68 Knots (11 page)

“Here she comes!” Arthur called out. “BillFi, get ready!”

The shimmering black of Ibis's back broke through the waves. First came the top of her head; she blew a cloud of
droplets into the air—and all over BillFi. The net was made of monofiliment fishing line, and it was nearly invisible in the water. The edges of the net were bound in heavy nylon cord, and these cords trailed back from her mouth and tangled tightly across her back. Ibis slid forward, and her blowhole dipped beneath the surface. Her black back continued to roll, and her dorsal fin cut upward, moved forward, and then began to sink again. The cords were wrapped firmly around the fin, cutting into the skin in places and exposing the white bloodless fat beneath the skin.

“Now, Bill!” Arthur said. BillFi lunged toward the whale, thrust his hands into the bitterly cold water, and tried to clip the float to the cords. The water made his fingers numb, and the moving mass of the whale made it difficult to clip the net.

“I can't do it!” he said. Ibis raised the base of her tail into the air, preparing to dive once again. “I can't make it hook on!”

Jesse threw his oars down and grabbed the clip from BillFi's stiff hands. He jammed his hands into the water, leaning far over the side of the dinghy, and he groped around in the cloud of monofiliment lines. He found a strong cable, and as he attached the clip, Ibis raised her flukes out of the water and began to dive. The strands of the net tightened around Jesse's powerful arms, and the tail slid silently beneath the waves, pulling Jesse out of the boat and far under the water.

A moment passed in uncomprehending silence. Then BillFi cried out, “Hey!” and Arthur said “Oh, shit!” and Dawn said, “Oh, goddess!” The three of them lunged to the port side and searched the water for signs of their friend. They could see nothing but beams of sunlight filtering through the green murk below.

“Where is he?” Dawn asked frantically.

“He's stuck to the damn whale!” BillFi said. “He put his hands down in there, and the net got him! He's stuck to the damn whale!”

Arthur looked in all directions for signs of Ibis. He saw nothing but barren waves.

“Whales can stay under for a long time,” he said. “Longer than Jesse can hold his breath.”

“Jesse!” Dawn yelled. “Jesse!”

No reply. On board the
Dreadnought
, the crew had gathered anxiously at the rail. There was nothing anyone could do but watch.

“The float!” Arthur said. “The big pink float. Jesse hooked it onto the net before he went over. It's on a long line.
It'll come up before Ibis does.”

They scanned the waves, the horizon, the water. Thirty seconds went by. Sixty seconds. BillFi's eyes darted from wavetop to wavetop, searching frantically for his friend. He saw nothing but seawater.

His mind flashed back to the time Jesse was knifed five years earlier. They were living in the same cinderblock shelter in the Bronx, a place for kids whose parents had decided to embrace life without them. A place where kids lived when they were between foster homes. A place where kids learned how to fight and cheat and take pride in their loss of dignity. BillFi—they called him Billy there—had arrived scared, and he spent every day and every night there scared. He was afraid for his life, he was afraid for his mind, and he was afraid for his soul. He was different from most kids—he knew that—and he had long since become accustomed to the jeers and the taunts and the harassment that the other boys dished out. But it's a long city block between accustomed and confident, and Billy had never taken that walk. He was small for his age, nearly blind without his thick tinted glasses, and nervous even when others felt at home. They laughed at him for his allergies, for his stumbling speech, for his inability to look people in the eye. They laughed at him for his intuition, for his ability to read faces and patterns and anticipate what was going to happen next. He was good at that. It was his one true gift. And it even got him beaten up more times than he let himself remember.

Jesse was always good to him, though. He could have been rough—the guy could punch his way through a wall, if he wanted to—but he saw in Billy a gentleness, a perception, a note of music that no one else in the shelter could understand.
And he responded with his own kind of artistry. When Jesse was with Billy, he played songs on his harmonica that were soft and sad and sweet. And Billy listened, letting the melodies and the breathing push away all that was harsh and dirty about the world.

One day, a bunch of guys in the shelter decided that they'd had enough of Jesse's harmonica. Without warning—without even asking him to stop—they put a knife between his ribs. Jesse was sent to the hospital by cab, and he recovered quickly. When he returned to the shelter, he continued to play his harmonica. The other guys, impressed by his determination, left him alone. And Jesse devoted hours each day to running and working out, to make sure no one bothered him again.

BillFi was startled by a shout bursting from the crew of the
Dreadnought
.

“There it is!” Dawn said. “The float. It's over there.”

The pink ball wobbled along the surface just fifty yards away. It was moving slowly toward deeper water. Arthur grabbed the oars and began to pull with all his strength. He made good time.

BillFi crouched in the bow and stared at the ball, knowing that his friend—his best friend—was trapped underwater below it. Then he saw the puff of mist. Ibis was surfacing for air.

Swimming with the drag of the float and Jesse's weight had clearly tired the whale. She moved slowly along the surface, taking several breaths. As BillFi watched, and as Arthur rowed, Ibis arched her back—and Jesse broke the surface.

“There he is!” BillFi shouted. Jesse's arm was still tangled in the net, but he was moving and taking large breaths. Then, as BillFi watched, Jesse reached his free hand into his pants pocket and took something out. He put it to his mouth and pulled.

“A knife!” Arthur said. “He's got a pocket knife.”

Jesse reached up and began to cut the net. But he wasn't cutting the part snarled around his arm. He was cutting the cable that ran through Ibis's mouth.

“He's still trying to get her free!” Arthur said. “He's trying to cut—”

Then Ibis dove again, and all was still.

More than a minute passed. Then the float crashed to the surface. This time, it didn't move. It floated in one place, bobbing low on the waves.

Arthur rowed frantically toward the pink ball. As the dinghy drew nearer, BillFi jumped up in the bow. “He's there!” he shouted. “He's holding onto the float.”

Dawn and Arthur stared. They could see Jesse's head next to the float, and as they watched, Jesse raised his arm and gave them a thumbs-up sign. BillFi returned the gesture.

When Arthur had moved the dinghy within earshot, BillFi called out, “Are you all right?”

“I'm okay,” Jesse called back as he grabbed the side of the dinghy. “My arm hurts a little.”

“What happened?” Dawn asked.

“Who cares what happened?” Arthur yelled angrily at Jesse. “You nearly ruined everything. For everybody! You want to risk your life saving some stupid whale, that's fine. But if you get hurt or killed, this whole summer is a bust. We all go home. It's not just about you. We're all in this together.”

“I just cut the net off Ibis,” Jesse said, treading water calmly. “Like we were supposed to do.”

“And it was wonderful,” Dawn said, ignoring Arthur. Her smile beamed warmth and happiness. “Another thinking, feeling creature is alive today because of you. Because of us all. But how did you—”

She didn't finish her question. Now freed of the net and the float and Jesse, Ibis breached just twenty yards away. She shot out of the water, nose first, moving nearly straight up. Her entire thirty-ton body cleared the surface and seemed to hang in the air, dripping and outstretched. Then she arched gracefully and landed flat on her back with a loud splash that drenched Arthur, Dawn, and BillFi and nearly swamped the dinghy.

“That looks like fun,” Dawn said once the waves subsided. “She's one happy whale. And I think she's trying to thank you, Jesse.”

They watched for a few more minutes as Ibis waggled her tail in the air, smacked the waves with her flippers, and breached several more times. Then she leapt skyward once more—her highest breach yet—and she crashed down into the water. As the waves settled and the mist cleared from the air, nothing but silence was left.

“I'll bet she's feeding,” Arthur said, his anger replaced by awe. “I don't think she could eat with that net in her mouth.” They pulled Jesse into the dinghy and rowed back to the
Dreadnought
. His arm was badly bruised and cut in several places, but after some iodine, bandages, and food, he insisted that he felt just fine.

Joy patted his shoulder. “You were never in any danger,” she said. “God sent you on that mission. He wouldn't abandon you.”

“Well, I was damn worried,” BillFi said with a smile. “Don't you
ever
do that to me again!”

Two days later, Arthur had anchored the ship in a secluded bay and called the crew together around the dining table. He was pale, and he was obviously choosing his words carefully.

“Here's the situation,” he said, as Logan poured himself some scotch. The others declined. “Joy says we have just a few day's worth of food left. We had twelve hundred dollars, which would have paid for a
lot
of food—and kept us out here a long time—but we spent it on ‘other things' instead. We're down to just a little bit of money, so unless we can think of a way to get some money or some food, we're going to have to quit.”

“So let's quit,” Marietta said with a scowl. “I thought this whole thing was stupid to begin with. Let's just take the stuff we bought, go home, and find something else to do. Sailing up and down the coast is pretty boring, if you ask me.”

“I don't want to quit,” Logan wheezed. “Yeah, maybe buying some of this stuff was a totally dumb idea. I mean, except for the booze, of course. But I don't want to go home. Noooo way! My mom is totally murder to be around.”

“I don't want to quit, either,” Joy said. “I came here to learn how to lead in accordance with God's will, and I still want to do that.
Dios mediante
, God willing, I plan to start a church back home in Texas—the House of Joy—and I'll need all the leadership experience I can get!”

“Who says we have to quit?” Crystal said, her blue eyes flashing around the table. “I don't know how we're going to feed ourselves later, but for now, we have a gourmet meal at our fingertips.”

The crew was silent for a moment. Then Logan downed his scotch and asked, “What do you mean?”

“Look,” Crystal said, running a hand through her short blond hair, “every day, when we're sailing, someone has to be on the stupid bow. Why?”

“To watch out for lobster floats,” Arthur said, annoyed that the conversation had slipped out of his control. “They could get fouled in our rudder and make it hard to steer. But the point is that—”

“Exactly, Einstein,” Crystal said. “Lobster floats. Floats connected to lines that are attached to lobster traps. Lobster traps filled with—
lobsters
! Whenever we want, we can just pull up a couple of traps and help ourselves to all the lobsters we can eat!”