Inside the bay’s currents, the spirit world howled around me.
28.
After dawn, thunder woke me. It sounded far off but soon was upon us.
“They’re killing the whole bloody bay!” Papa screamed from the porch.
I shot out of bed and nearly jumped down the entire flight of stairs. Hopping around on one foot as I put my boots on, I watched a motorized skiff leave a path of destruction.
“The orcas, Papa!” I yelled, pushing against the railing at my wondering spot.
“They’ll be long gone by now,” he said as the speedboat faded into the distance.
I ran back to get my spyglass. I saw four men hooting and laughing as they continued tossing sticks of dynamite into the bay.
“Kayle!” I cried, running to the float dock. “Don’t play with...”
Papa shouted for me to come back and rang the storm-warning bell to get my attention. Abe and his crew were milling about and Figgie and Warren were gathering irons for the blacksmith’s fire, but I didn’t pay any of them no mind as I rushed to my boat. I rowed as fast as I could, to the spot where Kayle had popped out of the water to surprise me.
She wasn’t there.
I continued sculling along the bar, making sure I wasn’t snapped into the currents. Out further, I rowed through schools of upturned fish and sea turtles floating lifelessly. I took out my glass and scanned the horizon again. As I looked east toward Paradise, a line of slow-moving motorboats came into focus. Though miles away, I saw long metal pipes hung off the boats, descending into the water as men rhythmically beat them. Thirty yards ahead of the boats a jumble of black top fins frantically zigzagged and collided.
“They’re running an oikomiryou,” I said, in disbelief.
The fishermen were carrying out a drive hunt, the very kind I had talked about on stage. Banging on pipes in the water created a wall of sound that disoriented the orcas. I rowed out farther to get a better view. They were herding the orcas toward Snuggler’s Cove near the Cow Bight.
As fast as I had rowed out, I pulled the oars even harder going in. To save Kayle, Derain, Miah, and the others, we had to get back across the bay.
I spotted Kayle peeking out of the water. Relieved, I rowed toward her and braced for a splashing.
“You naughty whalie, I’ve been worrying about you,” I said, giving her a gentle poke with my oar.
In the distance, I spied Abe and Figgie rowing toward me. Kayle slowly rolled to the left as I approached, revealing blood dripping from her mouth and earhole. The stiff line of her jaw retracted from her teeth.
“No, no, no!” I cried, jumping in the water to help her. You’re just a poddy, it’s not your time…Someone help me!”
I pulled up on Kayle’s top fin to lift her snout from the water, hoping to revive her.
“Breathe, like you do when sticking your tongue out at me,” I sobbed.
Though still a baby, she was too heavy for me to support, and her mass flipped me below her.
“Savannah, you’ll be dragged under,” I heard Figgie yell as he dove into the water.
“Faster, lads!” shouted Abe. “Put yer backs into it.”
As Kayle began to drift downward, and I up, our faces passed. I wrapped my arms around her head and shook, hoping I might waken her. We surfaced again as she rolled over, and my eyes met her own. It was as if I were staring into a dark room. There was no glimmer, no spark of life in her eye, no effervescence to her skin. Her mouth curled in an unnatural smile, the dried grin of death.
But I couldn’t let go.
I wrapped my arms around Kayle’s midsection, kicking my legs as hard as I could to stay afloat. It felt as if the entire bay were pulling on the other end.
“Please, Savannah,” said Figgie softly as he pulled up next to me. “It’s time.”
“I can’t,” I said, shaking my head as he moved behind me.
“It’s the Law of the Bay,” he said, trying to hold me up.
“I won’t let go, I won’t,” I shouted.
But as hard as I tried to hold her, Kayle’s smooth skin slipped from my fingers. I felt her tapered body and the smooth curvature of her fluke pass under my hands. Slowly, she sank into the darkening green water.
“KAYLE!” I cried, emptying my lungs of all air.
Figgie wrapped his left arm around my waist and paddled with his other to the whaleboat. The lads pulled me up over the gunwales as Abe hooked his hands under my arms and lifted me onto the hull. He held me to his shoulder, and we wept together until Papa arrived. On the way back to Loch Bultarra, the bay mocked me with the haunting images of all the souls it had swallowed. Papa and Abe spoke in hushed tones as I wrapped myself in a blanket.
“There’s only one way to deal with a bully,” Papa said. “Confront him head on.”
“We ought to talk to the other stations,” Abe suggested. “Yauncy and Bathers Bay will stand with us.”
“This is our fight,” said Papa. “We’re standing for what Pop, Prince Jimmy, and your da believed in. Anyone who comes along is strictly a volunteer. I mean it, Abe.”
“Everyone stands with ya,” Abe said, “and will pay their own way if need be.”
Later that morning, we took the shad to Yauncy Station to meet up with the others. The crew grew quiet except for the wind pulling on the ropes and sails. Each deckhand laid down his tasks and came to the aft where Papa held the wheel. Some were men who had skimmed oil or cheated Papa over the years. Others, like the bloke who’d made crew with me, barely knew him.
“Those whales are as much crew as we are,” said one of the lads.
“We’re with ya, Captain. The devil be damned!” shouted one of the sandgropers.
At Yauncy Station, we barely had a chance to sit before Brayden Yauncy himself stood up. A half-whale of a man, he kept running his fingers along the rim of his slouch hat waiting for the crowd to simmer down.
“We’ve known Caleb here all our lives,” he blurted out. “And over the years we’ve had our barneys with Dawson Station. But the way I see it, if they can stuff up Caleb then who’s to say we won’t be next. We’re with ya, mate.”
“Stone the crows if we’ll let some Seppo take over our town,” added a few from Bathers Bay.
Suddenly, Figgie was among them shouting “huzzah” along with the rest. When the group quieted down, I dropped my blanket and stood, too.
“That’s right, Cap’t,” I said. “We’re all in.”
Papa said it was too dangerous for any children to return to Paradise. I reminded him that we were already involved. If we didn’t learn to stand up for ourselves now, we’d live the rest of our lives afraid.
“It’s settled then,” Papa said. “We’re crashing the gates of Paradise and it’s damn napkins to anyone who tries to stop us.”
Our ragtag armada of patched sails, dinghies, and rafts must have looked quite amusing to the harbormaster. As we approached Paradise, I got my first glimpse of the holed-up orcas penned in Snuggler’s Cove. A twenty-foot-high barbed-wire fence on one side and a ramshackle jetty on the other hemmed them in. Men with rifles guarded the water corral.
When we entered the Gordon Arms, a yellow poster hung from the front desk.
The headline, Spectacle of the Beasts, screamed across the top of the broadsheet. It listed all the atrocities the orcas had supposedly committed. Some crackpot scientist had called for the removal of the diseased animals, as if they had cattle plague. Bittermen, I saw with horror, had arranged a “cleansing event” for three o’clock that afternoon. Public autopsies for scientific observation had been scheduled, with all whale byproducts going to the poor.
“Papa, you won’t let them do it, will you?” I cried.
“Don’t worry, we’ll see about this,” Papa replied grimly.
He sent for McMahon and hudd
led with Abe, Lon, and Figgie and I lugged everyone’s biddle bags up to their rooms. When we came down, you’d have thought the king of England had died. All the men sat glumly staring at the table.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, frightened of the answer.
“We been talking it through,” Papa said gloomily, “and we cannot think of what can be done, short of getting ourselves shot too.”
“With the orcas gone,” Lon suggested, “we could put a man in the Doddspoint Lighthouse to spot whales. With faster motorboats and rifle harpoons, we could still hunt.”
“The orcas are still here,” I said. “Using those motor-powered boats makes us no better than Bittermen.”
“I agree,” Papa added. “There’s got to be another way.”
The fact that my talk had provided Bittermen with the tools to capture the orcas caused heavy weather in my soul. How could I have given away the secrets the orcas had protected for thousands of years? I took my spyglass and headed toward the water jail with Figgie. Looking down from the Cow Bright pasture, I could see the cove was more of a crater left over from an old volcano, the middle of which had rotted out and filled with water when the inlet was formed. The large rocks jutting up made it sufficiently secluded for risqué swimming—bathing suits optional.
From a patch of trees, we watched as workmen reassembled the grandstand used during the horse race at the cove. They hammered away at the platform where Bittermen’s fancy wooden platform would overlook the cove known more for canoodling than killing. At the far end of the inlet, the corralled orcas’ moods swung between listlessness and agitation. When the hammering and sawing stopped, their mournful screeches and sighs made Figgie cover his ears as if he felt their pain, too. The black top fins stood out of the water like tombstones rather than sails. Jungay hung in the water, barely moving, as if asleep or dead. Some of the orcas tried to ram the barbed-wired posts, but as they did, guards in motorized skiffs banged on the metal pipes to create a wall of grating sound.
Increasingly agitated, the orcas fought amongst themselves in the tight confines of the prison. They were granted neither food nor rest. The guards—I overheard them talking—wanted to keep the orcas barely alive for a proper execution.
“Soon they will try and beach themselves, just as Derain did,” said Figgie, pointing down at the cove. “They would rather die than live under such conditions.”
Returning to the Gordon Arms, it was all-hands-on-deck. Four of the crew drew cards to see who had to go fetch Brennan while Abe was busy writing notes to other villages for help. Ned and Warrain were gamming with Bashir before he shooed them off to McMahon’s to make arrangements. The action whirled about me on a carousel fly-by.
“Your father’s looking for you,” Abe told me. “He might have been a barrister, that one.”
Papa was sitting at a table strewn with papers, his spectacles slipping off his nose. He waved for me.
“What’s this, Papa,” I asked.
“Our ace in the hole,” Papa said, grabbing my arm. “I got an emergency hearing with the magistrate at three o’clock.”
“About the orcas?” I asked excitedly.
“Our stolen whaleboat,” he said, pointing to his forehead, “but that means Bittermen has to delay his antics for another day. We bought ourselves some time, at least.”
Magistrate Shamus Wimbley liked to convene his court at the scene of the transgression, which made many a proceeding cannon fodder for newspaper grizzle.
Bittermen showed up at the dock with three lawyers and a reporter, all of whom the judge disliked. After an hour of his barrister’s babbling, Bittermen denied any wrongdoing. He didn’t help his cause any by not knowing the importance of the boat markings. The highlight of the hearing was the testimony of one Charles Horatio Ignatius Brennan—painter of the alleged stolen whaleboat. Old Charlie identified the family colors and the time-honored tradition of baymen returning lost vessels.
“That was the last whaleboat Alexander Dawson commanded!” shouted Brennan, shaking his hoary fist at Bittermen and the crowd. “By herrings, he died with a lance in his hand and the wind to his back. No man could ask for a better ending or deserved one more than he!”
“My client has no need of a whaleboat,” said Bittermen’s main barrister, snapping his suspenders against his shirt, “as he owns several yachts and a fishing fleet already.”
Papa peeled a long strip of green paint off the whaleboat in question to reveal the Dawson colors and handed it to Bittermen, saying, “I reckon this is yours.”
“Sir, this is beyond the pale,” said Bittermen, removing his Panama hat and waving it at the crowd. “I am a man of honor, which prevents me from dignifying this accusation with a response.”
“It also prevents the truth from coming out,” someone shouted, to much laughter.
By the time Wimbley brought the court back to order, I noticed the audience also included a new black carriage and horse off in the distance. I watched as the female driver took off her cloak and climbed out. I recognized the dark red dress with the white ruffles as one from Arizona’s immense closet. She began pacing about in the shadows, and that American swagger of hers all but gave her presence away. I felt like yelling, why don’t you come and join us! but I knew she was hotter at me than a bushfire in the woop woop for missing our meeting.
Before he left for a lathered shave, Wimbley ordered Bittermen to pay a fine and restore the whaleboat to its former Scottish glory. To prevent further shenanigans, he also doubled all levies for trespassing and vandalism in the village through Samhain.
The few of us from our side cheered. I made my way toward Brennan while Ned proposed a toast over at Smithson’s.
“Charlie!” I shouted, trying to get his attention. “I have something to tell you.”
Brennan finally turned around, his eyes wild and his mouth open.
“We figured out the significance of the black wave,” I said.
“Wave, what wave?” said Brennan.
“The one you warned me about,” I said.
“I did?”
“It was a trawler that done my brothers in,” I said. “I feel it, Charlie.”
“What do the orcas say?” he asked. “They ain’t talking much nowadays.”
“They’re holed up, Charlie. Papa’s tending to it now,” I added.
“That Captain Speedwell would sell his mother rotting fish for an extra quid.”
“Can you talk to the orcas?” I pleaded. “Can you help us save them?”
“I lost the gift. There’s too much sadness for the bay to hear anything,” he said, dropping his chin to his chest. “Their fates are sealed, child.”
Ned and Abe took Brennan with them while I waited outside the barbershop for Papa. He told me that Wimbley had ruled from the barber chair that the orcas were undeclared property, just as the Town Horse had been. With hot towels piled on his face, Wimbley muttered that Bittermen owned the orcas now and could do with them what he wanted. Papa telegraphed a couple of old army pals in Sydney with government pull, hoping to stay the executions.
“All we can do now is wait,” Papa said, digging his hands into his pockets.
“Papa, why did the other station crews decide to come with us?”
“No one likes to get pushed around. If you find a bunch of folks who feel the same way, they stick together.”
“But you didn’t always trust these fellas. I’ve heard you and Abe say that.”
“Well,” Papa laughed, putting his arm on my shoulders, “trust is a lot like the tides. You count on them being the same every day. Even though you trust they’ll be there, that doesn’t mean you trust them to do right by you all the time.”
We walked a bit in silence—me, as confused as if I were looking at a compass through fogged glass. Papa sensed my muddling so we stopped for a moment.
“You ca
n only trust something to follow its nature,” Papa said. “I trust my crew to be who they are, not who I think they ought to be.”
“Does that go for me too, Papa?”
“It does now, lass, it does now,” he said, giving me a hug.
At that moment, I knew that I owed Arizona a visit. We had to have a girl gam and hope the high tides of bluster didn’t wash over us.
29.
Finding Arizona’s house wasn’t hard; it took up all of Resurrection Hill. A week before, I’d sworn I’d never set foot in it again. Going through the front door meant sending a note, waiting for an invitation, or sitting on the leather couch in the foyer, like some tonic salesman. I wanted to do this on my own terms. I wrapped my belt around a wrought-iron fence post and hoisted myself over the granite wall. I climbed a tree near the balcony off Arizona’s bedroom and dropped down onto it.
I was mighty proud of my ingenuity, except…
She wasn’t there.
I double-checked. That new black gig of hers sat in front of the carriage house. I paced the balcony, looking for a way in. The lamps in her room put all her frilly things on display. I jiggled the handle and the door to her room popped open. I stepped gingerly onto the plush white carpet. She had more vials and dishes of creams than a Sydney apothecary. Cut-glass pufferfish-sized perfume bottles with rubber balls attached to them sat on their own table. I picked one up and squeezed, shooting myself in the eyes.
By the time I’d cussed the sting out, I saw a red specter wavering in front of me.
“Wipe your eyes,” Arizona said, handing me a handkerchief. “Water’s in a pitcher over there.”
“Fancy seeing you here,” I said, with a blurry half-smile.
“I’m surprised Father’s hounds didn’t get you,” said Arizona, offering me a chair.
“I have a way with animals,” I replied, not recalling any hounds.
“Yes, I’m well aware,” she said, smoothing out her dress.
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