Chapter 2
(Sitka. Paul’s story. 1996.)
Paul was a week out of high school and trying to figure out what he was going to do next. Not college. He didn’t have any interest, and his grades weren’t that great. What was the point if you didn’t know what you wanted to do? Well, sports and girls crossed his mind, but he needed a job. He had work on the fishing boats lined up for the season just as he’d done the last two years, but that wasn’t a long-term plan. He saw what happened to the guys who fished for someone year after year. You worked hard for four months, drank hard for eight months. No thanks.
So he’d put in applications for the pipelines and oil companies. Hard work, yeah, but the pay was really good. And it would get him out of Sitka. God, he wanted out of Sitka.
Sitka had a popul
