Friday's Harbor (27 page)

“So what am I going to be doing, exactly?” Neva asked.

“Walking,” Gabriel said. “You’re going to be walking. This kid doesn’t know about walls, so unless we protect him he’ll swim right into them. I want him between you and the wall, so he can get used to its being there, but you’ll be directing him.”

“Won’t echolocation tell him where they are?”

“Sure, but when the sound bounces back at him he’s not going to have any idea what it means.”

“So, the walking.”

“Yep. Around and around. Okay, come all the way up to him.”

The calf blew out a loud pneumatic huff. Despite all the time she’d spent with Friday, and the calf’s relatively tiny size, Neva jumped and then laughed at herself. “Why is his white skin yellow? Is that bad?”

“Nope, normal for a young calf. He’ll whiten up later.”

“It’s funny to see his dorsal fin standing straight up. Poor Friday.”

“Okay, let’s show you what you’re going to be doing,” Gabriel said.

“Can I just take a look at his flukes first? I haven’t had the chance.” At Gabriel’s nod, she held a diving mask up to her face and looked underwater, coming up grimacing. “Oh, man,” she said. “The poor guy. Do you think it still hurts?”

“I’m sure it does, but at least the young ones tend to heal quickly.” Gabriel stepped away from the calf, indicating that Neva should take his place. “You’ll hold him this way”—he positioned her arms so they formed parentheses around Juan just behind his pectoral flippers—“and let him move as freely as you can, but keep him from making contact with the sides. That’s it—that’s all there is to it. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Good,” Gabriel said. “I’ll be back in about an hour, and I’ll bring fish with me, so we can begin getting him used to being hand-fed. Sam said he’d come down and keep you company. Have him call me on the radio if you need anything.”

G
ABRIEL HAD A
yawning fit on his way back to Friday’s pool. As soon as he turned on the office lights Friday appeared in the window, and Gabriel banged on it with a flat palm, in greeting. The whale was looking for an indication that it was breakfast time, and when he saw none he swam off into the gloom. Gabriel had intended to do fish house, so Friday and Juan had food for the day, but what he did do was climb onto a desktop and roll onto his back, and rather than drift into sleep, fell into it headlong, as though from a high cliff.

He was getting old for these animal transport marathons.

Until the calf came into the picture, he’d intended to tell Truman that he’d be moving on just after the first of the year. Neva and Libertine had come along nicely, and there were any number of experienced marine mammal keepers who’d kill to join them. Gabriel wasn’t interested in maintaining exhibits and animals; exhausting though it was, he’d take a good crisis any day. Emergencies brought out the best in him.

He awoke from an hour’s deep and dreamless sleep abruptly, looking up to see Friday in the window, peering down at him and blowing air-bubble rings from his blowhole. Gabriel smiled. He would miss Friday; he was a one-in-a-million whale. But once the calf was settled into the pool, Gabriel suspected that Friday wouldn’t need any of them as much. Bringing up an orphan would keep him busy for years—for the rest of his life, presumably, unless something unexpected happened. Gabriel was sure he’d be good at it, too.

Now, getting up stiffly, he mentally amended his departure date to Labor Day. That should give them all plenty of time. In the meantime, he’d get in touch with a few of the young keepers he’d trained and see who might be interested in a position.

S
AM ARRIVED AT
the holding pool at 6:00
A.M
., carrying a Dunkin’ Donuts box.

“Oh, yum,” Neva said. “You’re the best.”

Sam held up a thermos. “Brought coffee, too,” he said.

“Great minds think alike,” Neva said. “Me, too.”

Sam laid a custard-filled donut—her favorite—on the rim of the pool. The calf was awake and moving, so she took a bite whenever they came around to that spot in the pool.

“You think you’ll have to keep him in this little pool much longer?” Sam asked her.

“Gabriel’s hoping we can move him into the med pool tomorrow. Isn’t he the most beautiful thing? I’m totally in love.”

“Yes, ma’am, he is. Hard to see him as a baby, though. He’s awful big.”

“It’s all relative. He’s less than half Friday’s size.”

With surprising speed, Neva discovered the tedium and discomfort of walking the calf. Half an hour after she’d gotten in, he stopped moving and hung quietly in the water, pecs and flukes drooping, eyes closed, dozing. Neva scratched slow, light circles around his head and blowhole to get him used to being touched and petted. She shifted from foot to foot; she windmilled her arms, trying to stay warm. Her numb hands ached, she had started shivering, and her muscles had begun to burn.

“Sam,” she said over her shoulder. “Talk to me. Distract me. I’m dying here. It’s been, what, two hours since Gabriel left?”

Sam consulted his watch. “One hour, three minutes.”

“Dear god.”

“Time flies, huh?”

“I wish,” Neva said, and then, to distract herself, she said, “You know, I’ve been wanting to ask how Reginald’s doing.”

“He’s good. Boy’s got a lot to learn, though.”

“Such as?”

“How not to talk back, for one thing. He sasses his teachers sometimes, tells them when they’re wrong about things. Boy’s smart as a whip, so it turns out he’s usually right and they’re usually wrong, but that don’t make it good manners. Plus he does love a good argument. You could say the sky is blue and he’d argue it’s green, just for something to do. Must have driven his aunt crazy. He and Corinna, though, they’re thick as thieves. Plus she hugs on him. He pretends it embarrasses him, but he loves it. Don’t think he got too many hugs in his life. Or love, for that matter.”

“Well, he’s got plenty now. That’s the important thing.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Sam. “It is.”

A
T
T
RUMAN’S INVITATION
Martin Choi arrived at the pool at seven fifteen. Truman met him in the killer whale office, as they’d agreed. As they walked from there across the back area to the holding pool, Truman said portentously, “Martin, the zoo and Friday need your help.”

“Yeah?”

“We need you to tell the world this little whale’s story.” Truman stopped walking to turn and face Martin—who ran right into him, clanking with gear and robbing the moment of some of its intended theatricality. “Because here’s the thing,” Truman said, “We think chances are excellent that we’re going to be accused of kidnapping this little whale so Friday can have a companion.”

“Yeah? So that would be good. I mean, who wants to be alone, huh?”

“Yes, but we didn’t do that.” Truman felt the beginnings of a headache coming on. “This animal—this baby—was abandoned by his pod off San Juan Island because he had such severe injuries he couldn’t keep up. He’d never be able to survive on his own.”

“Bummer.”

“Yes, it is. The point I’m trying to make is, we
rescued
him. That’s key.”

“Yeah, sure, I get that.”

“Of course you do,” said Truman. “That’s why he needs you to be his voice, Martin.
His
voice
. He’s counting on you to tell his real story, because he can’t.”

“Well, yeah,” said Martin. “So what do you think the big guy’s going to think, having a little buddy?”

“We won’t know until we’ve introduced them to each other.”

“Yeah? Well, I think he’s going to go out of his mind. The first whale he’s seen in, what did you say?”

“Nineteen years.”

“Nineteen years. How cool is that?”

“Very,” said Truman. “Very cool.” They were passing through several empty holding bays; Truman could see the small rehab pool ahead. “I should also tell you that there are some people out there”—and here Truman lowered his voice and shifted his eyes back and forth several times, as though someone might at this very moment be lurking nearby—“who may even accuse us of maiming the animal on purpose, to justify keeping him.”

Martin squinted. “Yeah? So, I mean, that would be bad.”

“Very bad. And very not-true.”

“Sure, yeah, I get that.”

They had arrived at the pool. Libertine was in the water, Ivy was perched on a wooden stool she’d scared up, and Julio Iglesias sat reluctantly in her lap. She kissed the top of his head, and his ears went flat with annoyance.

“Okay, let’s introduce you two,” Truman said to Martin after greeting them. “Juan, this is Martin Choi. Martin, meet Juan.”

Libertine continued walking the calf around the perimeter of the tank. When they came to Martin again, Truman handed him a dive mask to hold up to his face. “If you put the mask just under the surface, you’ll see the injury clearly,” said Truman, as they’d rehearsed.

“Youch,” said Martin when he saw the calf’s flukes. “I bet when he swims he just goes in a circle.” Truman’s headache bloomed into full flower.

For the next forty-five minutes Martin Choi snapped photo after photo, including some through the mask, which graphically showed the full extent of the calf’s injuries. Then Gabriel arrived and fed Juan his first dead fish—or so they told Martin, though they’d actually primed the calf half an hour earlier with a handful—and then a second and third and so on, until he’d gone through a quarter of a bucket. “He was hungry,” Truman said, because with Martin Choi you could never overstate the obvious.

“So that’s good, right?” said the reporter.

“Very good,” said Truman, and they all nodded as one.

Next, as they’d rehearsed, Libertine told Martin how much calmer the calf was now that he was in their care, and how frightened he’d been when he was drifting into the little bay by Ivy’s house, forsaken and alone. “Here, he’s safe,” she concluded. “He knows that. And he has the entire zoo pulling for him. He knows that, too.”

Then she lobbed the interview back to Truman for a final summation. “What you have to remember,” he said, “is, this is a baby. Would you leave a badly injured human baby floating out there all alone?”

“Well, of course not,” Martin said indignantly.

“And that’s exactly what he needs you to tell the world. Be his hero, Martin,” Truman intoned, channeling Matthew. “Be his hero.”

I
N THE PAPER’S
Wednesday edition two days later, the
News-Tribune
led with a story about the killer whale calf. Headlined O
H,
B
ABY,
B
ABY!
,
it detailed the calf’s rescue, with emphasis on his otherwise hopeless plight. Incredibly, Truman found that Martin Choi had gotten most of the information right. The accompanying photos were graphic enough to make it clear that this maimed orphan wouldn’t stand even a slim chance in the wild. The story was picked by the regional, national, and international wire services by noon.

Predictably, the Friends of Animals of the Sea responded that afternoon with an e-mail blast to its membership and the same media outlets that had picked up the story, titled (somewhat inscrutably, Truman thought) T
WO
W
RONGS
.
The e-mail made the case that the zoo had cold-bloodedly captured a hapless calf for the sole purpose of exploitation as a companion animal for the imprisoned Friday and that the calf should have been left alone to perish naturally. The fact that that death would almost certainly have been a lonely, slow, and painful one brought on by sepsis, starvation, or both was not mentioned. Apparently such a death would be mitigated by the fact of its accomplishment in the beneficent bosom of Nature.

T
WO DAYS LATER
once Gabriel was sure the antibiotics they were giving Juan had taken hold, they moved the calf into Friday’s medical pool. Although a watertight gate separated the two whales, Friday hovered there all day, spy-hopping again and again to see over the top. His visitors complained that they couldn’t see him, and neither Neva nor Gabriel could engage Friday in a work session, not even an innovative one. He wouldn’t even eat until they resorted to feeding him beside the med pool. He sang, whistled, clicked, and trilled at the calf in a long and constant song. And the calf sang back.

“Can they understand each other?” Neva asked Gabriel, who was tossing in fish every time Friday opened his mouth. “I mean, they speak different languages, don’t they?”

“That’s a little simplistic, but yes, something like that.”

“What do you mean?” asked Ivy, who was watching Libertine feed Juan on the other side of the watertight partition. The calf was a voracious eater, opening his mouth wide anytime someone appeared, with or without a bucket. Gabriel suspected that the calf had been weak even before it was injured.

“Friday is an Atlantic whale, and Juan is from the Pacific,” Gabriel said. “We know there’s such a thing as killer whale dialects because even within the Pacific population, transient whales have different calls than resident ones. We don’t know exactly how much they overlap, or even if there
is
any overlap between Atlantic and Pacific animals. But Friday will teach the kid what he needs to know so they can communicate. Right now, he’s so excited he may not be communicating anything besides a ton of variations of ‘Ooh!’ ”

“Can you imagine?” said Truman. “For Friday, it must feel just like Christmas.”

They had decided to document the entire introduction process with a video camera. Libertine, their self-appointed videographer, popped out from behind a camera on a tripod and said, “He’s like a little kid. He keeps asking,
When? When? When?
over and over.”

“Tell him it’ll be soon,” said Gabriel. “As soon as it’s safe.”

That afternoon, at least one day ahead of plan, Gabriel decided to lower a metal grid between the pools in place of the solid, watertight gate. That way, Friday and Juan would have visual as well as auditory contact. With the video camera rolling, they watched Friday lay his entire body along the grid separating the two pools, his eye staring through to the calf. At first the calf was hesitant, but after a few minutes he approached Friday, laying his side against Friday’s.