A Dolphin's Gift

by Watters, Patricia

  "Okay." Mike opened his knife, slipped the blade under the first strand of netting, and started cutting the mesh. Will continued to stroke the distressed animal while talking softly to him. Little by little, the strings of the net popped away from the knife blade as Mike sawed through each strand while at the same time Will pulled the severed net away from the dolphin.

  Once the animal was free from the net, Will said, "Let's move these limbs and clear a path for him." They broke loose the twistings of hairy roots, and dragged away tangles of kelp, gradually opening an escape route for the dolphin. "It won't be long now, boy," Will said. He looked at Mike. "What do you want to name him?"

  Mike looked at Will, wide-eyed. "You mean I can pick?"

  "Sure," Will said. "You're the one who discovered him here and cut him loose."

  Mike thought for a moment then replied. "How about Lester?"

  "Lester?"

  "Danville. After my soccer coach, Lester Danville. He's real nice."

  "Lester it is then," Will said, chuckling. "Are you ready?"

  Mike grinned. "Yeah, I'm ready." Standing opposite each other, they dragged the debris apart, clearing the path. With a flip of his tail, Lester glided toward Diana. The dolphins nuzzled and cuddled, swimming together while emitting a series of fast, excited clicks. Then they disappeared below the surface and were gone. Will turned to Mike, and said, "Do you realize what Diana gave you today?"

  Mike looked at Will with curious eyes, and waited.

  "Her trust," Will said, "the greatest gift she could give." As he said the words, they seemed to take on profound significance. Until now, he'd never had faith in concepts like love and trust. It took a pair of dolphins to point out that without them as a foundation, his life would always be vacant. As he knew it would be as long as Nellie was not a part of it. Love, he understood now—his love for Nellie was absolute, as was his trust in her. Nellie would stand by him always. It was trust in himself he couldn't bank on. In that he had no confidence. And Nellie deserved better.

  ***

  After Will hoisted the kayak aboard the Isadora, Mike chattered away, relaying the story of Diana and Lester to Nellie, who smiled in delight on seeing his enthusiasm. And later, when the Isadora glided up to the dock in Beaver Bay, Mike's face still held a flush of excitement.

  Will cut the engine and Mike scurried down from the bridge to tie up the boat. Mike’s face was glowing when he joined Nellie in the galley, where she was busily packing food to take ashore for their overnight campout. Mike looked over the assortment of goodies, and his eyes came to rest on a box of graham crackers. "Can we have somemores, you know, graham crackers, marshmallows and Hershey bars, like we did that time with Daddy?"

  "We sure can," Nellie said, trying to sound bright. Although she was determined not to show it, she knew she would not enjoy the campout. With no hope for a future with Will, she wanted only to return to Port Townsend, where she'd move the Isadora to another mooring, find a job, immerse herself in Mike's activities, and somehow begin to fill the void she now felt, as if she'd lost another true love. Which, in a sense, she had.

  "Far out," Mike yelped. "I'll whittle sticks like Daddy did for roasting marshmallows."

  Nellie gazed at Mike's eager face and caught the sparks of anticipation in his eyes. He was different from the angry, resentful boy who had set out on the Isadora such a short time ago, and for the first time since his father's death, Mike seemed happy. For him, life again held promise, unlike the twist of emotions that had settled inside her.

  Mike scanned the assortment of hot dogs, Twinkies, potato chips and soda pop, and asked, "Where did we get all the good stuff? You always make me eat yucky healthy junk."

  Nellie laughed. "Will brought it all back with him," she replied, the sound of Will's name on her lips settling heavy in her chest. "He got these too." From a cabinet above the stove, she pulled out a six-pack of Hershey bars and a squishy bag of marshmallows.

  Mike looked thoughtfully at the marshmallows and candy bars then he gazed up at Nellie and said, "He is kinda like Daddy, isn't he?"

  "In some ways," Nellie said, feeling a tightness inside that Will would never be the one to fill that place in Mike's life. "I know he cares about you—" her lips tipped at one corner "—and he also likes junk food."

  Mike grinned as he crawled up the ladder. "I better go see if he needs help."

  After a few minutes, Nellie, who was standing at the sink, looked up to see Will climbing down into the galley to help carry out the food bags. She thought of how it had been a few weeks before, when he'd come up behind her and wrap his arms snugly around her waist. She'd settled back, allowing him to hold her for a moment before protesting that Mike might see them...

  She was aware of the intangible wall separating them, a wall veiled in guarded glances and cordial conversation about impersonal topics, like the success of his whale study, and how many whale sounds he'd documented. Impersonal, that is, until he'd commented that he'd be continuing the study the following summer, if he could find a boat. A tense moment hung, until he'd made an ambiguous remark about maybe purchasing a small cruiser. And Nellie talked about Captain Nate and her visit with her uncle—another safe subject. Until she commented on how happy her uncle was, now that he was married. After another tense moment, the conversation shifted to Katy and Zeke. But even that impersonal subject seemed destined to hit hard, when Nellie mentioned that the animals had somehow managed to work out their differences.

  There seemed to be undertones in everything they said.

  Giving Nellie a tentative smile, Will said, "Did you see what I just saw?"

  She looked at him curiously. "I don't know. What did you see?"

  "A kid with a grin who wants, quote, an awesome stack of somemores, unquote, tonight."

  Nellie started sponging off a counter that already shone. "He definitely seems to be coming around," she said, turning to wipe the cabinet door. "And he hasn't had a bad dream since he started reading The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse. I noticed him paging through it several times. I even saw him reading it once when he thought no one was looking. That was very astute of you to think of it. The book and the kayak outing with the dolphins... you've made a difference in Mike's life. He looks up to you now." She said the words incidentally, but from the perceptive look on Will's face, she knew he hadn't missed her meaning...

  ...you'd make a good step-father in spite of whatever preconceived doubts you have about yourself, if you'd just give yourself a chance...

  Will picked up a bag of groceries to take it out to the dock, but before climbing up the ladder with it, he said, "What Mike's looking for he won't find in me, so leave it be."

  And Nellie wondered how many times Will would have to tell her that before she'd finally believe it.

  ***

  With Katy and Zeke locked securely on the Isadora for the night, Will, Nellie and Mike took the sleeping bags and groceries and left the boat. Will led them up the trail to the camping spot and springhouse—a small stone building built by the forest service in which steamy water from an unseen source filled a pool and flowed out through an overflow pipe. While Will and Mike enjoyed the hot springs pool, Nellie unrolled the sleeping bags, gathered wood, and prepared a circle of rocks for the campfire. Since she’d been delegated as camp cook, she'd soak in the hot springs pool later. She also wanted Mike and Will to have time together so Mike would have fond memories of his first trip on the Isadora. Her memories, on the other hand, would be filled with a longing she knew she’d never come to terms with.

  After they'd roasted hot dogs and popped popcorn, Mike whittled the ends of three sticks in preparation for making somemores. As they sat around the campfire roasting marshmallows, Will started telling Mike about upcoming events in Port Townsend...

  "... and if you plan to enter the Kinetic Sculpture Race," he was saying, "you'll have to get started on your entry right away."

  "What's a kinetic sculpture?" Mike asked, eyes wide with curiosity.
>
  Will sandwiched a toasted marshmallow and four squares of a Hershey Bar between two graham crackers and handed it to Mike. "It's sort of like a giant soapbox derby with homemade, people-powered rigs that must be able to run along the city streets, travel on sand, float in water, and finish in one piece. That's the tricky part."

  "How do we build something like that?" Mike asked, plainly interested in the project.

  "Well, you start by making your design," Will said, turning a stick slowly over the fire, while browning a marshmallow impaled on its end, "then you scrounge through auto dumps for parts. Depending on what you find, you might want to modify your design."

  "Like what kind of design?" Mike asked.

  "Just about anything," Will replied. "Once I saw a wooden cow on wheels, and I've also seen a paddle-wheel bee, a rolling crayon, and a giant slug."

  "Far out!" Mike exclaimed. He looked at Nellie. "Can we enter the race, Mom?"

  Nellie chuckled. "If you think you can build something that can do all those things, and float too," she said. "I'd hate to have to fish you out of the bay."

  Will laughed. "No chance of that. All entries have to pass the brake-and-float test, and prove they can stop after coasting down the Monroe Street hill. Some don't of course, so the crowd stands way back. Then the entries are hauled to the water to test for seaworthiness."

  "Do you think we could win?" Mike asked, his voice eager.

  "Sure," Will replied. "Everyone wins. There are awards for Mediocrity and Prominent Virtue and Bogging-Down-in-Sand, and even Total Misfit. And if you don't get any tickets from the Kinetic Kops—they ticket people for cheating or jumping out and pushing—then you're classified Ace Pilot and you get an Ace Pilot Certificate." He smiled at the bright sparks in Mike's eyes. "I tell you what. Hop into your sleeping bag and get a good night's sleep, and tomorrow we'll start working out a design."

  "Far out!" Mike kissed Nellie then turned to Will. "Can I steer again tomorrow when we get in open water?"

  "Sure," Will replied. "And maybe, after we've dropped anchor and set up our equipment, we'll take the kayak out again." He extended his hand. "Good night, son."

  Mike studied Will's hand for a few moments, then placed his palm against it, and said, "Good night... Will."

  After Mike was asleep, and while Nellie and Will sat staring into the campfire, Nellie said, "He's very excited about the race." Her voice was much brighter than her frame of mind. How much she wanted for Will to be a part of it all... a part of their lives.

  "It's a good project for him." Will glanced at Mike, who was curled in his sleeping bag, and said, "I think you have a pretty fine son."

  "So do I," Nellie said. "He has his so-so moments, but I wouldn't trade him for anything. He's my whole life."

  "I know," Will said. He stared solemnly at the glowing embers of the campfire. "That's why I can't be a part of your life too... why I can't give you what you want."

  Nellie looked down at her hands, not wanting to see the rejection she knew would be on Will’s face when she said, "You are what I want, Will. You also told me you loved me. Well, maybe I'm old-fashioned, but somehow I always equated love with marriage."

  "Those are two elements in the fairy tale," Will said. "But you left out the third."

  Nellie looked at him. "Which is?"

  "Children."

  Nellie saw his jaw tighten. There it was again. Children. Somehow it always came back to that. She gave a heavy sigh. "Well, you won't talk, and I can’t read your mind, and I don't understand what's going on with you so I'm very frustrated," she said, irritated.

  Drawing in a wearisome sigh, Will said, "Maybe you're right. Maybe it is a cop out."

  Nellie placed her hand on his arm. "If it is, then tell me why you hate yourself so much you got a vasectomy so you could never have kids."

  Eyes fixed on the dying embers, Will stared for an inordinate amount of time, so long Nellie was about to get up and walk away, when Will said simply, "I murdered my father."

  CHAPTER 12

  Will could feel Nellie's eyes on him, and after a long stretch of silence, when she offered nothing more he turned and saw her concern, and her love. He didn't deserve either. He didn't deserve anything but the grim loneliness he'd endured since he was sixteen. Then Nellie reached out and squeezed his hand, and said, "Whatever the circumstances were, I know you do not have it in you to murder anyone. So tell me what really happened."

  As Will sat beside Nellie, their bodies not touching, a despondent breeze swept about him. And without warning, a deep sense of loneliness settled over him, an oppressive reminder of the solitary existence he seemed destined to bear because of an unalterable past...

  "Will, I'm frustrated that you won't talk, and I want to know what happened," Nellie said.

  Will too felt frustrated, and angered, by the turmoil inside that compelled his silence. But he also knew Nellie didn’t give her love lightly, so she deserved an explanation.

  A cool sweat broke out on his brow as distant memories moved through his mind like clips from a gruesome movie: his father's drunken rages, the beatings, the countless foster homes where he and Kelsey would be settled, only to be returned home to face the cycle of drunkenness, rage and beatings again. His mouth compressed in a harsh line. It was a matter of survival, of instincts, and ultimately of murder.

  He balled a fist then stiffened his arm to keep from striking something, and replied, "I got the vasectomy to stop the cycle of abuse." He arched a cynical brow. "It goes back a ways in my family. My father. My grandfather."

  "Child abuse?" Nellie said, staring at him. "You never gave any indication you'd been abused. Can you talk about it?"

  "Sure," Will replied. "How graphic do you want me to get?"

  "Whatever it takes to put your mind at rest," Nellie said. She placed her hand on his arm, and held it there as she said, "I love you, Will, and I'm trying to understand why you've built a wall around your heart. Please don't shut me out now. Tell me what happened."

  Will heaved a labored sigh as a gruesome scene unfolded in his mind. "My father was beating the crap out of my mother and I hit him over the head with a bottle." He could still smell the liquor on his father's breath and see the tendons standing out in his neck and hear his mother's scream as his father raised up after being struck, then fell forward across the bed. When his father didn't move, Will rolled him over, and he lay face up in a growing pool of blood, eyes lifeless, the hardened lines of his face relaxed...

  "He had to be stopped," Will said, looking straight ahead.

  Nellie turned his face, forcing him to look at her as she said, "How can you call it murder? You didn't mean to kill him."

  Will let out a snort of derision. "I was strong when I was sixteen, and I remember the force behind that blow," he replied. "All I knew, when I raised the bottle to hit him over the head, was he had to be stopped. Permanently."

  "Even if the blow was harder than you intended, you shouldn’t blame yourself for what happened?" Nellie said. "The law does allow for you to protect and defend someone else."

  Will held her gaze, but instead of seeing hazel eyes, he saw the blue-gray eyes of his mother peering out from a haggard face with lines that years of cruelty had placed there. She'd had no way out. She'd suffered so much at the hands of his father. "When I was young, I vowed that as soon as I was big enough I'd stop him however I could. And I did. At least my mother had six good years before she died."

  "Were you charged with anything?" Nellie asked.

  Will shook his head. "No. The judge said it was in defense of my mother. But the judge didn't know the force I'd put behind that blow. But I did. I used all my strength to stop him."

  "Which is probably what it took to do that," Nellie said. "A man in a drunken rage has abnormal strength. You saved your mother from a brutal father, and she had several good years after that, and now it's all behind you."

  Will gave a weary sigh. "Is it?"

  "Of course it is," Nellie said,
"unless you want to spend the rest of your life letting it eat away at you. So my only question now is, do you love me enough to consider marriage?"

  The muscles in Will's jaws flexed. "I love you, but I can't marry you because I can't guarantee I won't one day strike back in anger. I almost did with Mike."

  Nellie looked at Will with a start. "What do you mean? Mike never said anything to me."

  "I'm surprised," Will said. He described the incident with Mike at Ocean Bay, when Mike refused to turn back. "I actually raised my fist to a child."

  "Why didn't you go ahead and hit him then?" Nellie asked. "What stopped you?"

  Almost overwhelmed by the feeling of remorse that just thinking about the incident brought, Will replied, "Mike flinched, and I saw in his eyes the fear I had as a boy."

  "Then that's half the battle," Nellie said. "As for Mike, he was testing you, and believe me, I know how he can test. More than once he's pushed me right up to the brink of slapping him across the face. But like you, I stopped myself. Did your mother ever hit you?"

  "No," Will replied. "She was the most caring person I ever knew."

  Nellie gave a kind of grudging laugh. "Then I rest my case. You know as well as I that child abuse is not genetic, or hereditary. It's learned behavior. And so is caring and gentleness. You have the choice of discarding your parents' negative traits and taking on their positive ones. But as long as you remain fixated on the wrongs of your father and grandfather, you'll never be free. You are the only person completely accountable for your own actions."

  Will's brows gathered in contemplation. Nellie's simple statement, you are the only person completely accountable for your own actions, seemed to somehow free him.

  "Loneliness is an insidious thing, sweetheart," Nellie said. "Don't condemn yourself to a life of solitude because of the wrongdoings of your father and grandfather." She slipped her arms around his neck and looked into his eyes. Tracing a finger along his jaw and following the contour of his lips, she whispered, "The only way you can break the cycle of abuse is to create the home and family you never had and be the father that was denied you. Make a happy home. You do have that power, and the love inside you to do it."