The noise of two dozen dogs was nearly deafening, even once Truman was in Neva’s small office with the door closed. Both he and Winslow had unusually low auditory thresholds. Neva fished out a couple of noise-dampening foam earplugs from her top desk drawer, handing them to him wordlessly across her desk.
At thirty-six Geneva Wilson was small but mighty from years of hard physical work with large animals, and gingery in color, manner, and temperament. She sat across the desk from him in her messy office, wearing canvas army boots, a stained sweatshirt, and cargo pants, her thick red hair indifferently knotted and stabbed through with a chopstick. Truman thought she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
“Your aunt is reacting out of sentimentality,” Neva said after he’d given her a synopsis of the situation. “And pity. You know that, right?”
Yes, Truman knew that. He remembered a number of unlikely orphans that Ivy had been sheltering when Truman came to visit—not just the usual assortment of hapless domesticated animals, but an owl, a nutria, and once, memorably, a male raccoon that washed its food in a dog dish Ivy had put on the floor expressly for that purpose, its splint tapping on the kitchen linoleum like a pirate’s peg leg. The animal had long, thin, artful fingers that deftly rolled pats of butter into perfect little balls the size of BBs before dipping them in the water. “She’s always had a soft spot for lost causes,” he said now. “Take Julio Iglesias. But it doesn’t make her wrong.”
“You know that politically having a cetacean—”
“A what?”
“A cetacean. A whale or dolphin.”
“Oh.”
“—having cetaceans brings the nuts out of the woodwork. They don’t mind so much when you have fish or lesser marine mammals—seals, sea lions, even walruses—but the anticaptivity people go absolutely nuts over whales and dolphins. You could end up being picketed day in and day out for years. I’m not saying it’s going to happen, but it could.”
“We’re helping an animal in need—a deserving animal. Our motives are purely altruistic. It seems pretty straightforward to me.”
Neva smiled at him fondly. “You’re so naïve. You haven’t seen it, but people lose their minds when it comes to killer whales. I’m serious. You can’t bring a killer whale here without making headlines. Ask anyone at SeaWorld.”
“Are you saying you don’t think we should take him?”
“I’m saying you have to be prepared for whatever is slung at you. If you’re okay with that, I think it’s great.”
Truman laced his fingers together, regarding her thoughtfully. “This man Gabriel Jump thinks the whale’s only got six months to a year, at the longest, if he stays where he is. I wish I didn’t know that, but I do. Ivy’s promised to pay for everything, if necessary. I’ve got Gabriel’s commitment to work with us for at least the first year. Would you be willing to come back to the zoo and work with him? It means Marla will have to find a new manager.” Marla was the owner of Woof!
“Honey, I don’t have any marine mammal experience. I’d kill to work with him, but I’ll be more of a liability than an asset, at least in the beginning.”
“He says if you can work with elephants, you can work with killer whales.”
Neva pressed Truman’s arm across the desktop. “In that case, of course I’ll come back. You know there’s no one I’d rather share a frying pan with than you.”
FROM WOOF!, TRUMAN drove to the Oat Maiden, a cheerful garage sale of a café in downtown Bladenham. It had gouged and rippling old floorboards, silvering mirrors, mismatched chairs, and heavy wooden tables brightly painted with celestial, aquatic, safari, and Bicycle-playing-card motifs in primary colors. Sitting at a back table waiting for him was Samson Brown, a seventy-one-year-old black man, tall and trim, his lined face testifying to a life of hard work cheerfully undertaken, including forty-one years of caring for Hannah. Truman shook his hand before sitting down.
“So what’s this all about?” said Sam. “You got yourself a whale now?”
“Maybe. Yes. And he’s right up our alley,” Truman said wryly. “He’s sick, he’s needy, he’s in a terrible facility, and bringing him here might kill him. Oh, and once he’s here he’ll be alone, just like Hannah. On the other hand, he’ll certainly die if he’s left where he is now.”
“I don’t believe the good Lord ever meant for death to be the right choice if there’s an alternative,” said Sam. “You got a way to move him?”
“Yes.”
“You got a place to put him once you move him?”
“Yes.”
“Somebody got the know-how to take care of him once he’s here?”
“Yes.”
“Anybody else want to do the same thing?”
“Evidently not.”
“Sounds like you got your answer.”
Truman smiled. “It sure does. The reason I asked you to meet me is, I want to know whether you’d consider helping.”
“Be glad to help, but I don’t know a thing about killer whales. Come to that, I’ve never even seen one except on TV. Can’t swim, either.”
“I’m sure there are ways you can help that won’t involve heavy physical work. Or swimming. You could be more of an observer. And you could work strictly on an as-needed basis. The main thing is, I’d feel a lot better about all this if I knew we could tap into your experience.”
“You don’t even need to ask that. It’s yours anytime you want it.”
“Thank you,” Truman said. “From my heart.”
A young girl approached the table wiping her hands on her apron. “I’m so sorry. We’re backed up in the kitchen. Can I get you something?”
“I’ll have whatever he’s having,” Truman said, indicating Sam’s glass of iced tea and pizza slice. “And tell your boss we said hi.” Johnson Johnson was another member of Hannah’s band of schemers, a man of infinite shyness, few words, and great artistry, who had also recently taken over the Oat Maiden. The round table at which they were sitting was a piece of his work, painted with bright animals from the African veldt and Serengeti Plain in a never-ending circle.
“Perfect,” said the girl and trotted away.
“He’s doing a good job with the place,” said Sam. “Who’d of thunk? Your mom and dad still helping him?”
“From time to time,” said Truman. “Mostly it’s Neva, though. She does the books, helps him order things if he gets too busy, generally keeps an eye on him.”
“She’s a good woman.”
“That she is,” Truman agreed. “That she is.” The waitress set Truman’s drink and a slice of pepperoni pizza in front of him and trotted off again. Truman absently rubbed his thumb through the condensation on the side of the glass. “You know, you said once that Max Biedelman thought the worst thing she’d ever done was to bring Hannah here. I keep thinking about that.”
“She didn’t feel bad about giving shug a home,” Sam corrected him. “What she felt bad about was not being able to give her another elephant. She gave her me—that’s the best she could do except for those couple of years right at the beginning with old Reyna.”
“So was that a mistake?”
Sam shrugged, stirred his ice cubes around in his glass with a straw. “She always kept on forgetting shug would’ve probably died over there in Burma. Elephants have to earn their keep over there, and who’d have hired an elephant who was blind in one eye? And she was just a little bitty thing even after she was full-grown. Don’t get me wrong, it would’ve been nice if the girl would have had another elephant or two to play with, like she does now. But it’s apples and oranges—there wasn’t anything like that back then. I think Miz Biedelman gave her a fine life. Girl never wanted for anything, always had the best food, never had a sick day in her life except for her foot sores.”
Truman frowned. “But she was alone here. This whale will be, too. Does that make it morally wrong to bring him here?”
“Never heard anybody say the right thing is the perfect thing.”<
br />
“Max Biedelman—what do you think she’d do, if it were up to her?”
Sam grinned. “Heck, that’s easy. She’d have already packed her bag to go down there and get him.”
ON JUNE THIRD the board of directors of the Max L. Biedelman Zoo voted unanimously to bring the killer whale to its facility as soon as arrangements could be made. Three weeks later, Truman and Gabriel departed for Bogotá to transport him home.
That evening, Ivy and her older brother, Matthew Levy, sat at their respective dining room tables, Ivy on San Juan Island and Matthew in Bladenham, connected via Skype. Matthew, a retired state appellate court judge, had drawn up a legal agreement between Ivy and the zoo, even though he had told Ivy numerous times and in no uncertain terms that she was poised on the brink of a headlong dive into a yawning black fiscal hole. His had always been the Levy family’s voice of pragmatism, even when he was a boy, and over the past several weeks he had spent significant energy trying to dissuade both Ivy and Truman from undertaking such a high-risk, low-yield project. Then, when it became clear that he wouldn’t prevail, he crafted as ironclad an agreement as he could between Ivy and the zoo, protecting her assets as much as possible, not only in the event of the animal’s untimely demise, but also in the case of a flood of surplus revenue.
While Matthew reviewed the terms of the agreement, Ivy filled in the Os in the document’s immaculate title page with a leaky ballpoint pen and drifted away, wondering if she should burn a little sage to cast out any negative energy and attract positive energy to the whale transport scheduled for first thing the next morning.
“Are you listening?” she was suddenly aware of Matthew asking her.
“Apparently not,” she said. “Honey, can’t we do this when I come down there tomorrow?”
“You should have done it a week ago. Until you and the zoo president sign this, you’re not protected,” Matthew said. “And neither is the zoo. You don’t seem to realize how vulnerable you are.”
Ivy sighed.
“Look, let’s just get through it. It won’t take long.”
And so he took her, page by numbingly tedious page, through an agreement between her and the Max L. Biedelman Zoo (henceforth referred to as THE ZOO) that laid out the conditions under which she (henceforth referred to as THE DONOR) would and would not finance the ongoing care and maintenance of the killer whale Viernes. Under the agreement, she would be the sole contributor to a trust, blah blah blah.
It wasn’t that Ivy didn’t care; as a rule she managed her significant fortune very attentively. Her grandfather Levy, the family patriarch during her childhood years, had always stressed that it was her duty to support the Needy, including food banks, homeless shelters, and women’s centers; the Greater Good, including the local police and fire departments; and Our Cultural Legacy, including the Seattle Art Museum, Portland Art Museum, and several local arts and historical organizations—all just so much bland philanthropic toast, though worthy. Ivy had dutifully supported all of them in generous, though reasonable, ways. This gesture, right now, was the one and only rash financial move she had ever made.
“And you understand that you will have a vote—not the controlling vote, but a vote—in decisions affecting the animal’s ultimate disposition,” Matthew was saying.
Ivy snapped to. “What does ‘ultimate disposition’ mean?”
“It means any decision affecting where the animal lives. In the event of his relocation to another facility, for example.”
“Why on earth would he be moved to another facility?”
“I don’t have the faintest idea,” said Matthew. “I’m just trying to cover all possible eventualities.”
“Oh.” Ivy subsided, nibbling at a cuticle. “You know, if I were you I’d have opened a vein years ago.”
He gave her an exasperated look. “Ivy, Truman has told me these things can become very political. We want to be sure you have a say, if and when it becomes necessary to move him.”
“Can I have the controlling say?”
“I’ve looked into that. It would be illegal, given that the zoo is a municipal organization. Besides, giving you the controlling interest in a specific animal’s welfare would set a terrible precedent.”
“Well, I don’t see why,” Ivy said sullenly, aware that she was just being difficult. “It’s not like I want to have anything to do with the sloth or the dik-diks.”
“Nevertheless.”
“Oh, all right.”
In fifteen minutes more, Matthew directed Ivy to sign there, there, there, there, and there, and the ship of Ivy’s impulsivity set sail.
Chapter 2
ÁNDALE! SHOUTED A beautiful young Colombian trainer as Viernes labored around his small pool one last time. Twenty thousand people had come to the park and the surrounding streets to say good-bye to their national treasure. The trainer made the sweeping gesture she had used to cue him in a thousand shows. “Ándale, Viernes!” Sleek and showy in a short-sleeved black and purple wet suit, her long hair flying behind her, she clapped extravagantly as a TV crew edged closer.
After the show Gabriel and Truman stood side by side watching Viernes hang inert in the water. Truman asked the Colombian trainer if, for Viernes, this torpor was normal. The trainer laughed musically and dismissed the question with a coquettish roll of her eyes. “Of course,” she said. “That is because he is lazy.”
Truman could feel Gabriel stiffen, but he said nothing as the trainer left the pool. Once she was gone Truman asked him, “Is she right? Is he lazy?”
“He’s in an advanced state of starvation.”
“Don’t they realize?”
“No. In all fairness, they’ve never worked with a healthy killer whale, so they don’t have anything to compare him with.”
Truman nodded. He’d quickly come to rely on not only Gabriel’s wealth of knowledge, but also the pragmatic remove he was able to maintain. Especially when compared with what Truman was coming to understand as his and Ivy’s rampant anthropomorphizing, Gabriel’s was a cool, dispassionate eye.
The next morning came early. Truman reported to Viernes’s pool at three o’clock to find Gabriel and the beautiful young trainer already busy smearing the whale’s back and dorsal fin with zinc oxide to protect them from drying out during the trip to Bladenham. Then they guided him into a custom-made canvas sling with cutouts that allowed his pectoral flippers to poke through. A construction crane lifted the whole apparatus out of the pool and lowered it into a huge fiberglass box until he was three-quarters submerged in icy freshwater. Once the box was secured on the flatbed, the truck heaved into motion, airport-bound.
Standing beside the box on the flatbed, Truman was stunned to find the streets packed with throngs of noisy well-wishers who’d come to say good-bye to their beloved whale. They cheered and wept along the entire six-mile route; what would ordinarily have been a ten-minute drive took an hour and a half.
For the next twelve hours Truman silently chanted what was fast becoming his mantra: please don’t let him die.
ON ORCAS ISLAND, one ferry stop away from Ivy Levy’s San Juan Island home, animal communicator Libertine Adagio was trying to sort out a new animal presence in her head. Animals never understood the concept of here or me; they simply were; so pinning down a location or even identifying the species always took time—sometimes a lot of time. Right now she sensed that the newcomer was male, captive, and ill, but that was all.
She padded around her kitchen in an old Friends of Animals of the Sea T-shirt, a pair of sweat socks flapping off the ends of her feet like clown shoes. At forty-seven she was small, frail, and mousy-headed. She loved her tiny cabin, covered as it was with rose trellises, garden art, and ferns, its seven-hundred square feet cozy and warm, furnished and decorated over the years with bright colors, gay rugs, and art in every medium. From her front window she was able to watch the ferries come and go, carrying commuters, food, dry goods, construction materials, walk-on visitors, and produce distributo
rs. She knew most of the small island’s other year-round residents, but the nature of her work and unpredictable travel schedule meant that she kept mostly to herself. This little house was the one place where she never minded her isolation.
She had only arrived home the night before from two weeks in Las Vegas. Initially she’d gone there to visit an elderly aunt, but she’d stayed on behalf of a small troupe of white tigers in an animal show that her aunt had insisted, with the single-mindedness of early-stage dementia, that Libertine take her to see. Despite a dislike of captive animal exploitation that bordered on horror, Libertine had given in, and the first tiger on stage had conveyed to her that the troupe wasn’t being well cared for. With a sinking heart Libertine had taken her aunt home, tucked her into bed with a shot of neat whiskey, and gone back to the casino in time to attend the last show of the evening. The tigers had been belligerent and disorganized until Libertine had finally conveyed that if they couldn’t straighten up and focus, she was going home. They had fallen into line, of course (in her experience tigers were twitchy, emotional creatures with surprisingly low self-esteem and a tendency to bully and then fold under pressure), but the casino’s management hadn’t been at all interested in what they—that is, she—had had to say. In the end a public protest was the only option. Knowing she was an abysmal protester—like the tigers, she tended to fold under pressure—she’d tried to convince a local, terrestrial animal offshoot of animal rights group Friends of Animals of the Sea to commit people and resources, but the few people who’d responded had milled around in a lackluster way for a week or so and then drifted off. After the eighth day Libertine had been alone on the sidewalk, brandishing a different sign each morning—STOP THE DOLPHIN EXPLOITATION NOW! and IT’S NOT ENTERTAINMENT, IT’S ENSLAVEMENT! and the satisfyingly cryptic IT’S JUST WRONG! Her face burning with every step, she’d made herself stay in Las Vegas for the entire endless week as penance, pilloried for her failure to incite zeal.
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