P’eh

The Yurok elder, Sandy Sanderson, sat by the fire. The flames flickered against the walls of the sweat lodge, and we sat close, drawn in by his voice, low and steady like the current.

“You ever hear of P’eh?” he asked. “Means fish in my native tongue.”

We shook our heads. We were boys, maybe ten, maybe younger.

“A fish big as a canoe,” he said. “Bigger. Not a salmon, not a sturgeon. Something else.” He spat into the fire. “It waits in the shallows. It knows the voices of men.”

I didn’t like that part. Things in the water should not have voices.

Sandy shifted, his bones cracking as he leaned forward. “It calls to children,” he said. “Says, ‘Come ride on my back.’ It seems kind. Gentle. It lets them climb on. Then it swims out, deeper and deeper, and down they go.”

The fire popped. Someone kicked at a stick, sending a stream of sparks into the black.

“I knew a boy once,” he went on. “My cousin, maybe seven years old. Name was Daniel. He was a wild one. Always running, never listening. His mother warned him about the river, told him the current would take him, but he just laughed. One summer evening, he went down to the bank to play. Never came back.”

I felt something cold settle in my gut.

“They searched,” the old man said. “For days. Found nothing. No footprints. No sign of struggle. No clothes washed up downstream. A boy can drown, sure, but the river leaves things behind.” His eyes found mine in the dark. “P’eh doesn’t.”

The fire burned low. The frogs and crickets had gone quiet. I thought of Daniel, a boy like us, full of life, now nothing but a name in a story told by the fire.

I never found mention of P’eh in any book. I never heard another soul speak of it.

Maybe Sandy made it up that night, watching us hover too close to the river’s bank. Perhaps he knew boys needed more than warnings.

Or maybe he was telling the truth.