Chapter One

Chapter One


Mornings come hard and mean on the Oregon coast in winter. Trees on Cape Mano between Hubbard and Sawyer have only lee-side branches, twisted old men with their backs to the sea. More than a few casually built bungalows and cabins are chained to the rocks so gale-force winds won't take them.

Highway 101, Hubbard's only through street, runs north to Canada and south to Mexico, edging along the black basalt shore and over a bridge that spans Hubbard's small harbor. Moored there are both sport and commercial fishing vessels, piloted by the handful of skippers capable of navigating the boiling deep-water channel at the mouth of the harbor. Everyone has a story to tell about a boat that's broken up on the rocks within hailing distance of home. In 1983 eight realtors on a sport-fishing jaunt drowned in plain sight when their charter boat turned broadside and sank.

For all its tiny size and appearance of sleepiness, Hubbard in 1989 lit its fires early, and nowhere earlier than at the Anchor Grill, which opened every morning at four o'clock sharp. The restaurant was located at the exact center of town, across the street from Devil's Horn, a rocky blowhole through which seawater shot thirty feet in the air when storm seas were running. The Anchor was that rare hybrid, beloved by tourists and residents alike, an easy place with vinyl tuck-and-roll booths, stained carpet and paneled walls, stuffed trophy fish, and the everlasting aroma of chowder, fried food, and beer. First light belonged to Hubbard's fishermen and pulp mill workers putting in day shifts fifteen miles away over in Sawyer. From seven o'clock in the morning until the reek of fish guts signaled