And All the Phases of the Moon

by Judy Reene Singer

  I suddenly realized how wrong that was and stood up. My breath came in gasps. I was being tasked with a responsibility. I had to set things in place. The continuity would be up to me and suddenly, suddenly, I just knew what I had to do. There was no other way to fix my family.

  I called Sam, my heart pounding. He answered right away.

  “You were right and I need you to help me,” I said, terrified of what I was about to ask him.

  “Of course,” he said. “Anything.” He paused. “What?”

  My voice shook as I got out the words. “I need you to help me. Please. I want to spread my mother’s ashes over the sea.”

  Chapter 38

  My mother’s ashes belonged to the sea as much as they belonged to my family.

  It was where she was destined to be, next to my father, next to her possible brother, to comfort and be a mother to Dan. The stars and the moon and the heavens and the sun all had known that this was her place, too. They had known this since my father’s and Dan’s deaths in the time before time, and now, since my mother’s death, they had always known that they would call to me and ask me to set things right for my family. They had drawn me to the pier for years, night after night, after my father and Dan died, to fill my head with moonlight, in all its iterations. The bay would whisper only parts of its secrets to me, knowing that I would be compelled to pursue them. The water would hypnotize my soul and draw me close, always asking me to pay attention, pay attention, murmuring that when the time was right I would know what I needed to do.

  It was all so perfect, as only could be arranged by an infinitely wise universe.

  The tiny, pearlescent wentletrap had been sent to me, found by an animal that was pure of heart, my Vincent, who had carried it to me without injury to it. It was necessary for me to give the right name to Sam’s boat, to make it the proper transport for a holy chore. I knew I would have to cast away my fears and rage and board The Wentletrap as she was carried on the sea. I would have to summon the courage to do this, from every part of my soul, so that I could complete my sacred and preordained task.

  I saw it all so clearly. I trembled from the weight of what I was being asked.

  * * *

  Sam, for his part, was more than thrilled. He would be the one to take me on my first trip. He said he felt honored; he promised that he was strong enough for the two of us, that he would take care of me.

  He checked and double-checked the equipment; he would plot the course this very night, he was so anxious and proud and ready. We would go right away, tomorrow.

  * * *

  The boat seemed to buck a little as soon as I stepped down into it. Like an unbroken horse, it was testing my strength and resolve; it was warning me, letting me know that it wanted my respect, that we had a connection in all of this, that it would be a vehicle of dignity and dispatch.

  Still, my legs shook. I needed to trust it. I needed to let it carry me out to the ocean and trust that it would safely return us. I needed to trust that I was doing the right thing. I felt my heart pounding. I resolved to proceed with what was being asked of me, to ask Dan and my father to watch over me. I straightened my shoulders, standing on the deck and feeling the water beneath us. How familiar. How gently it rocked us. Sam had checked the weather repeatedly for me. No rain or storm would interrupt us; I just needed to have courage.

  * * *

  I carried aboard the roses that I had brought home from the church and the silver urn that held my mother’s ashes. Vincent followed me, wearing a doggie life jacket with a red rose tucked into a buckle, to mark the occasion. He found a place on the deck under a seat and lay down to nap as though he had done this forever.

  Sam had been watching me from the deck, leaning on his cane for balance. He was wearing jeans, a long-sleeved tee, and his swim leg. I ached to be held by him, then chided myself. But he caught me staring and held his arm out to me. I reached for his hand and he pulled me close.

  “It’ll be okay,” he said into my ear. “I will take care of you.” He kissed me hard on the lips and I kissed him back. I had missed the wrap of his arms so much, the press of his body against mine, I almost couldn’t bear it.

  “I’ll take care of you,” he said again, and we held each other. “Let me.”

  He started the engine and let it warm up as he untied the boat from the pilings, then backed it out of the slip with great skill, gently and carefully and very straight before he turned it starboard. The open bay was ahead of us.

  It was a perfect day for this. The bay was calm and quiet, dotted with private sport boats, water-skiers, kayakers, and fishing boats that buzzed across its surface like mosquitoes. We passed P-town and the crowds of people waiting on the wharf for the ferries to take them out fishing or whale watching.

  It was a smooth ride. We eased past the Race Point lighthouse that was nestled in the dunes and was the marker for where the bay met the sea. It stood resolutely at the very tip of the Cape, usually whipped by brute winds and blowing sands and unpredictable currents. The mercurial combination used to cause shipwrecks, catching boats unaware before the lighthouse itself was built to aid sailors coming in from the ocean. Today the juncture looked calm.

  And inviting.

  The Wentletrap purred onward. There were boats in the distance, cruising quietly. We turned eastward into the waiting Atlantic Ocean.

  The water changed from calm and respectful, a mirror reflecting the glowing sun, to a more challenging chop. The boat handled it well, rising and falling with the waves, rolling side to side like a pacing horse. I closed my eyes, letting my knees open and close slightly, riding the deck like an old hand. I had almost forgotten this, the feel of the ocean pulling you forward, ready to hypnotize you with its undulations. I held tightly on to the railing and stared out over the water, my tears falling, joining with the spray that kicked up against my face, joining with the salt of the spray and the salt of the water. We were all the same elements, born of original seas. Somewhere in the deep. Somewhere ahead, somewhere, my father and my husband were waiting for me to complete my task. This was a homecoming and I almost couldn’t bear it.

  * * *

  Sam made a slow turn with the boat. In the far distance was a whale-watch boat, cruising the waters with its load of passengers. The whales had migrated down from the Arctic Ocean around January to start feeding and wouldn’t be leaving yet for the Caribbean—that came in late August and early September—but there were a few here and there, signaling their imminent appearances with a spout of white spray that shot straight up into the air, followed by gray behemoths rising gracefully from the depths of the ocean, giant mouths agape as they strained fish through their baleens and took another long breath before diving again to catch more. They were magnificent, their backs curving in slow, graceful arches as they sliced through the water leaving only their perfect tails to hover above the surface for a moment before disappearing. I loved watching them.

  * * *

  There was an odd sound from off in the distance, distorted by the air and the buzz of the boat’s motor. A splashing. A cry. Some kind of gurgling call I didn’t recognize. I tilted my head to listen, but the sound got caught up in the resonance of the wind and the water whipping against the boat.

  “Did you hear that?” I called back to Sam.

  He shook his head no. A few minutes later, the boat eased to a slow pace; he had cut the motor. Now it quietly rocked back and forth, hypnotically, like a child’s cradle.

  “I think this is a good spot!” Sam called from the cabin. He pointed to the port side of the boat. “It’s calm here. What do you think?”

  I looked around. Here and there the blow from the humpbacks betrayed their positions in the distance with a fine, white mist that spouted up from the water, accompanied by a huge sigh of release. The water was respectful. On the horizon, in the distance behind us, was the lighthouse, barely in view, a reminder of the cape, so my mother wouldn’t lose sight of where she had come from. Ahead was the
freedom of unending seas.

  “Yes,” I called back. “This is where she should be.”

  Sam came down from the cabin and stood quietly next to me. “It’s a good spot,” he said.

  Together we watched the shearwaters, the small seabirds that follow the humpbacks, fly close to the water’s surface, swooping in small flocks, waiting for the tell-tale white bubbles to rise from the depths, indicating a whale was coming up to feed. The birds would feed, too, with bravado, as they dove into the whales’ mouths to snatch a fish or two before the huge jaws closed. My mother would be surrounded by life. A whale suddenly spy-hopped, balancing its body upright in the water, and stared at me with its dark, unfathomable eyes as though it were reading my soul.

  The sound I had heard before echoed from a distance. A splash, a haunting cry. A call from the deep. Perhaps another species, whose voice I didn’t know.

  But it was the right place for my mother; I knew it. I reached under the deck seat and brought out the urn and the bouquet of roses.

  What to say? I hadn’t prepared a prayer, though I should have. A dedication. I opened the urn and held it upside down, shaking it gently. The contents quickly flew away, at first carried on the wind, then settling on the surface of the water, then dissolving into the waves and foam before they disappeared. I dedicated her to the seas, to its protective depths during battering storms, to its rolling majesty under the warming sun, to my waiting family.

  She needed to be rejoined with my father. She needed to let Dan take care of her like the good son-in-law that he had always been. She needed to bring family to a possible brother who had been abandoned to the sea.

  It would be the last thing I would ever do for her. “Good-bye,” I said into the wind. “I hope you find one another and find peace. I love you all.” I threw the roses, one by one, onto the waves. They bobbed and floated, red petals against the inscrutable blue water until the current carried them all away. A whale blew a stream of white mist as though it were playing taps.

  I had completed my task. I felt my heart draining off its last supply of sorrow. I went up to the cabin with Sam, ready to return home.

  * * *

  The strange sound was back, a mournful note, deep and low, along with the hard splash of water.

  “Sam,” I said. “Listen. Do you hear that?”

  He leaned out of the cabin and tried to concentrate. “Not sure,” he said.

  I picked up the binoculars from him and adjusted them. There was a roil of water, in the distance, white and heaving with a dark center. It splashed a soft rise of spray, then stopped. Another call, like an oboe playing a dirge.

  “What is that?” I said, pointing in the direction of the object. I handed the binoculars to Sam, who strained to make sense of it. There were no boats in the area; they had gone about their business farther out. There was nothing but the roll and thrash of something dark, covered with white foam, and the deep timbre of something that needed to be given a voice. For a moment I thought it was some kind of apparition. Some omen from the sea that, in this final moment, it had accepted my family into its depth. No. I was wrong. It was something living. The water was rolling in a rhythm that only something alive could fuel.

  * * *

  “Let’s just go over there, take a look,” Sam said. “It doesn’t appear to be that far.”

  He turned the motor on once again and pointed the bow of the boat to the odd shape. It appeared to be stabilized in one spot. The motor hummed to life and the boat eased forward.

  Another sound that faded back into the depths. I took the binoculars from Sam for a hard look as we drew closer.

  I could see clearly now what it was. A chill ran down my spine as I realized with horror what I was seeing. I ran from the cabin to stand at the bow, pressing myself against the rail for support. “Oh, Sam!” I cried. “Hurry! Hurry!”

  It was a humpback whale.

  And it was drowning.

  Chapter 39

  With the engine pushed to full speed we reached it within minutes.

  Sam stopped the boat and came down from the cabin to stand next to me and peer over the side. What we saw made me sick.

  “She’s twisted up in a gill net,” Sam said. “It’s pretty bad.”

  Only the front part of her body was visible. Something had caught on to her flukes and she was being pulled down almost vertically, deep below the water. About a hundred feet away was her calf, distressed and swimming in circles, blowing spouts and diving, to re-emerge moments later.

  The whale’s pectoral fins were pinned to her sides and her dorsal fin was bound with the same fine, almost invisible white nylon netting that tightly wound around her body. Unable to move, she barely seemed to have enough strength to breathe. How long she had been struggling was anyone’s guess.

  I knew it happened frequently, whales getting caught in fishing nets, fighting for hours, twisting and thrashing to break free, but only entangling themselves further, struggling until they die of exhaustion.

  “I’m going to use your radio,” I told Sam as I started for the cabin. He had sat himself down on the padded deck bench and was pulling his jeans off.

  “There’s a place to call!” I yelled back to him. “In P-town. Center for Coastal Studies. They do rescues.”

  “Turn on the automatic positioner,” he called back. “It’ll give our location.”

  “Don’t jump in,” I said. “Please don’t jump in. Wait for me to call the rescue first.”

  I left him sitting on a bench while I went topside to the cabin. I turned on the automatic positioner, which kept the boat in the same position without needing an anchor, and then called the number to the rescue. The radio cut out before the call could go through. I stuck my head out of the cabin to relay the information to Sam.

  “She won’t last!” he yelled up to me. “We’ve got to cut her free.”

  “They have rescue teams!” I yelled back at him. “I’ll keep trying. They have equipment.”

  He glanced over the side again. “Are you crazy?” he yelled back. “Equipment is going to do her shit, if she dies.”

  In fact, the thrashing had stopped. She was barely moving now and looked exhausted from her efforts. We had no idea how long she had been struggling.

  Sam had stripped to his bathing trunks leaving his tee on. “I’m coming up to the cabin!” he called. “I want to check the radio. Damn cell phones are useless.”

  He came into the cabin. “I want to find my knives.”

  “I’ll try the rescue center again,” I said.

  Vincent started barking on the deck. I called him to me. “He knows there’s something wrong,” I said to Sam.

  “Tie him up,” he replied, busy looking through a cabinet. “We don’t want him leaping into the water.”

  I fastened a rope I found to his collar.

  “Sam, you can’t do this by yourself,” I said. “It’s too dangerous for you.”

  “There’s no time,” he said.

  “You could get killed,” I argued. “That’s a forty-ton animal thrashing around.”

  He held his hand up. “We’re not arguing about this,” he said. “I’ve made up my mind. I just have to find my stuff.”

  “She could kill you with a flip of her body,” I argued.

  But he wasn’t listening. “We need knives,” he muttered as he searched the lower cabinets. “Where’s my dive knife?”

  He pulled out a black plastic tackle box, set it on a bench, and opened it. Every tool inside was neatly wrapped and had its own place. Bait knives, utility knives, even a round knife sharpener. On the top of the equipment lay a pair of goggles and a black knife sheath that was attached to a belt. He took the goggles and put them over his forehead, then reached for the sheath.

  “My dive knife,” he said, pulling the sheath off, revealing a thick knife with a serrated edge. “I used to take it everywhere.” He ran his finger lightly across the blade, then buckled the belt around his hips before putting the knif
e back into its sheath. “Okay,” he said. “I’m ready. I’ll start by trying to free her flukes. Once I get them free, it’ll release her tail. Then I can work on her midsection.”

  I followed him to the lower deck. The whale let out a loud, shivering mist of breath through her blowhole, the same sound I had heard before, stressed and terrified.

  Sam pulled the goggles down over his eyes and peered at her from the side of the boat. He had positioned the boat about twenty feet from her to allow himself some room to work without being knocked into the boat if she started thrashing.

  But she lay in the water, just floating, still as a log. For a moment I thought the worst.

  “Let me try one last time,” I begged. I ran up to the cabin and banged the top of the radio with my fist. Still no service. When I came down, Sam was already mounted on the side of the boat, sitting with both his legs poised over the water.

  “Please be careful,” I pleaded.

  “Get the other knives ready,” he said. “I might need them all. And be ready to pull the netting into the boat when I toss it up to you.” He took a deep, noisy breath. “Here goes,” he said, lifting up on his hands. “I’m not waiting anymore. This is how I lost a man. Waiting to be evacuated. It’s not going to happen to me again.”

  There was nothing more I could say to warn him. Swim leg and all, he slid down into the water, barely making a ripple in the surface.

  Now I realized the reason behind his decision to try the rescue by himself, his impatience to get it done now. It was his compassion for the whale, of course.

  It was also Corporal Mike Edison, KIA.

  * * *

  Even with a handicap, he was an amazingly strong swimmer. He had once described the training for a Navy SEAL, and it was brutal, beyond brutal, even, to build nearly superhuman fearlessness, strength, and endurance. Now I watched his arms pull against the water, like it didn’t exist, as he glided effortlessly and silently to the whale.