Song of the Sound

by Jeff Gulvin

  ‘She was getting ready. Sierra’s with her.’ Libby smiled. ‘Sierra’s been good for Bree, you know, really good.’

  ‘Animals are like that sometimes. They sense things about certain people we’ve no inkling of.’

  ‘Bree’s had a tough time.’ Libby bunched her lips. ‘I’ve hauled her around like a rucksack pretty much all her life.’

  John-Cody handed her fresh coffee. ‘Yes and she’s seen Mexico and the States, Africa and the Argentine. She can speak French and Spanish and is better at Japanese than classmates who’ve been studying it a year longer than she has.’ He nodded. ‘She’s had a tough time all right.’

  Libby looked up at him then and her eyes — dark in the darkness — softened. He looked at her, swallowed coffee and felt that strange yet suddenly familiar feeling well up in his breast. He couldn’t quite discern what it was, but it was exciting and although it troubled him the pain was a good pain and he could deal with it. All part of the confusion of everything, he told himself as he rolled another cigarette. He was smoking more these last few days, ever since Pole got to him.

  Libby stretched where she sat next to him. ‘I guess I better get back next door.’

  ‘Finish your coffee first.’ Suddenly John-Cody didn’t want to be alone. Alone meant thinking about a future that was closing in on him like the four walls of a cell. Libby watched him, saw the movement sharp at the edge of his eyes and wondered what was going on inside his head. He was pleasant always and softly spoken and he laughed, but she had no idea what went on in his mind: he gave nothing of himself away. He drew his cheeks in hard as he smoked as if he couldn’t get enough into his lungs. There was desperation in the action. It unnerved her yet she didn’t really know why. She finished her coffee, yawned and got up.

  ‘Listen, thanks for the company.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  She stood a moment and he stared at the lines of her face, hollows under the height of her cheekbones, eyes darkened into shadows by the firelight. He had no idea what she was thinking. He stood up and they faced each other, two feet between them, neither of them moving. Libby tucked her hair behind her ear.

  ‘Anyway. I’d better get back.’

  ‘Yes.’ He stood, hands loose at his sides, sleeves pushed up. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow then.’

  ‘Tomorrow.’ Libby smiled and turned. ‘Goodnight, John-Cody.’

  ‘Night, Lib. Sleep well.’

  ‘You too.’

  He went to bed, listened to her in the shower and wondered.

  He kept the letter from immigration in his pocket, transferring it when he changed clothes, as if he needed it with him but was impotent to act on it. He didn’t know what to do: he didn’t want to face it, the future and the past, inextricably linked. He half worked in the office, getting under Alex’s feet until she suggested he might want to go back over the hill. He thought about that but knew he needed to do something about the letter, just couldn’t figure out what. It was weird, as if all his decision-making powers had been stolen by Ned Pole’s ruthlessness. He saw Pole down by the Z boat wharf at Pearl Harbour. He was in conversation with one of the skippers as John-Cody walked down to check on some lake crossings.

  Pole saw him, said something to the skipper then climbed the steps and they met on the slope down to the main wharf. John-Cody looked him coldly in the eyes and Pole folded his arms across his chest. He stood tall, the brim of his hat pulled low, shoulders hunched into the weight of his stockman’s coat.

  ‘You didn’t hang about, did you?’ John-Cody said.

  ‘You wouldn’t have taken the offer anyway. You wouldn’t sell the Korimako to me.’

  ‘You’re right. I wouldn’t.’

  ‘Then there was nothing to say, was there?’

  They looked at each other.

  John-Cody shouldered past him.

  The immigration service sent him a follow-up letter two days later and he got in his truck and drove to Dunedin. He told Libby he was going to the city and she asked him to deliver some slides to the marine lab at Portobello.

  He left Manapouri with the dawn and drove east, skirting the Takitimus to Mossburn and Lumsden, where he stopped at a dairy for coffee. Then he carried on through Balfour and Riversdale to Gore. Here he parked, had a cigarette and thought about what he would say to the immigration people when he got there. He wondered what sort of a case he could plead. Deep down he was filled with a sense of dread, a feeling that no matter what he thought or said or felt there was nothing he could do, because a past was a past and he’d been running from his for years.

  Libby watched him leave. She heard him start the truck and opened the front door in her bathrobe and watched as he backed out without looking round and she stood there and listened till the truck was a rumble in the distance. The world seemed strangely quiet after that and she sat on the dew-covered wood of the chair, oblivious to the damp, listening while the birds woke up. John-Cody had changed: something had altered since that meeting with Pole. When they first met him he was quiet and subdued, but over time his spirits had lifted, as if the desire for life had been reawakened within him. But now he was back in his shell, closed down and removed from them once again. Bree had noticed it too: her conversations with him had been shorter, less frequent, and he no longer gave her his full attention.

  Libby felt alone again in her research. Before, she had related every discovery she made about the identification and behaviour of the pod to John-Cody, but recently his interest had waned and she kept more of it to herself. That was fine, research was often a solitary business, but when she was at Supper Cove she found the fiord lonely and somehow desolate. Apart from perhaps Punta Norte, it was the most remote place she had ever worked in. Dusky was full of wonder, but so vast and empty of humanity it was hard to imagine floating hotels and speedboats and thousands and thousands of tourists.

  The dolphins were completely at ease with her now and she had positively identified and sexed over thirty separate animals. But when she was cruising along in their wake, watching the images relayed to her by the underwater camera or observing the activity on her computer screen, she found herself thinking of other things, most notably John-Cody. She rebuked herself constantly over it: never had she thought so much about a man before. She wasn’t sure what the feelings amounted to. Maybe it was just concern for someone who had become a friend? No, it was something more than that. She didn’t do love affairs in the traditional sense: she was always too busy, had too much work, too many causes to fight. There was something about him, though, that got under the skin; she was aware of the same feelings in other women she saw in Te Anau and Manapouri. She was looked upon with a certain suspicion now, even jealousy perhaps, though heaven knew why. The man had an aura about him, barely discernible but enough to niggle away at you. The best of it was that he was completely unaware of it.

  The starling occupying the nest in the silver beech tree popped her head out and echoed in the morning. Libby glanced up at the sound of the song: it ought to make her feel that all was well with the world, but somehow it didn’t.

  John-Cody found the immigration office in Dunedin and parked the truck. For a long time he sat as rain driving in from the coast beat on the windscreen, casting ropes of running water over the glass. He rolled a cigarette and smoked it with just a crack in the window and all kinds of thoughts coursed through his head. He could recall with absolute clarity the smell of Bluff Cove when the trawler unloaded her catch. He remembered sitting on the gunwales in his waterproofs, gloves stuffed in his pocket, watching while the coastguard searched the vessel for drugs. He recalled drinking a pint of Speights in the local bar, after the catch had been priced and a sale agreed. He recalled catching Tom Blanch’s eye as he sat and chatted with the crew. They talked about fishing inshore along the coast, the deep-water fishery management areas off the Campbell Plateau and Solander Trough. He recalled again that first meeting with Mahina on Yuvali Beach, the smell of moisture in the bush, the scent of
the trapped hind, the mud and stones and tannin seeping into the sound.

  Again he took the envelope from his pocket and scanned the contents of the two letters. He should have phoned them right away: that’s what he should have done. But he was here now at least. He got out of the truck and his legs felt shaky. He amazed himself: forty-eight years old and the fear a new schoolkid experiences rolling like water loose in his gut. He dropped the butt of his cigarette and crushed it under his heel, then he looked up at the drab government building and went inside.

  Three flights of stairs and he came into a hall, carpeted down the middle with polished boards on either side. At the far end was a reception desk at chest height and a woman behind it fielding telephone calls.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ she said with a smile. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘My name’s John-Cody Gibbs and I’m here to see somebody about these.’ He took both letters from his pocket and spread them flat before her. Quickly she scanned the contents.

  ‘Do you have an appointment?’

  ‘No. I just drove over from Manapouri.’

  ‘You really should have made an appointment.’

  ‘I’m here now.’

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Just one moment, sir, I’ll find somebody to help you.’

  He took a seat in a plastic-backed chair and rested his ankle on his knee. He looked at the bottoms of his jeans, weathered and worn, and at the battered leather of his boots. He looked at his hands, musician’s hands that had spent half their life at the wheel of a boat. He had grown up on the banks of the Mississippi River with tankers and all kinds of watercraft rolling in and out of New Orleans, but not once had he considered a career at the helm of one of them. It had been the blues and Bourbon Street and a recording contract in those days.

  The glass-panelled door to his left swung open and interrupted his thoughts. A middle-aged man wearing a grey suit stepped out.

  ‘Mr Gibbs?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ John-Cody stood up. They looked at each other: maybe the same age, the immigration official red about the eyes, thread veins in his cheeks, dressed in a shirt and tie and neat white collar; and John-Cody who had cut his hair only once in twenty-five years.

  ‘My name’s Bridges. Would you like to come through, please.’

  John-Cody followed him beyond the glass panels into a thin corridor that opened out into an office filled with young people at computers. Bridges led him between their desks to a partitioned office at the far end, which (when the door was closed) offered some semblance of privacy. He gestured to the seat facing the desk and took his own. John-Cody glanced at the picture of Bridges’s wife and three children on the wall behind his head.

  Bridges laid the two letters flat on the blotter. ‘You decided to come straight here then.’

  John-Cody made an open-handed gesture. ‘I guess I should’ve phoned first, but…’

  ‘That’s OK.’ Bridges licked his lips. ‘You’re here now.’

  ‘Listen, the man who…’

  Bridges interrupted him. ‘Really, that’s not important.’ He took a file from the cabinet behind him and John-Cody was strangely appalled to see that it had his name typed on it. Bridges took a pair of glasses from his jacket pocket and put them on. He opened the file. ‘You arrived in New Zealand illegally, Mr Gibbs. Is that the case or am I mistaken or misinformed somewhere?’

  John-Cody shook his head. ‘You’re not mistaken. I jumped ship in 1974. A Hawaiian trawler called the Beachcomber.’

  ‘Why didn’t you apply for residency in the normal way?’

  John-Cody made a face. ‘I should’ve done. I just never got round to it. I hooked up with a couple of fishing boats and ended up in Fiordland. That was about the time the helicopter deer wars were on and there was money to be made hunting.’ He went on to explain his life in. New Zealand to Bridges, who listened patiently, his fingers clasped before him, elbows on the desk. John-Cody told him about crayfish gathering with Tom, and about the sounds and how they affected his life. He told him about Mahina and his life with her, a marriage in everything but name. He told him about the Korimako and her mission to educate people about the fiords, the flora and fauna. He told him about the boundary changes, the amount of fishing that went on, everything.

  When he was finished he felt empty and realized it had all just poured out of him. Bridges had listened in perfect silence for almost an hour and John-Cody had unloaded on him. He told him he knew that Ned Pole was behind this: he told him why Pole had done it, about the Dusky Sound proposals, about Libby and her research. He even told him about Bree, though for the life of him he didn’t know why.

  When he was finally finished he sat back, feeling weak and weary and suddenly very old. He could see the expression on Bridges’s face and it was as if he had pleaded with the executioner, not the jury.

  ‘I understand what you’ve told me, Mr Gibbs. And I appreciate you coming here like this.’ Bridges scratched his head. ‘You’ve obviously led an exemplary life in New Zealand, quite literally by the sounds of it, and normally someone who has been here this long would be subject to a certain amount of sympathetic treatment.’

  ‘But.’ John-Cody interrupted him.

  Bridges shuffled the papers in the file. ‘This thing with the FBI: I’ve done some research and it appears you’re still officially wanted in the United States. I’m afraid that leaves us no choice whatever.’

  ‘Yes, but the circumstances surely…’

  Irrelevant technically: and much as an individual might dislike it, technicalities are what departments such as this work on, Mr Gibbs.’ He sat forward then and his face was closed. ‘I’m sorry, I’m afraid I have no choice but to serve you with a removal order.’

  John-Cody lost his breath for a moment. He stared at Bridges. ‘You mean deport me.’

  ‘Yes.’ Bridges moistened his lower lip. ‘Well, sort of anyway: we’ll ask you to leave voluntarily and believe me it’s in your interest to do so. It’ll be in writing, of course, and you have the right of appeal. Should you lose that appeal, however, you wouldn’t be able to reapply to come here for at least five years. Equally, if you disobey the order to leave voluntarily and we have to arrest you, you cannot reapply for five years.’ Bridges paused. ‘It’s not for me to advise you on such matters, Mr Gibbs. But I have considerable experience and I don’t think you stand much chance with an appeal. The FBI holds a warrant for your arrest. There’s not much we can do but hand you back to them.’

  John-Cody sat where he was. His hands rested like dead weights in his lap. He could feel sweat in his hair crawling like insects across his scalp.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Bridges said. ‘There’s not much more to tell you except you’ll have forty-two days to leave from the date of the order.’

  FIFTEEN

  STANDING ON THE RAIN-lashed street, John-Cody felt like a dead man. It was over, finished: Ned Pole had won. He hoped against hope that Mahina was as good as her word and couldn’t see any of this. He stood for a long time staring at his truck and not seeing it, the rain plastering his hair to his scalp. He was dead, or he might as well be. The core of his life had been ripped away; just when he had thought there might be some scraps left, somebody figured otherwise and anything he might have created after the death of Mahina was swept up like so much rubbish. He was standing by the driver’s door of his truck, trying to think of what to do, when he recalled Libby asking him to take some papers to the marine studies centre in Portobello.

  Like an automaton he got behind the wheel and drove out to the peninsula. He passed the envelope across the counter at reception and as he turned again his gaze settled on a photographic display on the wall. It showed a black-backed whale with no dorsal fin breaching high from the water: it was a southern right of the Auckland Islands.

  Libby was sitting outside the house with Tom Blanch when John-Cody got back that evening. It was a four-hour drive from Dunedin and he did it without stopping. The road was clear and his mind calmer tha
n it had been.

  ‘How you going?’ Tom called as he walked up the path.

  ‘Hey, Tom.’

  Libby smiled at him. ‘Did everything go OK?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘You managed to get out to the peninsula?’

  He nodded. ‘Steve Watson wasn’t around, but I delivered the stuff for you.’

  ‘What were you doing in Dunedin?’ Tom asked him.

  ‘Just checking on a couple of things.’

  Libby got up to make some coffee and John-Cody took the seat she had vacated and fished tobacco from his pocket. Tom looked out of the corner of his eye at him.

  ‘What’s the deal with Ned Pole, Gib? Libby tells me you’ve not been the same bloke since you two met at the range.’

  John-Cody made a face. ‘There’s no deal, Tom: you know what Pole’s like. He’s determined to get those hotels in Dusky Sound. He was just reminding me of the fact, that’s all.’

  Tom squinted at him. ‘And that’s it?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘So why the long face? You were getting so much better.’

  John-Cody flicked ash on the floor. ‘It comes and goes, Tom. Some days are better than others.’

  Libby brought the coffee pot and set it on the table between the two men. She went back inside and fetched the low stool from the bathroom. John-Cody watched the smooth backs of her hands as she poured coffee. He took his black with no sugar and warmed his palms on the cup. They sat in the quiet for a few minutes, the wind caressing the trees the only sound save the odd car on the road to Te Anau.

  ‘So how’s it going in Dusky, Libby?’ Tom said.

  ‘It’s going as well as it can. Though not well enough. I’m pretty sure the pod is resident, but I don’t have enough data to prove it officially yet.’

  ‘Which Pole will use at the hearing.’

  She nodded. ‘Undoubtedly.’