Inbetween Days (29 page)

‘She's getting some air.'

I gasped on the back deck, my head between my knees.

Where was I going? I shouldn't have gone into that room that wasn't my room. Grief had muddled my thinking. No matter where I looked, that lump of dirt by the back fence was at the edges. When my breath came back, I sneaked around the side of the house and sat on the front steps, hiding like a little kid who couldn't run away without having somebody drive them.

In another part of my mind, that timer kept ticking.

I went back inside, stuffed clothes into a bag, and money into my jeans pocket. I straightened the quilt, erasing Gypsy's shape forever. I took the bag into the bathroom, showered, and threw yesterday's clothes back on in record time. I waited for Trudy to leave, then asked Mads if she would drive me to the bus station in Burt.

Pope said hope was nothing if I squeezed too tight and didn't let go—he said I should find faith instead. But he was wrong. To find faith was to believe in something that wasn't mine, something I couldn't control, something without any evidence that it existed. Hope was different—I knew I had to hold it tightest when it seemed it might float away.

Hope was personal. One day I would tell him that.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Fowler's Bay seemed like the edge of the world: a ragged strip of high, white cliff and a broad sloping beach that stepped off into the endless blues of the sea and the sky. I'd been there an hour and people were still coming. There were about a hundred of us now, spread out along the beach, cliffs at our backs, huddled against a shrill wind. It was unbearably bright as the sun set directly in front of us. I'd left my sunglasses behind on the bus.

I was stupid to think I'd be the only one.

When I first arrived, I found shelter in a shallow scoop in the cliff face. The sand was hot and gritty against my legs, the air briny and sour. I avoided catching anyone's eye. I tried not to fidget and draw attention to myself.

Down on the beach, it was like a crime scene: six men and three women wearing orange-striped wetsuits, standing inside a flimsy barrier of yellow tape. Outside, a couple of camera crews inched closer, grumbling when they were ordered back. A helicopter hung lazily overhead; below, a cluster of seagulls hovered, just the same. Offshore, a tug-like boat seemed anchored to the spot though the waves surged and chopped around it. Along from me, an old woman, wearing a floppy blue sunhat and faded harem pants, defended her patch of shade beneath the cliff overhang.

And down on the beach my whale was dying, her fins two useless black wings at her sides. She'd dug herself into a trench and her sounds of despair—clicks, sighs, deep-chested groans—were coming at intervals further and further apart. When I'd first heard them, I felt so hollow I thought I would cave in. Soon she would stop thrashing and be all pause.

There were so many of us—couldn't we move her? Couldn't we roll her like a giant hay bale until the deeper water took her back? Wouldn't she know we were helping her and wouldn't she try harder? Wouldn't she fight?

I refused to look at the man who droned, ‘That's it. She's gone now,' each time the pause grew longer or the trench got deeper and the waves retreated.

The light was different here, the colours, too. When I'd stepped off the bus, the light was blinding, everything faded like over-washed clothing. The sun seemed much closer to the earth. In Main Street, Fowler's Bay, the shops were cheerful and open for business. The heat wasn't warm air that settled around you, but a burning haze that shimmered above. My skin was pink within minutes. The ice-cream was plainly Häagen-Dazs in Häagen-Dazs containers and the people on the street didn't stop to talk. It felt like the sun never went down in this town.

I stood and slipped off my shoes. I took a few steps out onto hard sand.

‘You can't go any closer,' the old woman said. ‘They don't want anybody down there.' She raised a pair of binoculars hanging from a cord around her neck. Her skin was creased, toasted a deep brown.

‘I know.'

‘She's hanging in there.' The woman nodded to herself. ‘The tide's going out. She knows it. She's resting, conserving her strength.'

‘I've come a long way,' I confessed.

She lowered the binoculars. ‘Are you upset?'

‘I'm tired.' I sank back into the soft sand and dug my feet in.

‘I'm Nat,' she said, and moved over to make room. ‘Come on up here.'

‘Jack,' I said.

Nat refolded her towel and made a cushion for me. ‘You're burning. Here.' She rummaged in a bag and handed me a bottle of aloe vera lotion, a flask of cold water, and her binoculars. ‘Look. See for yourself.'

I searched through the lens for the whale's eye and wished I hadn't: it was dark, pain-filled and intelligent, with a rim of white, like a human eye. The eye tracked the people around it, watching. I wondered if she understood that we wanted to help, or did she believe that these busy, black figures were the enemy. Was she terrified? Was she in pain? Were her insides being slowly squeezed by her own weight?

‘Why do they beach themselves?' I asked.

‘I prefer to think it's not a choice,' Nat said. ‘Maybe she was lost, disoriented, or chased by a predator. This is the ninth I've seen wash up here in the last twenty years. The inlet creates some strong currents this time of year, so it could be that, too.'

‘What happened to the others?'

‘Some died. The fully grown ones usually do. They're too heavy to help us to help them.'

I shook my head. ‘She looks so weak.'

‘She has a better shot than most. She's stuck right where the drag is strongest.'

‘But couldn't we all move her?'

Nat smiled. ‘She's heavier than you think and one swipe with her fin could cause serious injury. Her tail could kill. She has to do it herself—they can't save her, they're just keeping her alive.'

‘Are there more out there? Are they waiting?'

‘No.'

I let that sink in.

‘It's the wrong time of year for migration. She doesn't need them. She knows where to go—she just took a wrong turn.'

The team of rescuers backed away and spoke in a huddle. One man stayed, pouring seawater over the whale's glossy back, but the skin on her tail was already turning dull and grey.
Marron lost their shine like that,
I thought,
then other creatures moved in and ate them from the inside out.

‘What are they doing now?'

Nat took the binoculars. They were damp from my tears but she didn't seem to mind. ‘Something's happening.'

‘That's it, it's over,' said the doomsayer, and somebody, finally, told him to shut up.

Apart from the lone man with the bucket, the rescuers moved away to sit inside the vehicles parked further up on the flat, away from the shifting sand. The helicopter had gone. The boat was heading further offshore.

‘They're stopping,' I said. Many people were packing up and leaving. I wanted to run screaming at the seagulls, which had settled in a semicircle around the whale. Were they waiting for her to give up?

‘They're resting,' Nat said, and put her sun-browned hand on my arm. ‘They've been here for two days straight. Where have you travelled from, Jack?'

I told her and, gently, she asked more questions. She was trying to distract me, I knew. When the whale sighed, her grip tightened and she didn't let go.

‘Won't be much of a moon tonight,' she said. ‘It's going to make things more difficult. How old are you anyway?'

‘Seventeen,' I said.

‘Seventeen. I'm seventy-nine,' she told me with a wry smile. ‘This is all I can do now—wait. I've lived here my whole life. I'm almost too old for anything but watching and praying. Doesn't seem like fifty years since I was waving placards in outrage and only eating orange food.'

By sunset, Nat knew that I came from a place that was green all year round and that I'd never seen the sun slip over the edge of the earth like it had right at that moment. She knew about Ma and Trudy, about Trudy's car floating in Moseley's Dam. I told her about Pope, and Jeremiah, too—how he loved me but I wasn't whole enough to love him back. Nat said that sometimes all you could do was acknowledge the gift. She told me that she grew up in an even smaller town and she knew firsthand how everything you did left a ripple. And she asked me why I'd want to be on a beach far from home, with a crowd of strangers, an old woman, and a stranded humpback whale.

I didn't answer. It was too hard and I was too sleepy to explain.

I wanted miracles.

The moon came out from behind a sheet of cloud. Nat was right: it wasn't much. But it was the same moon, wherever you were and the stars made up for it. As I watched, one fell.

This time I was very careful what I wished for.

Nat dozed in her deckchair next to me. The wind had dropped and the only sound was the gentle slap of waves. I stretched my stiff legs and brushed sand from my cheek. I slipped on a jacket. A faint stripe of pink was showing above the cliff face but daylight was still a little while off. It was quiet.

This can't be how it ends.

I listened and strained to see any movement. There was nothing for the longest time and I was already mourning when the whale shifted and blew. Torches flickered down near the shore. A floodlight came on, illuminating a circle of black sea, the half-submerged hulk of the whale, the bodies in the water.

‘Nat.' I shook her shoulder. ‘Nat, wake up.'

She struggled to her feet. ‘The tide's back in.'

‘That's good, right?'

‘It's good if it doesn't leave her stranded higher up. They'll have to try to hold her position now.' She topped up my water flask and opened a packet of biscuits.

‘This is it,' somebody else said.

‘A week ago we had the mother of all king tides,' Nat said. ‘She could do with one now.'

There was a flurry of activity, and the boat edged its way in. The helicopter had come back and a lone cameraman shot from a safe distance. Ropes were flung and tied. The rescuers began digging. As light broke, the tide fell short of its last line and receded. I watched, counting the waves as they broke further and further away, measuring the inches in increments of lost hope. The humpback was floundering in the deep hole she'd made, agitated now, spitting seawater through her blowhole with each sharp burst of breath. One fin turned circles, batting at the shallow water like a broken oar.

‘They've got the ropes under her,' Nat said, patting my arm.

Nat and I pressed closer and the broken line of people behind followed. The rescuers ran clear of the water, away from the whale.

‘They've missed it,' said a woman. ‘There's nothing more they can do.'

My hands bunched into fists. ‘No!'

The exhausted rescuers jerked around to stare. One man raised his arm in a final salute and barked into a walkie talkie.

‘No,' Nat echoed. Her head bobbled on her thin neck as if she was struggling to hold it up.

I watched, silently praying they would go back to help.

Offshore, a giant wave built. A wall of dirtied water swelled. When it finally curled and broke, the wave smashed over the humpback whale. For a moment, she was lost to us. The tide surged in, lapping our toes, its powerful drag sucking the sand from under my feet. The boat's engine screamed; the man lowered his arm. She'd turned. Her great tail smacked the water, making it boil and churn. Just then the ropes snapped and flung back. The boat rocked. But she'd turned.

The next wave carried her backwards. She was thrashing now. The cradle of deeper water held her as she surged forward onto the sandbar. She flopped helplessly until another wave gave her just enough lift to propel herself forward again.

‘Let her go!' Nat shouted. ‘Go. Go, you beautiful thing!'

‘Go,' I whispered. I put my hands over my eyes. ‘I can't watch anymore. Tell me when she's gone.'

I counted to seventy-six.

‘She's gone,' Nat said.

I opened my eyes. Nat grabbed my hand. We joined the others, hugging and high-fiving each other.

Way out, past the sandbar and in deeper water, the whale breached, and her underbelly flashed silver.

Nat and I took the long way back to town, wandering along the shoreline. I helped to carry her things and she talked about her family. I had a bad case of sunburn and a lump in my throat too big to swallow.

We rounded a point and came to a horseshoe cove where the waves had pounded shells into fine grit and the tide had dredged up huge piles of rust-coloured seaweed. I picked up a knotted piece of driftwood and a perfect cowrie shell. I put them in my pocket to take home.

Nat smiled at me. Her teeth were outrageously white in her sun-browned face. She looked like something the sea had thrown back, too.

‘Nat?'

‘Yes?'

‘Do you think she'll catch up?'

‘I think she'll do the best she can,' she said.

She approached one of the mounds—over half her height and shaped like a giant mammoth—and slipped off her shoes. I did the same, and we kicked every one of those mounds, because you never knew what might be underneath.

There were still so many mysteries left.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

I got off the bus in Burt at two o'clock and spent the last of my cash on a taxi back to Mobius. I watched the meter tick over until it matched the number of dollars in my pocket, then I asked the driver, Nick, to stop. We'd made it halfway along Mercy Loop. He pulled up in the truck stop, the last point where you could still turn around before Pryor Ridge came into view.

Nick offered to take me into town. ‘I can't leave you here.' He shuddered and crossed himself. ‘I could never forgive myself if you turned that corner and were never seen again. You know what they say about the ghosts.'