Part 19 (2/2)
She shrugs and puts the milk away; Cindy takes it right back out of the little fridge and grins at her, pouring a dollop into a bowl of scrambled eggs. ”This smells a little off,” she says.
”Bad?”
”No, just off.”
Pen shrugs. ”It got left in the car for a bit. We'll just drink it fast.” Cindy points at the coffee pot. Pen fixes herself a cup and takes it outside to drink on the porch swing, smelling the sea air, looking at the roses. The leaves are turning. Allan should be home any day. Wherever you go, I will follow.
Winter will be coming soon.
Morgan raises the rifle and points it at the fin whale. ”It won't but sting her a little-”
Cully steps between, and puts his hand on the barrel of the gun. ”Morgan,” he says, so calmly, ”would you look at yourself?”
Morgan pauses, gulls whirling behind him. Cully takes a deep breath; the whole world smells like rotting fish. And slowly, Morgan lowers the gun. ”f.u.c.k,” he says. ”I guess she didn't mean anything by it.”
”I'm not sure it was the whale,” Cully says.
”What the h.e.l.l else could it have been?”
Cully shrugs and points over the railing. Another whale breaches in the distance-one, two, a pod of humpbacks. They're everywhere, now that Cully's looking for them. Gray whales slipping along the surface not so different from dappled wave-tops themselves. The great pleased grin of a blue whale as it lifts its head from the ocean, blowing plumes of vapor into the perfect sky. Dolphins leaping among the tuna, a softer shade of steel. ”You see any hook-marks on her hide? Besides, it's a G.o.dd.a.m.ned endangered species. Do you wanna pay the fine?”
”They can take it out of the tuna she ate,” Morgan says, folding his arms over the rail, and Cully doesn't point out that fin whales don't eat tuna. ”Besides, you want to talk about a G.o.dd.a.m.ned endangered species? What the h.e.l.l are we?”
Cully opens his mouth to answer. The tuna turn like steel wheels in the sunlight, iterations from hull to horizon. The hold is two-thirds full, the gleaming fish packed in like bullion. The trip is paid for, the diesel is bought.
If every trip could be like this- He looks at the whale, who has rolled on her side again, her baby nosing along her belly, looking for the teat. She gazes at him with that wide, alert eye, her flipper upraised, gleaming wet in the sun. She cups it like a woman cupping a hand. She beckons.
She's listening.
”I reckon you're right,” Cully says, and boosts himself over the rail. He crouches down, one foot in front of the other, dangling off the side as if trying to scoop something out of the water. The whale rolls, and her flipper brushes Cully's fingers. Cully laughs in wonder and cranes his head to look at Morgan, silhouetted by the sun. ”Where do you think they go?” he asks.
”They?”
”When they go extinct. Or nearly so.” He gestures at the whale, at the tuna, at himself.
”What, when they die?”
”Do they?” Cully asks. He pulls his hand back in, but stays squatting on the wrong side of the rail. ”What do you think? Maybe they get to go home.”
There's the hold full of tuna. There's Pen and the kids, and there's this place he and Morgan found, where there's tuna for the taking. Pen owns the boat. Most of the boat. And then there's the insurance money, and then there's those fish in the hold, and all the ones out there, where a factory fleet won't ever find them. The factory boats just aren't a dying breed.
The whale rolls again, water beading, streaming off her hide. She looks at him. Waiting. Where do they go?
”Hey Morgan, you think you can find this place again?”
”We charted it, didn't we?”
”Yeah,” Cully says. He stands, hand on the rail for balance. He promised he would pay, and he'll never find his way back here if he doesn't settle his debt. ”I guess we did. I guess you'll find it no problem. Christ, it's beautiful here.”
He wants to pull off his wife's glove, and kiss her long brown hand. He wants to smell the roses on her skin, the salt sea in her hair. More than anything, he wants to go home.
The whale squirms, a long slick convulsion, and rights herself. She glides away from the Sweet Katrina, her breath and her baby's breath trailing behind them. She's done waiting for him to figure it out.
There's fish here for the taking, and Morgan knows how to find them, and Pen will keep him on. There'll be money for the boys for college, money for Pen and Cindy to retire on. They won't have to leave the island. They'll sell the boat to Morgan, eventually, and Cully's sons won't be fishers. They'll get city jobs. He won't see it, but they'll grow up fine, they'll be okay. On land.
He weighs it in his hand and hates it, while the whales turn like wheels in the ocean. On land.
”Cully-” Morgan says.
The whales are sounding. They show their flukes, monuments against a perfect sky. They're diving now.
Cully lets go of the rail. Paid in full. He goes under.
He goes on.
The Slaughtered Lamb.
The smell of the greasepaint was getting to Edie.
”Oh my G.o.d, sweetheart, and then she says to me, 'Honey, I think you'd look fabulous with dreads,' and I swear I stared at her for ten whole seconds before I managed to ask, 'Do you think I'm a f.u.c.king Jamaican, b.i.t.c.h?' I mean, can you believe the gall of ...”
Nor the mouths on some others, Edie thought tiredly, pressing a thumb into the arch of her foot and trying to ma.s.sage away the cramp you got from a two-hour burlesque in four-inch stilettos. They were worth the pain, though: hot little boots with the last two inches of the dagger heel clad in ferrules of s.h.i.+ning metal. When you took them down the runway, they glittered like walking on stars.
She looked in her makeup mirror, still trying to tune out Paige Turner's f.u.c.king tirade about f.u.c.king Jamaicans, which wasn't getting any more interesting for its intricacy. Edie's vision was s.h.i.+mmering with migraine aura-full moon tonight-and the smell of makeup and scorched hair was making her nauseated. The f.u.c.king cramp wasn't coming out of her f.u.c.king foot. No way she could walk in flats like this.
She didn't want to go home: there was nothing in her apartment except three annoying flatmates-one of whom had an incontinent cat-and a telephone that wasn't going to ring. Not for her, anyway.
She wanted a boyfriend. A family. Somebody who would help her get rid of this f.u.c.king headache, and treat her like a person rather than a side-show. Somebody who wouldn't spout bigoted s.h.i.+t at her. She didn't get that from her father's family, and she certainly didn't get it here.
”f.u.c.k.” She dropped her foot to the floor, arching it up so only the ball and toes touched. ”I'm f.u.c.king f.u.c.ked.”
”Aw, sweetie,” somebody said in her ear-a lower voice than Paige's, and a much more welcome one. ”What's wrong?”
Somebody was trying to distract Paige by asking her if she was staying up for the lunar eclipse. It wasn't working. Edie wondered if a punch in the kisser would do it.
She looked up to see Mama Janeece leaning over her, spilling out of her corset in the most convincing manner imaginable.
”I gotta get out of here,” Edie said. ”You know, I'm just gonna walk to the subway now.”
She jammed her foot back into the boot. The support eased the cramp temporarily, but she knew there'd be h.e.l.l to pay all night. So be it.
”It's fifteen degrees,” Janeece said. ”You're going to go out there in high heels and a wig and four inches of fabric?”
”I've got a coat. And a bottle of schnapps back at my place.” Edie stood. She smiled to take the sting out of it, then made sure her voice was loud enough for Paige to overhear as she gathered her coat. ”Besides, if I have to listen to any more racist bulls.h.i.+t from Miss Thing over there, I'm going to be even colder in a jail cell all night. Somebody ought to tell her that it ain't drag if you look like Annie Lennox.”
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