The Whale's Footprints - Rick Boyer

by Rick Boyer

  The Whale's Footprints

  Rick Boyer

  1988

  For

  John McAleer

  professor, biographer, novelist,

  mystery fiction's formost man of letters

  Edgar recipient,

  and Keeper of the Flame

  THE BOY WH0 LOVED WHALES

  I'LL NEVER FORGET the summer Jack fell in love with the whales. It was in 1970, when he was just six years old; his younger brother Tony was barely three. There was a stranding of pilot whales on the beach near Wellfleet. For reasons not yet understood, whales periodically beach themselves and die, sometimes in great numbers. Pilot whales are particularly susceptible to this lemming-like behavior, especially in the shallow waters of Cape Cod Bay.

  Great schools, or pods, of these twenty-foot creatures drive themselves up onto the gently sloping beach sand inside the bay. In the falling tide, they lie heavy on the sand and cannot move. There they remain until they die. In the summer of seventy, we went to see a pod of twenty-three pilot whales beached in Wellfleet. Since our cottage is just minutes away in North Eastham, it was easy for us to visit the beach and see what was happening.

  At first, Jackie was afraid of the big black monsters that lay strewn in the shallows. No amount of coaxing could bring him from behind his little brother's stroller, where he hid so the big fish couldn't see him. But after a while he saw they could not chase him and gobble him up. He heard their ragged breathing, their strange sighing, and finally ventured to the water's edge. He touched one tentatively, feeling the slick skin that concerned onlookers kept wet with sea water, pouring it lovingly from buckets, draping wet towels over the curious, bulbous heads and long black backs.

  Jack joined the people keeping the animals wet. For two hours, he hauled water, ran among them on the wet sand, and talked to them.

  "It's all right, Mr. Whale," he assured them. "It's all right!" He went up and down the entire pod, carrying the big blue beach pail that was half as big as he was, coaxing, petting, leaning over the blowholes that blew up at him like strange, faceless mouths. We could scarcely drag him away.

  We returned the next day to a grimmer scene. People looked worried. Talk was hushed. Expectant whispers drifted to us over the wind. Occasional curses, exclamations of rage. People tried to push, lift, carry the whales back to deep water. It didn't work; the animals weighed four tons each. Boats appeared, their owners tying heavy lines to the wide tails. We saw the powerboats' big wakes churning out there, trying to pull the trapped animals off the sand. Jackie ran faster and faster between the long dark shapes. His coaxing grew louder, more frantic. Then, toward evening, a curious silence filled the beach. Strange and unpleasant smells grew in our nostrils. The gulls came, diving and tearing. Jackie ran and ran, shooing them off, his eyes filled with tears.

  But there were hundreds of gulls, and only one little boy, waist deep in water. In the near darkness of late evening, I carried him, weeping and sunburned, back to the car. His nails dug into my raw, red shoulders. His eyelashes—tiny artist's brushes—flicked against my cheek, damp with his tears.

  "Daddy! Daddy!" he wailed, "why can't they go?"

  "Some will be saved,Jackie," said his mother. "Don't you worry honey, some of them will be okay."

  We half believed it. Until the next day, when the stench of death drifted across the corner of the bay from Wellfleet to Eastham, and to our beach. Housebound with sunburn, silent with depression, Jackie sat at the table trying to help us with a jigsaw puzzle.

  And so he discovered whales and death at the same time.

  A week later, when it was apparent that the rebound we expected wasn't forthcoming, we took the boys to Sealand in Brewster to see the dolphin show. The sullen blond boy filed into the arena and sat, palms together and fingers pointed down, saying nothing. His younger brother, swarthy as a betel nut, sucked a grape Popsicle, the sticky purple juice dripping down the wooden stick onto his hands and shorts. Jackie didn't want a Popsicle. He didn't want anything. Mary and I exchanged nervous glances.

  Then they started the show.

  The shiny gray mammals, wearing their perpetual grins, stood on their tails, wore sailor hats, shot baskets, dove for coins, wore sunglasses, went through hoops, squealed and chuckled. And when the kids clapped, the dolphins lay on their sides on the surface and, swatting the water with their flippers, clapped right back at them.

  Jackie was standing up by this time. His eyes were still wet, but he wore the biggest smile I have ever seen, before or since. We had to go back to that show every other day for the rest of the month. Damn near broke me. But there was no way out.

  Thus, the bond between Jackie and the whales was established—and atomic bombs couldn't have destroyed it after that. When he became a young man, Jack knew exactly what he wanted to do: go to Woods Hole on Cape Cod and follow the whales in a skiff. Listen to their songs. Watch them play and feed and mate and care for their young. Watch their endless rolling dives and chase their spirit spouts across the blue-green sea.

  But the whales' footprints led him somewhere else, led him into trouble so deep that Mary and I wondered if we'd lost him for good.

  ONE

  ON FRIDAY, the eleventh of August, Mary and I awoke to an odd feeling in the atmosphere. The air had a lazy, leaden feel to it. I had a hunch what it was: the tropical depression that the National Weather Service had been tracking across the Atlantic for the past week was going to show its teeth. After breakfast we went down the deck stairway of our cottage to the beach and looked out across Cape Cod Bay. Gulls weren't flying; they were huddling on the shore or rafting up in the shallows, flicking their tails and squabbling. The haze was bright and fuzzy; it hurt our eyes. Our dogs walked slowly, tentatively, along the sand, pausing to sniff the air and whine softly. Distant diesel trawlers, blotchy in the haze, bounced up and down in the gathering chop, the oily smoke oozing out low from their stacks and creeping over the water as if afraid to rise.

  "I feel weird, Charlie," Mary said in a low voice. "Let's turn back. I feel nervous and tired."

  "It's the low pressure. That's why the birds can't fly and the smoke won't rise. There! You hear that whistle out there? Hear how close it sounds? That's a sign, too. The sounds are bouncing off the layers in the air. You feel it? I can just about feel my skin tingle."

  After lunch we went back down to the beach. The sky was darker now, and the wind was picking up. Gusts blew the dune grass flat, and up on the bluffs tossed the scrub oak trees and made the pale undersides of their leaves wink at us like a million tawny freckles.

  We walked back to the cottage. Inside, I turned on the big SONY short-wave. It buzzed and crackled ominously; the air was full of bad electricity. I raised a few marine stations: Nauset Beach, Point Judith, Boston. All said the same thing: the tropical depression was now a gale. The big storm was pounding the islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard to the south, and moving in our direction. Gale warnings for the Northeast and to all vessels at sea. Traveler's advisory. Stay inside. Watch out. I went back onto the deck. Now the water was glowing white-gray. The sky was darkening. Black sky, light water. The world had turned upside down.

  "I'm worried about the boys, Charlie," Mary said. Our two sons, Jack and Tony, were both working at coastal locations on the ocean side of the Cape. Jack was at Woods Hole, enrolled in BUMP, the Boston University Marine Program, studying the intelligence and vocabulary of whales. His younger brother Tony was a grounds keeper at the posh Chatham Bars Inn. Both towns are on the south shore of the Cape and therefore were vulnerable to the storm's direct onslaught. Tony in particular, on the low bluffs overlooking the southeastern corner of the Cape, was in the s
torm's path. I didn't like it. I studied the incoming rush of the sea nervously. We would get a monster tide, no doubt about it. Would our small bluff be adequate protection against the storm surge and high waves? We'd soon find out.

  "When's Jack due?" I asked.

  "He said they were leaving Woods Hole around four, which means they should be here by five-thirty or six."

  "Let's call them; maybe they can leave early."

  "I doubt it. Jack said last night that Andy had a lab at three. I don't think he can skip it."

  Andy Cunningham, a fresh Yale graduate, was Jack's new friend and roommate in Woods Hole. He was a premed doing a summer fellowship at MBL, the Marine Biological Laboratory, while Jack was working in BUMP. From our impressions of Andy during a trip to Woods Hole in July, he seemed to have everything: looks, brains, personality, and driving ambition. We'd been very struck with him during our quick visit, and now were looking forward to having them both up to the Breakers for the weekend. If they arrived safely, that is.

  At four-thirty the storm broke. It was as if a gigantic foot came down out of the sky and stomped us flat. The sky turned black and exploded in thunder. The dogs, though accustomed to shot-gun blasts, turned in tight circles under the coffee table, crying. I didn't blame them. Mary and I sat close on the braided rug in front of the fireplace. The wind shrieked through the dune grass and wailed and sobbed around the chimney. The ocean was a basso roar, and the rain crawled across the windowpanes in horizontal streaks, the way it does on the windows of a moving car. You could feel the cottage rock in the big blasts.

  At six-fifteen we heard the front door open and slam; the candle flames on the mantel flickered and jumped.

  "We're here!" Jack shouted above the din. "Just barely!"

  We were both relieved to see them come in. They stood in the living room, dripping wet. Andy shook my hand and hugged Mary. He was a handsome kid, with black hair and bright blue eyes set wide apart. He had a strong jaw. He was almost as tall as son Jack, our blue-eyed blond who's six-two and has his mother's classical Roman features but the Adams-Hatton Anglo-Scots coloring. Jack's younger brother Tony looks like his mother, with the olive skin, wavy dark brown hair, and coal black eyes of the Calabrian side of his parentage.

  "When do you guys want dinner?" Mary asked. "Jeez, Jackie, you're soaked through."

  "We're in for a three-day blow. Heavy-duty gale. They say maybe it's a hurricane. You been listening to the radio? Woods Hole and the Islands are swamped; it ought to peak up here sometime tonight."

  "I'll put the lasagna in the oven now. I would have put it in earlier, but we weren't even sure you'd show up. God, I'm glad you're here."

  "We brought some mussels with us. We could steam those up first. Did you know we saw over thirty whales yesterday? A big pod of fins, three seis, and the rest humpbacks."

  "Were they singing?" I asked him.

  "Oh yeah. We got their songs on the hydromike."

  just then there was a terrific crash of thunder. The window-panes and dinner plates rattled; the dogs whined under the coffee table. Mary took the mussels into the kitchen while we got drinks and stood in front of the fire. Now and then a gust would come down the chimney and send a big ball of smoke into the room.

  "Last time we talked, Andy," I said, "you were still up in the air about med school, trying to decide between Harvard and Johns Hopkins."

  "I've settled on Hopkins, mostly because of the financial aid package. I hope we can talk a little bit while I'm visiting, Dr. Adams. Your medical experience would be helpful."

  "I'll do what I can, but I left general medicine some time ago, Andy. Now I specialize in oral surgery."

  "Oh that's right. I remember Jack telling me that now. Why did you decide to switch?"

  "It's, uh, rather a long story," I said, looking out the window at the rain. "Let's say it involved a family . . . sadness. But I wish I'd had your choice of schools. You can't go wrong."

  I sipped my Scotch and looked at the two young men. They looked terrific. It seems, of late, that anyone under thirty looks terrific.

  Mary called me into the kitchen. I left Jack and Andy standing in front of the fireplace, beers in hand, playing with the dogs. Tony was due at the Breakers the next day—Saturday noon. The sea would be kicking up like crazy in Chatham, I thought, rolling right over the outer bar and swamping the small craft in the shallows. It was storms like these that made me appreciate our protected location high on a bluff on the sheltered bay side of the Cape.

  With the storm raging outside, the fire and the smell of food in the cottage, and our sons joining us for the weekend, Mary and I were in a warm, cozy mood. I cranked open a bottle of Chenin blanc and put the mussels, still in their purplish-black shells, into the steamer. I asked Mary if she wanted to hear some music, but she said she'd rather just listen to the storm. It would be another fifteen minutes for the mussels, so I went back and joined the young men in the living room.

  "Okay," I said, "tell me the latest from Woods Hole. Andy, has your situation improved any?"

  "You mean with my lab supervisor? Hell no; it's coming close to trashing my whole summer."

  "C'mon," said Jack, "Hartzell's not that bad. In fact, I kinda like him. 'Course, I don't have to see him more than a few minutes a week—"

  "Hmmmmph."' Andy grunted into his beer mug. "You're lucky. If you worked for the guy, you wouldn't be saying that." He paused and sipped his beer. "You know, I really and truly think the guy's a little nuts. Really. What's worst of all are his mood swings. One minute, he's okay. Next thing you know, he's hitting the roof. Like today, Dr. Adams—"

  "Call me Doc. Everybody does; I don't even answer to 'Dr. Adams' anymore."

  "Okay, Doc. So today, we all knew there was this big storm coming. So I ask him, can Jack and I leave early today, since we're going up to Eastham for the weekend. Well, he blows his stack. 'I want you in that lab until four o'clock, Cunningham! I've got a data run that can't wait and I've been planning it, and blah, blah,' you know. Guy's a real turkey."

  "Well, what the hell, Andy," said Jack. "You know how it is with bio labs. You get the specimens all primed, the equipment all set up—"

  "I know, but get this: after I get in there and start running the experiments, Hartzell leaves! I turn around and there he is in his raincoat, saying he's got an important errand to run. Guy's gone over an hour, with me stuck in Lillie Hall and the sky's getting darker by the minute. Our roommate, Tom McDonnough, says he saw his car driving past our house. So why does he get to leave when I have to stay and worry about his goddamn tunicates?"

  "Tunicates?"

  "Sea squirts, Dr. Adams. I mean, Doc. Sea squirts are Hartzell's babies. We go through 'em by the bushel. He's working on a way for them to concentrate silver from sea water. Gonna make himself a billion dollars—"

  "What? Sea squirts? Silver? A billion dollars? What are you—"

  Mary interrupted us with some hummus and pita bread, then sat down with her glass of white, gazing at the fire and patting Danny, the yellow Lab, on his wide head.

  "Sea squirts are marine organisms that concentrate various elements in their tissues," Andy explained. "They concentrate vanadium to such an extent that there's been talk of growing sea squirts for that reason alone. Now old Hartzell, my lab supervisor himself, is figuring out a way to get them to concentrate silver."

  "Can he do it?" I asked.

  "Well, that's the tricky part," interjected Jack. "And that's why he's so paranoid about his research data. In fact, Hartzell thinks Andy's trying to steal his secrets, doesn't he, Andy?"

  "Yeah. Me or somebody. But he's convinced it's somebody our age. Some 'young punk,' as he calls us. He calls me that one more time and, so help me, I'm gonna level him."

  Andy shook his balled list in anger. I was glad I didn't have a boss. Having a lousy boss must be hell.

  "Let's go back a sec," said Mary. "You say he's training these little animals to gather silver from sea water? I didn't know sea w
ater had any silver in it."

  "Sea water's got a lot of valuable stuff in it," said Andy. "They say that a cubic mile of sea water has as much gold in it as all the bullion in Fort Knox."

  "No! You're kidding!”

  "Well, something like that, Mom. Problem is, how do you commercially extract it? Well, old man Hartzell's got these little sea squirts—"

  "Yeah, and he's watching 'em inhale that brine and spit it out again," Andy continued, "hoping that the concentrations of silver are going to build up in their slimy, stinky little bodies so that he can throw 'em into a furnace and, voila! Silverado!"

  "Problem is, he's got you doing all the shit work," said Jack, "and accusing you of stealing on top of it all."

  "Not just me. He keeps saying it's 'all you young, spoiled kids who never had to work.' Well, I keep saying to him, 'Dr. Hartzell, you may not believe this, but I'm a poor kid, too. My old man's a car salesman in Pawtucket who's worked his ass to a nub for twenty years, sending me to prep schools and then to Yale. Worked sixty-, eighty-hour weeks to pay the bills. My mom, too. What do you say to that?' "

  "Really?" I asked. "All of that is true?"

  "Yep. And as expensive as med school is, I'm taking no more money from them. They've done way, way more than enough. I told them I was getting a free ride all the way through, based on my past performance. Of course it isn't true; I'm in hock up to my neck. But I don't want them working like that anymore. Especially him. He had a heart attack last year; the next one's gonna kill him . .

  He lowered his keen blue eyes briefly. "That's what sealed Hopkins for me," he continued in a low voice. "They're giving me more money."

  "Why is Lionel Hartzell so obsessed with somebody stealing his data?" asked Mary.

  "Because he's nuts. That's what I've come to think. Now Jack here likes the guy. But like I said, Jack isn't working for him."

  Jack got up, grabbed Danny by his big neck, and hugged him. The Lab wagged his tail, batting it against a cabinet door and making a sound like a bass drum in a parade: whump! whump! whump!