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his commercial fishing rights. They didn’t want him going back
there and stirring up trouble with the neighbors. But the federal
authorities had a different agenda. Lonny’s crime was shooting
at a Steller sea lion, and the feds weren’t interested in doing
anything but making an example of Lonny K. Lonny’s friends
saw the federal government as a massive golden sea lion lunging
out of the water and shaking a salmon in its jaws.
At the Cook Inlet Pretrial Facility in downtown Anchorage,
Lonny and the other arrivals waited in a hot windowless cell, a
foul-smelling hellhole of a cell. To Lonny the place stank worse
than a pack of sea lions. The sweat rolled down his sides and he
was left there to stew for a long time. His ordeal had begun.
His mother Audrey visited him there and she later
remembered the indignities with a bitter shudder. She thought
she would rather die than be locked up like that. Audrey felt sorry
for her son, but he had been given many chances to straighten
out. She was old school in this regard, a law-and-order, takeresponsibility
woman. Lonny had always been a jock, humored
and indulged, and the pattern of indulgence had finally caught
up with him.
Privately Audrey believed that a tendency to alcohol abuse
ran in the genes, on her late husband’s side. But this was no
excuse. Lonny was thirty-four years old. He had time to change
his ways. Pink-faced, square-jawed, handsome, Swedish and
German by blood, and with winning blue eyes, Lonny had looks
that worked magic on certain women, often women who had a
fire-breathing streak of their own. One of these was his girlfriend
Florence, a twenty-two-year-old from one of the island villages.
Privately Audrey had doubts about Florence, who liked to “party
hearty” and who might not be the best influence on her son. But
Audrey didn’t want to hex Lonny by giving up on his judgment.
If he would leave off drinking, if he would wed Florence or
another woman and find room in his heart for God, Lonny could
turn his life around.
For his part Lonny had a single great fear: that his
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