No More Pranks (3 page)

“How do you know it's the same whale?” I asked.

“From the triangular scar underneath his tail. During mating season, male humpbacks fight for the females' attention. He must have got in someone's way,” Uncle Jean explained.

“How did you get interested in whales?” I wanted to know.

The question made Uncle Jean laugh. “I guess I was born interested in whales. That's what happens when you're raised in these parts. Where I grew up, in the town of Ste. Anne de Portneuf—about an hour east of here—whales were as common as mosquitoes. Only, whales don't bite. My mother used to say she never had to sing me to sleep. The whales blowing outside my window—those were my lullabies.

“Then, when I was not much older than you are now, a teacher encouraged me to study marine biology. So I ended up at Chicoutimi University, specializing in marine mammals.”

I'd never known that about Uncle Jean. I'd thought of him as a businessman—never as a scientist. Maybe my parents had mentioned it, but I wasn't paying attention. You could miss a lot that way.

There was one thing I really wanted to know. “Why are you so nuts about whales?” I asked.

This time, Uncle Jean didn't answer as quickly. Instead he took a deep breath. He exhaled with a long, slow sigh that reminded me a little of the sound Petit Fou had made. “Why am I so nuts about whales?” he said, repeating my question. “Jeez, Pierre, I hardly know. Maybe because they're so darn big—and so darn beautiful. They make even a big guy like me feel small—which is a good thing sometimes. People get into trouble when they think they're so big the whole world revolves around them. Whales
have a way of reminding us we're just a tiny part of the universe.”

I thought I knew what he meant. Even Petit Fou's short visit had left me feeling that way. There's so much of the world we just don't see. I scanned the water around us, eager to spot the humpback or maybe another whale, but the water was still except for an occasional rolling wave. There were no low-flying birds in sight either.

“Paddle hard on your left,” Uncle Jean directed me. “It's time to head back.”

For a while I paddled so hard I didn't have the engery to ask any more questions. There was lots I still wanted to know—about Uncle Jean and about whales. If Uncle Jean was a marine biologist, why didn't he teach at a university the way my parents did? And if whales kept blowing all night, when did they sleep?

Uncle Jean must have taken a break from paddling. I could hear him opening something up. I hoped it was food. All the paddling had made me hungry. But when I tilted my head a little to see what Uncle Jean was doing, I
realized he was taking out a pair of binoculars from the watertight hatch in front of him.

“Jesus Christ,” I heard him mutter under his breath. “Zodiacs up ahead at three o'clock.” Then he began paddling again. With both of us paddling, the kayak moved easily over the water, gliding in the direction of whatever Uncle Jean had seen.

In the distance I saw what looked like dark splotches against the horizon. But as we approached, I realized there were three Zodiacs—the little speedboats Uncle Jean hated so much. They had formed a tight circle. In the center I thought I could make out the outline of a whale.

“It's a minke,” Uncle Jean told me as we moved in toward the group. “And those idiots have him cornered.”

The passengers on the Zodiacs paid no attention as we paddled toward them. They were leaning out of the Zodiacs, frantically snapping photographs and shouting instructions to one another. “Get one of me with the whale, darling!” a high-pitched voice squealed.

So much for the rules. These boats couldn't have been more than a couple of meters away from the minke, who seemed to be trying to figure out how to escape. The sharp smell of gasoline hung in the air, making my nostrils burn.

Just then, one of the Zodiac captains spotted my uncle Jean. “Okay!” he called out, loud enough for the other captains to hear. “Time to move on.” The captain had a shaggy gray beard and a sunburn. He had this gold ring with diamonds on his pinky finger. I noticed because the diamonds gleamed in the sunlight. I'd seen him before, only I didn't know where.

“Time to move on all right, Roméo,” Uncle Jean yelled from our kayak. Considering how Uncle Jean felt about Zodiac operators, I didn't expect him to be on a first-name basis with the guy. “You know better than to get so close.” Uncle Jean's voice sounded angry.

“That minke came over to see
us
,” the man whose name was Roméo called out.

“I'll bet he did!” Uncle Jean didn't sound convinced.

Then I realized why the captain seemed familiar. I'd seen him at the clubhouse by the Tadoussac harbor. When I'd gone in to get sandwiches for the crew, he'd been sitting in the cafeteria, playing cards with his buddies.

The moment he had a little room to maneuver, the minke disappeared from view. There was no telling where he'd gone. Even though we weren't far from shore, I knew the water here was very deep. What other animals, I wondered, were swimming beneath us—in their own watery world?

“You okay?” I asked Uncle Jean as we made our way toward the launching dock.

“I'm okay,” he muttered, but he sounded upset. “They treat the whales like performing seals. And the more people bother the whales, the less they eat—which means that, over time, their existence is endangered. Then there's all the gasoline they dump into the river. And that Roméo,” he added, “we grew up together. He was as interested in whales as I was. Like I just told him, he should know better.”

I made a tsk-tsk sound to show my disapproval, unsure what else I could say to make Uncle Jean feel better.

“They're predicting bad weather tomorrow,” he said, his voice sounding a little less upset. “So when I go for groceries, I could drop you off at the Marine Mammal Interpretive Center. What do you say, Pierre?”

I'd always refused when my parents tried to talk me into going with them to one of the museums in Montreal, but this was different. This wasn't going to be about paintings or sculptures. This was about whales.

The weather was bad all right. I could tell without even getting up from my bed. The sky was the color of smoke, and the pine tree outside my window was tottering in the wind like an old drunk. There were none of the usual morning sounds in the house. The radio wasn't blaring, the coffee machine wasn't gurgling, and there wasn't the usual chatter of guests as they lined up for the downstairs bathroom. Everyone seemed to be sleeping
in—something that didn't happen much in Tadoussac.

But I was wide awake. So I slipped on my jeans and sweatshirt and tiptoed down the winding wooden staircase to the main floor. A Scrabble board had been left out on the table, the game still unfinished. The word “temptation” was spelled out across the middle of the board.

Aunt Daisy and Uncle Jean didn't have a bolt on their front door the way we did in Montreal. I unlatched the screen door and headed for the small patio at the front of the house. There weren't any chairs—only this small, bright pink bench people used when they put on their boating shoes. I sat down and looked out at the St. Lawrence. Today, there was no mist over the water—if there had been a mist, it would have been blown away by the gusting wind.

Even without binoculars I could see the waves tumbling toward the shore with a force I hadn't seen before. In the distance I spotted a huge cargo ship moving a little unsteadily across the water. I didn't want to imagine
what it would be like to be out in a kayak in these conditions. Uncle Jean had warned me that the St. Lawrence was moody. “It's beautiful all right,” he'd told me, “but she can be like this girlfriend I had before I met Daisy. Calm one minute, wild the next. A guy never knows where he stands with a woman like that.”

Just then I heard the squeal of bicycle brakes. Whoever it was had stopped at the gray-shingled house next to the B&B. Just as I was craning my neck for a closer look, someone tapped on my shoulder.

“Bonjour, you. It's me—Rosalie,” a girl's voice said.

I turned around to see a smiling, freckled face between two long brown braids. “I'm Pete,” I said, extending my hand, “er, Pierre.”

“Pete,” the girl repeated slowly. From the way she said it, you could tell she hadn't ever heard the name before. “I am Rosalie Marchand,” she said slowly. “I live next door.”

“I figured that.”

“You figured?” Rosalie said. “Excuse me, but my English is not very good.”

“I figured you live next door since that's where you parked your bike.”

“Oh,” said Rosalie, brightening. “I see.”

“How come we haven't met before?” I asked.

“We were away, visiting my grandfather in Chicoutimi. We returned home only last night. My parents told me you were here, staying with Jean and Daisy. You got in trouble in Montreal, didn't you?”

I didn't know what to say to that.

Rosalie kept right on talking. Not the shy type, you could say. “No kayaking today, I suppose,” she said, gesturing toward the water. “What are we going to do?”

“We?” I repeated, a little surprised. Maybe this was a Tadoussac thing. In Montreal, people didn't go around making plans with people they'd just met. “Uncle Jean is supposed to drop me off at the interpretive center later,” I told her.

“Just ring the bell before you leave. I'll come,” and with a toss of her braids, Rosalie disappeared into the wind.

Uncle Jean and Aunt Daisy seemed glad when I said I'd met Rosalie—and that she'd invited herself to come along to the center. They left us at the top of the long, winding parking lot. “We'll do our groceries, have a café au lait in town and pick you up at two,” Aunt Daisy said, checking her watch as she slammed the van door shut behind us.

“It's busier than usual,” Rosalie said as we paid our admission. “When it's sunny, there's hardly anyone here.” The displays were in French, but when the clerk heard us speaking English, she offered us two English booklets. “He'll take one, not me,” said Rosalie. “I speak French.” You could tell she was pleased that the woman had thought she was English.

Rosalie knew her way around. “You've got to listen to this,” she said, grabbing my elbow and leading me toward the back of the main exhibit room. Once we got there, she reached to the wall for a set of headphones and shoved them over my ears as if they were earmuffs. Through what sounded like an ocean of bubbles, I could hear a series of
strange high-pitched whistles, like nothing I'd ever heard before.

“Whales,” Rosalie explained excitedly when I took off the headphones. “They live in a world of sound. Scientists say whales use their own language to communicate. Cool, no? Now come and see what happens when a calf—that's a baby whale—is born.” Rosalie dragged me to another booth where we watched a video of a calf swimming up to the water's surface to take its first breath.

“For humans, breathing is an instinct. But not for whales,” Rosalie said. “They have to remember to breathe. At night, only half their brain goes to sleep. The other half stays awake and reminds them to breathe.” Rosalie was talking awfully fast now, as if her words were having trouble keeping up with everything she wanted to say. Still, I was glad she'd answered the question I'd wanted to ask Uncle Jean—about whether whales ever got to sleep.

It was hard to see what was going on at the next station because there were so many kids crowded round it, making noisy panting
sounds. Lucky for me, I had my personal tour guide. “Belugas can hold their breath for up to twenty minutes,” Rosalie explained. “And sperm whales can hold theirs for up to an hour and a half. How long can you hold yours?”

So that's what all the kids were doing—trying to see how long they could hold their breath. There was even a computerized timer to help with the calculation. “My turn, my turn,” I said as I elbowed my way past the crowd.

Rosalie had been in charge so far—dragging me here and there and explaining stuff—but I was about to become the center of attention. A warm, familiar feeling came over me, as if I was about to go on stage.

“Think of me as a whale,” I said, inhaling deeply through my nostrils. And then I held my breath—so long that I felt my cheeks puff up and my face turn hot, and then hotter.

The kids I'd pushed out of the way were looking at me, their eyes widening in surprise. I turned to look at Rosalie next. She'd covered her mouth with one hand.

And then I tumbled to the floor, making a loud thud as I hit the ground. I even rolled around, letting my head drop from left to right, just to add to the effect. “Quick! Call the doctor!” I heard Rosalie yell. One little girl started to cry, tears running down her cheeks.

The kid's crying got to me. Slowly, like a rag doll, I picked myself up from the ground, pretending to be a little groggy. Everyone's eyes were on me, including those of the clerk who'd given me the English booklet and who had rushed over to see what was going on.

“Gotcha!” I said with a laugh as I stood up.

But no one seemed to know what “gotcha” meant. The clerk looked confused; the little girl was still crying. As for Rosalie, she'd stomped out of the room without looking back.

Rosalie didn't go very far. I could see her standing on the balcony that looked out over the water. I thought I'd give her a few minutes, but she didn't come back inside. She didn't even turn to see if I was watching her. I figured that meant it was up to me to go get her. Not that I planned on apologizing or anything.

“I was just kidding around,” I told her. Actually I told it to her back, since she was
staring at the water—or pretending to. All I could see were those long braids of hers dangling on either side of her head, but I could picture the rest of her face as if I was looking right at it. The big smile, the freckles, the blue eyes. I had to admit she was kind of pretty, even if she did talk too much.