasn’t uphill.  Make no mistake, Alex was very popular and his status as a football player certainly helped with some segments of the student body.  But Alex’s magnetism hinged on a friendly word, eye contact, or a nod.  He made a point of acknowledging people.  They felt included by Alex even if they didn’t know much of anything about him, and his admirers felt better about themselves whenever he singled them out.  The adults had a similar feeling about Alex and expressed their approval by saying, that kid has a good head on his shoulders.

Midweek football practice finished a bit early, but Alex was dead tired when his buddy, Raff, dropped him off at home.  He was way more tired than usual and wasn’t particularly pleased with himself.  Though he probably deserved it, he certainly hadn’t appreciated the twenty pushups coach made him do, especially after the humiliating lecture in front of the entire team.  His crime was hitting the quarterback and flattening him like a pancake during what was supposed to be a light scrimmage.  He didn’t know why it happened.  Maybe just instinct, he mused.  In an actual game, his actions would’ve been cheered and earned him a free burger and fries at the Dairy Freeze.  He promised himself that he’d avenge his embarrassment by crushing the opposing quarterback during Friday night’s upcoming game.  Usually, doing twenty pushups wasn’t a big deal, but coming at the very end of practice, he’d felt like he was running uphill with a sixty-pound pack.  He stumbled onto the back porch and let the screen door slam behind him.

His mom was frying up some bacon and turned around with a start at the bang of the door.  She scowled but turned her attention back to the sizzling bacon.  Slamming the screen door was one of her things and usually brought forth a rare reprimand.  However, the bacon needed her undivided attention lest she overshoot the perfect degree of crispness.  To Alex, the smell of bacon was a sign that things were about to improve – even if they weren’t all that bad to begin with.  He’d choose breakfast for dinner anytime.  Dinner for breakfast never even came up for discussion.

Alex glanced out the window and noted that his dad’s Washington State Game Department Dodge was in the turnaround, which meant that his dad was home and would actually have dinner with his family.  Smelling the bacon, he’d make some dumb joke about his upside-down family that couldn’t tell sunrise from sunset.  Alex would choose his dad being home for dinner anytime – even before choosing breakfast for dinner.  His dad’s early arrival didn’t happen that often these days with all the trouble down on the river. The recent fish-ins compounded his regular work – all-night stakeouts looking for poachers of all sorts.  The rural county gave plenty of cover to the poachers, but the department didn’t have enough officers to uncover most of them.  His dad didn’t always laugh when Alex joked about all-night doughnut feasts, but he’d grown used to it and got into the spirit of things once by bringing home a partially eaten bear claw, saying, Here, I thought you might like some leftovers.

When the bacon was done and laid out on paper towels, Alex’s mom turned to him but didn’t greet him with her usual hug.  She didn’t even ask him how his day went or if he scored a touchdown.  She was unnervingly reserved.  Alex pressed gingerly to get something out of her and finally she nodded to the slightly rumpled newspaper lying on the kitchen table.  Your dad made the papers today.  Your dad instead of just Dad told Alex that she wasn’t too pleased about what his father had done to make the paper.  Retrieving it, Alex immediately noticed the article about a raid at Frank’s Landing on the Nisqually river.  The attention-grabbing headline sent shivers up his spine: Shots Fired at Frank’s Landing.

An early-morning raid at Frank’s Landing resulted in several arrests and the confiscation of both nets and fish.  The culprits had been hauled off to jail in Olympia.  Nothing suggested that this was a planned fish-in to garner media coverage for Indian fishing rights.  At the time of the raid most reporters were sure to be at the local coffee shop or stuck in traffic on their way to work.  The Nisqually Indians were engaged in the routine business of landing and selling fish in their usual place.  Shots were indeed fired but the article didn’t make clear who fired them.  People had talked about something like this happening sooner than later if things kept going the way they were.  Alex looked up at his mom, whose expression bore a grim resemblance to threatening rain clouds.  There was no report of anyone being shot, which gave Alex a measure of relief.  But it hadn’t done much to reassure him or his mom that the conflict was cooling down.  The event seemed to be an escalation of the fish war, which is what the press had begun calling the skirmishes on the river. There was no mention of her husband in the article, but she was chagrined just knowing he’d been anywhere near when shots were fired.  She worried that the tit for tat between the tribe and the game department was intensifying much like the conflict in Vietnam.  The war on the other side of the world and the opposition to it were somehow connected to what was happening in Alex’s backyard.

The article focused on illegal fishing without mentioning that it was defined as illegal by the State of Washington.  It didn’t seem like the press had even talked with any of the Indians.  Perhaps the reporter assumed that the readers knew all there was to know about Indians fishing illegally and thwarting the state’s conservation efforts.  The state said the Indians were breaking the law, and that was all there was to it for most right-thinking citizens.  The Indians had difficulty getting their side of the story out through the tight mesh of the local press, but that was beginning to change.

Reading between the lines, Alex got the impression that the game officers had been heavy handed, and he hoped a careful examination of the accompanying photo would help fill in the blanks.  Before his mom could ask what he thought about the article, Alex ran up to his room to get the magnifying glass he used for his stamp collection.  The first thing he noticed was that the picture was made up of thousands of tiny dots; they only formed a clear image when his eyes were a certain distance away.  He checked several other black and white photographs, moving his head back and forth to see at what distance his eyes would blend the dots into a recognizable picture.  The Frank’s Landing photo must have been taken from the Fort Lewis side of the river – aimed back at the commotion in an attempt to encompass the entire scene.  Alex wondered how the photographer took the picture.  They must have had advance warning of the raid to be positioned so correctly.  Or perhaps it was taken from a boat – an even bigger clue that someone had gotten a head’s up.  He suspected that a picture taken by a tribal member might show something quite different.

There were no close ups of any participants.  Several boats were beached onshore, and one was in the river with two armed officers standing in it.  Uniforms from regional jurisdictions outnumbered the Indians by about three to one and included several officers from town, who Alex recognized from safety assemblies at North Thurston.  Several were holding shotguns pointed up at the trees and others appeared to be armed with clubs.  Closer scrutiny revealed that the clubs were, in fact, flashlights with their lenses facing backwards.  Some of the Indians gripped clubs as well.  Two appeared to be in handcuffs and one officer was dragging a net up the beach, with a woman trying to hang onto one end, to where several game department vehicles were parked. 

Even though he couldn’t make out the face, it didn’t take long for Alex to recognize the silhouette of his dad standing by one of the state vehicles.  With a rifle butt resting on his thigh and the business end pointing up to the sky, he was apparently guarding a boy who was approximately Alex’s age.  The boy stood out because he was wearing a number-nineteen, Lenny Wilkens, SuperSonics jersey.  Of all the Sonics, Lenny Wilkens was Alex’s favorite too.  This made Alex feel some connection with the boy, if only in a black and white photo.  Children, barely discernible in the picture, crouched behind the weighing scale near the shrub line and appeared to be trying to hide.  They looked about seven years old.  It seemed like an odd place for them to be so near this adult melee.  One of the large dugout canoes was drawn up on shore perpendicular to the river with several Indians and officers looking down on its contents.  It was easy to see the nylon net piled up inside, and one had to assume that freshly caught salmon along with blood and slime pooled in the bottom of the canoe.

As he stared at the picture and moved the magnifying glass, more of the story came to life.  One of the two partially hidden children appeared to be sheltering the other from an officer who stood a few feet away.  Even with a giant telescope, Alex couldn’t have discerned exactly what was taking place between them.  They obviously weren’t playing a game of hide and seek.  A feeling of menace seemed frozen in the frame.  Alex realized that his imagination had jumped to a conclusion for which there was no evidence in the photograph’s tiny dots.  The beached canoe needed little interpretation though.  The magnifying glass revealed that one side of the canoe was stove in amidships.  Alex’s imagination went to work again and pictured it getting rammed by one of the state’s motorized skiffs and dumping its occupants into the river.  He’d heard about this tactic before and hoped that no one had gotten tangled in the mesh net.

Well, what do you think? his mom finally asked, turning away from her dinner preparations.

Looks like Dad’s been doing his job.  Where is he?

Alex’s dad walked in while drying his hair but abruptly left when admonished not to do that near the dinner table.  He returned a few minutes later looking only slightly sheepish, his hair now dressed for dinner.

Dad, tell me about the raid.  You feel like Elliot Ness?

You being smart with me?

No.

Well, what do you want to know then?  You read the paper I see.

Who fired the shots?

One of the local police who was helping got a little excited.  They didn’t fire at anyone, just up into the trees, more like trying to get their attention and let them know we were serious.

Did you really need to do that with all those officers there?  From the picture in the paper, you all looked pretty serious – armed and uniformed.

The idea was to prevent things from escalating or getting out of hand, and to make a show of force.  We don’t want to shoot anybody of course, but we need to be prepared for anything.  You never know what’s going to happen in a situation like that.

Especially when guns are involved, injected Alex.  Did any of the Indians have guns?

We didn’t see any, but some probably did.  They certainly had clubs.

So did you guys, judging from the picture in the paper.  What if somebody thought they were being targeted and fired back when they heard the shots?  I’m no expert on policing or crowd control but it seems like shots fired is asking for trouble rather than preventing it. 

Alex realized that his tone and questions sounded uncharacteristically confrontational, which wasn’t his intention. 

He was motivated by a concern for his dad’s presence in a situation where shots were fired, but he felt himself starting to side against the game department and the state. How many Indians did you arrest?  The paper didn’t say.

Four I think, the ones we actually saw fishing or handling fish.

Weren’t the fish cleaners handling fish? 

Well, that’s different.

Alex realized he’d pressed hard enough and let the unasked question go. What about the kid in the Sonics jersey you were guarding?  You arrest him?

Yes, he was taking fish out of one of the skiffs.

"Is that considered fishing?

Doesn’t matter.  He was handling illegally caught fish, which means he was in possession.  You know what the law says – if you possess something illegal, you’ve broken the law just like if you were the one who stole it.

What happens to him?

Well, he’s a minor, so he’ll probably be released to his parents or some other relative.  If he was an adult, he’d bail out if he could, then go to court and probably get a fine.

What if he couldn’t pay the fine?

Do the time.

You spy on them before the raid to catch them actually fishing?

Well, we observe what they’re doing.  Hard to miss the goings on at Frank’s Landing.

Take their gear?

Yeah, from the ones we saw fishing.

What about the fish buyers?

Confiscate the illegal fish but leave them alone otherwise.

What about the fish cleaners.

Ignore them unless they give us trouble.

What happens to the fish?

Donated.

Any officers donate it to themselves?

Don’t know about that.  Are we done now?

Alex sat down at the dinner table where his mom had piled a platter of pancakes in the center.  The crunchy bacon eased the palpable tension circling the family.  His thoughts drifted off, and he wondered how far back he’d have to go to get to the start of all this trouble.  Probably something for the history books, he thought.  The conversation with his dad served as a tutorial for how the fish war might play out in his own life.  He hadn’t been paying much attention and had generally believed what everybody was saying – the Indians were interfering with the state’s efforts to preserve the salmon runs.  Alex hadn’t answered his dad when he asked if they were done now, and he was sure his dad interpreted his silence as a yes.  Eventually though, the dinner small talk gave way to a flood of questions, as they amassed in Alex’s head.

Chapter 2: Lingering Questions

The following morning found Alex lounging in bed twenty minutes after his feet usually hit the floor.  His mom’s third impatient reminder got him moving in the direction of the bathroom and finally out to the kitchen where he realized how late he was.  The day should have begun with a steaming bowl of oatmeal, but it would have to be Cheerios instead.  Alex had been mulling things over most of the night.  A barrage of new questions plagued him, and he hoped his dad wouldn’t get too irritated when he realized that their conversation from the night before had never really ended.  He had questions for himself too.  Of course, he knew about the conflict, especially when it made the papers or TV news, but how could he have remained so ignorant of the history behind it?  After all, the Nisqually was his river too.  He’d grown up next to it, fished it, tubed it, and, most of all, he’d admired its beauty and power.  As nature’s grand connection from the Mountain to the sea, it defined the Nisqually valley and shaped much of its history. 

He wiped away the milk that had dribbled down his chin from eating in such a rush.  Questions would have to wait, and his dad wasn’t there anyway.  He grabbed his sack lunch off the table and trotted down the front steps to meet the school bus.  About half-way down the rutted gravel drive the jittering headlights of the department’s aging Dodge cast an eerie effect in the morning fog.  His dad was back from another all-night stake out looking for deer poachers.

Want a ride to school?

Sure. I hate riding the bus anyway.

Alex climbed in the old Dodge Power Wagon – affectionately known as Gramps, and they made a quick stop at the house so Rex could let his wife know he was off to drop Alex at school.  High School’s pecking order began on the way there – students who drove their own cars looked down on those riding the big yellow bus.  Even those who got rides with friends were partially emancipated. Alex usually had to take the bus because of how far away he lived.  He and his friends held pickup trucks in higher regard than their parent’s sedans and station wagons, but the Dodge was in a class by itself.  After all, it had served in the Army and deserved the respect due any veteran.  Alex wasn’t embarrassed to be driven to school in a vehicle dedicated to helping the Washington State Game Department do its job.  If anybody suggested that being a game warden was a lowly form of law enforcement, they would get an earful from Alex.  He grew up with strong convictions about protecting wildlife.  He also knew how dangerous it could be compared to more visible forms of policing.  Poachers were no more interested in going to jail than the average bank robber, and in hunting season they would be armed.

A direct hit on the last chuckhole in the gravel drive before turning onto the serenity of smooth pavement reminded Alex that he had a tailbone.  The old Dodge clearly didn’t give a shit about chuckholes or tailbones.

Why don’t we just grade the driveway and fill in all those craters? asked Alex.

We’ll get around to it, maybe next spring.

Though Alex had noticed it when he jumped in, he wasn’t sure what to say about the holstered pistol that sat on the seat between them.  His dad often carried a department-issued gun on the job and had a few of his own as well.  Alex was a hunter and had his own rifle like nearly all his friends, but seeing the pistol there on the way to school was unsettling; it was an unwanted hitchhiker.

What’s with all the straw in the back of the truck?  The department into ranching these days? asked Alex.

No, we found all that on the riverbank.  Probably some of those vigilantes threw it in the river to take out the nets.  A bale of straw is pretty effective if it hits the cork line; current pushing on the bale rips the net right out.

What happens to the nets if you find them?

Sometimes we find them and sometimes we don’t.  The current deposits them wherever it feels like.  When we find them, we take them.

And if you don’t?

‘Well, that can be a problem because if the net is abandoned and we don’t find it, it can still net and kill fish – passively.  Why are you giving me the third degree?"

Just curious.

The conversation from the previous night had faded and most of Alex’s questions would fester ‘til the next opportunity.  His dad was a big guy by anybody’s standard and his imposing presence had earned him nicknames like Big Fella and Big Red from his buddies in the department.  Alex was a big guy too.  Even as a junior in high school he’d already become a snug fit into his dad’s shadow.  It wasn’t the promise of local glory or the possibility of a college scholarship that led Alex to become the right tackle on the North Thurston Rams.  Football wasn’t an all-consuming passion for him like it was for some, but he did like the game and all that came with it in a small town.  He definitely liked winning – an all-too-infrequent occurrence for the Rams.  His size and natural athleticism led his peers to coax him into trying out for the team.  Two years later he was a regular starter, albeit with a dinged-up right shoulder; he put his all into the game and did everything the coach asked.

The road wound around and came out to the main highway close to Frank’s Landing.  Alex wondered how long it would be before another incident on the river grabbed the headlines and whether shots would be fired at a person instead of up into the trees.  Neither side in the conflict was talking about compromise.  In fact, they weren’t talking at all, except in the newspapers. 

Alex queried his dad, You know, I’ve been thinking.  Most of the fish in the river this time of year are chum, right?  Why is the game department even concerned with them?  They’re not sport fish.

We’re not particularly concerned about them as a conservation issue but when they’re caught off reservation land, that’s against state regulation.  We don’t want any nets in the river because the nets don’t know a chum from a steelhead or a dead cat.  What’s more, the state doesn’t consider Frank’s Landing part of the reservation because it wasn’t in the treaty.

Any dead cats turn up?

You know, you seem to be developing quite an attitude about this.  I would’ve thought you would be on the side of the state and the game department – on the side of conservation.  The courts have affirmed the treaties time and time again but said the state has the right to enforce conservation measures.

I didn’t know I had to take sides.

Alex realized that his dad might be right about his increasingly prickly attitude, but he chalked it up to trying to find his place in the so-called adult world.  He pondered what the magnifying glass had revealed and what it had not.  He wished he knew, in some scientific way, how many of the prized steelhead the Indians actually netted.  Any suggestion that the Indians were taking protected steelhead, on or off reservation land, was a red flag to many sport fishers.  More than a few had decided to take things into their own hands, whether by sabotaging nets or being more threatening toward the Indians.  Each side had their numbers, but the thing was that they were their numbers, and people batted them back and forth like tennis balls.  Researching the data might help Alex whittle his thoughts to a sharper point; then he could stand confidently on facts.  Of course, the state and the Indians each had their own facts, just like everybody else. 

Maybe if everybody could sit down to breakfast for dinner it could be resolved.  Do the Indians like bacon?  It was just the right note to break the tension. You can let me off here, Dad.

What?  We’re still five blocks away.

I know.  I just want to catch up with Sid and walk the rest of the way.

You embarrassed to be seen with me in the Power Wagon?

Of course not.  I just wanted a few minutes with Sid before school starts and the peace and quiet disappears.

OK, then.  See you after practice.  You need a ride?

Thanks, but I’ll connect up with Raff and he can drop me off.

Don’t practice too hard.  Protect that right shoulder.

OK, Dad.

Even though the ride to school seemed to smooth things over, it didn’t erase the tension that had been brewing between him and his dad over the past year.  Like a stretched-out rubber band, neither of them knew when or if it might snap.  They were less and less comfortable just hanging out together like they always had.  Alex felt this loss and wondered if his dad did as well.  Seemed like a fishing trip together might be the perfect remedy, but with both of them so busy, who knew when that might happen?

Chapter 3: What You Are to Be...

Alex and Sid accumulated a raucous group in their several-block trek to school; it was large and boisterous enough to force several oncoming pedestrians off the sidewalk and into the street for their own safety.  The twenty-five steps leading to the front entrance forced one to look up at the building’s pretentious façade.  More appropriate for the Supreme Court than a high school, it was a design of the period and was most likely intended to inspire respect for learning, Alex thought.  As far as he knew, he was the only one who still paid any attention to the school motto chiseled into the terracotta embellishments on the front of the building – What you are to be, you are now becoming.  Routinely, he wondered why the motto wasn’t something more practical, such as, always do your best or never give up.  The motto puzzled him because it ignored the here and now.  What was wrong with being who you were, in the moment?  It was like moving half the distance to the goal line, always getting closer but never quite crossing it.  Maybe that was its message – that striving was the thing, and the goal was irrelevant.  Occasionally he tried to explore the motto’s deeper meaning with his classmates, but most students just ignored it.  Alex teased them after school, asking if they had any better idea of what they were becoming than they did in the morning when they first arrived at school.  The bell ordering students to man their stations broke up the clusters clogging the hallways, and Alex headed off to first period, leaving Sid to go to gym.

Though Sid wasn’t a football player, it wasn’t for lack of interest.  His knee played tricks on him, he said.  Periodically, it threw him off balance by giving way and playing its trick in embarrassing ways, often at a most inopportune and unpredictable time.  This infirmity was one of the reasons he was especially shy around girls.  Nonetheless, Sid was the proud equipment manager of the team.  By the time of his senior year, he’d weathered all the cruel and good-natured teasing that kids could dish out.  He said it made him stronger but joked that he still wasn’t strong enough to try out for the team.  His position did have its perks with cheerleaders seldom far away, but Sid hid behind his trick knee.  Alex connected with him again at lunch.

Hey Alex, you ready, could this be the day?

Day for what?

The day the most wonderful Amanda Schneider asks you to run away with her right after practice.

"Don’t think so.  I can barely walk