On Whale Island

by Daniel Hays

  “You only pretend to be sensitive.”

  “Yes, honey, that’s true, but would you prefer I was insensitive pretending to be sensitive rather than being insensitive and . . . ”

  “Don’t talk. Just don’t talk.”

  And thus our marital bliss is yet again saved from the gummy jaws of communication by Wendy telling me just how and when to shut up.

  The moon was full a few nights ago and the tide was more than a foot lower than is common. I walked out in our harbor and jumped on the rocks I usually hit with the boat. I remembered my favorite picture book, where these seven identical-looking Chinese brothers each have special qualities. One of them can inhale the ocean and hold it in his mouth. In a picture he’s doing this and the sea bottom is shown with all its miracles revealed, things always there but covered. I don’t remember what the other brothers do, or finally what happens, but I will always remember the ocean’s floor revealed and all the wonder of a “normal” thing uncovered. Would that we could all for just a moment see each other suchly.

  Wendy

  I carefully spoke to Daniel about maybe living in New Hampshire and getting a job at his old boarding school. We shall see what happens.

  My head is busy getting ready for the future.

  DAY 177

  Wendy says I am “a gob of wounds who leaves blood around the house,” the intensity of which is proportional to the number of tools I use on each project.

  Dear God,

  Just one flaw I’ve noticed—and that’s not bad, considering. It’s with girls. I think given how they become so dangerous to live with each month, what about giving guys a way to know. Maybe their hair could be on fire, or a high-pitched wailing siren could go off, or perhaps a big frog would hover over them and wave at us—anything, just please, some warning!!!

  Besides that, I’m pretty happy.

  Thanks,

  Daniel

  DAY 178

  The house is absolutely too small today. The inside of the windows are a sheet of ice, so there is nowhere else to gaze at, and Stephan is being a constant whiner. That is all the reason I need to go get the mail, so I am off in too rough a sea. Some really scared moments in big waves by the harbor mouth. The surges of ocean are fantastic—like a moving small mountain. Between the peaks are the troughs, and these are as spectacular as the foaming crests for simply being an empty space where one should not be: mountains of water hover on either side and the moment is underlined; you are aware it will not last, a perfect pregnant pause. I look down at the base of a trailer-sized rock we call Motu Kau Kau. It is like seeing your mother’s underpants—it should never be! The whole harbor mouth is confusion. The aluminum boat is light, so I can leap out of the way or charge down and follow a particularly big wave, screaming and such in an attempt to keep it fun and deny the fear.

  My version of doing doughnuts in the parking lot when I was a teenager was chasing after the Fishers Island ferry in the Thames River, in Connecticut. Her name was the Olinda, and what a beast she was, shaped like a forty-six triple-D. Following her in a speedboat was like trying to get a peek and not get slapped. She picked up speed just in front of our summer home—the one my father and I built when I was sixteen—and she would set up a standing wave six feet high. The crest of this wave would move with her at ten to fifteen miles an hour, and the game was to position yourself just falling off the crest of the wave and surf. If I went too slow, no problem, I would just wallow as the wave went under me. But if I went too fast I would lose control, hit the trough, and plunge into the bottom of the next wave, stopping too suddenly. The idea was not to die, with a little style if possible. Over the years, I got good at it and could ride the wave perched high and looking down on the faces of the passengers—the children anyway. Grown-ups tended to look away.

  I wonder what mischief Stephan will get into during the tumultuous years ahead. Will he survive to raise his own brood? The life led in cities scares me. If I had stayed in New York for my adolescence I think I would have been killed from drugs, gangs, a car, or in any number of pointless ways. Stephan is safe here. Let him wander with his machete, get stung by giant mosquitoes, and get lost in the dark of the island’s forest.

  DAY 184—JANUARY

  It blew so hard last night that Wendy and I both dreamed the house was picked up, like in The Wizard of Oz. I wasn’t expecting this much of a blow, so I had left the windmill untied. It was howling like a pissed-off tiger. We both stared at the ceiling for a while, and then I put on a jacket, went outside, and approached the furious beast. A white glow at the top of an easy-to-climb spruce tree. The direction booklet has many warnings about just this sort of thing. It says the blade tips can travel at over three hundred miles per hour. There is no on/off switch. Lying nearby was a long stick, which I had purposely left there a week ago, anticipating just this situation. I picked it up and went to the back, sheltered side of the tree. The windmill’s tail was now overhead—the blades faced into the wind—and I reached upward with the stick, thinking about the scene from the movie Catch-22 where an airplane flies into a man and neatly cuts him in two.

  By pressing the stick on the tail, I was able to spin the whole windmill 180 degrees. The blades quickly stopped, and before they could begin to spin the wrong way, I scurried up the tree and grabbed them. I pulled some rope from a pocket, lashed the blades to the tree, and was almost blown into the forest by a strong gust. Another exhilarating four a.m. adventure!

  Back inside I saw the how large the seas were, from the southeast. At dawn the wind suddenly shifted to the west, shredding off the tops of the waves. It was brilliant to witness this as the red light from the rising sun hit and electrified the spray. Dazzling.

  Stephan read Shōgun until three a.m.! I am so proud of him. I pray that no matter how I screw up, his love of books will save him.

  Beautiful walk around the island with the girl. There is almost continuous surf from our harbor to Strawberry, a neighboring island two miles away. We found a big lobster claw washed up. It smelled fresh, so it became lunch.

  DAY 190

  I think the single most difficult thing in my relationship with Wendy is our different understanding of time. I like now, and Wendy likes to plan.

  I am happy to have absolutely no plans. Wendy is panicked: What will we do? I avoid this as long as possible—just sensing that she is thinking about this makes me sleepy. Today she corners me:

  WENDY: Daniel, I know it’s just January, but we—

  DAN: Hey, honey, what’s for lunch?

  WENDY: Daniel, we need to talk about this. What—

  DAN: Look! An eagle!! I thought they migrated or something.

  WENDY: We agreed, before we left, that this adventure would last one year. One year. That means that on July sixth—

  DAN: I don’t remember actually agreeing to one year, honey. I thought we sort of left that open, like—

  WENDY: No, we said one year.

  DAN: But aren’t you—I mean, why? Give me one good reason!

  WENDY (pulls a list out of her pocket!): I’ll give you ten.

  (She clears her throat, and reads:)

  Reasons That We Have to Go Back to the Real World:

  1. We will be out of money very soon.

  2. Stephan needs to be around other human beings besides you and me.

  3. I want to be able to step out my door and go jogging. I am getting tired of slipping on the ice, the seaweed, the slimy rocks, and the mud.

  4. The one yard sale we went to absolutely sucked.

  5. Latte!

  6. I need a girlfriend I can talk to whenever I want, not just when I can get you to bring me ashore.

  7. Fresh milk.

  8. I like dressing up sexy sometimes.

  9. Baths!

  10. I am going absolutely crazy and may have to kill you soon.

  There is a pause as I gather myself for rebuttal. The pause goes on a little longer than it should have before I reply: “There’s nothing wrong with
canned milk!”

  DAY 191

  Calm ocean, and it’s a warm foggy day. We pack up and take the boat northeast to a small nearby island’s harbor, hidden by a narrow opening—really a strange secret place where you would expect to see dinosaurs. There are clean white sandy beaches surrounded by impenetrable spruce thickets. The dogs run in circles of bliss as I wander off with an old borrowed shotgun.

  I see a swimming duck, and since Wendy and Stephan are just over the little hill and can’t see me, I figure it’s okay to shoot it in the water and then make up a great story about how good a shot I am . . . so blam, I shoot at it. It’s about my third time shooting a big shotgun. First I think, “Ouch, that hurts!” (It’s like being punched in the armpit.) Then I notice that not only is the duck alive, but it hasn’t even taken off.

  Now it is swimming at me as if it knows I’m a New Yorker and could only be offering it bread crusts in the pond by the Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park. Fear. I let fly another cloud of pellets, and I can’t believe it—he is still coming right for me. I am disgusted, of course, but also a little scared. I have only seven more shells with me. I’m sure there are other ducks nearby, and before they can all start laughing I take the bold step of saying (lying to myself), “I’m feeling gracious today, so I grant thee, oh duck, life. Go prosper, live.” I climb the hill (looking anxiously over my shoulder) and have a chicken salad sandwich . . . which I masticate with extra ferocity.

  DAY 193

  I’ve given up on trying to fix any more of the leaks in my house. I do not see this as a sign of cabin-fever apathy tightening its throat hold on me so much as a triumph for higher levels of justification. In the winter the wind blows so hard that the water has no trouble going up and under a six-inch weatherboard or even, over time, soaking into and through some one-inch pine. Anyway, the wavy stain patterns look great on the inside sills and dripping down the walls. This is such a relief, because I didn’t know how I’d ever finish those walls with such an interesting pattern. So when it’s blowing and the water level inside rises I don’t feel guilty; I just call it art.

  DAY 196

  Stormy house shaking night but we are comfortable within foggy windows showing only what you draw on them.

  Wendy can go from a loving cozy woman to a dangerous bison in 1.5 seconds, and when you suddenly find yourself in bed with an angry bison you are in trouble. There was this foam pad Stephan used as a mattress, which due to some leaks (art! I mean art!), got wet and smelly over time. Wendy was gleeful at having routed out the foul stench emanating from Stephan (“He’s just a kid” was my explanation) and she wanted the pad burned. I figure anything you’ve carried out to an island is valuable and thus salvageable, so I hung it up on our clothesline. For two weeks it was rained on, snowed on, frozen, thawed, and flapped in the wind. Then I turned it over, and the same went on for another two weeks. I kept insisting it was saved, (“Call your mother!”) but Wendy refused to let it back in the house.

  Then she and Stephan went ashore for the night to Peter and Mary Ellen’s, and so I remade our bed; it was now sporting the refreshed foam covered with the sheets.

  The next night I’ve forgotten as we snuggle into bed and blow out our candles to watch the full moon. There are about five seconds of that wonderful sexy calm you share with someone you really like and then, as if all the balloons at the National Republican Convention have been dropped down into the crowd, all hell breaks loose.

  First her body goes rigid and launches her, somehow, to a standing position next to the bed. Pure terror sets every one of my strained back muscles quivering at its own unique frequency. I fall off my side of the bed and hit the floor as Wendy runs around to a chair to grab and pull on her pajama bottoms while hissing, “No way, that is it, I’m out of here.” Being on the floor as I was—and quite unable to move—I reflected on what was driving my wife to put on her pajama bottoms before really laying into me.

  I couldn’t help myself. I giggled.

  When I regained consciousness I was just able to see Wendy hurling pillows and blankets in all directions. She was like a wood chipper running at ninety thousand rpms. In one swift motion she uncovered the slightly musty foam and flung it through the porch door into the gale of wind, which moments before had been rocking us to sleep.

  The mattress opened like a parachute, and my last sight of it was a swirling shape skipping over the treetops, getting smaller as it leapt deeper into the unexplored forest to the north.

  DAY 199

  Brilliant sunup, way cold. Pancakes and an hour of quiet before Stephan wakes up. His slogan this week is “Do I have to?” Is the child suffering the early symptoms of a horrible illness called teenagerhood? Do we just keep feeding it and hope for the best?

  Stephan usually makes a lot of noise in the morning. He clomps heavily up the stairs, maybe to warn us. But sometimes there’s no sound at all and the hair on the back of my neck slowly rises, and I turn to see his grinning face peeking from under the whalebone banister.

  After good mornings are exchanged he eyes the kitchen. Have we left him anything? Usually we have: some scrambled eggs, hot cereal, or maybe some steaming coffeecake Wendy just took out of the oven. Today he slathers a cold pancake with syrup and peanut butter.

  Wendy and I usually awake with the sun, hours earlier. Stephan reads, sometimes till three a.m., and he wakes when he is rested. He is less grumpy too.

  I see his arrival upstairs as the half-hour bell for school. In the fishing shed, our schoolroom, Stephan sits at the table. Alas, there is only one chair, so I lie on the bunk, usually with a blanket over my feet. His home-schooling book is set up so that he goes along at his own pace. We talk about each section he completes. I want to be sure that what he is being exposed to is not an opinion disguised as history.

  I get into trouble when he has math to do and asks me for help. Nine out of ten times my “help” is wrong. Luckily Stephan is gifted with enthusiasm. He has also been picking up some self-righteousness from me, so I have him back up in the book and teach me until we get to the question we are stuck on. I will argue my antiquated technique until he has to convince me that his way works better. In doing so he generally solves the problem. The other times I find myself saying, “Stephan, there will never be a practical application in your lifetime for this particular problem. Let’s skip it.”

  Sometimes Wendy brings us lunch, maybe a tuna-fish sandwich. Usually we head to the house, the walk through the woods acting as a cleansing break. Today Wendy has made us tomato soup. An hour or so later we are back to work. If you’ve ever broken off the wooden handle on a lit bottle rocket you have some idea of how Stephan’s mind works: spinning all over with showers of sparks. I have to pay attention to keep feeding the fire. It’s a dance. By three or four o’clock we are finished. I like doing this at a natural place in his lessons, say when he finishes chapter 7. Beginning another section because we still have fifteen minutes somehow seems disrespectful to his natural learning rhythm.

  It’s goof time till dinner. Stephan joins Wendy and me for a walk around the island, reads, or just runs off into the forest with his machete, quite happy. We blow a sort of foghorn at dinnertime if he’s not back. I used to play the trumpet, so I can make a number of objects musical. Today I use a lobster buoy and get two notes. In the distance we can see and hear treetops rustling. I love to watch this—the commotion in the forest, the birds shrieking away in terror, the dogs barking—and then a scratched-up child with torn clothing emerges. He’s usually hungry.

  After a dinner of Oh My Gosh, Garlic (it’s okay to name it once it’s on the table), we play a game of cards or Monopoly. I am happiest when whatever Stephan is reading has got his attention so much that he gulps down his food and gets into bed to read it. Right now he is loving A Confederacy of Dunces.

  Wendy and I read by candlelight. Usually our eyes begin closing at about the same time. We blow out the lights, tug at each other until sufficiently entwined, murmur a “g
ood night” toward Stephan, and sleep.

  DAY 201

  Another exciting mail run. Ice formed on our suits on the way back, and many ducks laughed at me as I shot hundreds of little bullets at them, which they were unable to fly into. I got frustrated and stood up, yelling, “I’m dangerous, godamnit, you STUPID CANADIAN DUCKS!”

  At home, first Wendy opens her Health magazine with, “Oh great, how thin do I have to be this month?” I get a note from my checkbook-order company saying I can’t get any more Star Trek Thirtieth Anniversary checks because it’s now been thirty-one years, but I will be receiving “eight rotating scenes, showcasing the most sought-after ships of Star Fleet . . . and to add to this incredible series, the back of each check is printed with the exterior schematic of the ship!!” Who says living on a deserted island in the middle of winter is no fun? We celebrate with martinis, and Stephan opens one of his hoarded sodas.

  DAY 202

  We’re really inventing humor here. Such as last night, when Wendy was showering. She can be such a neat freak, so Stephan and I dumped a bottle of very bright green food dye in the shower-water tank. Suddenly realizing I would not receive an enthusiastic response, I got scared. I ran downstairs before the green had quite reached the showerhead and blew out all the candles. I pretended to fumble for matches until she ran out of water and her shower was over.

  Stephan summed up the situation quite well: “That was really close. We almost died.”

  • • •

  DAY 207

  We are becoming a little crazy, getting on each other’s nerves. And it’s not even February yet. Howling winds, ice-covered windows, three people and two dogs in a fourteen-by-sixteen cabin.