The Year of Broken Glass Read Online Free

Anna’s homegrown tobacco, the westerly subsided now and the night warm beneath the late-April stars, the scent of new growth and old rot rising from the alder-bottom beyond our house. I can’t stop thinking about the float I found earlier today. Before I left the boat I packed it in an old tote with rags and crab floats for padding. When I arrived home I stowed it high in the rafters of the garage where Anna wouldn’t find it. Svend had been adamant about the fact that it might be worth a bit of cash, and if so it will be money I’ll give to Jin Su.
    â€œThirty thousand,” Svend says, as I answer the vibing cellphone in my hand. I think about this for a second before understanding that he’s referring to the float’s value. “You’re shitting me,” I reply, trying not to raise my voice with the exhilaration that sum brings. “I’m not. I’ve been on the computer for hours now. There’s this guy, Stu Farnsworth, he’s the big fishing float guru. Anyway, he’s got an ‘Antique Floats Wanted’ page on his website, and on it he’s got pictures and drawings and descriptions of all these rare floats he’s always on the lookout for. Most fetch from five hundred bucks to five grand. But there’s this one grouping of seven or eight different emblems, and that fish on your float is one of them. Those ones he’s offering up to thirty grand for!”
    Svend is so excited his voice is leaping through the phone into my ear. An old fisherman, forever in love with the thrill of the big haul. “You know, I’m thinking,” he continues. “Who do you sell your crab to?” I know it’s a rhetorical question, and I’m not sure where he’s going with it, but I answer: “Nelson Chow.” To which Svend replies with another obvious question. “And what’s he?”
    â€œHe’s a fucking fish buyer Svend. Why, you think he’s looking to get into the glass fishing float market or what?” I’m a bit exasperated, a bit excited, and I want to know his point.
    â€œHe’s a middle man, kid. Now I’ve been surfing around for hours looking into this thing, and it turns out Stu Farnsworth isn’t the only person buying floats online. In fact, there are as many people buying them as there are people selling. Or more. There’s pages of these things up for bid on eBay.”
    I’m starting to get where he’s going with this. It’s sort of a knee-jerk reflex for most fishermen to want to cut out the middle man. We spend countless hours on the docks and at coffee shops scheming ways to get our catch directly to market. The prawns Svend catches and sells to the buyers in Vancouver for five bucks a pound sell for fifteen dollars or more once they make it to Toronto and LA. They sell for upwards of fifty dollars a pound in Japan. The middle men are making more money from their cushy offices moving our product than we are risking our lives out on the water fishing for it. It’s an old story. And it’s an age-old desire for fishermen to want to find a way to bypass them and keep for ourselves the inequitable slice they take from the pie. “Somebody, somewhere, is paying a pretty penny for these things Ferris.” We’re both hanging on the line, digesting the implications and the possibilities. Through the open window beside me I hear Anna rising from the bath. “I’ve got to go Svend,” I say.
    â€œDo you know of anyone?” he asks. “Anyone who might know about these things?” I picture hundreds of glass fishing floats still held in their twine encasements, strung together like beads on a string, swirling and clonking in the breeze like a great wind chime beneath Fairwin’ Verge’s treehouse.
    â€œYes,” I say. “I think I might.”
    FAIRWIN’S TREEHOUSE, OR “Fairwin’s Fort,” as it’s known on the island,