“You think Friday would recognize the ocean anymore?” Sam asked. “I always wondered with shug whether if you dropped her into that tea plantation in Burma she’d even know where she was, she’d been gone so long.”
“I bet he would,” said Reginald. “I bet he still gets homesick sometimes, too.”
“Just because he was born there doesn’t mean he can remember anything about it, son,” Sam said. “He was just a little bitty thing when he was captured.” He looked to Gabriel for confirmation. Gabriel nodded.
“Well, I bet he can still remember,” Reginald said stubbornly. “I bet he remembers and he misses it. Bet he misses his family, too.”
They all looked at Libertine. “Don’t ask me,” she said. “I don’t have the faintest idea.”
Reginald folded his arms tightly over his chest, which was when Libertine realized they probably weren’t talking about the whale at all.
“I bet if you let him loose right now he could find his way back home,” Reginald said.
“Honey, it was a different ocean,” Ivy said gently.
“I bet he could anyways.”
Winslow spoke up. “If you let him go, would he survive, do you think?”
“No,” said Gabriel firmly. “I don’t.”
“Maybe he could, though,” said Winslow. “At least for a while.”
“Someone should try it,” said Reginald. “You could, like, put a whale-cam or something on him and follow him.”
“You’d radio-tag him,” said Gabriel.
“Yeah?” Reginald said eagerly. “You’d, like, suction cup it to him or something?”
“We’d attach it to his dorsal fin. It doesn’t even take that sophisticated a device. We track animals all the time.”
“See?” said Reginald. “That way you could get him back if he starts starving or something.”
“That’s probably a little simplistic,” said Truman, looking to Gabriel for confirmation.
“It is, but he’s got the basics. You track where he’s going, and if he stays in one place too long, you send a boat after him to see if he’s okay.”
“Theoretically,” said Truman.
“Theoretically,” Gabriel agreed.
“Could we do it?” said Reginald. “He’d probably really like that.”
Sam said, “It’s not that simple, son.”
“Yeah,” said the boy hotly. “But you could, if you wanted to.”
Sam gave the boy a look that said he’d gone too far. Reginald set his jaw and then they changed the subject.
AT FOURTEEN REGINALD Poole—now Brown, since Sam and Corinna had adopted him—was large in presence if not yet in stature. Evidently his father had been a big man, so Reginald was likely to become one, too. They had never met, but his mother used to talk about him all the time when Reginald was little and there was still a chance the man might come back. By the time Reginald was five it was clear he wasn’t coming, and his mother started dissing him big-time. “He’s nothing but a good-for-nothing, piece-of-shit freeloader. Don’t you go asking me about him ’cause he’s nothing, not even a gnat in God’s eye. I don’t even want his name in this house—not so much as his name.” But that was just pride talking.
And the truth was, if Reginald were his father, he wouldn’t come home, either. His mother was a hard-drinking, wild-haired, ramshackle, slack-mouthed woman who liked to tell anyone within earshot that Reginald was her ball and chain. “He a good looker, honey, but he be draggin’ me down. You wouldn’t know it now, but before he come along I was a fine-looking woman, made men run into each other on the street, they was so busy staring. In those days my legs reached right up to heaven, and the Lord gave me a fine ass to go with them.” She used to tell Reginald, “You got your looks from me, baby. You got your mama’s pretty mouth. When you grow up, girls gonna be all over you.”
A month before his eleventh birthday his Aunt Ella drove down from Bladenham to pick him up and bring him back home with her. On the ride back she told him, “You know, your mother always did have a screw loose, even when we were kids. Our mama used to say, ‘Ella, you better make something of yourself, because you’re going to end up taking care of your sister one day. That girl’s got less sense than God gave a goose.’ It used to make me mad when she’d say that, but even then I knew she was right.”
It took his mother three days to even realize he was gone, and as far as he knew there’d never been any talk about his going back. It took his mother three days to even realize he was gone, and as far as he knew there’d never been any talk about his going back. If anyone had asked him—and no one ever did—he’d have gone right back home. When she was straight he could make his mother laugh until she had to run to the bathroom to keep from peeing herself; when she was on crack—which, by the end, was most of the time—she let him do whatever he wanted, like go outside at two o’clock in the morning and talk to the old man who lived in a red sleeping bag on the sidewalk a couple of blocks away. At his aunt Ella’s he had a special place in his room, in the far corner behind his bed, where he liked to pretend he could time travel, go home to when home was still good. Not that he believed in that kind of kid stuff anymore, but still. He became the only black kid in his entire school, which on the one hand sucked, but on the other made him something of a celebrity.
Then he’d met Samson and Corinna Brown and Hannah, and Winslow Levy, and that’s when things started turning around, especially when he and Winslow were recruited to help Hannah escape from the zoo so she could go to California. Reginald’s picture had been in the paper for that, even though Martin Choi called him “Dillard” instead of Reginald. In his prior experience the only kids his age who got their pictures in the paper were kids who’d been collateral damage from gang shootings or who’d been kept locked in the basement or a closet for years and were eighteen years old and weighed forty-five pounds.
Right after Sam got back from the sanctuary in California, he and Corinna had had a long talk with Ella about letting the boy come and live with them, and once she’d been satisfied that they were good Christian people she’d said yes. “He’s a good boy, but he’s high-spirited,” Reginald had overheard Ella saying when he was supposed to be taking out the trash. “He needs a firmer hand than I’ve got the strength for, plus he deserves to be raised by someone who believes in him. I finished raising my own kids a long time ago and honey, I’m tired.”
After six months his grades were all As instead of Cs and Ds, and Sam asked Ella if she would help him find Reginald’s mother. She agreed, and when a month later they found her, she signed away her parental rights so Sam and Corinna could adopt him. Reginald was pretty sure money had changed hands, but he was also sure he wasn’t the first kid who’d been sold for crack cocaine. It didn’t matter to him: once he was adopted, Sam and Corinna couldn’t change their minds later on and make him leave, no matter what kind of stupid thing his reckless brain put him up to. Sam was even stricter than Ella, especially when his mouth got him into trouble, which was often; but all in all, that was okay with Reginald. Sam took him for walks in the orchard behind the zoo so they could talk about what it was to be a man, and Corinna was always hugging and loving on him, which he pretended not to like but really did because she was big, soft, and warm, and she smelled like a ton of different shampoos and other beauty products. Now, at fourteen, he had a home and a family, and he and Winslow were still best friends even though Winslow had that dopey pig that was always sniffing you in the behind and worse.
The day after the TV party, on his way home from school, Reginald had reached Bladenham’s main commercial street when he saw Martin Choi, the News-Tribune reporter, walking toward him from the other direction. Reginald had run into the reporter several times since Hannah’s departure, and the guy always said the same thing: “S’up, dude? You hear about anything interesting over there at the zoo, you let me know first, huh? You’ve got my number, right?”
Reginald loved being treated as though he could be i
n possession of confidential information, so he always said he would, but he never meant anything by it—at least not until today; in fact, not until this minute. Call it the devil, call it a wild hair, but Reginald ducked under the drugstore’s sagging canvas awning and blurted out, “If I tell you something, you’ve got to never tell anyone it was me who told you.”
The reporter looked surprised—as surprised as Reginald was at where his show-off self was taking him. “Yeah? Sure, kid, that’s what reporters do—we go to jail instead of giving away our sources.” He looked at Reginald with sudden excitement. “Hey, are they getting another whale?”
Reginald heard a high, whiney little buzzing in his ears, which was what always happened when his mouth outpaced his brain, but it just made him talk faster. “No, something way better.”
“What?”
“They might let him go.”
“What do you mean, let him go?”
“Home—back to where he came from.”
“Colombia?” said Martin.
“No, man. The wild. Like that whale in Free Willy.”
“Holy shit! You mean they might release him?”
Suddenly this conversation seemed like a bad idea, a really bad idea, but Reginald was in too deep now to deny it. Faintly he said, “Yeah. I mean, maybe.”
“Man—whoa!” Martin said eagerly. “So does anyone else know about this? You call anyone at a radio station or TV or Northwest Cable News or anything like that?”
“No.” Reginald was already wishing he hadn’t told Martin Choi, either.
“Keep it that way, okay, kid? I mean it.”
“Man, you better not rat me out.”
“Hey, take it easy. Your name’s Raymond, Reynolds, Remington, something like that, right?”
“Winslow,” said Reginald. “My name’s Winslow.”
THE FIRST HINT of trouble came in a phone call from Martin Choi. Truman was in his office working on a formal Greater Good Fund proposal to present to his full board of directors when Brenda put the call through.
“So, hey,” Martin said. “I hear the whale’s gonna swim home.”
“I’m sorry?” Truman could feel in his stomach that wherever this conversation was going, it wouldn’t be anyplace good.
“A little bird told me you’re thinking about sending him back there to Iceland or Norway or wherever.”
“Who told you that?”
“No can do, bud,” Martin said. “We’re all about protecting our sources.”
“Listen to me carefully,” Truman said, deepening his voice to its most forceful tonal range. “There is not one iota of truth to that, not one—it is completely and totally without merit. I can’t even imagine why anyone would say it, unless they were trying to make trouble for the zoo.”
“Right on, man,” said the reporter. “I hear you.” Truman had the sinking feeling that if Martin were in the room with him right now, he’d be winking. And with that, the reporter hung up.
Rattled, Truman searched for a reason why anyone would say something so baseless. Could it be an animal activist planting a seed that would turn into a toxic flower when debated in the press? Gabriel had warned him over and over how noxious the whale activism community could be. But why this story, and why now?
There had been a lot of people at the pool the night before last, but everyone except Gabriel, Ivy, and Libertine had been through the Hannah media blitz three years ago and had experienced firsthand the awesome power of an untruth if it was repeated enough times. He trusted them completely. That left Gabriel, Ivy, and Libertine. Why would any of them be talking to Martin Choi in the first place, let alone planting a false story?
Telling himself he was going to the three for insights, not to make accusations, he called Gabriel, who said, “The man’s an idiot. Hell, no, I didn’t talk to him.”
“But do you have any idea who might have?”
“I’ve always said Libertine shouldn’t be here. I’ll say it again.”
“All right,” said Truman. “Other than Libertine.”
“Nope,” said Gabriel. “Sorry, bud.”
Next Truman called Ivy’s cell and described his conversation with Martin Choi. “For heaven’s sake,” Ivy said. “He’s an idiot. You know that.”
And of course, he did know that. It just didn’t help. “Do you think this is something Libertine might have planted— maybe something she’d been planning since the day Friday got here? Gabriel warned us.”
“Shame on you,” Ivy said. “That woman is one of the gentlest people I’ve ever met. There isn’t a nefarious bone in her body.”
“Normally I’d agree with you, but let’s face it, she’s also a little, hmm, unbalanced.”
“Why, because she claims to hear animals?”
“It’s not exactly normal,” Truman said drily.
“That’s mean, is what it is. She may be a little odd, I’ll grant you that, but she cares about that animal as much as any of us, maybe more. And anyway she’s said he’s stonewalling her, that she hasn’t ‘received’ anything or whatever from him since right after he got here. Plus she knows if it was her and she got busted, she’d have to leave the project. Isn’t that in her contract?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
Truman sighed. “If it wasn’t her, I’m stumped.”
“My advice is, let it go. The man’s an idiot. You know that. Everyone knows that. Maybe he made it up all by himself—maybe he’s trying to shake the trees a little and see if something falls out. Though I have to say I wouldn’t credit him with enough intelligence to actually do something like that, but it’s possible. No matter what, the story won’t have legs. No one’s going to back up whatever source he had, if there even is a source, which I doubt.”
The only person left was Libertine.
With the greatest reluctance he picked up the phone.
LIBERTINE AND IVY had a standing pizza date at the Oat Maiden every Thursday night. Libertine tried to back out—she’d been crying for hours, ever since Truman’s call—but Ivy wouldn’t let her. Fortunately one of the back tables was empty, because her face was swollen and blotchy. Once Ivy had ordered their customary pepperoni and onion pizza, Libertine described Truman’s careful questioning. “He was trying to be very fair, but he thinks it was me. They’ll all think it was me. If I were them, I’d think it was me.”
“Well, was it you?”
“Of course not.”
“Then just say so.”
“I did, but it’s almost impossible to prove that you didn’t do something. Plus I’ve never been very good at sticking up for myself.”
Ivy picked a piece of pepperoni off her pizza slice and popped it in her mouth. “I know. You’re worse at standing up for yourself than anyone I’ve ever met.”
Libertine looked at her plate.
“That’s all right. But what did he say—he didn’t fire you, did he? Because I’ll call him right now, if he did.”
“No—he just told me what had happened and then he asked if it was me, and I said no, which was when I started crying, and now I can’t stop.”
“I can see that,” Ivy said.
Libertine nodded. “I’d give a lot for a pair of sunglasses.”
“That’s all right, honey,” Ivy soothed, patting her hand. “They’ll just assume there’s been a death in the family.”
THE NEXT MORNING, too miserable to sleep, Libertine went out at five-thirty and drove around town until she found the News-Tribune in a vending box. Above the fold a huge headline blared, KILLER WHALE TO GO FREE. The story attributed the information to “an anonymous source close to the zoo.” It went on to state, “The Max L. Biedelman Zoo, which made the controversial decision three years ago to let its lone elephant, Hannah, move to a sanctuary, is now considering letting Bladenham’s favorite wild-caught whale go free.” It got worse from there.
At the pool, a copy of the paper was spread across the office desk. Neva and Gabriel avoided her. Gabriel didn
’t even make eye contact.
By noon Libertine decided to go to Truman’s office and get the firing over with—she was still so unhinged she was a danger around the pool anyway. She told herself it was a blessing in disguise: she’d known for weeks that she was running out of money, and this way she’d be able to go home to Orcas Island and live in her own house and seek out a job that would bring in a little money. But while all that was true, it didn’t make her feel any better. She was relieved when Truman made time for her right away, indicating that she should sit in his visitors’ chair.
“Have you read the story?” he asked her without preamble. A copy lay faceup on his desk, its headline exposed.
Libertine nodded miserably. “I know you’re going to have to fire me. I came over here to say I won’t make any kind of fuss.”
To her surprise, Truman looked at her kindly. “Absolutely not. Whoever the source was, it certainly wasn’t you. I know you’ve had experience with the media in the past, and whoever this was, was a rank amateur. ”
Stunned, it took Libertine a moment to understand that Truman, at least, didn’t think she was the mole. She reached across his desk impulsively to press his hand. “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!” Then she started to cry again. He held out a box of Kleenex.
“We do still have someone leaking information to the media, though,” he said. “Someone who’s trying to force an outcome. Do you have any ideas? Someone within the animal rights community?”
“No, but I’ll put my ear to the ground. It’s not that big a subset.” Libertine pushed herself out of the chair. “And thank you so, so much. I hope you know how much being here means to me. We may have philosophical differences, but I’d never do anything to jeopardize that. Or Friday.”
Truman smiled. “I know. And I think most of the other people around here know, too.”
ONCE LIBERTINE WAS gone Truman asked Brenda to hold his calls for a few minutes while he collected himself for the inevitable media onslaught. He attempted to calm himself, unsuccessfully, watching the unending line of visitors snaking out to the parking lot. The more popular Friday became, the more media scrutiny the zoo would come under, even over untruths and trivialities.
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