Authors: Douglas Carlton Abrams
Pulling into the parking lot, she saw Frank carrying a worn cardboard box against his chest. T-shirts and a computer keyboard peeked out between the open flaps. She quickly rolled down the stiff window and shouted, “Frank—
I’m so, so sorry.”
Frank stopped, looked at her, and then glanced back down at the box, which he dropped into the trunk of their other car, a beige Toyota Corolla. He turned away without saying a word. He was shaking his head. Elizabeth turned off the car and ran after him.
“Frank, please forgive me,” Elizabeth said as she followed him through the gate to the small courtyard. They walked past the overgrown lavender and into their small town house. “I fell asleep at my desk. I wanted to be rested for your party, for our reunion.”
Still no answer. He did not even turn around to talk to her.
“Dr. Skilling said I had to file some paperwork or I was going to lose my candidacy. Now he says I need to file my dissertation in three weeks or they’re going to kick me out of the program.”
Frank had picked up another box. This one also was not closed. She could see some of Frank’s medical books inside.
Frank turned to face her, his brow furrowed in a scowl. “I can’t do this anymore.”
“Do what?”
Frank dropped the box on the ground. It landed with a thud. “Do this!” he said, his temper eclipsing his words with a cutting gesture.
Only then did the meaning of the boxes become clear. “You’re leaving?” she asked.
Frank looked around the living room in exasperation for the words that had escaped him.
“I wanted to make you the cream cake. I got the re—”
“I don’t need a cream cake. I need you. I need a family.”
“You have me.”
Frank stepped in close, wrapping his large hand around the nape of her neck, and pulled her face toward him. Elizabeth’s eyes went wide as his lips sealed against hers. Surprised, she inhaled the sweet and familiar scent of Frank, and leaned into his embrace.
Grabbing both her shoulders, Frank wrenched her away from him and glared into her eyes. “Remember that? If you’re not here, it dies.”
“It’s not dead. And we
will
have a family. I just need—”
“—more time,” Frank finished. He’d heard it all before. He picked up an old plaid suitcase and a pile of gear he had not had a
chance to box up. It was his old well-loved wetsuit, diving mask, snorkel, and fins. They stuck out at every angle, threatening to fall to the ground. “That’s what you’ve been saying for five years!”
“Just until I finish.”
“If it made a difference, I’d wait another five years, but it won’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re no closer to finishing than you were last year or the year before. Let’s face it, Elizabeth. We want different lives.”
“I want to have a family, Frank, I just don’t want to sacrifice—”
“Families make sacrifices for each other.” The plastic strap broke off the mask, and it dropped to the floor. They both looked at it.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have sacrificed what
you
loved,” Elizabeth said.
Frank did not answer as he walked out to the car. Elizabeth followed him. He threw everything into the trunk with the force of his anger. “Sometimes we sacrifice the things we love for the
people
we love.” The driver’s side door squeaked as he opened it and got in.
“Where are you going?” The words were out before she had thought them. The question seemed strange, but the answer made all the difference. Was he going to someone?
“I’m going to stay with Tom and his family.”
She sighed with relief. At least this was about them and not someone else.
Frank turned the ignition. Elizabeth wished his car did not start so dependably. “I’ve made sacrifices,” she said. He closed the door, but he rolled down the window. He was still willing to talk. “I moved to California for your residency—away from Professor Maddings and from my research subjects.”
Frank shifted into reverse. “They’re not your research subjects, Elizabeth. They’re your family.”
THIRTEEN
Three days later
Friday, February 16
Two hundred nautical miles off the Pacific coast of Mexico
A
POLLO SWAM NORTHWEST
toward the summer feeding grounds—his long flippers not far from those of his two companions—
The three whales moved their flukes rhythmically and forcefully—their grace belying the extraordinary thrust of the broad tails propelling them onward—
Apollo could feel his companions by the lift and fall of water and the low sounds of the contact calls that groaned from within their great bodies—
These long utterances also revealed the seamounts and canyons on the ocean floor far below
—
Their course took them far west—past the continental shelf—the waters descending deeply to the abyssal depths where the sperm whales dove—
As Apollo and his companions surfaced—they let out great gusts of air—emptying their lungs and filling them with the breath of life
—
A strange sound—like nothing Apollo had ever heard—pulsed through him—
He approached one of his companions—now held fast—unable to move—caught by some strange tentacle—
Apollo saw his bulging eye—
And then a shattering eruption—so close it was deafening—the force throwing Apollo to the side—the air knocked from his mouth—his body heavier now—beginning to descend.
Only then did he taste the astringent tinge of red—and feel the heat of his companion’s lifeblood—his companion’s body limp—dead so fast—
The killer’s tentacle began dragging his companion away—
Apollo saw the other whale fleeing—but the sound again was in the water—and the tentacle—and the eruption—
Blood closed in on both sides—like a red tide—
Apollo rotated his body to his second companion—touched him as he swam underneath—feeling for life—but there was none—
The great shadow of a ship hovered above, and his heart pounded in his chest
—
Dive—
Dive
—
Apollo stopped several lengths away—rolled his head to the side—and then saw the enormous gray ship looming out of the water to the sky—countless round eyes all along its body and its underbelly dark red like the blood that it drank.
K
OJI
I
TO STOOD
on the high bow of
Catcher Boat #1,
knowing what he needed to do, but unsure whether he could. Ito had the phone number and the test results—he just needed to make the call. But if he did, he would risk his job and possibly much more.
The gun smoke clung in a gray cloud around the harpooner, who wore a yellow plastic hard hat and an orange life vest like the other workers. The whales were pulled in, one on either side of the boat.
Ito knew they were somewhere off the coast of Mexico, a country that, unlike his own, seemed to think that whaling was wrong. The
Ryukyu Maru
whaling ship and its catcher boats needed to stay
at least two hundred nautical miles off the coast, outside Mexico’s exclusive economic zone, and in the open seas that were owned by no one.
Catcher Boat #1
had been rewarded by the sight of three adult humpbacks swimming north by northwest at an extraordinary eighteen kilometers per hour. The catcher ship fired two exploding grenade harpoons in quick succession, using both of its lines to catch two of the three whales.
Ito and several other workers tied large cables around each whale’s tail to secure it as the boat raced back to the mother ship. The drag of the whales’ forty-ton bodies caused the water to foam. On the side of the
Ryukyu Maru,
Ito read the English word
RESEARCH
in large capital letters, each many times larger than the height of an ordinary man. But today there were no foreign media or environmental groups nearby.
The factory ship hauled the lifeless whales effortlessly up the ramp and onto the processing deck. Ito and several other members of the testing crew took some standard morphometrics, measuring the total length, the width across the flukes, and flipper size. They cut out the gonads to determine the whales’ reproductive state, their earplugs to tell their age, and their stomachs to see what they were eating. The scientist from the Japanese Cetology Research Center was looking for information that would demonstrate the health and abundance of humpback populations around the world. The whalers hoped to prove that the population had increased sufficiently and that they could begin commercial whaling once again.
Ito was simply a lab technician, not an official researcher, and he looked around nervously to see whether anyone was watching him. He stole a glance at the members of the flensing team, each in a green hard hat and a bright blue uniform. They were busy cutting away the whale blubber and meat and were joking about something he could not hear. According to the IWC treaty, the “by-products” of
whales killed for research must not be wasted. The meat would be shipped to market in Tokyo.
Ito’s official responsibilities were limited. He was taking tissue samples from various internal organs, and his hands now worked with practiced skill on the slippery stomach. His mind was free to think about what he was going to do. He had tried to speak to his supervisor but had been told to mind his own business. Ito knew whom he needed to call, but would the executive director of the Fisheries Development Department speak to
him,
an ordinary worker?
FOURTEEN
5:00
P.M.
La Pompe, Bequia
T
EO WALKED UP
the final cement step that led from the beach, his body bone-weary from a day like any other, out looking for whales. They still had another two whales in their quota for the season, but his heart was not in it. Every time he looked out at the horizon, he saw Elizabeth’s face. He had stayed after the other men left to refinish the boat where it had been damaged by the tail of the bull, but he had also wanted to be alone.
“When the whaling captain gon choose heself a wife?” Eve, Maggie, and Cynthelia were sitting on a wooden stoop. It was Eve who had spoken. She had been widowed young, and Maggie’s man had run off. Cynthelia was not yet married. They were all attractive women and dressed in shorts and T-shirts, like women who were still fishing for a man. “You just tell us which one you choose, and any of us gon make you a happy man!” Eve winked and Cynthelia giggled.
“I’m sure you know that a sailor he married to the sea. It wrong he break a lady’s heart.” Teo flashed them one of his famous smiles and then bowed his head and kept walking.
“Break me heart! Please break me heart,” he heard Maggie call out after him. He chuckled at the proposal but knew that he could not do to hers what had been done to his.
A cheer rose up from the rum shop across the street, where his crew was playing a heated game of dominoes on the porch. The in
cessant beat of the soca music was punctuated every few moments by a sound like a pistol as one of the men slammed a domino down on the wooden table. The men considered the pieces they held like leaves in their knotted mahogany hands, and adjusted their strategy.
On the wall behind the men hung a turtle shell and the remains of a poster that had once said
SAVE THE WHALES.
The only word left was
WHALES,
and above it, someone had etched into the blue paint the word
EAT.
All around the posters, like wallpaper, were magazine and newspaper articles: “The Man Who Battles the Giants,” “Caribbean Whaler a Legend on Island,” “The Last Great Whaler?” Teo remembered the words from one. It said he had the “rough way of the buccaneers but the charm of the captains that left many women gazing out to sea awaiting their return.” Though he liked that description, it wasn’t true, at least the part about many women. There had been only one woman, and she had left
him
gazing out to sea, thousands of miles away to America.
“Come have a drink, Cap.” Rafee was waving him over.
He smiled as they all stared at him expectantly, but he had no time for drink. It muddied the mind, and a hunter always needed to have his wits about him. “Not tonight,” Teo said.
“Nother time,” Rafee replied, and the men returned to their game.
Teo walked under the arching rib bones of a humpback whale that marked the entry to his property. They were ghostly gray in the twilight. He touched the rough surface, paying his respects to the whale that he had killed as a boy at his father’s side. He could still hear the cheering of the whalermen.
Some who had been in his father’s crew remained in his. They were his men and he was their captain, and together they hunted the whale that fed the whole island when they were lucky enough to catch one.
The bare two-room house clearly belonged to a man who did not have a woman. All Teo owned of value was the boat, a few pieces of furniture, and a handful of pots and pans. He pulled the levered handle of the old fridge and opened the small door of the freezer compartment. In it was the whale part that Rafee had given him, wrapped carefully in white butcher paper. There had been something strange and wrong with it. He took out a chocolate-flavored Popsicle and, from the fridge, what was left of an open can of tuna.
Out on the deck, Teo looked down into a square plastic container, where half a dozen sea turtle hatchlings bumped into one another. He crumbled the tuna into the water as they swam around, nibbling at the meal. Their brownish-green shells were only three inches long. It would be several years until they were large enough to release back into the sea without getting eaten right from the start.
Teo sat down in a rickety wooden chair, its slatted seat and back rough and dried out by the salt air. Below him, a few stilts propped up the porch precariously. The house clung to the cliff as if desperately trying to avoid the hungry seas below.