Song of the Sound

by Jeff Gulvin

  Moby Dick moved through the water with the poise of an animal half his size, a grey and silent ghost probing the depths with gentle strokes of his tail flukes. Like the younger male he too had been harried and hassled by sea lions at play, but they had left him quickly and now he eased his massive bulk deep below the surface.

  John-Cody saw him out of the corner of his eye and eased back to witness the great whale’s approach. He had first seen him seven years previously and every time he had been down here in winter since, the grey whale had sought out the boat, coming alongside to roll and play and slap the surface as if greeting an old friend. During his quiet periods he would doze on his side with his eye closed to the sky, while Mahina leaned over the rail and sang to him in her native tongue. Now he swam above the thickened layers of bladder kelp heading straight for John-Cody.

  Libby stood on the spreaders with her back to the bows and used binoculars to scan the surface for any sign of bubbles. Tom came on deck scratching his head and muttering. She heard Jonah banging about in the galley.

  ‘What’re you doing up there?’ Tom called to her.

  She didn’t answer him immediately: she was watching Moby Dick as he dived one hundred yards beyond the Korimako’s stern. She saw him lob-tail for a moment, then his flukes disappeared with barely a ripple in the surface.

  ‘John-Cody’s diving.’ She lowered the binoculars and looked down at Tom. The sun was bright; it burned holes in the mist and reflected off the white steel of the deck.

  ‘He’s what?’

  She climbed down the mast and dropped to the deck beside him. ‘I know. It’s weird. He’s told me not to dive here alone. He’s only got a seven-mil wetsuit and he hasn’t run the flag up the shroud.’ She pointed. ‘I’m worried about him, Tom. He’s a stickler for every tiny detail on this boat and he hasn’t run up the dive flag.’

  ‘He’s been quiet lately, I’ll give you that.’ Lines furrowed deep in Tom’s brow and Libby followed him back inside. Still she hadn’t mentioned the letter though it was in her back pocket. Tom told Jonah what she had just told him and Jonah lifted the weight of his hair from where it hung in his face.

  ‘Bloody cold to be diving.’

  Libby looked in his eyes. ‘We can’t see any bubbles.’

  John-Cody held his position as Moby Dick-approached him. The whale was silent, moving very slowly with barely a downstroke from his tail flukes; at just under seventy feet he was one of the largest whales in the bay. John-Cody was tiny, insignificant, no more than a dot in the water and yet the whale approached with caution, concern almost, and for the first time since they came down here John-Cody’s resolve began to weaken. He stayed where he was, conscious all at once of his airtime. The whale moved round him in a circle, twenty feet above his head, blocking the light from the sun and casting the seabed in shadow.

  The sea had gone dark and John-Cody felt the chill in his bones. The darkness lifted from inside him and he imagined this place with rain and howling winds, storms whipping the land for days and days at a time and Libby’s words echoed in his head: a terrible place to die.

  Moby Dick drifted closer and all at once his bulk was so huge it was overpowering. John-Cody felt a sense of fear, panic in his throat that almost made him kick for the surface. But the whale, perhaps sensing his disquiet, wallowed and slowed and eased gently down to eye level as if deliberately seeking him out. John-Cody kicked back with his fins, the whale so close now that everything else was lost, a great grey wall that stretched the length of his boat and three times his own height. Moby Dick’s eye was wide and pale like an albino, lifted in rolls of blubber so it extended slightly from the side of his head, the pupil huge and dark and round. John-Cody could make out every mark in the callosity, every line in the raised flesh of the socket. The eye fixed on his and John-Cody looked directly into it, as if he was being allowed a glimpse of the whale’s soul: a sharing between old and young, the wise and suddenly foolish.

  The sea washed cold: enclosed in his suit, the only sound was the rasp of his breath and the gentle rising grunts coming now from the whale. John-Cody stared into the whale’s eye and Mahina stared back at him. He started, almost forgot to breathe then looked again and she was there still: not pale and wan and dying with her features ravaged by cancer but young and vibrant with fire in her hair and the darkness in her gaze he witnessed the first time he saw her.

  He went limp in the water, looked again and saw only Moby Dick looking back at him. He was close enough to touch the great whale and unconsciously he stretched out a gloved hand and laid it on the puckered hillside that was the callosity. For a moment the two of them remained like that, sixty feet under the sea, then John-Cody checked the dive computer on his wrist and realized he had just enough air to make it back to the surface.

  Libby climbed to the spreaders once more, binoculars dangling from her neck, and settled herself in the crow’s nest. Tom was in the stern with Jonah standing on the wheelhouse roof. All of them were looking for the same thing, bubbles rising somewhere on the surface. Libby scanned the bay; she had the best vantage point. Slowly she moved the glasses over the water, ignoring where whales blew or penguins darted and sea lions broke to bark at one another. She had seen Moby Dick dive one hundred yards off the stern and she concentrated on that area, heart high in her chest, a morass of thoughts clogging her mind. She stared and stared, conscious now of the time, glancing from the bay to her watch and back again. She saw a patch of bubbles break fifty yards off the stern.

  She cried out and the others looked where she looked and she put the glasses to her eyes again, saw the bubbles more clearly and knew he was ascending. She watched, biting down on her lip, and then she saw the black of his suit and more bubbles, geyser-like now: his hood broke the ripples and he spat the demand valve from his mouth.

  John-Cody felt the sun on his head as he rose the final few feet after decompressing the last stage; he spat his mouthpiece and saw the white of the Korimako’s stern in the distance. He pulled down his mask and for a moment he floated on his back, the tank much more buoyant now with the lack of air in it. He looked at the cumulus curling thick and white, grey still at the edges, stretching like a blanket across the expanse of the sky. Tears fell freely though he made no sound and he didn’t know why he was weeping, only that he had seen Mahina in Moby Dick’s eye and knew she had been trying to tell him something. He felt weak, weaker than he had ever felt, resolve fractured now. He lay with his arms wide in a crucifix, fins sticking out of the water, and then he gazed towards the boat and saw Libby watching him from the spreaders. Instinctively he lifted a hand to the top of his head indicating that he was all right.

  Libby saw the movement and exhaled heavily. She could feel her heart racing in her chest and all at once she had to hold the ring of steel that formed the crow’s nest for support.

  ‘He’s OK,’ she called down to the others. ‘I’m going to take the dinghy and pick him up. Jonah, heat a kettle of water and pump up the auxiliary for the shower. He’s going to be freezing.’

  Tom cast the dinghy off and she stood in the stern, opened the throttle and powered across the bay to John-Cody.

  He lay where he was, looking at the sky and seeing Mahina all over again. Why had she come? What was she trying to say to him? For the second time since they had left Bluff Cove he was visited by the feeling that she was trapped still, unable to return home, suffocated within his own consciousness.

  His thoughts were interrupted by the buzz of the Honda engine that drove the dinghy. Righting himself in the water, he saw Libby coming for him, a strange mix of fear and relief on her face. Slowly he swam towards her, mask loose at his neck. She circled him, came up on the port side and flicked the gears into neutral. They looked at each other for a few moments, eye to eye, her standing in the boat and him in the water, getting colder by the minute. He didn’t speak, just unbuckled his empty tank and hoisted it over the side.

  TWENTY-TWO

  LIBBY TALKED TO BREE
on the radio later that afternoon. The Korimako was still anchored in Laurie Harbour and earlier she had seen the heavily pregnant cow wallowing like a hippo in the shallows. John-Cody had been quiet all day, more distant than ever. He had sat in the dinghy after she helped him aboard, holding his fins, mask and snorkel and watching the water as it slipped by the gunwales. He had said nothing about what he had been doing or why he had dived alone, and she had felt unable to ask. Libby had gone below and it had been a great relief to make contact with her daughter.

  ‘Mum, I think I’m in love with Hunter,’ Bree told her.

  ‘Bree, you’re not even thirteen.’

  ‘So what? What’s age got to do with love?’

  ‘Nothing, I suppose. Have you kissed him yet?’

  ‘I might’ve done.’

  Libby laughed then, realizing just how much Bree was growing up.

  ‘How do you know you’re in love?’

  ‘I can feel it, Mum. Hunter, he’s so mmmmm. I get all sweaty when I’m near him.’

  ‘Mmmmmm? What’s mmmmmm?’

  ‘You know what I mean. Anyway I’m not going to talk about it on the radio. I’m having a great time at the farm. Hunter’s mum and dad are so nice to me, and now Mr Pole’s been teaching me I’m much better on a horse and Hunter and me help with the sheep. We took the horses over the hills on Saturday. It was cold but I felt like a cowboy, the world seemed so big all of a sudden. I’m so happy here. I want to stay in New Zealand. Not just for the two years, I want to stay for ever.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  ‘No, let’s not see. Let’s settle, Mum. I’m in school. You can’t keep dragging me away all the time.’

  ‘Bree, I don’t do it on purpose. It’s all to do with …’

  ‘I know, work. But try and stay, Mum. I love it here. I’m so happy. I’ve never been happier. There’s Hunter and Sierra and the hut and the lake and you and John-Cody.’ Bree paused then. ‘How is John-Cody? He was so quiet when you left. I know you fancy him, Mum. How is he?’

  Libby laughed out loud.

  ‘I’m sorry, but I can see it when you’re around him, the way you look at him. Don’t worry, I feel the same about Hunter. It’s love, Mum. You shouldn’t try to fight it. There’s nothing you can do.’

  ‘So you’re the expert all of a sudden.’

  Bree laughed. ‘John-Cody fancies you too, I can tell.’

  Libby sat up straighter.

  ‘But he hasn’t let go of Mahina yet, not properly. He needs to. She’s gone. Maybe you can help him. He needs to let go of her, that’s what makes him sad and she wouldn’t want him sad.’

  Libby thought about that and considered the wisdom she heard in her daughter’s words. ‘You think so?’ she said.

  ‘Yes. I do.’

  Libby considered the letters she had read from the immigration service and her mood darkened. ‘Bree, you just take care,’ she said. ‘We’ll be back soon.’

  ‘No, Mum: you take care. I’m safe here on land. You’ve got four hundred and seventy kilometres of ocean to cross, remember.’

  ‘Don’t worry, John-Cody’s a brilliant skipper and there are no icebergs down here.’

  ‘Mum.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m serious about staying here. I thought I’d hate it, but I love it. I don’t want to move anywhere else. I want to stay here and for you and John-Cody to get married.’

  Libby stared through the porthole at sea lions swimming on their backs, one flipper raised and bent at right angles. She had seen the fur seals do that in Dusky Sound but had no idea why.

  ‘I think you should ask him. He’ll never get round to it.’

  ‘Bree!’

  ‘Why not? It’s a new millennium, Mum. Girl power, remember?’

  Libby laughed again. ‘I’ll bear that in mind. Just don’t you go asking Hunter.’

  John-Cody was standing in the prow smoking a cigarette when Libby went back up to the bridge. Both the wheelhouse doors were open and a chill filled the saloon from the harbour. Tom came in from astern and closed the windward door. Libby could hear Jonah down in the engine room. The boat smelled of diesel from the heater and coffee standing cold in the pot. John-Cody straightened and clipped his cigarette: the wind caught his hair and scattered it about his face. He looked at the clouds and his gaze tightened, then he came back into the wheelhouse and studied the barometer. Libby saw that the pressure was dropping.

  ‘Is there another storm blowing in?’ she asked him.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you any idea when?’

  ‘Less than twenty-four hours.’ John-Cody squinted at her. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I saw that pregnant cow again today: she’s due any time, John-Cody.’

  He looked at his watch and then out of the window into the gathering gloom. The days had grown shorter still since they had been down here. ‘Forget trying to film at night,’ he said. ‘We won’t stand a chance. If we can find her tomorrow, I’ll dive with you.’

  For a long moment they looked at each other and Libby thought about what Bree had said. It was true she did care about him, she found herself thinking about him all the time: she loved his smell, his maleness close to her. She loved the seams in his face, the blue vein that lifted against the skin under his eye. She loved the fractured lines about his mouth and the tanned sinew of his forearms. ‘I spoke to Bree just now,’ she said. ‘She’s in love with Hunter.’

  John-Cody smiled then, for the first time in a couple of days. ‘Did she tell you that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then she told the whole fishing fleet in the Southern Ocean. How’s she doing?’

  ‘She misses you.’

  His eyes dulled once more and he looked beyond her. ‘Is that what she said?’

  Libby nodded. ‘She wanted to know why you were so quiet when you left. She asked me if you were still quiet.’

  ‘What did you tell her?’

  ‘I said that you were.’

  He looked at the floor. ‘Why did you dive alone this morning?’

  He didn’t reply. Libby waited. He could sense her expectancy; feel how close she stood to him, scent her hair, the texture of her skin. He moved past her to the aft steps.

  ‘I need to raise the Moeraki,’ he said. ‘See if they’ve fixed that oil filter.’

  That evening after dinner Tom and Jonah went down to the engine room to make some checks. It was a habit of Tom’s to make sure the Gardner was cleaned and oiled and all the gauges were working properly. Jonah was learning about marine engine maintenance and Tom was an excellent tutor. The storm had not grown into anything yet and Libby sat in the saloon and read a book, aware of the creak of the wind in the shrouds on the afterdeck. John-Cody had tried in vain to raise the Moeraki before he contacted Bluff Radio for news. According to them the boat was still fishing but had missed one check-in. He came up the steps looking troubled.

  ‘Is that very bad?’ Libby asked him.

  ‘Not very bad, there could be lots of reasons why a boat doesn’t check in on time. You’ve seen the atmospherics: sometimes you can’t get a proper signal. It’s happened to us lots of times down here.’ He shrugged. ‘Jack Mackay is a good skipper. The Moeraki’s a sound vessel. They’ll be all right.’

  He was silent after that, then got up to make some coffee and placed a mug before Libby. He put some music on very quietly and they sat in the stillness without talking. Libby thought about what Bree had said about her and John-Cody and wondered if anyone had been listening. She wondered also if she cared. John-Cody looked beyond her, staring through the darkened for’ard windows.

  ‘What’re you thinking?’ Libby asked him softly. ‘I’ll give you an English penny for your thoughts.’

  He looked sideways at her. ‘I don’t think they’re worth that much.’

  ‘I’m buying. Why don’t you let me judge?’

  ‘There’s nothing to tell you.’

  ‘I think there is.’ Libby wanted to bit
e the bullet but suddenly she was afraid. ‘Why did you dive on your own like that this morning?’

  ‘I’ve dived alone here lots of times. It’s different with you. While you’re on my boat you’re my responsibility, Libby. I’ve had one death. I don’t want any more. That’s why I tell you not to go without a buddy.’

  She nodded. ‘But why didn’t you run up the dive flag? You always run up the dive flag.’

  He could feel her probing; picking at him, demanding something of him in a way that he didn’t want to acknowledge. He didn’t answer her. Libby watched his face, the darkening about his eyes and the concentration that dipped his brow in heavy lines.

  ‘I saw the letter from the immigration service. What’s going on, John-Cody?’ It just came out, she hadn’t intended it to but it did. She heard the words, did not associate them with her voice and then he was looking at her from under hooded eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry. You were in the water and I was worried. You’ve been so quiet, so distant. I didn’t know what to think.’

  John-Cody sat and looked at his fingernails. The music drifted softly and Tom and Jonah’s voices came to him now and again from below deck. He bit his lip and looked at Libby.

  ‘Come out to the glasshouse,’ he said.

  Libby followed him outside and she took two cigarettes from her pack, broke off the filters and handed one to him. He lit it with a trembling hand, then they sat either side of the table with the door partially rolled up and the stars chill and bright as diamonds overhead. John-Cody smoked in silence then he looked across the table.

  ‘I’m wanted by the FBI in the United States,’ he began quietly. ‘I told you I didn’t go to Vietnam when I was drafted but I didn’t tell you why.’ He paused and sucked on the cigarette. ‘I refused to go. I got my papers in New Orleans and just skipped out. A few months later the Feds turned up and arrested me. They drove me to an army base near Seattle.’