Maggie stepped into the boat, and Alex reached to grab both sides at the rocking motion that ensued. Maggie shot her a quick glance and threw a life preserver in her direction. “If you’re scared, put this on. If you can get it over that coverall.”
Alex fumbled with the catches on the vest.
“Not that it really matters, out here. In these waters, hypothermia takes over in a matter of minutes. Doesn’t allow much time for rescue, provided there is anyone else out here who’d be close enough.” Maggie turned the key. The motor started easily, and they puttered out of the cove. When they reached the open waters of Haro Strait, Maggie revved the engine, and they lurched forward, Alex grabbing the side of the boat again, her gloved hands clenched tight.
It hit her in the face like a slap from the past, an ill-behaved ghost of memory that she had managed to bury all these years. Water. The last time she had been on a boat. She and Daniel had been married about six months when he informed her that they were spending four days on a houseboat on Lake Navajo with Daniel’s boss and his wife.
Alex had stopped where she was, turning slowly. All her life, avoiding even the water of the shower, and now out on a boat? “But . . . I don’t own a swimsuit.”
Daniel turned and looked at her, his eyes sweeping her five-foot-one-inch frame, a shape that was much more like a rock than a willow. She had put on a few extra pounds after they married. “That’s probably for the best.”
The words cut, like a knife to the stomach. She had never imagined herself to be anything other than what she was, but those words, that appraisal, coming from the man she had only recently married and still believed that she loved, hurt worse than if he had actually stabbed her. She felt as if the blood were draining from her body, pouring out of the wound he had just torn in her psyche.
The long weekend went downhill from there. Daniel looked like a chiseled Greek god in his swimming trunks, like a Michelangelo sculpture that dove into the water and swam and smiled, most often flashing those pearly whites at the other two females on the houseboat with them. Alex felt ignored and completely out of place. She started taking a book with her whenever they were out on deck, so that she wouldn’t have to watch her husband of less than a year as he cut through the water, laughing and splashing and playing with the wife of the boss. Bettina wore a bikini that was held on with strings, and everyone on the boat was silently keeping track of the ability of the garment to stay on her body. It was only a matter of time, really. So they were all attentive when she took that one fateful dive off the side of the boat that managed to render her topless. Daniel was floating nearby, a lazy smile on his face.
“Whoops!” Bettina laughed, all wet hair and bare breasts and Farrah Fawcett teeth, as she climbed out of the water and into the towel that her husband held open for her.
Frederick, the boss’ recently divorced brother, sat near Alex on the deck, and he turned to her, his eyes hidden behind the dark lenses of his sunglasses. “Ah. Now I know what my brother sees in her. I knew it wasn’t her ability to converse.”
Alex laughed, for the first time since they had boarded the boat three days before. She and Frederick chatted for a while, her book forgotten in the glare of human attention.
Daniel was quiet when he got out of the water and plopped into the chair next to her, water dripping around him. She was still naive enough not to read the danger in that quiet. He put one wet hand on her leg and sat silently.
It wasn’t until they were in their cabin that night after dinner that she got her first lesson in just what Daniel’s moody silences might mean. She had slipped off her sweater and was standing by the dresser in her tank top and capris, when he came at her, grabbing both arms in his hands, and pushing her backward, through the glass door that opened onto their own small deck.
“Wha . . .” She was caught completely unawares by that move and was now caught between his body, looming like an angry giant against her, and the railing of the boat pressing into her back, the only thing that separated her from the dark water below.
“See this latch?” he hissed into her face. She glanced down, and there was a small latch, like the kind often used on a garden gate. She swallowed, and her eyes flicked from the latch to his face. “One flick of my thumb, and you would be in the water.”
His hands pressed into her upper arms. “And let’s see . . . I had too much to drink, everyone would know that. Passed out. Slept through the whole thing. Maybe you got up in the night, and maybe you went out on the deck to look at the moonlight, and leaned against the railing, and . . . well. It wouldn’t be hard to conclude that you must have fallen in, while the rest of us slept.”
Alex could feel his breath in her face, thick with the whiskey he’d been drinking.
Suddenly he brought a knee up, between her legs, and lifted her off the deck. “I saw the way you looked at him, you little slut. Don’t embarrass me, Alex. I won’t stand for it. You understand?”
“But, I didn’t . . . ,” Alex sputtered, knowing she hadn’t done anything wrong. Daniel’s hands moved up her arms, over her bare shoulders. One hand circled her neck from the front, the other wrapped around the back of her shoulders, pulling her in closer. She could barely breathe. He put his mouth over hers, thrusting his tongue into her. She could feel his erection, pressing against her stomach. His grip on her was forceful, constricting.
He bent and swooped her into his arms, like a child, and for one brief, terrifying moment, she thought he was going to drop her over the railing. She grasped at his shoulders, and he laughed. Then he turned and carried her to their bed, where he didn’t even attempt to keep his passion quiet, as if he were purposely making as much noise as possible. Sending a message to Frederick, wherever he might be on this boat. Alex was his wife; she belonged to Daniel. And she had the marks to prove it, small bruises on her throat and the backs of her arms. Love bites on her neck and shoulders. As if love had anything to do with it.
Maggie killed the engine, and they bobbed in the water. She lowered a hydrophone, flicked a switch, and said, “Listen. That’s them. Part of J Pod.”
Alex listened to a whole series of clicks and whistles and high-pitched squeals bouncing back and forth under the water. “It sounds as if they’re talking to each other.”
“They are.” Maggie stared out at the dark water. “I don’t know how many different orca pods exist in the world, but they inhabit every ocean. Each pod has its own language, its own distinct way of communicating. Each pod has its own culture, its own way of being in the world.
“Some of those whistles and clicks? That’s the orcas, talking to each other. One scientist in Canada has cataloged a dictionary of some of their sounds. As if they’re saying, ‘Hey, John, over here.’”
Alex sat still, listening to the hydrophone, trying not to let her teeth chatter.
“Some of it? All those rapid-fire clicks?”
Alex nodded.
“That’s echolocation. Sonar. The most sophisticated sonar system in the world. One orca can send out clicks in front of her, trying to detect whatever is out in the water, even when it is too dark to see. And from the sounds that bounce back to her, she can tell if there are salmon and which way they’re headed. She can tell that we’re out here, sitting on top of the water. And from just her clicks? All the other orcas know where things are, too. Even if there’s a youngster, following the fish and not paying attention, the sound that bounces back to mom also bounces back to everyone else in the pod. They all know where everybody is, where the fish are. Where there’s something else that they need to be aware of. Just from the echolocation clicks of one orca.”
They sat, bobbing in the dark water, listening as the orcas talked to each other, the sounds getting closer and louder. A few streaks of pale gray splashed the sky, making it easier to distinguish sky from water.
And then Alex heard it—movement in the water around them. She heard a whoosh as one orca came up for air, and water spouted in the gray dawn air around them.
The sound was followed by another, and another, whoosh, whoosh, as if they were all putting on a show for this water-fearing stranger from landlocked New Mexico.
Alex smiled, a huge grin covering her face. She felt the urge to giggle.
“That was the sound that hooked me, that whoosh as they come up for air. The first time I heard it, I was nine years old. We were living in that house in Copper Cove, the one you’re in right now, and I was lying in bed, with the windows open. It was summer—the days went on forever. And I heard them. I jumped up and stood at the window, watching the orcas going by out in the water.” Maggie turned and caught Alex’s eye. “I knew it, right then. That I was going to spend my life studying these creatures. One whoosh, and I was hooked.”
Alex nodded. “They’re incredible.”
One orca swam directly underneath them. Alex reached for the sides of the boat again, afraid the giant blackfish might tip them over. It swam to the side where Alex was sitting and rolled slightly in the water. Alex and the orca were looking directly at each other, eye to eye. The look she saw there went straight through her, penetrating her multiple layers of clothing, piercing right through every story, every lie, every decision that she had made in order to survive this so-called life of hers.
It was as if that orca could see it all, the whole mess, and yet could still look Alex in the eye and not cast judgment. As if that orca actually understood. As if that orca could actually see every bruise she carried, inside and out. As if that orca could read her pain and despair. They looked at one another for a long moment.
The blackfish rolled away and dove under, and Alex exhaled. Her breath whooshed out in a huge fountain of air, just as the whales were doing.
“Amazing, isn’t it? That connection?” Maggie studied the girl for a moment. “Their brains are four times as large as ours, much more elaborate. Highly intelligent creatures. I even know a scientist or two who would venture to say more intelligent than we are.
“What they can do, with that sophisticated sonar of theirs, goes beyond just communicating.”
Maggie looked out at the water.
“In the sixties and during the Cold War, the Navy had a program where they trained dolphins to locate bombs—land mines under the sea. Even if the bombs were hidden inside a container. And there were times when the dolphins would indicate a bomb, when the Navy was not aware of having planted any at that particular site. When they investigated, the dolphins had detected unexploded material that had been in the water since the Second World War.
“They were able to find things that even the US Navy did not know about. I find that rather remarkable.” Maggie was still sitting in her seat, watching the darkened water. “Dolphins and orcas are the same family, you know. The orcas have an even greater sonar capacity.
“It doesn’t matter how dark and murky the water is. It doesn’t matter how hidden something might be. They can see through things—see what’s inside. Like ultrasound—you know those tests that doctors use to take pictures of babies in the womb?”
Alex swallowed, tingles running down her arms, and nodded slightly.
“Same idea. Send sound waves through the skin and the muscle, and see what’s going on inside the womb. That’s what the orcas can do. They can see inside. There are stories—not science experiments, you understand—but anecdotal stories of trainers, working with captured orcas. And the orcas began to act differently—protectively—around a trainer as soon as they sensed that the woman was pregnant. Sometimes before the woman herself knew.”
Alex stared into the water, watching as the pod moved away from them, into the growing light of the day.
Maggie watched them, too. She took a deep breath.
“I’m a scientist, first and foremost. But there’s something to these creatures that goes beyond anything I’ve ever seen.” Maggie waited a moment, and whispered, “They have a capacity to understand, to empathize, that is unlike anything I’ve ever seen with humans.
“How do they do it? Staying together, with their mother, for as long as the mother lives. Staying together in families. Helping each other, helping the new babies. And we haven’t seen any sign of violence or anger or disagreements. That’s a pretty amazing social structure, if you ask me.”
Maggie took a breath. “Sure puts our human culture to shame.”
Their eyes met, one tiny flicker of connection. Then Maggie turned away and started the engine, heading them back to land.
TWELVE
Maggie was seventy-six years old, and age had done nothing to soften her rough edges. If anything, the prickly, brittle points of her personality had been honed over time and circumstance to the sharpness of a blade. A lifetime of dealing with fools and incompetents had only served to solidify an inherent tendency toward stubbornness, a certain predilection for harsh judgment. She expected the worst from people; it had been her experience that they usually delivered.
Maggie was born at the end of 1941, just in time for her Navy captain father to kiss her goodbye before he reported for duty in the Pacific, shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. She was four years old before she saw him again, when the war was over and he’d been granted a two-month leave.
Two months, as it turned out, was too long for each member of the family. Jeanine, her mother, had gone to work in a shipyard during the war, helping to build supply ships, trying to meet the endless demands of the war. Maggie and her mother had established a relationship based on mutual respect for space. Maggie was independent from the moment she could sit up, and she stayed to herself, in the yard or the house or the garden, observing all the various forms of life around her.
The addition of husband and father, four years later, especially one who was a captain in the Navy, rocked their boat considerably. Henry Edwards was accustomed to issuing orders and having them obeyed. The consequence of disregarding one of his orders on board a Navy vessel, particularly in wartime, was court-martial for treason, maybe even death. So he was caught completely off guard when he told his four-year-old daughter to come inside and clean up that mess in the front room. Maggie was squatting on the front walk, examining the slime left by worms. “I can’t. I’m watching the worms make trails.”
His voice came sharper. “Margaret.”
Maggie stood up and put her hands on her hips. “I said I’m busy.” She glared at him.
His wife also demonstrated a resistance to taking orders from this man she hadn’t seen in so long. Working at the shipyard had given her a sense of power, a sense of control over her own life, a sense of her value as a human being. With her contribution to the war effort, she had come to see herself as far more than a wife and mother and cook and housekeeper. She and Maggie had learned to eat when they were hungry, whatever was handy, and she had long since abandoned the idea of cooking three squares a day, for anyone.
When her husband left for the war, they were newlyweds; Jeanine was still trying to prove she could be a good wife. She kept a spotless house, cooked meals that she thought he would like. Four years later, she didn’t seem to care about house or food or even what her husband might think about any of it. When he asked, “What’s for dinner?” she turned and looked at him as if he’d just spoken in Greek.
“I don’t know. Have you looked in the refrigerator?”
Henry ran his hands through his hair, poured a little more scotch in his glass, and the three of them tried to ignore each other for the remainder of his leave. By the time his next leave was secured, more than a year later, Jeanine had decided that the position of Navy captain’s wife might not be as attractive a career as she had first imagined in those heady months before the war. She pulled up stakes, and she and Maggie went to live with Jeanine’s uncle George in Copper Cove.
It wasn’t that Maggie didn’t like men, or more particularly, her own father. But the reality of a father who ordered her about, and told her to eat her peas and make her bed, was strikingly different from the father she had always known—the portrait of Navy captain He
nry Edwards that had perched atop the piano. The father in that picture was easy to love—he just sat there looking handsome and regal. He never issued orders, or brought his hand down on the dining room table in anger, making the dishes jump, just because Maggie forgot to say, “Yes, sir.”
Uncle George was much easier to navigate. He was in his seventies, crippled with arthritic knees. He moved immediately into the cabin, just up the hill from the big house, telling Maggie and her mother that he wanted to give the girls their space. It was a perfect fit—all three of them profoundly enamored of personal space.
Uncle George often sat on the porch of the cabin, or in the main room when the weather was nasty, using his spyglass to watch ships in the channel or passing whales. Uncle George was the perfect companion. He didn’t care about messes; in fact, he didn’t even seem to notice them. He didn’t require special care and attention; if Jeanine cooked a meal every second or third day, and invited him to join them, he was happy to get it. Sometimes, when the weather was fine and his knees cooperated, he would make bacon and eggs and pancakes for all three of them.
It was Uncle George who told Maggie all about the blackfish—the orcas. He watched them through his spyglass, and let her look.
Maggie watched, as one after another of the big creatures jumped up out of the water, turning sideways before diving back under. “What are they doing?” she asked excitedly.
“It’s called breaching. I think they’re playing. Jumping up out of the water because they’re happy. Because they’re having a good time.”
Maggie was not familiar with that kind of playing. She was familiar with independence, with scientific inquiry. But jumping and playing just because it felt good? That was not an activity she had ever seen before, and what she watched through that spyglass was infectious. The orcas were obviously having a good time. Maggie quickly grew to love this life by the water, watching everything that went on out there, from the whales to the sea lions to the storms that blew in from the west. And she was growing increasingly fond of Uncle George.
The Music of the Deep: A Novel Page 10