Page 32 of The California Dreamers

31

Lost child

The next morning

Long before dawn the next day, after a fitful sleep, I wake with an overwhelming sense of pity for the Gull. It’s only a feeling, intense but disconnected from reason, I’m so groggy and tired. It takes me a moment to remember why I feel sorry for her—then I recall her stolen wings, her brutal paint job.

My second thought is how unusually cold my neck is. Normally, when I wake, it’s warm, with damp tendrils of hair stuck to it. Could it be true that I cut my hair yesterday, and dyed it dark to match my home? I reach up to my shorn head to confirm this, pull a piece down my forehead to check its color, and the ache for my long, wild white curls is so piercing I quickly rake my hair back. My whole body craves water. Water will make everything right again.

It’s hours until cereal and exercises, but I tiptoe outside and drag my half suit from the drying rack. I tug it down quickly, hating the flat black paint on the Gull, her winglessness. I turn my back on her as soon as I can. Water. Just get to the water. There, it won’t matter. I’ll forget yesterday, and how I caused all of this.

Cap’s already out here in the moonlight, his board hoisted overhead for the long walk down the beach. His eyes are on the horizon. Dark as it is, he’s scouting waves. I will do the same, scanning the ocean for possibilities, imitating Cap’s single-minded hunt.

I’m about to step into my wetsuit when I see it, not in the ocean but on the sand—a smooth, arched length of something shining. A mound of fish, opaline in the moonlight. But it’s not the right time of year for grunion.

I race toward it, barefoot, wearing only the T-shirt I slept in. I know from the sound before I see its frantic flipper, its great, rolling eye. It can’t be anything else, but still, there’s a moment of denial. Not thousands of fish—one mammal. A whale. Just a baby, surely, no more than ten feet long. Only the distance of my own body, a little more than five feet, separates it from the waterline, but the tide is ebbing fast and the creature has panicked, letting out a broken moan that’s pure ache, pure longing for home. It hurts to hear it, and I come close, push the wall of slippery flesh. I’ll never be able to move it alone.

“Someone! MamaGriff! Help!” It comes in desperate pants as I scoop water onto the animal, flicks it probably doesn’t even register as more than mist, but all I can think is it’s drowning in our air. It’s a windy night and they haven’t risen yet and the Gull’s far off—they won’t hear.

Cap. He’s barely a dot in the shallows, but I run, sloshing into the cold. “Cap!” I wave him down, and by a miracle he must glance back, maybe checking the wind in the trees to do some mysterious calculation, maybe giving one last thought to where his family sleeps. He sees me.

“Whale!” I yell, pointing. “Whale!”

I run back past the glistening hump of animal, up the steep trail to the Gull, and while minutes ago I couldn’t bear to look at her exterior, now I’m thrilled when her ugly, sloppily painted side comes into view. I rush up and pound on her door, and Griff appears, bleary-eyed.

“Beached,” I pant. “Blankets. Beached whale. Help us. Wake them up.”

Awareness dawns on his tired face and Griff jolts into action. He stuffs his sheet and a blanket into my arms and I fly back down to the water to drench them, drape the sopping fabric on the whale’s side.

Cap is next to the animal on his knees, digging furiously. A grave, no—a trough. He’s trying to make a chute from its body to the ocean.

“Good,” he says, helping me spread the wet blankets. “They’re coming?”

“Yes.”

Cap digs, I run back and forth to the water’s edge, soaking the blanket.

Then Mama is there, digging, cooing to the poor lost child.

Dyl’s here, too. Then the twins. Every piece of fabric we own is sopping. Every towel, blanket, sheet. Dig, soothe, soak, squeeze, drape. Over and over. Now the whale’s inside two troughs, but they’re not nearly deep enough to draw water and it seems impossible.

Cap—“We need more people. Mag, you go.”

Mag is the fastest runner. He’s gone forever while we five dig, soothe, soak, squeeze, drape.

People come. Our people. Mag has roused the couple who live in an alley lean-to behind the bait shop, and the wiry man with the braided gray beard who never talks to anyone but collects cans all day and sleeps under the pier. Five or six others. Then more. More panting, voices I know and most I don’t, saying “poor thing” and “it’s still alive,” more strange hands digging desperately next to mine.

“Did you call them?” someone asks.

“Yes. Number on the pier.”

“A juvenile. Sperm whale?”

“Yes. Female, almost two tons, I’d guess. Poor thing.”

Dig, soak, squeeze, drape.

“There, there, baby,” Mama coos.

“Close now,” Cap says.

But mostly, we work in silence. The dozen of us roused from sleep, a small group of people who avoid people. Drench sheets, drape it, towels, the trenches beginning to fill, dig dig dig.

Just as I think I can’t carry one more sodden blanket—my shoulders ache like my arms will fall off my body and surely, surely we cannot outrun the tide—a trickle of water touches the great creature’s flank. Then it’s a channel six feet wide.

“Faster!” I yell.

“Close now, baby,” Mama murmurs.

Jubilation—it’s moving.

Someone urges, “Give it a second.”

“Don’t stop now.”

“Okay, give it space. All together on three. One, two, good. Leave it room.”

We push with everything we have, helping it along as it flounders, a graceless and desperate shimmy of its torso. We heave, its fin hits water, then one whole side, then it’s in, and as it submerges, we hold our breath, watching. One wrong flick of its exhausted, confused body and it will surge back onto land, farther than before, somewhere beyond our help. But it disappears into the waves just as the first light hits the water. A fragment of fin, a shared sigh as if every one of us on land can feel the great fish’s relief.

By the time the ranger comes in his truck full of gear, the animal is at sea.

He nods. “Would’ve been too late.” He seems like a kind man, but the others scatter, wary of his badge.

I watch our bedraggled group break up, a patchwork family I didn’t know I had.

***

The six of us stay close all day. We skip exercises—the only time except El Zafiro that has happened. We’re limp and shivering after our rescue mission, but the water calls. Mama surfs with us, which she rarely does, and for hours, before the tourists come, we make our own private lineup. Nobody mentions the morning, and I think—I hope—it’s because they feel like I do. They don’t want to break the spell. In bright sun, it seems like something out of one of the bedtime stories I spin for Dyl, moonlight and magic and mythical creatures. There’s a sunburned family sprawled out where the whale was, their red Igloo cooler and towels right where it got beached.

As I float next to Mama, she sees me looking over my shoulder at that spot and smiles in understanding but says only, “My watchful Little Seal.”

Finally, exhausted, the six of us head to the Gull for a nap.

I hoist Dyl up to our bunk, climb after him and settle in close. It feels like nighttime, I’m so tired, but it’s not even midmorning. Dyl curls on his side next to me, yawns once, and he’s out, his warm body a small c inside my big C. Behind me come the familiar creaks and shivers of Mag and Griff climbing up to their own separate bunks, rustling into their covers. Cap and Mama crawl up the ladder into their room over the Gull’s driver’s seat.

Outside, there’s the usual noise of beachgoers revving up for the afternoon. Distant radios, kids crying. Is it the weekend? It doesn’t matter to us.

Mama and Cap murmur, laugh, go quiet.

I stare at the vanilla wall that hides my sleeping parents. Dyl’s body is slack, he’s deep in a dream, and Mag and Griff are already snoring, but I’m wide awake. I can’t stop thinking of the creature we saved. Her cry of fear, and that huge, rolling eye. How scared she was to lose her bearings.

And how lucky we are, the six of us, together and safe in our home.

I haven’t thought about my hair, or the Gull’s disguise, all day.

The whale, so much bigger and more important than a little picture. Everything will be all right.

***

That night we string our hammocks up in the trees, close enough to hear each other if we call. It is warm, but not so hot that hammocks are necessary. Cap thinks it’s smarter to sleep here at night for a while, just until we know the paint job has worked. We can keep an eye on the Gull and any trouble that might arise in the night.

“Just to be safe,” he says.

As I’m getting Dyl settled, he whispers, “Ro.”

“Yes?”

“We float. We float AND we glide.”

It’s such a happy thought that I whistle. I’m only whistling to Dyl, who’s in the tree with Mama, next to me, so close that when one of them turns a puff of wind comes to me.

He returns my whistle, long and low, who-whoooooo…hoooo . The stress on the second syllable, a croon that was made up so long ago. It’s pretty, musical, so I think Mama invented it.

Then someone else whistles. Mag or Griff. Mama—her whistle is as pretty as her voice. Then Cap.

Swaying in the cradle of my hammock, listening to his low whistle in the dark, I regret every time I’ve disobeyed his rules. I don’t want a different father. I’ll always choose Cap over some soul-dead citizen.

I won’t use the camera again. It’s hidden in the Gull, inside the wall behind our bunk, but as soon as I get the chance I’ll paddle far out before dawn and throw it into the ocean. Mental pictures will be enough.

I start the whistles again. A little shy. But they all follow. Then someone else starts it.

We go on like this. Five, six times. Dyl dares, next, his excitement palpable in how he holds himself, rigid, waiting for the answers.

It’s cool up here. The air is fresh and sweet, and tomorrow stretches ahead, and I’m glad to be in a new place. When it’s hot, go in the ocean. When it turns cold, get cozy in the Gull.

Grouchy? Hang up a hammock and trade whistles.

I feel sorry for any family who thinks they need more.

This is my cul-de-sac. I smile at the thought, picturing our circle glimpsed from above by a night bird. A ring of bodies. The navy blue rope hammocks wouldn’t show up in the picture; probably, they’d melt into the dark night. This is my quiver, except it’s a quiver of six, and it’s all-year-round. We are each other’s home.

Mama floats away, but she floats back right when you need her most.

We float, we glide, we need no one else.