Henry and Tom: Ocean Adventure Series Book 1: Rescue (Ocean Adventures Series)

by Michael Atkins

  Breathing was becoming harder to do. The calf knew that being out of the water, away from home, was not good for him. But when the calf thought about swimming his mind was flooded with thoughts of his mother being eaten alive before his eyes and the sharks chasing him and trying to devour him. He desperately wanted to swim, but he was also very afraid to go back into the ocean.

  The land creature he trusted was making sounds again. The calf clicked back the simple message that he wanted the land creature to stay close to him. As the land creature kept making sounds, the calf heard other objects – these were not small land creatures, but rather something else - making a loud noise. They reminded the whale of the objects the land creatures used to float on the surface of the ocean, only these objects moved on the sand.

  The whale was frightened by these loud noises and even more scared when the objects moved towards him and touched his body. He reacted by flopping around and slapping his tail on the sand. The objects moved away from the whale, but they kept making noise.

  Then the land creature the whale trusted looked directly into the whale’s eye. He was making sounds again. The whale clicked back the message, “I am scared”. The land creature then did something he had not done before; he touched the whale and stroked his body. The calf felt slightly calmer when the land creature touched him. He stopped floundering on the sand. The more the whale resisted and moved, the harder it was to breathe.

  Click, click, click. The whale sent out the coda message, “I’m scared, please help me; I’m scared, please help me” over and over the whale clicked, hoping that the land creature could understand him.

  Looking directly into the land creature’s eyes, at least what the whale thought were his eyes, they were so small, the calf sensed something. He sensed that this land creature, and the other creatures and objects nearby, were only trying to help him. They meant him no harm. He had to allow them to do what they were going to do, or he was going to die.

  Now the clicks changed. The coda sent this time was, “I agree, I agree, I agree.” The objects then moved close to the whale and again touched his body. The calf did not react. The objects were pushing him, rolling him over. Frightened, but resigned to his fate, the calf did not resist. The sensation of rolling over on land was very different than it was at sea. In the ocean, the calf loved to roll and spin. On the sand, the sensation of rolling over was painful. For a moment, the whale was suffocating. Then, when he was righted again (on his belly) the whale could take in air once more. The calf was getting weak, very weak. His energy reserves were close to zero.

  Underneath him the whale could now feel something other than sand. Whatever was beneath him now felt more like another whale; only it was colder, oddly shaped and it covered only a portion of his body. Now the whale could hear more objects making noise. These were new objects – larger and louder than the three objects that pushed him and rolled him.

  The land creature the calf trusted was right by his eye. He had not left his side. The whale clicked again, “I’m scared, please help me; I’m scared, please help me”. The land creature again stroked the whale and spoke to him. The calf felt a slight sensation of relief. As long as this land creature stayed near him the calf somehow felt that he could endure whatever it was that was going to happen to him.

  Making even louder noises the new larger objects came close to him, but they did not touch the calf. A large number of the land creatures now moved all around the calf. After a short amount of time passed, the whale felt whatever was beneath him wrapping close around his body.

  It was almost impossible to breathe now. The calf could see the sun for the first time since he had been on the sand. The sun was dipping into the ocean. The calf knew that this meant soon the light would be gone and the world would be dark for a time.

  The land creature the calf trusted was once more right by his eye and he was making sounds. The calf clicked back, “I’m scared, please help me; I’m scared, please help me”. After the land creature touched him again, the whale felt the very strange sensation of being lifted up in the air.

  The objects on the sand right behind the calf were making even more noise. The calf could clearly see them out of his right eye. Now raised five feet in the air, the calf focused on the land creature he trusted who remained very close to him.

  “I’m terrified, I’m terrified, I’m terrified,” the calf clicked over and over.

  Now the calf could feel the waves splashing up against his body. They were taking him back into the water! The objects making the loud noises were moving with him into the surf. The calf tried his best to keep taking breaths, but it soon became too hard. The land creature the calf trusted was right by his eye and touching him.

  Now the clicks changed to “Please hurry, please hurry, please hurry.”

  When the object dropped the calf into the water, the whale felt the sensation of floating, even though his belly was still touching the sand. With the weight lifted off of his lungs, the calf was able to take in a deep breath. The water was soothing on his skin. For a moment the whale did not move – he just lay there in eight feet of water and rested – slowly breathing, coming back to life.

  Now there were more land creatures all around him, but they were diving and swimming, not walking on the sand. There were also objects floating on the water. Then the calf remembered the sharks. Where were they? The calf slapped his tail against the water and clicked and then turned around, facing out to sea. He sensed no sharks near him. He swam out a few yards into the ocean. He was fully floating now and breathing normally.

  Then he heard them. The pod was calling to him! His family was nearby! The calf clicked back loudly sending out the message, “I am here, I am here”. The cows responded. The calf knew what to do – he had to swim to them. Once reunited with the pod the cows would protect and feed him and he would be safe.

  The calf turned on his side and looked at one of the objects floating on the water. He saw what he was looking for, the land creature he trusted. He was floating on the object and looking down at the calf.

  The calf clicked again, “I am safe, I am safe.” But these clicks were not another message sent to the pod, they were a message sent to the land creature he trusted.

  Although he did not know what the sound meant, the calf heard the land creature say loudly, “Goodbye Henry” as the whale swam away.

  Chapter Six

  “Holy crap!” Tom exclaimed as he got into Syd’s Corolla and closed the door. The reporters were still not satisfied; they were banging on the car window demanding to be told more.

  “Drive baby!” Tom yelled to his wife. Sydney put the car in gear and rolled away, slowly at first so she didn’t flatten a reporter or a camera man. After a minute or so they were clear and they pulled out onto Mission Boulevard. It was almost nine p.m.

  Sydney was laughing. “What’s so damn funny?” Tom asked.

  “You are honey. You’d think you were President Clinton or something. Those people would not leave you alone.”

  “Tell me about it. Tomorrow might not be any easier,” Tom said.

  “I do get it. It was a fantastic thing, but it was just a whale,” Sydney reasoned. “There were media on the beach from all over the world. I had no idea that a stranded whale was international news.”

  “Sperm whales are magnificent creatures. You had to have read Moby Dick as a kid,” Tom said as he continued to scroll through his voice mail messages, all fifty five of them.

  “Nope, never did. Saw the old movie though. Loved Gregory Peck,” Sydney said. “Hey, you’ve got to be starving. Want me to stop and get you something?”

  “Nada. Let’s go straight home, please. No more calls either – the cell, the home phone, the pagers, they all get turned off. I’m exhausted.”

  “I am so proud of you, Thomas. You hung in there like a trooper. I would have run away and hidden somewhere if all those reporters were after me,” Sydney admitted. Since they were stopped at a light, she leaned over a
nd gave Tom a kiss.

  “It’s really hard to express how cool it was to spend time with a whale,” Tom said as he snapped his cell phone shut.

  “I’ll bet he smelled terrible. How could you stand it?” Sydney asked.

  “He didn’t smell bad. Well, not that bad anyway. I think we connected on some level. You should have seen it Syd; the whale would not let me out of his sight. I talked to the whale from early morning until he swam away at sunset.”

  “You talked to the whale, huh. Did he talk back?”

  “He did actually. He clicked at me almost non-stop.”

  “Well, do share! What did he say?” Sydney teased.

  “I’m serious. We made a real connection. I got that he was scared. Who wouldn’t be? Those sharks tore his mother apart and took a bite out of his tail,” Tom said, a bit agitated.

  “He’s a whale, Tom. You make him sound like a person. Whales aren’t people.”

  “Maybe whales are smarter than people,” Tom said, seriously but glibly.

  “You’re excited; that’s all. Who wouldn’t be! My husband is a celebrity!”

  “Yea, thank God that won’t last very long. I’ll be old news within a week. Thanks for coming to get me.”

  “Wouldn’t have missed it for the world, sweetheart,” Sydney said. “Home sweet home.”

  The Campbells climbed out of their sedan and went inside. Their two bedroom duplex wasn’t much, but they were saving every nickel for a down payment on a larger home. Tom had just gotten a raise at Scripps and Sydney was now an associate professor with a promising idea for a series of academic and popular books on addiction.

  Their future was bright. They both wanted children, but they also wanted to wait a while. Syd was only twenty six; they had plenty of time to start a family.

  Tom showered and put on a pair of shorts. Sydney was already asleep when he crawled in bed beside her. But he couldn’t sleep. His mind was spinning thinking about the whale, the rescue, all of it.

  He understood what Syd was trying to say – what happened to him was a highly emotional experience. It was all too easy to ascribe human-like characteristics to the whale under such circumstances. She was certainly not speaking anything but conventional wisdom. While Tom was not an expert on animal behavior, he knew that most scientists cringed anytime an observer talked about animals having emotions or complex and abstract thoughts.

  Still, Tom knew, both rationally and intuitively, that he and the whale connected on a deep level. What they shared was beyond extraordinary. When he looked at the whale he swore that he saw something behind that big beautiful eye – not just intelligence, but something greater. For sure Tom sensed something far more than simply an animal as humans define animals.

  Reaching over, Tom touched Syd’s hair and gently played with it for a minute. She is so beautiful, Tom said to himself. I’m so lucky. Sydney is bright too – not just bright, near genius. What was this woman doing with the likes of me? Tom asked himself. He slid next to her and cuddled with her. Syd rolled on her side and they spooned.

  As he closed his eyes and tried to go to sleep, Tom hoped that the calf had reunited with his pod. George told him that if the calf could rejoin his pod the chances of him surviving were high. He thought about Lacey too, how she would look at him and seem to know his thoughts, how she could anticipate his next moves with uncanny accuracy. He had no doubt that Lacey experienced emotions, all dogs do. To deny that was silly and stupid, Tom thought.

  But animals are not people. Their inner world is unknown to us. What the whale thought and felt only the whale knows. Tom felt privileged to share in the whale’s world as much as that was possible. Their day together would always remain one of the best days of his life, certainly the most unique day.

  When Tom looked into the whale’s eye, he thought about Henry. He didn’t consciously choose to do so, it just happened - there was no doubt in his mind that the whale’s name was Henry.

  Where was Henry right now? Tom imagined the calf reunited with his pod, being fed and cared for and protected by them. He didn’t want to believe that Henry was killed before he could reach safety. Henry’s story absolutely needed to have a happy ending and Tom could not imagine it any other way.

  Chapter Seven

  June 2015

  San Francisco, California

  I hate this place, Tom thought as he walked into the legal offices of Garrett and Ham, Sydney’s lawyers. He was thankful that this was likely the last time he would be forced to put on a smile and act pleasant when inside he was seething.

  Everyone went out of their way to be polite here, to the point of being nauseating. But the alternative was worse and Tom knew it. An amicable separation and divorce had saved him and Sydney tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees and spared their kids the rancor that usually comes with a split after twenty years of marriage.

  Waiting in the reception area, Tom was also happy that he did not have to sit through another mediation session with his lawyer, Sydney and her counselor. The only winners in that process were the attorneys. Tom imagined them getting together for cocktails after the day ended and joking about how much money they made dividing up other people’s property.

  Tom argued that mediation was unnecessary that he and Syd were quite capable of working everything out without outside intervention. Sydney did not disagree that they were capable of doing so, but she was afraid that they were too emotionally tied to the subject matter. She wanted to be equitable to Tom without getting shortchanged. The neutrality of bringing in a third party to settle a non-existent dispute made sense to her.

  Tom wasn’t sure just what made sense anymore.

  “Hello Syd,” Tom said. He walked over to her and they exchanged platonic cheek kisses.

  “Hi Tom. Thanks for being flexible. I had to re-arrange my schedule around the event in Portland. You can still watch the kids next week, right?” Sydney asked.

  “Yes, no problem,” Tom answered.

  “Thanks. As I told Sally, you and I close friends. Nothing will change that. Ever,” Sydney said with pride.

  Every time Sydney called him a “friend” Tom cringed inside. While he did not want to be her enemy, he damn sure did not want to be her friend. But Tom kept his mouth shut. It was time to get this over with; he had other things to attend to today.

  “Syd, not to be too insistent but -.”

  “Yes; absolutely, Tom. I know you have to be somewhere else today. We still have time for lunch though, right?”

  “Of course. A short one though Syd.”

  “Then let’s get this over with so we can go and talk. Sally, are the papers all ready to sign?”

  The lawyers then led Tom and Sydney Campbell through the twenty page divorce decree. Sydney kept the house, but she was required to sell it or re-finance it and give half the equity to Tom within two years. Their liquid and other physical assets were split roughly 50-50. They shared jointly legal custody of the children. Sydney waived her right to formal child support because she and Tom agreed on how the kids should be supported by both of them.

  Ten minutes later and the review was finished. When the judge rubber stamped the documents later that month, Thomas and Sydney Campbell would no longer be husband and wife.

  Tom and Syd chose to go to the main floor of the office building and sit in the café. It was normally not too crowded and the sandwiches were decent. Sydney respected Tom’s need to run to an appointment – she did not want to delay him unduly.

  “The usual?” Tom asked. Sydney almost always ordered the same meal – a turkey sandwich on rye, mustard only, with a vanilla yogurt and bottled water. Tom ordered his favorite – hot pastrami and potato salad with a light beer.

  “Please,” Syd said. “And let me pay this time. You don’t have to always buy me lunch; I can return the favor on occasion.” Sydney handed Tom a twenty and a ten dollar bill.

  They sat down and started to eat. For a minute or so neither of them said a word.

&nbs
p; “How are you feeling?” Sydney asked.

  “Too ‘therapist’, Syd.”

  “Sorry, I’m not doing too well, Tom. Divorce sucks, even when it’s done between people who like and respect each other. I’m sure this all very hard for you. I know it is for me.”

  “Empathy, okay. That’s better, I guess.”

  “Tom, I’m sorry. Maybe this isn’t a good time. Should I take my sandwich and go? I respect -.”

  “Sydney for God’s sake! Just say what you need to say. Every statement does not have to be qualified or pre-positioned for maximum politeness.”

  “Are you still planning on going to Hawaii?” Sydney asked.

  “Yes. I’m leaving in thirty days. My plans have not changed.”

  “I’ve thought a lot about this and consulted some experts. Now, I agree that you are an accomplished sailor. No doubt about that. But you are asking me to send my son out on a sailboat with you to cross half the Pacific Ocean. I cannot agree to that, Tom. I know that disappoints you and I’m sorry, but my decision is final.”

  “Have you told Jonas yet?” Tom knew that Syd would say no, after her well thought out and perfectly reasonable thought process had been thoroughly explained, of course.

  “No. I thought the news might be best coming from you.”

  Tom laughed. He couldn’t help himself; the laugh burst out without warning. Syd looked at him as if he had just insulted her mother.

  “Sorry, Syd. No way. Your decision, your announcement. I will not be the fall guy on this one.”

  “He already blames me for the divorce and resents the hell out of me. If you would please -.”

  “Is he wrong for feeling that way? You’re big on making ‘I’ statements. Taking responsibility, looking in the mirror, all that. Why shouldn’t Jonas have some resentment towards you?”

  “We’ve been over this. I thought we were past assigning blame. This is about Jonas, not us. You’re better than that, Tom.”

  “Wow, okay. Syd, you’re a good person. You love our kids, I know that. God knows I shoulder a great deal of blame for us drifting apart. But sometimes I think you believe your own bullshit just a little too much.”