Grayson (6 page)

One bat ray swam within three feet of me. He moved gracefully, like an enormous newspaper rolling and unrolling. Six more bat rays followed in complete synchrony. They swam to a level ten feet above my head, revealing their white underbodies. They turned in toward shore where the water was warmer and climbed into the upper inches of water, skimming the light blue surface silhouetted by the rays of the sun, their long whiplike tails trailing behind.

They looped back and dove, flying past me, one after the other as they flapped their fins fast, using the downward thrusts to move the silt on the ocean floor and uncover other stingrays and halibut hiding from predators. The bottom erupted as stingrays scurried by and bat rays closed the distance. Not wanting to leave, but needing to breathe, I turned and followed what was left of my bubble stream to the surface, trying
to push the water downward rapidly with my arms the way the bat rays did.

Snapping through the water’s taut surface, I rolled over onto my back and breathed fast and deeply.

I didn’t stay there long. In the back of my mind I knew that if I didn’t find the baby whale soon, he might never find his mother, and even if he was with me, we might not find her. But still, there might be a way to help him.

If I continued diving in the same place, over and over again, did I increase or decrease my chances of finding the baby whale? I wasn’t sure, but I decided to try something different. This time I swam two hundred yards farther offshore into a warm current. Taking three deep breaths, I bent in half and lifted my legs up over my head, pulled rapidly, and felt the water squeezing around my head like a vise that continued to tighten as I dove deeper. My heart was beating slowly in my throat. I pulled a few more strokes, and then sculled to hold myself in place.

Two green sea turtles swam off to my right side. They were large, their carapaces mottled in patterns of browns, greens, blacks, and grays. They were about
four feet long and could have weighed one hundred and fifty pounds. They had to be at least fifteen years old. And they were swimming slowly and easily. Their fore flippers were beating the water like wings and they weren’t in any hurry, carrying their homes along with them like aquatic RVs. They were amazing animals, able to hold their breath underwater for up to five hours, and they could make their hearts slow down so they beat at nine beats per minute. As they disappeared from view, I pulled back to the surface with a deep sense of gloom. There was no sign of the baby whale or his mother. What could I do now?

Floating on my back trying to catch my breath and energy, choppy water rolling over my shoulders and arms, I stretched them out and let them float near my head, tucked my chin to my chest to stretch the back of my neck, and then grabbed my knees with both hands and pulled them into my chest one at a time. Slowly I released them. That took the stress out of my back and I imagined that I was in a giant cradle rocking from side to side, with gentle waves rolling under me and massaging my back and shoulders.

The wind blew through the funneling waves, transforming
them into wind instruments. They were giant bassoons, tubas, trombones, piccolos, trumpets, flutes, clarinets, saxophones, French horns, B horns, C horns, and oboes. A symphony of the sea was playing. And the music the waves played grew louder, changed in tone, in pitch, and in length with their constantly changing shape and the amount of wind blowing through them.

As the waves broke, a new movement emerged. The rush of the waves plucked the beach like the strings of a harp, making high, sweet notes. The swirling breezes strummed the water’s surface and the tiny wind waves sounded like the flowing notes of a piano.

In the background the deep resonant clangs of the shipping buoys, plaintive cries of the seagulls, and calls of the willets became a part of this great sea symphony, and I enjoyed each movement until I heard an incessant high-pitched whine, like the outboard engine on my grandfather’s fishing boat.

Quickly, I lifted my head and moved my arms fast, splashing them hard against the water to make myself more visible.

I could tell by the way the skipper was holding the
motor and peering over the bow of his boat that it was Carl. My mood immediately lifted. I raised my arm high above my head and waved. Carl was an old man who fished along the shores of Seal Beach and Long Beach. He used worms like my grandfather and sometimes lures, but he believed he caught the most fish with night crawlers. He had a compost pile at the back of his house where he tossed his grass clippings and vegetable peels, and he grew the longest night crawlers I’d ever seen.

Carl tipped his white sailor’s cap and turned his boat toward me. His face was red and deeply etched from years of being on the water. He wore dark sunglasses to protect his light blue eyes.

Carl loved to stop and talk. His wife had passed away long ago and he still missed her company. But while he liked people, he enjoyed fishing alone; that way he didn’t have to wait for anyone or be on anyone else’s schedule. Sometimes he brought an older friend—he was kind of a grouch—but Carl did it because he said his friend’s wife had passed away too and he was lonely. I thought it was nice of Carl to do that, since I’d much rather be alone than be with
someone cranky. Carl and I didn’t see each other very often. It usually took him some time to get himself going in the morning; he was usually starting to fish when I was finishing up my workout.

But I loved to see him. He always had some news or information that I could think about when I swam. Just as good, Carl usually caught an extra halibut or two, and he always gave me some to bring home for dinner. It was always a little strange kicking ashore while holding a five- to ten-pound dead halibut above my head with fish juices sliding down my arms.

No fish ever tasted as fresh or as sweet as the ones Carl gave me. I liked the fish even more because they were from Carl and I could tell he was as excited about giving me the fish as I was receiving them from him.

Carl was perplexed. He saw me floating on my back: He had never seen me do that; usually I was swimming on pace. He thought something was wrong, and when I told him about the lost baby whale, he smiled as if he had just been given an answer to another of life’s mysteries. He hadn’t had a nibble on his line all morning and it hadn’t made sense. The
fishing conditions seemed perfect, and usually he caught at least two or three fish.

The baby whale must have scared the fish away. Carl thought the baby was still somewhere nearby. He told me he would cruise the shore and radio Steve if he saw anything at all. Sometimes, he said, the important things take time, sometimes they don’t happen all at once, sometimes answers come out of time and struggle, and learning. Sometimes you just have to try again in a different way.

He knew so much more than I did, and I always liked talking with him. He turned his boat, glanced back over his shoulder, tipped his hat, and motored along the shore.

Try again one more time. Try diving into deeper water. If you can’t find the baby whale this time, then it’s time to try something else.

Diving below the water, I pulled as fast and as hard as I could to get down as deep as I could go. From moment to moment the world changed. I swam through a brilliant melting kaleidoscope of green, yellow, indigo, violet, and soft blue. As I pulled deeper, the pressure
tightened around my head and body like an invisible shrinking knot.

My ears popped, and I pulled deeper. The increased arm movement was using oxygen more quickly, so I had to keep enough air in my lungs so I could make it to the surface without passing out. I was grateful for those training sessions my coach had given me where I had swum one lap of the pool breathing every five, then seven, nine, and eleven strokes. Still, I wasn’t used to swimming with the weight of the water on me and I knew I couldn’t stay down too long.

There he was floating right below me, inches above the soft light brown silt-covered bottom. He looked right at me with his large brown eyes. He was so peaceful. I laughed and I wanted to swim over and hug him. He had been there all along, just watching me.

He lifted his fluke, did a little nod downward with his head, and glided toward me underwater through beams of white and green sunlight. The liquid light dappled and waved along his skin.

He swam in a small circle and I laughed out of relief and delight. And tried not to get a noseful of water. He wanted to play with me, but I was out of air.

Following my bubble stream, I raced to the surface. My lungs were down to zero.

Floating on my back, I gasped for air, caught my breath, and then dove again.

He had the most incredible set of lungs. He was able, it seemed, to stay down forever. He did one giant dolphin kick and slipped through honey-colored sunbeams, and they changed with his movement through the water, becoming squiggles of lime green light.

He grunted softly, squeaked, paused, then grunted softly again. He paused longer this time, as if he was waiting for me to respond. Then he clicked and chirped. He made a small symphony of underwater sounds: high and low tones, soft and loud; all were new and different.

For the first time in my life, I heard a baby whale speak. I heard the voice of the whale. I was thrilled. The baby whale had spoken to me.

More than anything, I wanted to talk to him and I wished I could understand what he was saying. It was like going to a foreign country and not being able to speak the language. It was frustrating, wanting to
somehow make a connection but not being able to understand anything.

He looked at me with his big chestnut brown eyes and I wanted to reach out and touch him. I wanted to be able to do something that he would understand.

Instead, I just watched him, trying to think of a way I could help. Watching for any gesture he might make, anything I could comprehend.

He tried a few more sounds, louder in volume, higher in tone. And he waited as if he was expecting me to say something.

When I didn’t say anything, he turned on his side and looked at me. He opened his mouth. He had a large pink tongue. I think he was clicking it against the roof and base of his mouth, like a human child. He continued talking or vocalizing.

And I listened to the sounds with real awe. Years later, I realized that if I had found the baby whale on my first dive, I might never have heard him speak underwater, I might never have seen the graceful bat rays or the swimming sea turtles, and I never would have known how far I could go down into the ocean depths on a single breath.

There was no sign of the whale’s mother by the jetty, underwater, or anywhere else so I started swimming back toward the pier, hoping the baby whale would follow. He didn’t.

I thought that if I could communicate with him he would come with me, like a dog responding to a familiar whistle. I thought that maybe if I could try to speak in his language he would understand. I tried to repeat his chirp. It was pathetic. It didn’t sound anything like him. I tried to grunt, a really big grunt, but all I got was a noseful of saltwater and tears in my goggles from the salty sting. I returned to the surface to clear the water out of my nose.

And it finally occurred to me: No matter what I sounded like, I didn’t know what his sounds meant, and even if I could imitate them, I wasn’t going to be anything more to him than his echo.

Unable to figure out a different approach, I resumed my swim back to the pier.

Sometimes it makes sense to try something again and keep it simple. A moment later, the baby whale took the lead.

When we reached the pier, Steve was waiting there along with a group of fishermen and a handful of locals and tourists. Steve said that one of the fishermen on an offshore boat thought he had sighted the mother whale near one of the oil rigs.

The oil rig was about a mile and a half offshore and it was almost in a direct line with the pier. I had swum out there only once before, during an open-water race, but at that time, I had had a paddler with me on a long paddleboard. He had helped me stay on course, and he had watched for danger.

But the baby whale had already turned and started to head offshore. He looked over at me as if to say, Please come swim with me.

I knew it made no sense to follow him. I could think of many reasons why I couldn’t or shouldn’t, but I didn’t want him to go off alone.

Sometimes things just don’t make sense, sometimes there’s no reason to explain how or why I wanted to do them; I only knew that I had to, I had to try. Without trying I would never know what could happen. It was like reading a great mystery and never knowing how it finished, always wondering who did it. Sometimes the things that make the least sense to other people are the ones that make the most sense to me.

Maybe I knew this, too, because I didn’t always fit in. I was shy and large, and I believed that I had to work hard and study hard to do well. I had different friends—from computer wizards to the guys on the water polo team and the girls on the swim team to friends in drama and music—but I didn’t fit into any one group. I had things I knew I wanted to do and didn’t play the teenage boy and girl games. I was more interested in studying people who had been leaders, made discoveries, or explored, men and women who were always going against established thought. It was
always difficult to swim against the tide, doing something new or different, because the ideas that could result might cause something to change. Many people are happy with things as they are. They are comfortable with what they already know. But if I didn’t move outside my comfort level, how would I ever experience anything new, how would I ever learn, or see or explore? I believe that each of us has a purpose for being here, that we have certain gifts and certain challenges we need to learn from and fulfill for our lives to have meaning and richness.

“I’m going to swim with him,” I shouted to Steve.

“I don’t like the idea of you being out there alone,” he said.

I was afraid. But I knew I had to. Sometimes I just did things because I thought I could and because if I didn’t an opportunity to learn something, grow, and reach farther would be lost. There wasn’t time for a long discussion. The baby whale was turning out toward the open sea, and I was afraid that if he left now without me, we would never know if he found his mother or what happened to him. Maybe my presence could even make a difference.