The Night My Brother Worked The Header
October, 1990
Last day of the salmon season, Old Windell gave a knife to Larry Olseth and put him on the butcher line next to me. "Be nice to him, Agnes," Windell said. The salmon dropped every three and a half seconds from the stainless-steel header and crowded through the open gate as if still alive. They plopped onto the belt headless, one to a slot. We kept up pretty well. Uma-san and Saka-san, the Japanese butchers, slit the bellies, throats and bloodlines. I separated the egg sacs from the gut...
