Josh watched her pulling the lawnmower out from under a tangled tarp. She frowned and yanked and then yanked again, and it was free. She was sweating already, just a little on her brown arms, and she hadn't even gotten the thing turned on yet. He came over from behind her and whistled through his fingers. It came out sharp like a referee's whistle.
 
"Josh!" she said when she turned around, clinging to the edge of the mower, her legs scissoring awkwardly. "Where in the world have you been? What's it been, a week?"
 
"Hi Sudie," he said.
 
She slapped at his arm. "Hi is good for nothing around here anymore. You've got to give me something to go on, you know."
 
"I know," he said. "Come on, I'll show you."
 
He took her in his rust-red Mazda. She tapped her fingers on the dash, and he wished he had the radio working. A short in there somewhere.
 
"Where we going?"
 
"I said I'll show you."
 
She was looking at him, and he kept his eyes on the road. She coughed, but he didn't bite. "Yeah, ok," she said.
 
He drove onto County Road 23 and there was nothing. A blazing hot day already. A sparrow flew alongside them for a moment and went away. Sudie rolled down her window, then back up against the wind. They drove for several minutes until they could see the horizon of something coming up and the county road dipped and they descended five hundred feet to the bottom of the Snake River Canyon.

He pulled off at a sportsman's access and turned off the car. The river was flat here all the way across, with insects roaming the surface in random gray swarms.
 
"It smells," she said.
 
"Yeah, like love," he said, and offered her his hand.
 
She frowned. "Why are we here?"
 
He got out and went down to the river and knelt at the shore, reaching his hands down and under the bank until he had them around a quarter-inch kennel chain. He stood up tall with the end of the chain wrapped around his right hand and looked back over his shoulder at Sudie.
 
"I bet you're curious what I got here," he said.
 
"And I bet I can see it fine from where I sit," she called out from the Mazda.
 
"Come on."
 
The far end of the chain where it submerged into the water was rising and pulling and going up and down the river in short runs.
 
"Josh--whatever you got--it's moving like a dog under there." She had gotten out of the car and was standing for a better view.
 
The chain tightened, and he had to suddenly let out slack to keep from being pulled over. "Sudie, what do you know about sturgeons?"
 
"I don't know anything about sturgeons. I don't think I ever wanted to."
 
"They used to be all over this river, back a long while ago. Pretty rare these days." He started towing his end of the chain up the bank. His legs bowed and flexed as he took in short low steps. "I've had it here since this morning. It took me a while to figure out what exactly I was going to do."
 
"You've lost me, Josh."
 
"Yeah, ok," he said.
 
The head of the sturgeon broke the surface, white, tight skin over the curved head, and then the length of it showed in the film of the water. It had a ridge of bumps on its back and the look of some beast.
 
"You should have seen when I caught it," he said. "It took me a good half-hour to tire it down." He grunted and pulled it up and over the bank and it lay there silvery and gleaming, with the links of the small chain disappearing down its throat and coming back out from the flap of the gills. It looked to be no less than five feet long.
 
Sudie came down by Josh. She put her hand on his shoulder. "I can't really believe it," she said.
 
"I didn't want anybody to see it but you," he said, and took the sturgeon by the ridge and held it still. It lay there mouth open as if it were panting and its tail rising a few inches from the ground. 
 
"What do you plan to do with it?"
 
"Only what I already did."  He turned the fish so that the head faced her direction.  He pointed to a spot on top of the skull.  There, tattooed in thin, black lettering and standing out stark against the dull, tight skin of the fish, were the words: "Josh and Sudie."
 
She stared, then traced the lettering with a finger. 
 
"These fish live to be more than a hundred years you know.  Just imagine him swimming down under there, terrorizing everything in the river, all the while carrying our names around."
 
She reached out and spread her hand over the flat place on its crown and held it there for a long moment. "He's so ugly," she said. "I could almost kiss him."
 
"I'm standing right here."
 
She seemed to consider that. "You gotta let him go for me."
 
It was warm and humid and he didn't want to argue. He undid the chain from around the fish and pushed it back into the river. It floated there lifeless. He got into the water next to it, holding it upright and pushing it back and forth in the slow current. After a minute, the sturgeon moved, pushing away from him and tacking slow out into the deeper water, and then it was gone. He looked back and Sudie was sitting on her heels. He watched her rub her hands together and smell them where she had touched the fish, and she held her face in her hands.