Grayson

by Lynne Cox

  five

  Steve devised a plan. He spoke with the local boat operators and fishermen and asked them if they had seen a lone mature female whale. None of them had, but they said they would get on their radios and check with friends working along the coastal waters.

  We decided I should return to the jetty, to the place where the baby whale first started swimming with me. We thought the jetty area could be the place where he lost his mother.

  “Okay, let’s go for a swim, baby whale,” I said, and I started swimming, hoping he would follow.

  He swam with me for a bit, but he really just wanted to play. He rolled onto his stomach, moved his tail fin up and down a couple times, then flew past me like a rocket. He turned, swam back, rolled on his side, and dove underwater. I just kept swimming toward the jetty, sensing the urgency now more than before. Swimming with my head up like a water polo player, I scanned the ocean’s surface.

  The California land mass was quickly warming, and the sea breeze was gaining strength, crumpling the ocean’s surface into a mass of waves as reflective as aluminum foil. White sunlight caught the edges of the tiny curling waves, and they sparkled like white stars on a sea of blue. The light was so bright it was blinding.

  Squinting, I stared across the water, looking for a large spout, a ruffle of white waves, a hole, or a long wide groove caused by the mother whale swimming through the water.

  I couldn’t see her and I felt a sudden tightness in my heart. What could I do?

  The baby whale was swimming right beside me, so full of energy, speeding ahead, circling back, and bounding through the water with great exuberance. He turned and swam right under me, so close I could almost reach out and touch him.

  He seemed happy. He seemed to be playing and full of energy, but how long could that last? When had he last eaten? How long would his body fat sustain him? How often did he need to drink so he didn’t get dehydrated? What would we do if we couldn’t find his mother?

  I didn’t have any answers. But as long as we tried, as long as we kept looking, there was a chance we could find her.

  Sometimes it’s the process of doing that makes things clear. If we don’t start, we never know what could have been. Sometimes the answers we find while searching are better or more creative than anything we could ever have imagined before.

  My mind continued to roam, spin, and focus as I swam. Was there a better way to search for the mother whale? What would happen if she had already moved north? Had she been calling him? Had he missed her? Had he heard her voice for the very last time? Had the baby whale learned how to communicate? Had he been calling her? Maybe she couldn’t hear him?

  I heard the deep rumble of the Long Beach Lifeguard boat. They were zooming toward us, their bright red bow cutting a V in the gray-blue water. White waves shot up against the red hull, and the V spread into fast-moving waves.

  The lifeguards patrolled the coastal waters all year round. Many of them were my friends. Some of them had accompanied me on channel swims and others watched me during my daily workouts. I was always happy to see them, but on this morning I was thrilled. They would be able to help. And they would do their best.

  They took great pride in finding and rescuing people, and they also had a deep appreciation for the wildlife that inhabited the ocean and shores. They studied the birds, marine mammals, and fishes and swapped stories about their findings. They observed the behavior of the marine animals and knew all about the migration of gray whales.

  Two lifeguards came out on deck. They were older guards, in their forties or fifties, with hard bodies, bronzed skin, broad shoulders, and very big smiles. One lifeguard had fine wavy blond hair and spoke quickly and softly. His friend was taller, with straight dark brown hair. He had a deep booming voice. I recognized them: They had been partners on the boat for a long time.

  When they pulled alongside me, I explained that I was looking for a gray whale.

  They told me they had been watching the northern migration. That morning they had seen a pod of five whales swimming along the edge of the Long Beach breakwater. The lifeguards had watched them swim outside Los Angeles Harbor, keeping a distance from cargo ships and tankers entering the harbor. Once they crossed the harbor entrance, they made a straight line for the Palos Verdes Peninsula, using it as a landmark, and then they followed the coast north toward Alaska.

  The baby whale surfaced near their boat. The lifeguards silently watched in complete amazement. They’d never been that close to a baby gray whale. They’d heard that people swam with them in the lagoons off Mexico and that they enjoyed being touched by people, but they couldn’t believe that they had a baby swimming right around their boat.

  I started to worry when one lifeguard said that gray whales are very protective of their young. Gray whale mothers usually don’t let their babies out of their sight. There was a good possibility the baby’s mother was dead. For a moment, I felt great sadness. I don’t know why, but I didn’t think she was dead. I reasoned with myself: Wouldn’t someone have seen a whale floating in the water, especially in an area where there’s a lot of boat traffic? Wouldn’t someone have seen something? No, she had to be alive.

  The baby whale swam ten feet from me. He spouted, bounded through smooth waters, and weaved from side to side. He swam under me and rolled over; I think he was trying to play with me. Whales love to play. They nudge each other, and as they swim their bodies sometimes touch. Sometimes baby grays ride along on their mothers’ backs.

  I still wanted to touch him to somehow reassure him, but I couldn’t reach far enough. So I thought as strongly as I could: Don’t worry, little guy, we’ll find her.

  I glanced across the ocean’s surface. It looked so big. I would take you to your home if I could, I thought, as loudly as I could. But you don’t really have a home. It’s all that water that stretches out around us. Or maybe it’s not that at all. Maybe your home, everyone’s home is simply where your loved ones are. Then that’s really home. I will take you home. We will find her.

  The lifeguards said they would search for her. They would radio Steve if they saw anything at all. They would radio the crews who were on patrol in different waters off Long Beach, and they would radio other lifeguard departments at Surfside, Sunset, and Huntington beaches to see if they had sighted a single female whale, one that seemed lost, or confused, or wasn’t migrating north.

  So the baby whale and I continued swimming to the north jetty and once we reached the rocks, we stopped and scanned the water.

  There wasn’t a huge hole of dark blue made by the impression of his mother’s body diving into the sea, or a long trail of blue, or even a fluke. There was no sign of his mother.

  I treaded water and the baby whale floated near me. We watched and waited for five minutes, and when I didn’t see anything, I decided to turn around and return to the pier. But when I started swimming freestyle, the baby whale didn’t follow.

  He dove suddenly and disappeared.

  Three minutes passed and there was no sign of him.

  I was worried; I knew he could hold his breath for five minutes, maybe more, but he had just vanished.

  Taking a deep breath, I dove under the water to look for him. Using wide breaststroke pulls I dug deeper into the water column, moved down through the thermocline, and the farther I went, the colder the water became. The color faded away. Wave surge churned the muck on the seafloor and the visibility dropped to ten feet.

  Slowly, with my legs extended over my head, I turned in a circle, trying to see the baby whale.

  My ears were filled with the sounds of the city. It was like walking through Times Square in New York City during the height of rush hour. Sound in water travels four times faster than it does in air and it travels farther, but the sounds surrounding me seemed to be amplified by the water. And I felt the energy waves of the fire truck and ambulance sirens, the rumble of a jet airplane taking off from Long Beach airport, the deep throb of a helicopter flying directly overhead, the
sound of swarming mosquitoes as three racing Jet Skis buzzed within a few yards of me.

  There were more sounds, sounds I couldn’t distinguish, and perhaps sounds that were too low for me to hear. There were so many ships heading for Los Angeles Harbor or traveling north or south along the California coast; maybe their sonar made so much noise that when the mother whale called her baby, he couldn’t hear her. Or maybe he was crying out for her and she couldn’t hear his cries. Maybe she was using her sonar to try to locate him, but with all the interference from the ships’ sonar and other sound waves moving through the water column, she couldn’t locate him.

  My lungs were burning, so I used large breaststroke pulls to return to the surface, releasing bubbles from my mouth and letting the water lift me back to the surface. I was disappointed. I had thought I would be able to find the baby whale. Maybe he had given up on me. Or maybe he was swimming far away in deeper water.

  I decided to swim out parallel to the jetty. Taking three large breaths I hyperventilated so I would have some extra air in my lungs. I kicked my heels over my head like I was doing a handstand on land and made large rounded breaststroke pulls so I could dive down quickly.

  As I pulled myself deeper into the water, the waves slowly bounced me up and down. It was like entering a mermaid’s world where color and light were transformed into liquid. I swam through colors, through liquid silvers, whites, yellows, greens, purples, and blues. It was like diving into bubbly white champagne, into clear gin, deeper into swaying walls of yellow chardonnay. The water grew colder and colder the deeper I dove. I passed into a world of shimmering julep green, through merlots and grape into heavier waters, and finally into deep water the color of blueberry juice.

  Sunlight became liquid too. Undulating beams of white and gold and silver light whorled and wavered around me as if I was lying in the center of a neon hula hoop. The deeper I dove the tighter my goggles felt, like they were squeezing into my eye sockets, and my head felt as if it was clamped in a vise and the pressure was twisting down on my head. My ears and sinuses hurt. Swallowing hard, I released the pressure and pulled past a large field of kelp that was rolling in and out with the surges, riding a liquid breeze. I dove deeper, until the liquid color faded into a soft baby blue.

  Using my hands like pectoral fins, making sculling motions like a goldfish, I turned slowly around in a circle. My blood was pulsing in my temples. My body felt squished in by the water pressure.

  Stay under just one more moment, I told myself. Look again. Turning around in the mermaid world, I strained to see something, but there was no sign of the baby whale.

  My lungs were on fire from my desperation to breathe, my head throbbing from the buildup in my blood of carbon dioxide that I couldn’t exhale—it increased the blood flow to my brain and my urgent drive to breathe. I shot back to the surface, hoping I could reach it before I ran out of air, before I blacked out from the lack of oxygen, and drowned. My ears were popping from the acute changes in pressure, my muscles ached from lack of oxygen, and my lungs felt like they were imploding and screeching for life.

  Three bubbles, two bubbles, one bubble—hold on to that last bubble. Intense pressure. Pain. One last huge silver bubble flew to the surface and burst.

  Gasping for breath, lying on my back, treading water, body one big ache, I breathed hard and fast. My heart was pounding and my head felt like it was about to explode. I lay there floating, trying to get my breath back to normal. Trying to get my heart rate down. Trying to get back in balance.

  One more time, I would try. But I knew I needed to rest for a few minutes. I needed to get the lactic acid out and more oxygen into my blood.

  Lifting my feet up, remembering to pretend that I had a quarter between my shoulder blades that I needed to press into the water, I floated, letting my mind relax to take the pressure out of my head. Looking up into a sky filled with the colors of Provence, the bright blue of the sky, the yellow of the sun, and the white of the clouds, I watched the clouds become beluga whales, angelfish, sticky macaroons, woolly llamas playing flutes, the summit of Mont Blanc, great cutter ships and white elephants and fluffy white house cats, furry borzois and the great Pyrenees. Floating like the clouds I rode the ocean currents.

  The water suddenly became gritty, discolored, earthy brown and red, flecked with shiny mica. I was in a small river of sand and silt, caught in a riptide flowing offshore. It was a small riptide, moving at only one knot or two, but in a few minutes, it had carried me two hundred yards offshore. I knew it was nothing to be afraid of; it’s only when you try to turn and swim directly into a rip that you have problems. If I needed to get into shore at any point, I could get out of the rip by just swimming fifty or a hundred yards parallel to shore, and then I could swim to shore. I enjoyed the free ride on the riptide into deeper water, and the trip gave me inspiration for a new plan.

  This time I would dive deeper and faster with the hope of finding the baby whale. Taking seven deep breaths, I dove and pulled as fast as my arms would move, and pulled myself down twenty-five feet. A school of bat rays were swimming in single file, flapping their wings, swimming right toward me. They grew bigger as they swam closer. From wing tip to wing tip they were five feet wide, and they must have weighed two hundred pounds each, maybe more. Their bodies were flat, their skin was smooth and like a surfer’s wet suit. Their heads were large and protruded in front of their fins.

  One bat ray swam within three feet of me. He moved gracefully, like an enormous newspaper rolling and unrolling. Six more bat rays followed in complete synchrony. They swam to a level ten feet above my head, revealing their white underbodies. They turned in toward shore where the water was warmer and climbed into the upper inches of water, skimming the light blue surface silhouetted by the rays of the sun, their long whiplike tails trailing behind.

  They looped back and dove, flying past me, one after the other as they flapped their fins fast, using the downward thrusts to move the silt on the ocean floor and uncover other stingrays and halibut hiding from predators. The bottom erupted as stingrays scurried by and bat rays closed the distance. Not wanting to leave, but needing to breathe, I turned and followed what was left of my bubble stream to the surface, trying to push the water downward rapidly with my arms the way the bat rays did.

  Snapping through the water’s taut surface, I rolled over onto my back and breathed fast and deeply.

  I didn’t stay there long. In the back of my mind I knew that if I didn’t find the baby whale soon, he might never find his mother, and even if he was with me, we might not find her. But still, there might be a way to help him.

  If I continued diving in the same place, over and over again, did I increase or decrease my chances of finding the baby whale? I wasn’t sure, but I decided to try something different. This time I swam two hundred yards farther offshore into a warm current. Taking three deep breaths, I bent in half and lifted my legs up over my head, pulled rapidly, and felt the water squeezing around my head like a vise that continued to tighten as I dove deeper. My heart was beating slowly in my throat. I pulled a few more strokes, and then sculled to hold myself in place.

  Two green sea turtles swam off to my right side. They were large, their carapaces mottled in patterns of browns, greens, blacks, and grays. They were about four feet long and could have weighed one hundred and fifty pounds. They had to be at least fifteen years old. And they were swimming slowly and easily. Their fore flippers were beating the water like wings and they weren’t in any hurry, carrying their homes along with them like aquatic RVs. They were amazing animals, able to hold their breath underwater for up to five hours, and they could make their hearts slow down so they beat at nine beats per minute. As they disappeared from view, I pulled back to the surface with a deep sense of gloom. There was no sign of the baby whale or his mother. What could I do now?

  Floating on my back trying to catch my breath and energy, choppy water rolling over my shoulders and arms, I stretched them out and let them float n
ear my head, tucked my chin to my chest to stretch the back of my neck, and then grabbed my knees with both hands and pulled them into my chest one at a time. Slowly I released them. That took the stress out of my back and I imagined that I was in a giant cradle rocking from side to side, with gentle waves rolling under me and massaging my back and shoulders.

  The wind blew through the funneling waves, transforming them into wind instruments. They were giant bassoons, tubas, trombones, piccolos, trumpets, flutes, clarinets, saxophones, French horns, B horns, C horns, and oboes. A symphony of the sea was playing. And the music the waves played grew louder, changed in tone, in pitch, and in length with their constantly changing shape and the amount of wind blowing through them.

  As the waves broke, a new movement emerged. The rush of the waves plucked the beach like the strings of a harp, making high, sweet notes. The swirling breezes strummed the water’s surface and the tiny wind waves sounded like the flowing notes of a piano.

  In the background the deep resonant clangs of the shipping buoys, plaintive cries of the seagulls, and calls of the willets became a part of this great sea symphony, and I enjoyed each movement until I heard an incessant high-pitched whine, like the outboard engine on my grandfather’s fishing boat.

  Quickly, I lifted my head and moved my arms fast, splashing them hard against the water to make myself more visible.

  I could tell by the way the skipper was holding the motor and peering over the bow of his boat that it was Carl. My mood immediately lifted. I raised my arm high above my head and waved. Carl was an old man who fished along the shores of Seal Beach and Long Beach. He used worms like my grandfather and sometimes lures, but he believed he caught the most fish with night crawlers. He had a compost pile at the back of his house where he tossed his grass clippings and vegetable peels, and he grew the longest night crawlers I’d ever seen.