Cry of the Sea (5 page)

“Wait,” my dad said. “One second.” He pulled
out the video camera he’d stashed in there when he ran over to join
me and aimed the lens at the three mermaids. “Hold that one up a
little bit more, June,” he ordered. “Let me get a good shot of
her.”

“Dad, we don’t have time for this,” I said.
He didn’t listen. He gestured for me to hold the mermaid up even a
little straighter. “This might be hurting her.” He put a ‘stop’
hand up. I guess I had her where he wanted. “Dad, am I in this
shot?” I asked. “Please say no.”

With the mermaid dying in my arms, I knew it
was awful to think about how ugly I was at the moment. I mean, my
hair wasn’t brushed, and I didn’t have a stitch of make-up on. A
part of me realized that I shouldn’t care about such things. I
should only care about doing what was right—saving the mermaids and
recording their plight for the world to discover. This was an
unbelievable find that I could barely wrap my head around, and yet
I knew it was more important than my stupid vanity. That was the
thinking of the responsible person my parents raised, who
understood the enormity of what was happening, what I was holding
in my arms. The rest of me, however, was still a teenage girl with
a few basic needs. One necessity was being given some kind of
warning that I was going to be filmed, so I would not be completely
hideous looking. Who knew where my dad might choose to send this
footage? I didn’t even have a free hand at the moment to tuck my
stray hairs back up under my cap.

Dad put up a ‘shush’ finger in front of his
mouth and then started narrating into the microphone: “We’ve found
an amazing discovery at Grayland Beach in Washington today. What
you are seeing are three sea creatures that appear to have human
features such as arms, a torso, and a head. Based on these features
being matched with fish tails, one might stipulate that these are
the mermaids of legend. They have found their way to this beach
because of leaking oil from an Affron Oil vessel. The mermaids have
mere moments to live unless we can get them to a tank of water and
get the oil cleared away from their gills.” He leaned close to me
to get a good shot of the gills on the mermaids’ necks.

“Dad,” I said urgently. “Stop taping. We
don’t have time. They’re dying.”

As he focused tightly on the face and neck of
the mermaid in my arms, guess who else got a close-up on
camera?

“Dad!” I shouted for two reasons. Do-gooder
and teenage girl unite in protest!

My dad snapped up. “You’re right,” he said,
backing up and turning off the camera. “I got carried away.” He
tucked the camera inside the bag on his shoulder and helped me lift
the first mermaid.

Her skin had a spongy quality similar to the
skin of a dolphin or seal, and yet it wasn’t as thick as a sea
mammal and not nearly as heavy. Some of the scales bent backwards
and cut at my hands. I guessed the scales protected her like armor.
As we carried her to the truck, I saw the mermaid’s skin color
darken. Her eyes fluttered, and her gills worked frantically. She
had to get back into water—fast.

We put her down softly in the bed of the
truck and covered her with some blankets. As quickly as I could, I
ran back to the other two mermaids. What I saw when I got to them
caused me to crumble to my knees and start to cry. I know I’m not
supposed to cry; it makes my dad crazy when I do it. I just
couldn’t help it right then. When I looked at the mermaids in that
early morning sun, the sadness took over so fast that the tears and
sobs came out before I could control myself. Their gills had closed
to slits and their strange fingers no longer clawed at their necks.
The bodies lay completely still.

My dad caught up with me. “What’s the
matter?” he asked.

I opened my arms and gestured to them. “Can’t
you see?” I said. “They’re dead. We weren’t fast enough. Look at
them.”

“Come on, girl,” Dad said. He wrapped his
arms around me and helped me stand up. “I know it’s terrible. It
is, really. Just hold it together a little while longer. We still
need to get them off this beach.”

My first impulse was to wriggle away from
him, shocked by his words. I could feel my forehead creasing with
the distrust filling my brain. Did my dad, always the warrior of
creatures that had no voice, just tell me that these mermaid bodies
needed to be taken somewhere?

“Why?” I seethed at him. “What are you going
to do with them?”

“Calm down, June,” he said. “Don’t you know
me better than that? I don’t mean the bodies any harm. But I
do
need to keep them away from Affron. What do you think
they would they do if they knew there were creatures like this in
our waters?”

I felt stupid. Of course my dad wasn’t
thinking of diabolical plots to chop up the mermaids and study them
for science. He’d never do that. He wouldn’t even chop up already
dead meat from the grocery store to eat for dinner. On the other
hand, Affron scientists would have no qualms about exploiting the
poor creatures if they knew about them. They’d hunt them down. Find
their homes. Capture every last one of them. Not to mention just
the testing and prodding they might do on these two cadavers.

“Sorry, Dad. I’m just feeling overwhelmed,
you know.”

“I understand,” my dad said. “Now hurry. We
still have a chance of saving the one in the truck. So, come on and
help. Fast.” He hefted a mermaid out of the sand and practically
ran with it back to the truck.

I tried to be helpful by using all my
strength and picking up the remaining mermaid by myself. Only, I
quickly found out that was impossible. Although the mermaid
appeared as thin and as slight as a supermodel, she must have
weighed close to one hundred fifty pounds. With that being at least
thirty pounds more than my own weight, all I could do was lift her
up behind me and drag her over my shoulders by her arms. Dad came
back after unloading the other body onto the truck and met me only
a few yards from where I’d started. He took her upper body off my
shoulders and helped me carry the mermaid the rest of the way. We
put the two dead mermaids in the truck bed next to the barely
surviving one.

“I hope she doesn’t get creeped out by this,”
I said.

“Like she isn’t creeped out already?” my dad
pointed out. “C’mon.”

We got into the truck and sped off. As we
drove away from the beach, we passed four white SUVs with the
Affron Oil logo painted on the sides heading the opposite
direction. I don’t know why I ever doubt my dad. When it comes to
this business, he knows his stuff. We couldn’t have stayed a breath
longer without our mermaids being discovered.

No more than five minutes later Dad veered
off the highway and pulled the truck into the nearly empty parking
lot of the Aberdeen Sea Mammal Rescue Center, a large
warehouse-looking place tucked between a pine forest and shore
cliff. Dad had driven like the truck was on fire, and the center
was only a few miles down the road from Grayland Beach. I jumped
out of the truck before it had completely stopped and ran up to the
door. At the same moment, a young man stepped out of a beat-up,
used Civic and approached the door.

“You Sawfeather?” he asked me.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m June. And that’s Peter,
my dad.” I pointed back at the truck where my dad was still turning
off the ignition.

The guy stood there, fumbling with the keys
to the front door for an interminable amount of time. Did he even
know which key opened the door? He didn’t look much older than me,
and the sight of this blond, shaggy-headed kid in his sweatshirt
and jeans didn’t impress me. Where were the marine biologists who
were supposed to meet us? What good was this guy going to do me? He
had to be too young to be of any real use.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Do you actually work
here?”

“Yeah,” he said, not a drop of
self-consciousness in his voice. “I’m an intern here. Name’s Carter
Crowe. I just got a call to come in for an emergency. You it?”

He finally got the door open.

“Well, not me personally,” I said. “But we do
have an
extreme
emergency in the truck and we need to get it
into water fast. Is anyone else coming? Like someone who can
actually help?”

Carter smiled at me. Straight, clean teeth.
His eyes were bright. He’d had his caffeine on the way over, and it
was working. I have to admit, his was the most dazzling smile I’ve
ever seen. It made me slightly dizzy.

“No worries,” he assured me. “I can
help.”

I can’t say why, but all of a sudden I was
absolutely sure that he could.

He flipped on the lights to the center,
revealing a neat little room with a sign attached to the front of
the information desk that denoted the space
Visitor’s Center
.

I’d been to the Sea Mammal Rescue Center
before, on a field trip in grade school and for a rescue I’d done
with my dad after a construction crew left so much litter when
building a new beachfront condo that it was killing the animals
that relied on the water there. This place was a non-profit
organization with some small aquariums and a tide pool in the front
lobby. Tourists paid admission to see the tiny reef sharks and hold
sea slugs in their hands. Little kids tortured sea stars, and
everyone marveled at the jellyfish tank.

What the average person and school group
didn’t realize was that behind the double doors on the far side of
the room was a warehouse facility. I could remember from the time I
came a few years back being amazed at how much stuff was on the
other side of those doors. And I felt so special being let in on
the big secret of it all. The room itself was massive, and at the
far end of it were two tanks large enough for dolphins to swim in
tight circles, and they were set up side-by-side, filling the
entire length of the wall, precisely for emergencies like oil
spills or fishing disasters. Porpoises getting caught in tuna nets,
otters stuck in plastic 6-pack soda rings, orcas maimed but not
killed by harpoons. Along the right wall were sturdy shelves lined
with more aquariums of varying sizes and some cages for rescued sea
birds. Usually the pelicans and seagulls were sick from eating
poisoned fish, and sometimes they had hooks stuck in their beaks.
In the center of the room were some long, metal examination tables.
Many cabinets, a sink, and all the tools of the trade cluttered the
left side of the room, along with a door leading to a private
office, and a hallway that led to an examination room and a locker
room for cleaning up.

Carter flung open those double doors at that
moment, giving me just a glimpse of the vast room of water and
glass. I moved to follow him, eager to see if my memory of the room
and reality were the same, but he stopped in the doorway and told
me, “I’ll set up a tank while you bring in the fish.”

Stretching my neck to see past his shoulders,
I asked, “Do you know how to do that?”

“Do you know how to bring the fish in?” he
questioned in return, slipping through the doors and allowing them
to shut with a bang behind him.

The challenge spoken, I retreated to the
parking lot to hold the door open for my dad who had already
unloaded the surviving mermaid. He carried her gently toward the
center and had just passed through the door when another car
skidded into a parking spot. The noise caught my attention, and I
hesitated before shutting the door behind me to get a better
glimpse of who had just arrived. It was just an ordinary, unmarked
compact car.

“Dad, someone’s here,” I said to my father,
who was already halfway across the room.

“I need your help, June,” he said. “Come
on.”

“But what if it’s Affron? What if one of them
followed us?”

“Then close the door and help me move this
body out of sight.”

I shut the door tight and ran across the room
to open the double doors to the warehouse for my dad. He was
panting under the weight of the mermaid.

“What about the other mermaids?” I said,
suddenly realizing they were still out there in the truck bed. My
heart started beating really hard. “They’ll see them.”

“They’re under a blanket,” Dad said.

We kept moving inside, heading for the large
tank at the end where Carter was adjusting temperatures.

“Over here, you two,” Carter called over his
shoulder. “Is that it? I thought there were going to be three of
them.”

“Two of them died,” I said.

“That’s too bad,” he said sincerely. He faced
my dad to help lift the creature up into the tank. When he saw the
mermaid, he jumped back. “What the hell is that?”

Dad didn’t answer. Instead, he asked,
“Where’s Dr. Schneider?” By his tone, it sounded like he wasn’t
thrilled with the presence of this teenage intern either.

“Right here.”

The new voice behind us startled me. I hadn’t
heard the door open over our talking. Dad and I both snapped our
heads to see Dr. Schneider closing the double doors behind him. The
thin, balding man grabbed a lab coat from a hook by the cluttered
desk beside the doors and slipped it on over his wrinkled clothes.
“I live a little farther away from here than your emergency
allowed.”

“You should move,” I quipped.

I guess he didn’t think that was funny,
because Dr. Schneider ignored me as he headed across the floor
toward my dad.

“So what have you brought for us, Peter?”

“I’m not sure,” Dad said. “But I think it’s
something no one has seen before.”

“It’s a mermaid,” I said. Carter and Dr.
Schneider looked at me like I had three heads. “Well, that’s what
she looks like. You got a better idea what she might be?”

Carter shook his head. “Well, whatever it is,
we’ll have to get the oil cleaned off of it before we can put it in
the aquarium, or it won’t do any good at all.” He directed my dad
to place the mermaid on a large metal dissection table in the
middle of the room.