In the distance there were ferryboats crossing, frothing up a giant trail of white through the harbor, and at last the weight of the job began to lift from Hawley’s shoulders. He glanced behind them at the cliff. It seemed far away. Far enough that Talbot couldn’t hit them, even if he was up there with a rifle. Even if his wife was dead. There was no way the old man could make the shot.
As soon as he thought this, a spray blasted, hissing not thirty feet away. Hawley immediately ducked down, thinking it was Talbot after all. Then the boat began to pitch and Jove started making a noise in the back of his throat, like he was going to be sick. Hawley checked for blood but Jove wasn’t hit. He was staring over the port side, at a widening plane of flatness among the waves. And from this open place, the whale appeared—rising like a dark and crusted slice of doom, only ten feet away from the boat. The creature slid along the hull, five times the length of their dinghy from bow to stern, its snout covered in barnacles and parasites.
It was a gray whale, the kind Jove had spotted from the ferry that morning. Fifty feet of blubber and muscle and skin the color of storm clouds. With all his might Hawley leaned into the tiller, spinning the boat away. But the whale turned and followed, its giant mouth opening wider, like a black hole sucking in all of the ocean.
Hawley reached for the cooler. Jove shouted and grabbed the handle with his ruined fingers but Hawley shook him off and threw the salmon overboard as an offering, their silvery skins landing with a smack before sinking under their own dead weight.
The creature was not distracted. It ignored the fish and passed underneath the dinghy, then bumped into the hull. Both men were sent sprawling. The motor choked, flooded with water, sputtered for a moment and died. Hawley gripped the rail, trying to steady the balance. He crawled to the stern and yanked the starter, but the engine refused to catch. Without power the tiny boat floundered. Waves crashed over the bow.
The tide around them swelled in broad circles, then slid sideways as if it were being pulled down a drain. A low rumbling began, a subterraneous hum, and the whale emerged once more, blasting air and raining a flood of brackish wash down on the men like a fountain. The creature hovered on the surface beside the boat, an expanse of scarred and unforgiving rock, its snout like the head of a sunken galleon. And then the whale bashed the dinghy again, nearly upending it, and another rush of cold water poured across Hawley’s legs.
Jove got to his knees and started bailing. Everywhere there was water, and Hawley lunged for the handgun. Then he got to his feet, aimed as best he could and pulled the trigger. The shots echoed off the cliffs, loud as fireworks. For a moment Hawley could sense each bullet as it left the chamber, as it traveled through the air, as it penetrated the whale’s dark skin and tunneled through flesh, slowed and then came to a stop, nestled in some hidden corner of the leviathan’s body, a token to be carried until the end of days.
He squeezed the trigger over and over, until all the bullets were gone and there was nothing but the sound of the ocean and the click of an empty barrel. Blood colored the water. Another spray rose high over their heads and rained down upon them with a roar. Hawley watched the spouts on the animal’s back, swelling with air. They sealed tight, like two lids over a single eye, and the whale sank beneath the waves.
Jove clutched the bailer, breathing hard. “Where’d it go?”
“I can’t tell,” said Hawley.
The men waited. The boat rocked.
A distant tone came from the cliffs overhead. A burst of air, a hiss. Hawley turned, trying to place the sound, then saw the cut of the whale’s back in the distance. He said nothing, only pointed, and the men watched as the whale dove, the long, dark slick of its back sliding along the waves and then the bend of its spine and then the scarred tail rising high in the air like a pair of beckoning hands before vanishing beneath the surface.
Hawley’s shoulder was raw, his clothes soaked to the bone. He thought of the holes in the whale’s back, the way they opened and closed together, and it was like he could feel the same opening and closing in his own chest, and then the plug, and the sinking. He dropped the gun. He sat down in the flooded boat.
“Hell of a thing,” said Jove. His face was streaked with salt water, the burns like shadows carved into skin. He picked up the bailer again and began to scoop and pour, scoop and pour, returning ocean to ocean.
“I’m finished,” Hawley said, “with all of this.”
It felt good to say it, even if it wasn’t true. Hawley peeled back his coat and checked the hole in his shoulder. The bandages he’d used were wet and covered with blood but they had not fallen apart. Not yet. He turned to the engine. He tried to get it started again. He checked the vents, switched to neutral, opened the choke, looked for a sign. Hawley wrapped his fingers around the starter and pulled. He listened for the catch. He pulled again. And the motor roared to life.
Firebird
PRINCIPAL GUNDERSON’S OFFICE SMELLED LIKE fish and watermelon. The brine wafted up from his old gray desk, as if it had been made from pieces of driftwood dragged in from the beach and the drawers filled with day-old scrod, while the candy he was eating produced a synthetic, fruity cloud that hovered in the center of the room. He rolled this candy in his mouth, from one cheek to the other. He offered the bowl of candy to Loo.
“We’re here to talk about your future,” he said.
Loo plucked one of the cellophane-wrapped squares but she did not open it. She pressed it in the palm of her hand until she felt the sugar begin to melt and soften at the edges. She tried to breathe through her mouth instead of her nose.
“What about it.”
“College.” Principal Gunderson cleared his throat. “Or maybe a trade school?”
“I haven’t graduated yet.”
Principal Gunderson set the bowl of candy back on the desk. “Your best grades are in science. But you’ve missed the last four classes, and if you don’t make up the work, you won’t graduate.”
“I’ve been sick.” Loo had no intention of returning to biology. Whenever she approached the lab door her hands would start to sweat and she would end up hiding in the library. She’d felt powerful when she broke Marshall Hicks’s finger, but kissing him had made her insides shaky and vulnerable. Avoiding embarrassment now seemed more important than getting an A.
Principal Gunderson shuffled some papers to show that he did not believe her. “Your teacher wants to fail you. But I convinced her to let you write a paper instead. On condition.”
“Of what?” Loo asked.
“Of you working. For me. At the Sawtooth. As long as you control your temper,” Principal Gunderson said, “you’ll be starting this Saturday at four.”
Loo could think of a hundred things she would rather do.
“I’ll have to ask my father.”
Gunderson released a soft bubble of air. “He already knows.”
“What?”
“It was his idea, actually.”