Delta Girls (23 page)

I
STUMBLED BACK OUT OF THE ORCHARD, SPENT. THE
crowd was much smaller now. A couple of the pickers were playing guitar softly, the Rolling Stones. Empty wine bottles littered the tables. The fire was dwindling in its pit. Quinn and Abcde were waiting for me, eating leftover pear tarts they had begged from Mrs. Vieira.

“Where were you?” asked Quinn. It was kind of nice to know she was worrying about me for a change.

“Just went for a walk,” I said, grateful for the cover of night—hopefully my eyes didn’t look too swollen, too red. Hopefully my weeping hadn’t carried like the coyotes’.

“Did you see the wild turkey?” she asked.

“I saw an owl.” My whole head was congested, dizzy.

“We saw two owls and a fox and a wild turkey and seven bunnies,” she said. “And bats.”

“Very wild,” said Abcde, and Quinn held up fingers—two in a Von one hand, three in a Won the other—before running over to the porch to get a drink of water.

“Thanks for watching her,” I said, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice.

“Any time, Izzy, I’m serious. She’s a joy. A beautiful child.”

Ben stepped onto the porch, next to Quinn. He waved at me, then bounded down the steps, Quinn trailing him. I caught my breath, wishing I could splash cold water on my puffy face.

“Where’d you run off to?” he asked.

“I needed to get a sweater,” I said, then felt like an idiot, since of course I hadn’t grabbed one. “Where’s Sam?”

“Sam?” he asked, as if he wasn’t sure who I was talking about. “Oh yeah, the whale girl—I’ve been helping her with some environmental data—pesticide use in the area, mostly. I think she took off with one of the reporters.”

I wanted to cry all over again, this time from relief.

“Hey,” he said. “Would you mind if I came down to the houseboat for a little bit tonight? I love to be on the water when the moon is full.”

Longing filled my body near to bursting. I looked back at the orchard. Did the trees suffer when we couldn’t pick their bounty fast enough? Were they like a mother whose milk comes in and her baby doesn’t want to nurse and she thinks her breasts will explode?

“We’re heading there now,” I said.

“IT’S SO PEACEFUL
here.” Ben sat on a deck chair, his feet up on the railing. The houseboat rose and fell gently. A few campers across the way had lit bonfires. I could see some of them in silhouette, standing by the levee, watching for spray, for spines, even though the whales hadn’t made an appearance for a while. The full moon cast its glow all over the water, like a slick of cream.

“I love it,” I said, bundled in a sweater for real now. My body felt relaxed and sleepy after my big cry. I lay my head against the back of the chair and looked up at the stars, felt them prickle
somewhere inside of me, lighting up the sadness that still lingered there.

“You should see it in the winter,” he said. “It’s cold, but I love when the tule fog starts to roll in.”

“What’s that?” asked Quinn.

“It’s the fog that settles into the valley after the first big rain,” he said, “really low and dense. Sometimes stays for months.”

“What do you like about it?” I asked.

“I don’t like it when I’m driving,” he said. “You can’t see the road. But when you’re in the houseboat, it’s awesome. It’s like you’re in some sort of misty magical place.” He sounded a little bit drunk, but in a loose and pleasant way. I could smell Madeira on his breath.

“Like Niflheim,” said Quinn excitedly.

“Just like that,” said Ben. “Where the world began.”

“Will we be here this winter?” asked Quinn.

“No, sweetheart.” I felt a pang of loss. “All the work will be done here by then.”

“Oh, there’s stuff to do all year long,” he said. “Pruning, spraying, you name it. I’m sure my parents could find something for you to do if you want to hang around.”

I wanted to hang my arms around his neck, hang myself all over him. I was tempted to inch my foot a little closer to his on the railing, but stopped myself. “I’ll look into it,” I said, trying not to get my hopes, Quinn’s hopes, up too much.

We sat in silence, looking out at the water. I must have drifted off to sleep in my chair; when I woke, Quinn had put herself to bed and Ben was gone. Someone had draped a blanket over me. My legs were stiff as I took them off the railing and limped into the boat. Quinn’s body gave off warmth under the sheets; I pulled the cold blanket from outside to my chest and ached for a different kind of heat.

F
OR THE FIRST TIME, THE KISS-AND-CRY HELD REAL
meaning for Karen. Tears of relief, of joy, of complete overwhelm, streamed down her cheeks as she and Nathan kissed again. Deep, slow kisses that made the arena disappear, that created a warm, sweet bubble around their bodies. They kept kissing as the judges revealed their scores, as those scores moved them into first place, as Deena screamed in triumph, waving flowers over their heads, showering their flushed faces with petals.

“NATIONAL CHAMPIONS!” DEENA
kept saying in the cab after the medal ceremony. “National fucking champions, baby!”

Karen snuggled against Nathan, his hand on her leg. They pressed their medals together, made them kiss, too. Karen felt the metal clang inside her, as if her whole body were a tuning fork, open to a new vibration. She kept stealing glances at her mom to see how she was reacting to all the cuddling, nervous that she would try to break them apart, but Deena barely looked
at them; she was too busy talking about all of the upcoming events. Karen hadn’t let herself think beyond Nashville. Deena had put such a focus on Nationals, on getting noticed this year so there would be a better chance of getting on the Olympic team in 1998. They hadn’t talked about what would happen if they actually placed—the Champions Series Finals in Canada in two weeks; the World Championships—the Worlds!—in Geneva, Switzerland, in March. The invitations to appear on
The Today Show, The Tonight Show
, the calls from potential sponsors. Deena was in her glory, already scheduling interviews, setting up photo shoots.

“Now that you’re a couple,” said Deena, finally looking at them directly, as if sizing them up, scrutinizing them as a unit, “you’re even more of a hot commodity.” Nathan winked at Deena and lifted both thumbs. Karen nuzzled her head deeper into Nathan’s neck, breathed in the spice of his sweat and hair gel and cologne, avoided her mom’s appraising eyes. All she needed for glory was this.

A
FTER WORK THE NEXT DAY, THE VIEIRAS ASKED ME TO
go to Rio Vista, a few towns south, to pick up bags for our booth at the Pear Fair before the store closed. I hoped Ben would be able to join me, but he was busy helping his dad gussy up the old tractors for the parade. Abcde came along, instead. After so many years of just me and Quinn in the car, it felt weird to have her with us, almost like having a live tiger in the back seat; the car didn’t feel big enough to contain her energy. I half expected her to pounce as I drove. I rolled down my window so the scent of her dreadlocks—sweaty, herbal—wouldn’t suffocate me. Rio Vista wasn’t too far away, but it felt like we were in the car for hours, what with her alphabetical exclamations—“ferry greets humble itinerants,” “river seems terribly undulatory.” I wondered if her use of the alphabet was related to her hormonal cycle in some way—it seemed to be peaking.

Rio Vista was a small town, but compared to Comice, it felt huge, with its fast-food restaurants, its large drawbridge that the
whales had been milling around of late. I had looked forward to seeing them again, but they had moved on by the time we got there. Hopefully on their way back to sea.

We stepped into Foster’s Bighorn, a legendary local restaurant; the walls were covered with taxidermied animal heads—bear, deer, lion, rhino, some animals I couldn’t even identify.

“Antelope, boar, cougar, deer …” Quinn pointed to the different heads, cringing.

“Creepy dead elephant,” said Abcde. “Fuck.”

“Language,” I warned, tilting my head at Quinn.

“Yes, it is.” Abcde sounded defiant. “Yes, it is language. And I intend to use all of it.”

“Abcde,” I started.

“No word is off-limits for a poet.” Her eyes blazed in the dim room. “Quinn should know that. ‘Fuck,’ ‘shit,’ ‘cunt’ … all of it’s fair game!”

Quinn clapped her hand over her mouth, scandalized and giddy.

“Nice,” I said. “Real nice, Abcde,” but she just shrugged.

“This, however”—she swept an arm out to take in all the animal trophies—“this is truly unfair game.”

A couple of people in the restaurant threw us dirty looks, and we slunk back outside. At least I slunk; Abcde and Quinn held their heads high. We walked to the end of the street, which overlooked the water, and found a monument to Humphrey, the humpback that had visited the Delta in 1985. Donated by “Silva’s Memorial’s” (“Why can’t people learn to use apostrophes correctly?” Abcde huffed), it looked like a large gray tombstone, a large picture of a whale engraved onto its smooth marble front, these words underneath:

A poem by a twelve-year-old boy was carved below in smaller letters, the boy’s signature also engraved in the stone:

“You call that a poem?” Abcde was livid.

“It’s cute,” said Quinn.

“Cute doesn’t cut it.” Abcde smacked her purse against the monument. “Cute isn’t worthy of being immortalized in stone! All bewail cute!”

“He was only twelve when he wrote it,” I said. “Give the kid a break.”

“I give no one a break for sloppy writing,” said Abcde. “I’ve seen twelve-year-olds write very sophisticated work. ‘Until they ended his vacation.’ Who is this mysterious ‘they,’ and what did they do to the whale?”

I suddenly felt sorry for the students in her workshop at Squaw Valley.

“They saved him,” said Quinn. “The rescue people.” She had heard the story many times about the humpback’s visit over twenty years ago. The fact that he found his way back to the ocean after almost a month in the Delta seemed to give her hope for Bartlett and Seckel, but I knew she was still worried.

“He saved himself, honey,” said Abcde. “That’s what all of us have to do.”

A little tingle ran across my ribs.

“Anyway,” she said. “Quinn could write a much better poem, and she’s nine.”

“I don’t know …” Quinn looked down at her blue flip-flops.

“We’ll work on it,” she said. “We’ll work on it so we’ll be ready when they make the monument for our whales.”

“If our whales die,” said Quinn, “do you think they’ll put their heads on the wall of that restaurant?”

“I doubt it,” I said. “Their heads would take up the whole place.”

Quinn looked bereft.

“They’re not going to die on our watch,” said Abcde, and I wanted to tell her not to say such a thing to Quinn. Even if they were on their way to the ocean, they weren’t out of the woods. Sometimes death can sneak up on a person. You can’t always keep someone alive, no matter how hard you will their heart to keep beating.

WHEN WE RETURNED
with cartons of bags for our sellable pears that evening, there was a big commotion in the slough. The whales were back. This time, the Marine Mammal people were piping sounds of killer whales, the humpbacks’ natural predators, into the water. Bartlett, the mother whale, was thrashing around, trying to protect Seckel, her baby. She was smacking her tail against the water in a way I had never seen before, sending huge plumes into the air that crashed onto the deck of the houseboat, which was already bucking from her movements. I had left some windows open—the houseboat was going to be drenched inside. I looked out at the Coast Guard boat but couldn’t tell which life-jacketed person was Sam—all of them had their windbreaker hoods on, ducking against the assault of water.