IT TOOK FRIDAY more than two weeks to fully recover, and the whale team was never quite the same. Ivy spent more and more time back in Friday Harbor, and talked Libertine into taking Julio Iglesias, at least on a trial basis. Her exact words were, “He may be an asshole, but he deserves to be a happy asshole.”
In turn, Libertine got Truman’s permission to bring him to the pool every day as, of all things, a therapy dog. Gabriel jury-rigged a set of steps so the dog could climb into the deep-silled office window looking into the pool and snooze on his very own fleece, where Friday could watch him. Whenever someone went upstairs to work with the whale, Julio Iglesias liked to noodle around the concrete deck in a little orange flotation vest, peeing on his regular stations—the two big coolers, the railing uprights, the ozone tower—and any pile of new gear he might find up there.
Libertine had watched the dog and Friday play the same game of Follow Me that the whale had first developed with six-year-old Nicolle on Christmas Day. But one day she called Gabriel, Truman, and Neva on the radio and told them breathlessly to drop whatever they were doing and come to the pool top immediately—and bring the video camera. Gabriel and Neva were just downstairs and raced up with snorkels and swim fins as well as the camera; impressively, Truman arrived from his office in less than five minutes.
There, riding on one of Friday’s pectoral flippers, was Julio Iglesias.
“I’ll be damned!” hooted Gabriel. “Julio, you dog, you!”
Julio Iglesias looked back with his enigmatic Garbo eyes.
Libertine appointed herself videographer, saying, “Ivy would never believe me.” On the camera screen she saw Julio Iglesias sit down on the smooth, shiny, six-foot-long black flipper, neatly tucking his tail over the tops of his front paws. Even when Friday set sail across the pool, the dog seemed entirely untroubled. Libertine filmed for nine full minutes before Friday swam to the side and the dog daintily disembarked. With Truman’s permission, Libertine uploaded the video to YouTube, giving it the title Friendship, Big and Small. By the next morning it had gone viral, receiving 1,442,337 hits, and that day the zoo saw more visitors than any other single day in its history.
Thinking that Friday might like to watch more animals, Truman requested from Netflix a year’s worth of Flipper episodes, but, disappointingly, neither Julio Iglesias nor the whale turned out to be interested.
“He probably doesn’t like it because it’s fake,” said Johnson Johnson, who, once the Oat Maiden was closed for the night, had come back to the pool with Libertine.
“What do you mean?” Gabriel said.
“Well, it’s a movie,” said Johnson Johnson.
Gabriel looked at Libertine for elaboration, as happened more and more often.
“The characters aren’t real,” Libertine explained. “So the story isn’t real. Julio Iglesias is real.”
“He certainly is,” said Gabriel. The dog was sound asleep on the windowsill, snoring.
AS LIBERTINE AND Johnson Johnson drove home, she was newly aware of a tiny but persistent presence that had been in her head intermittently since morning. Something was in trouble. “I need to make a detour,” she told Johnson Johnson. “I keep sensing something. Do you?”
“No.”
She tracked the presence all the way to their block, and then coasted along slowly. Three houses down from Johnson Johnson’s, she pulled over to the curb and stopped. “It’s right here somewhere. Help me look.” She fished a flashlight out of her glove compartment.
Together they peered into bushes and up trees. “It’s right here,” Libertine said in frustration, and then Johnson Johnson knelt down and, with infinite care, parted the lower branches of a dripping rhododendron.
“What is it?”
“Look,” breathed Johnson Johnson. “Oh, look!” He reached for a kitten that Libertine estimated was no more than four weeks old. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
It was not beautiful. It was soaking wet and filthy and one eye was stuck shut. Johnson Johnson placed it very carefully in the breast pocket of his flannel shirt. “Do you think we can take it home?”
“I’m sure we can,” said Libertine. “It’s been in distress all day, and clearly no one’s claimed it. Though how it got stuck in a bush I can’t imagine.”
“Let’s call it Winken,” said Johnson Johnson, pulling up his shirttails and packing them around his pocket to further warm the kitten.
Libertine smiled. “That’s a very good name.”
“Yes,” said Johnson Johnson. “That way, when we get another one we can call it Blinken. Well, or Nod.”
As soon as they got home, he carried the kitten into the kitchen like a precious gem while Libertine rounded up several clean dish towels. Together they unwrapped her—the kitten turned out to be a girl—and set her on a dish towel on the counter. She was even younger than they’d guessed in the dark, no more than three weeks and quite possibly less. They buffed her dry and Johnson Johnson warmed some milk while Libertine went out to her apartment and found an eyedropper.
“Sit,” she said, pouring the warm milk into a mug and bringing Johnson Johnson and the kitten into the living room, where Chocolate and Chip were out cold on a couple of wall shelves. Once he’d sat down, Libertine pulled up a little milk in the eyedropper, put the thinnest dish towel over the end, and let the milk soak it before she put the eyedropper near the kitten’s mouth. The kitten latched on immediately, pulling the milk down until it was gone.
“She’s hungry. I bet she was in that bush all day,” Johnson Johnson said, and his voice caught. “Someone should get in trouble for doing that.”
“I agree,” said Libertine. “But the good thing is, she’s very strong. She was in my mind for hours and hours before we found her. That means if we take good care of her, she’ll be just fine.”
Johnson Johnson nodded soberly: Libertine had learned that he liked things to be just fine. Impulsively, she kissed him on the top of his head and went back to the kitchen to rewarm the milk.
BEING BACK IN Friday Harbor had been even harder than Ivy had expected it to be. She felt cut off, cranky, and unmoored, and she missed Julio Iglesias, incredible as that seemed. She also missed Friday; even more than that, she missed Gabriel. But at the same time, something in her had uncoupled during that last night they’d all been together at the Oat Maiden. It came down to this: she’d given Gabriel godlike abilities to heal the sick and bridge the seemingly unbridgeable gap between two species; but he’d turned out to be a mercenary, not a savior. She simply could not reconcile his gift for making animals well with his equal and opposite willingness to capture their babies, selling them to the highest bidder without so much as a flicker of conscience.
So she busied herself with giving the house a thorough cleaning, washing the screens that she installed in the windows every spring. She donated several thousand dollars to the Whale Museum, which reinstated her as an educational docent, who would talk to giddy tourists and groups of middle school students about the cetaceans living in the Straits of Juan de Fuca and the Puget Sound. She had over to dinner the young couple who’d recently moved into the house two doors down from hers; she played bridge. It was all shallow busywork, of course, but gradually she regained her equilibrium, going so far as to begin planning a trip to Cairo.
But in late April she got a call from Libertine, who said, “I miss you. I don’t understand why you feel like you have to be in exile.”
“I’m not in exile,” said Ivy. “Look, that was never my life.”
“We miss you—all of us do. It’s hard to know what to tell Julio Iglesias. He doesn’t understand.”
Ivy snorted. “Of all the people who don’t miss me, Julio Iglesias would top the list.”
“You don’t understand love,” said Libertine. “You don’t understand it at all. It’s staring you right in the face and you can’t see it.”
“Oh, so Julio Iglesias loves me now?”
“I wasn’t talking about Julio Iglesias.”
“No?” said Ivy.
“No.”
“You?”
“Yes, me,” said Libertine. “You’re funny and you’re brave and you’re not afraid to make people angry when you defend an opinion. I love that about you.”
“You know you just defined the word blabbermouth, right?”
Sounding exasperated, Libertine said, “And you say I can’t take a compliment.”
Ivy felt a warm wave sweeping up from her toes to her noggin-top. She said, “I don’t know what to say.”
“Well, I do. Say you’ll come back and stay sometimes.”
“You all have jobs,” Ivy protested. “You have a place to go, and work to do. I just write checks. I can do that from anywhere.”
“Not as well as from here.”
“Liar,” said Ivy.
“Curmudgeon,” replied Libertine. “Look, maybe this isn’t the time to say it, but I have a plan.”
“Here we go,” said Ivy.
“I know you don’t like staying with your brother and sister-in-law, so when you come down you can have my apartment.”
“And where will you go?”
“I’ll just stay at the house.”
“With Johnson Johnson?”
“Yes.”
“No kidding!” Ivy said, beginning to grin. “And you’ve been keeping this to yourself? I have stayed away too long.”
“Stop,” said Libertine. “He’s a good man who can use a little company from time to time.”
“And that company would be you?”
“Not usually, no—just every now and then.”
“Well, he’s a lucky man.”
“Anyway, come down. Please?” A long beat went by. “You aren’t going to, are you.”
“Nope,” said Ivy.
“Did something happen? I haven’t done something, have I? Sometimes I do and I don’t even know.”
“Honey, you’re perfect in every way. I just need to live my own life for a little while. I love being in the thick of that group, but it’s not real. This is real—up here.”
“We seem pretty real to me,” Libertine said.
“You know what I mean.”
ON JUNE 24, the zoo celebrated the first anniversary of Friday’s arrival at the zoo. In celebration, Truman ordered half a dozen enormous sheet cakes with Friday’s image sculpted in the frosting, and put the cakes in the zoo lobby for the visitors to share. Attendance continued to climb. One month earlier, Truman had released Ivy from any financial obligation to subsidize Friday, since the extra revenue he had brought in was more than enough to maintain him.
“So are you coming down for the black-and-white gala, at least?” Truman asked Ivy, who’d declined to be present for a series of anniversary-related educational activities at the zoo. The gala was a fund-raiser that would benefit the board-adopted Greater Good Fund. After a long beat he said, “You’re not coming, are you?”
“No,” said Ivy, “but I was thinking about something else. How about the next weekend you all come up here and stay overnight? We’ll have our own anniversary celebration! I’ve already talked to Sam about whether he and Corinna and Reginald will come, but he said Corinna doesn’t travel. Coming up here isn’t exactly my idea of traveling, but if they prefer to stay home anyway, I asked Sam if he’d mind feeding Friday so everyone else can come. He said he’d be happy to do it.”
So at the agreed-upon time, Ivy met the ferry and picked up Gabriel, Truman, Neva, Winslow, Libertine, Johnson Johnson, and Julio Iglesias. It was a brilliantly sunny day and from Ivy’s living room Haro Strait looked like hammered silver, lively and bright. A pod of killer whales had been working the water just off the island all morning. Ivy gave Winslow her grandfather’s binoculars and pointed them out.
“Whoa!” Winslow said. “I wonder what Friday would say, if he could see them?”
“I can’t imagine,” said Ivy. “Sometimes seeing them out there makes me sad for him.”
“Don’t be,” said Gabriel, who must have overheard her. “He wasn’t even from here, and if you ever went through a North Atlantic storm, you’d think again.”
“Yeah, but don’t they stay underwater?” said Winslow.
“Sure, most of the time. But they need to breathe. In a force-five storm, the wind picks up water and flings it.”
“Cool,” said Winslow.
“Not if you’re out in it. Not if you’re on a boat,” said Gabriel.
“Really?” Winslow said enthusiastically. “Do you get seasick?”
“No, but everybody else I know does.”
“I bet I would,” said Winslow.
“I bet you would, too,” said Truman, taking up the binoculars Winslow had set down and looking out over the water.
“I threw up on the up-and-over ride at the state fair last year,” Winslow admitted ruefully.
“Is it just me, or is talking about throwing up before a wonderful meal a bad idea?” asked Neva. “Come on, let’s see if Ivy needs any help.”
So Winslow set the table and everyone else ferried heaping bowls of fresh steamer clams, crabs, fish stew, salads, rolls, and a whole, glorious grilled salmon. Julio Iglesias, who’d been closely watching the parade of delicacies from the living room, caught Ivy’s eye, and unleashed a mighty pee on the carpet.
“Oh, you little bastard!” she cried, going to the kitchen to get a wad of paper towels. Julio Iglesias hooded his eyes and trotted over to Libertine, hopping into her lap as soon as she sat down at the table.
“He just trying to get your attention,” said Libertine.
“Oh, he’s got it, all right,” said Ivy grimly, brandishing a wooden mixing spoon at him. “He’ll have it all the way to the laundry room.” But she failed to make good on her threat, instead fixing him a plate with bits of fish, wheat roll, pasta salad, and freshly steamed asparagus with hollandaise sauce, which caused the dog to leave Libertine immediately for the spot in the kitchen formerly reserved for his supper dish. When Ivy came back alone, she said, “His bed’s still in there, too. If he knows what’s good for him, he’ll eat himself into a stupor and take a nap.”
Once all the dishes had been passed and plates were heaping, Ivy said, “So catch me up! What’s the news? And speaking of that, how’s dear Martin?”
“You know, he actually got an interview with the Huffington Post,” Truman told her. “You’d have thought he’d won a Pulitzer. Apparently his exposé on the Friends of Animals of the Sea was picked up by the wire services and got quite a bit of play. Trina Beemer has become a persona non grata lately. I guess she didn’t get the organization’s go-ahead before she poisoned our boy.”
“Hey, they’re gone!” said Winslow, turning around in his chair and peering through the binoculars.
“Who?” said Ivy.
“The pod! The killer whales. I don’t see them anymore.”
“They’re probably following a school of fish,” Gabriel said.
“Okay, never mind the whales,” said Ivy, who had had several strong whiskey and sodas by then. “I want to propose a toast.”
“Go,” said Gabriel.
She raised her glass. “Here’s to the best people in the world. I’m honored to have you all under my roof and hope that good health, buoyancy, and wisdom follow you to the end of your days.”
“Amen,” said Gabriel.
“Hear, hear,” said Truman.
They ate until they were groaning. The conversations around the table were lively, fueled by good food, good wine, and good company. Only Libertine seemed withdrawn. Ivy tried to engage her, but she kept lapsing into a pensive silence. When she and Ivy were alone in the kitchen, loading dishes into the dishwasher, Ivy said to her irritably, “What’s with you, anyway? You’re way too quiet. It’s a holiday. Be festive, for god’s sake.”
“I’m sorry,” said Libertine. “I didn’t realize. I’ve been hearing something I can’t understand. Would it be rude if I go for a walk?”
“If it’ll cheer you up, by all means go. You’re lousy company anyway.”
“I think I’ll see if Winslow wants to come along. I might need some help.”
Then she walked into the living room without further explanation, and even Ivy knew enough to let it go.
THE GOOD WEATHER window had slammed shut and a light mist was falling, so the two zipped up anoraks and, at Libertine’s suggestion, headed down to the little beach at the foot of Ivy’s property, which fronted a pocket-sized bay. The Sound was cold and crystal clear; Libertine could see a few tiny crabs scrabbling along the rocks, and small fish flitted back and forth under cover of a few fronds of kelp. But none of this was what she’d come for. She’d been hearing an animal in great distress since arriving this morning, and from the time the killer whale pod moved out of sight, it had gotten louder and louder.
“I need you to help me,” she told Winslow. “You know those whales you were watching? Something’s wrong with one of them. I don’t know what, but it’s a young animal, and it’s scared. We need to find it.”
“Really?” said Winslow. “How do you know that?”
“I just do. Does Ivy have a boat or something?”
“No,” said Winslow. “Dad says the whole family’s afraid of drowning. Isn’t that weird?”
“All right,” Libertine said, ignoring the added commentary. “It’s close—we should be able to see it if we look in the right place.”
Winslow quickly scanned the little bay. “There’s nothing here.”
“I know. That’s why we need to walk. I want to go around that little point. It looks like we can get there if we go up into the woods. Up and over. I think there’s another little inlet on the other side.”
Winslow went first, holding branches out of the way for Libertine.
“Thank you,” she said. “You’re just like your father—a gentleman.” She was silent for a minute. “You don’t feel anything, by any chance? In your head?”
“No. You do?”
“Yes,” said Libertine. “I’ve been feeling something young and in trouble ever since we got here. I think it’s in the water near here. And it’s so afraid!”
They broke through the trees and found themselves on the shore of another tiny inlet. This beach, like Ivy’s, was littered with bleached driftwood that looked, in Libertine’s feverish mind, like the bones of giants. Libertine grabbed Winslow’s sleeve. “Look!” she cried. “Oh, look.”
A tiny killer whale, no more than ten feet long, floated just off the shore.
“Is it dead?” said Winslow. But then the calf took a small, light breath.
“What’s the matter with it?” Winslow said. “Why didn’t it go with the rest of them? Do you think it’s lost?”
“I don’t know. No, I don’t think it’s lost, but there’s some reason why the pod abandoned it. We need to get Gabriel. I’ll stay here and try to keep it calm, if you’ll go back. Go! Go!”
Even Winslow could hear the calf’s keening, high and piercing. He turned around and ran.
WHILE WINSLOW WAS gone Libertine tried to soothe the animal, but it had gone beyond her reach, just as Friday had so many months ago. She stayed at the water’s edge anyway, trying to send soothing energy until Gabriel, Neva, and Winslow appeared at last, followed by Truman, Ivy, and Johnson Johnson. Gabriel climbed down out of the woods and sat on a weather-smoothed driftwood log.
“For heaven’s sake,” Ivy cried after a few minutes. “Aren’t you going to do something?”
“I am doing something,” Gabriel snapped. “I’m watching.”
“It’s so small,” Libertine said.
“You’re comparing it to Friday. He’s a full-grown male; this animal’s probably a year old, plus or minus. So of course it’s small.”
“Why is it here?” Ivy asked.
“Could be lots of reasons. Maybe it’s injured. Maybe it’s sick. Maybe it has a parasite load that’s killing it.”
“It’s been abandoned,” Libertine said.
“Obviously,” Gabriel said. “What we need to know is why. I need to take a closer look before we lose the light.” He turned to Ivy. “Do you think the Whale Museum has wet suits, fins, and snorkels we can borrow?”
“I’m sure they do. I’ll call the executive director.”
“See if we can get three sets of everything, one for Neva, one for Libertine, and one for me. Make sure he understands it’s an emergency,” Gabriel said, “because we may need people to help. And a small boat and fishing net long enough to stretch across the mouth of the inlet.”
“Aye-aye, cap’n,” said Ivy.
Then Libertine overheard Truman whisper to Winslow, “Go with her, okay? Make sure she doesn’t slip or fall or anything.”
“Is she drunk?”
“No. Well, yes, but she seems functional. Just stay with her. If she has to go into town to pick things up, come get me. I don’t want her driving.”
“No kidding,” said Winslow.
AN HOUR LATER the three were suited up and ready to get in the water. The island was small and Ivy well-known; people came out of the woodwork to see if they could help, until a small crowd had gathered behind the band of driftwood.
With a mask, snorkel, and fins, Gabriel swam slowly and quietly toward the calf. It regarded him with darting, panicky eyes but stayed put as he circled, examining its skin and pectoral flippers and flukes—and there he found the problem. Most of its left fluke and a part of its right one were gone. The injury looked like it was a day or two old; his guess was that it had probably been caught in a boat propeller. The severity of the wound would have made it almost impossible to keep up with the pod.
He reached out and touched the animal lightly on the back, and when it flinched he whispered, “It’s going to be okay,” and returned to the beach to explain the problem.
“Is it a boy? Girl? How old do you think it is?” Neva asked.
“I don’t know if it’s male or female, but it’s a year old, plus or minus.”
“So what’ll happen to it?” asked Ivy.
“Here? Death,” said Gabriel. “Especially because it’s still young and probably hasn’t mastered eating on his own. Mom may still be nursing it, if she isn’t pregnant again.”
He and Neva locked eyes. “Could we?” she asked.
“Maybe,” Gabriel said. “We’ll need a permit, but I think I can get that pushed through tomorrow. And we’ll need to run bloods and a blowhole swab. And fecal, if we can get it.”
“What are you talking about?” said Ivy, looking from one to the other.
“That’s all doable, isn’t it?” said Neva.
“Will someone tell me what the hell is going on?” Ivy cried.
Gabriel turned to her. “If the calf’s in good enough shape, we might be able to bring him to the zoo.”
Ivy drew in a quick breath. “You mean to live with Friday?”
“Maybe—maybe. With the injury he has, he’s certainly not releasable.”
“Oh, man!” said Ivy. “Oh man, oh man, oh man.”
“Don’t get ahead of things,” Gabriel cautioned. “We have to keep it alive first. Do you know anyone at the urgent care here?”
“I know everyone,” said Ivy.
“Then see if they have a lab that can analyze some samples—and if they can, ask them to give you lab supplies—tonight, even if it means they have to bring someone in. You’d be willing to pay for that, right?”
“Hah!” Ivy said. “In a heartbeat.” She turned to Truman and said, “Come with me. You’re going to be driving. I damned near went into a ditch on the way to the museum.”
“I told Winslow to make sure you didn’t drive.”
“I know,” she said. “That’s why I made him stay home.”
IVY BELIEVED THAT every now and then, and usually when you least expected it, the universe looked out for its own. In the rapidly fading light, with the help of a Boston Whaler, Gabriel and Neva stretched a fishing net so the calf was contained for the night. Once it was in place they waded out and hydrated it with tubing, lubricant, and a funnel Ivy had found for them along with lab materials and the promise that a tech would stand by to analyze the samples as soon as they were brought in the next morning. Gabriel reached the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife guy in charge of permitting, with whom he’d worked for decades tagging seals and sea lions. He promised he’d push the paperwork through the next day, as long as a zoo representative was available to sign off. He also promised to loan them the transport gear, provided that Gabriel would vouch for the fact that it would come back promptly.
Having done all they could until daybreak, they each took turns checking on the calf throughout the evening, listening in the darkness for his breathing. Finally Gabriel sent everyone to bed, stressing that the next day was likely to be long and punishing.
But instead of going to her room, Ivy poured freshly brewed coffee and a generous measure of Bushmills Irish Whiskey into a thermos, pulled on a heavy sweater—the nights were cold here even in the height of summer—and tugged a windproof anorak over that. Then she stuck Julio Iglesias and an inflatable cushion into a canvas bag and, sweating fiercely, emerged from the house just a few minutes shy of midnight.
The sky had cleared, and a full moon lit up the band of bleached driftwood on the beach. She struggled her way to the next-door bay, where she could make out the calf’s silhouetted dorsal fin, motionless in the moonlight. She froze until she heard its pneumatic exhale and inhale. Then she blew up the inflatable cushion, set Julio Iglesias on his feet, and lowered herself onto a driftwood log. There she listened to the calf breathe, all the way until morning; if it died in the night, at least someone would have borne witness to its passing. When first light came and it was still alive, she struggled to her feet, stuffed the empty thermos, Julio Iglesias, and her deflating cushion into the canvas bag, and climbed up to the house prepared to fix breakfast and brew up a large pot of coffee strong enough to strip paint.
The household was already stirring when she came in. Gabriel had found eggs, cheese, bacon, and scallions in the refrigerator and was cooking; Winslow was manning the toaster; and Truman had found and brewed coffee and was getting glasses and orange juice out on the table. Neva was making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in case they didn’t have time to stop for lunch later, and Libertine had run Johnson Johnson to the ferry, since he had promised his wait-staff he’d be back at the Oat Maiden by three o’clock that afternoon. Ivy told Gabriel that the calf had had an uneventful night, at least from the sounds of his breathing.
“That was some dumb move, going alone,” he chastised her. “You could have broken an ankle out there, and no one would have known until morning.”
“Now, see?” she agreed. “That’s exactly what I thought.”
“So?” said Gabriel.
“I decided not to listen.”
BY THE END of breakfast, they’d all agreed to name the calf, a male, San Juan—Juan, for short—to commemorate the place where they’d found him. They spent the rest of the morning preparing the stretcher and transport box that Gabriel’s Department of Fish and Wildlife contact had ferried over on the back of a small flatbed truck, and loading up the calf. Truman, with Gabriel, drove the truck onto the 12:10 ferry.
As Gabriel had laid out for them on San Juan Island before they’d left, they would acclimatize the calf in an above-ground, circular fiberglass pool in the zoo’s holding area, which had once been used to house waterfowl while their exhibit was being upgraded. Neva now offered to take the overnight shift, but Gabriel wanted to be there to monitor the calf through the night.
AT FOUR ON the nose the next morning, Neva, already wearing a wet suit, arrived at the pool and climbed in with two Dunkin’ Donuts to-go cups of coffee held high.
“You’re an angel,” Gabriel said.
“If I were an angel, I’d have brought donuts, too. I ran out of money.” She pushed her way through the four-foot-deep water until she’d come alongside Gabriel. Though it wasn’t quite as cold as Friday’s pool, she still shuddered.
Gabriel set his coffee cup on a little deck on one side of the pool, beside a length of flexible tubing, funnel, and two gallons of water. “I want to hydrate him before I go.” With Neva’s help, Gabriel gaped the calf’s mouth with a dowel as thick as a broomstick and fed the lubricated tubing down his throat and into his stomach without difficulty. In less than five minutes they’d poured two gallons of fresh water and electrolytes down his throat.
“Good,” Gabriel said. “We’ll feed him in an hour or so.”
“So what am I going to be doing, exactly?” Neva asked.
“Walking,” Gabriel said. “You’re going to be walking. This kid doesn’t know about walls, so unless we protect him he’ll swim right into them. I want him between you and the wall, so he can get used to its being there, but you’ll be directing him.”
“Won’t echolocation tell him where they are?”
“Sure, but when the sound bounces back at him he’s not going to have any idea what it means.”
“So, the walking.”
“Yep. Around and around. Okay, come all the way up to him.”
The calf blew out a loud pneumatic huff. Despite all the time she’d spent with Friday, and the calf’s relatively tiny size, Neva jumped and then laughed at herself. “Why is his white skin yellow? Is that bad?”
“Nope, normal for a young calf. He’ll whiten up later.”
“It’s funny to see his dorsal fin standing straight up. Poor Friday.”
“Okay, let’s show you what you’re going to be doing,” Gabriel said.
“Can I just take a look at his flukes first? I haven’t had the chance.” At Gabriel’s nod, she held a diving mask up to her face and looked underwater, coming up grimacing. “Oh, man,” she said. “The poor guy. Do you think it still hurts?”
“I’m sure it does, but at least the young ones tend to heal quickly.” Gabriel stepped away from the calf, indicating that Neva should take his place. “You’ll hold him this way”—he positioned her arms so they formed parentheses around Juan just behind his pectoral flippers—“and let him move as freely as you can, but keep him from making contact with the sides. That’s it—that’s all there is to it. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Good,” Gabriel said. “I’ll be back in about an hour, and I’ll bring fish with me, so we can begin getting him used to being hand-fed. Sam said he’d come down and keep you company. Have him call me on the radio if you need anything.”
GABRIEL HAD A yawning fit on his way back to Friday’s pool. As soon as he turned on the office lights Friday appeared in the window, and Gabriel banged on it with a flat palm, in greeting. The whale was looking for an indication that it was breakfast time, and when he saw none he swam off into the gloom. Gabriel had intended to do fish house, so Friday and Juan had food for the day, but what he did do was climb onto a desktop and roll onto his back, and rather than drift into sleep, fell into it headlong, as though from a high cliff.
He was getting old for these animal transport marathons.
Until the calf came into the picture, he’d intended to tell Truman that he’d be moving on just after the first of the year. Neva and Libertine had come along nicely, and there were any number of experienced marine mammal keepers who’d kill to join them. Gabriel wasn’t interested in maintaining exhibits and animals; exhausting though it was, he’d take a good crisis any day. Emergencies brought out the best in him.
He awoke from an hour’s deep and dreamless sleep abruptly, looking up to see Friday in the window, peering down at him and blowing air-bubble rings from his blowhole. Gabriel smiled. He would miss Friday; he was a one-in-a-million whale. But once the calf was settled into the pool, Gabriel suspected that Friday wouldn’t need any of them as much. Bringing up an orphan would keep him busy for years—for the rest of his life, presumably, unless something unexpected happened. Gabriel was sure he’d be good at it, too.
Now, getting up stiffly, he mentally amended his departure date to Labor Day. That should give them all plenty of time. In the meantime, he’d get in touch with a few of the young keepers he’d trained and see who might be interested in a position.
SAM ARRIVED AT the holding pool at 6:00 A.M., carrying a Dunkin’ Donuts box.
“Oh, yum,” Neva said. “You’re the best.”
Sam held up a thermos. “Brought coffee, too,” he said.
“Great minds think alike,” Neva said. “Me, too.”
Sam laid a custard-filled donut—her favorite—on the rim of the pool. The calf was awake and moving, so she took a bite whenever they came around to that spot in the pool.
“You think you’ll have to keep him in this little pool much longer?” Sam asked her.
“Gabriel’s hoping we can move him into the med pool tomorrow. Isn’t he the most beautiful thing? I’m totally in love.”
“Yes, ma’am, he is. Hard to see him as a baby, though. He’s awful big.”
“It’s all relative. He’s less than half Friday’s size.”
With surprising speed, Neva discovered the tedium and discomfort of walking the calf. Half an hour after she’d gotten in, he stopped moving and hung quietly in the water, pecs and flukes drooping, eyes closed, dozing. Neva scratched slow, light circles around his head and blowhole to get him used to being touched and petted. She shifted from foot to foot; she windmilled her arms, trying to stay warm. Her numb hands ached, she had started shivering, and her muscles had begun to burn.
“Sam,” she said over her shoulder. “Talk to me. Distract me. I’m dying here. It’s been, what, two hours since Gabriel left?”
Sam consulted his watch. “One hour, three minutes.”
“Dear god.”
“Time flies, huh?”
“I wish,” Neva said, and then, to distract herself, she said, “You know, I’ve been wanting to ask how Reginald’s doing.”
“He’s good. Boy’s got a lot to learn, though.”
“Such as?”
“How not to talk back, for one thing. He sasses his teachers sometimes, tells them when they’re wrong about things. Boy’s smart as a whip, so it turns out he’s usually right and they’re usually wrong, but that don’t make it good manners. Plus he does love a good argument. You could say the sky is blue and he’d argue it’s green, just for something to do. Must have driven his aunt crazy. He and Corinna, though, they’re thick as thieves. Plus she hugs on him. He pretends it embarrasses him, but he loves it. Don’t think he got too many hugs in his life. Or love, for that matter.”
“Well, he’s got plenty now. That’s the important thing.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Sam. “It is.”
AT TRUMAN’S INVITATION Martin Choi arrived at the pool at seven fifteen. Truman met him in the killer whale office, as they’d agreed. As they walked from there across the back area to the holding pool, Truman said portentously, “Martin, the zoo and Friday need your help.”
“Yeah?”
“We need you to tell the world this little whale’s story.” Truman stopped walking to turn and face Martin—who ran right into him, clanking with gear and robbing the moment of some of its intended theatricality. “Because here’s the thing,” Truman said, “We think chances are excellent that we’re going to be accused of kidnapping this little whale so Friday can have a companion.”
“Yeah? So that would be good. I mean, who wants to be alone, huh?”
“Yes, but we didn’t do that.” Truman felt the beginnings of a headache coming on. “This animal—this baby—was abandoned by his pod off San Juan Island because he had such severe injuries he couldn’t keep up. He’d never be able to survive on his own.”
“Bummer.”
“Yes, it is. The point I’m trying to make is, we rescued him. That’s key.”
“Yeah, sure, I get that.”
“Of course you do,” said Truman. “That’s why he needs you to be his voice, Martin. His voice. He’s counting on you to tell his real story, because he can’t.”
“Well, yeah,” said Martin. “So what do you think the big guy’s going to think, having a little buddy?”
“We won’t know until we’ve introduced them to each other.”
“Yeah? Well, I think he’s going to go out of his mind. The first whale he’s seen in, what did you say?”
“Nineteen years.”
“Nineteen years. How cool is that?”
“Very,” said Truman. “Very cool.” They were passing through several empty holding bays; Truman could see the small rehab pool ahead. “I should also tell you that there are some people out there”—and here Truman lowered his voice and shifted his eyes back and forth several times, as though someone might at this very moment be lurking nearby—“who may even accuse us of maiming the animal on purpose, to justify keeping him.”
Martin squinted. “Yeah? So, I mean, that would be bad.”
“Very bad. And very not-true.”
“Sure, yeah, I get that.”
They had arrived at the pool. Libertine was in the water, Ivy was perched on a wooden stool she’d scared up, and Julio Iglesias sat reluctantly in her lap. She kissed the top of his head, and his ears went flat with annoyance.
“Okay, let’s introduce you two,” Truman said to Martin after greeting them. “Juan, this is Martin Choi. Martin, meet Juan.”
Libertine continued walking the calf around the perimeter of the tank. When they came to Martin again, Truman handed him a dive mask to hold up to his face. “If you put the mask just under the surface, you’ll see the injury clearly,” said Truman, as they’d rehearsed.
“Youch,” said Martin when he saw the calf’s flukes. “I bet when he swims he just goes in a circle.” Truman’s headache bloomed into full flower.
For the next forty-five minutes Martin Choi snapped photo after photo, including some through the mask, which graphically showed the full extent of the calf’s injuries. Then Gabriel arrived and fed Juan his first dead fish—or so they told Martin, though they’d actually primed the calf half an hour earlier with a handful—and then a second and third and so on, until he’d gone through a quarter of a bucket. “He was hungry,” Truman said, because with Martin Choi you could never overstate the obvious.
“So that’s good, right?” said the reporter.
“Very good,” said Truman, and they all nodded as one.
Next, as they’d rehearsed, Libertine told Martin how much calmer the calf was now that he was in their care, and how frightened he’d been when he was drifting into the little bay by Ivy’s house, forsaken and alone. “Here, he’s safe,” she concluded. “He knows that. And he has the entire zoo pulling for him. He knows that, too.”
Then she lobbed the interview back to Truman for a final summation. “What you have to remember,” he said, “is, this is a baby. Would you leave a badly injured human baby floating out there all alone?”
“Well, of course not,” Martin said indignantly.
“And that’s exactly what he needs you to tell the world. Be his hero, Martin,” Truman intoned, channeling Matthew. “Be his hero.”
IN THE PAPER’S Wednesday edition two days later, the News-Tribune led with a story about the killer whale calf. Headlined OH, BABY, BABY!, it detailed the calf’s rescue, with emphasis on his otherwise hopeless plight. Incredibly, Truman found that Martin Choi had gotten most of the information right. The accompanying photos were graphic enough to make it clear that this maimed orphan wouldn’t stand even a slim chance in the wild. The story was picked by the regional, national, and international wire services by noon.
Predictably, the Friends of Animals of the Sea responded that afternoon with an e-mail blast to its membership and the same media outlets that had picked up the story, titled (somewhat inscrutably, Truman thought) TWO WRONGS. The e-mail made the case that the zoo had cold-bloodedly captured a hapless calf for the sole purpose of exploitation as a companion animal for the imprisoned Friday and that the calf should have been left alone to perish naturally. The fact that that death would almost certainly have been a lonely, slow, and painful one brought on by sepsis, starvation, or both was not mentioned. Apparently such a death would be mitigated by the fact of its accomplishment in the beneficent bosom of Nature.
TWO DAYS LATER once Gabriel was sure the antibiotics they were giving Juan had taken hold, they moved the calf into Friday’s medical pool. Although a watertight gate separated the two whales, Friday hovered there all day, spy-hopping again and again to see over the top. His visitors complained that they couldn’t see him, and neither Neva nor Gabriel could engage Friday in a work session, not even an innovative one. He wouldn’t even eat until they resorted to feeding him beside the med pool. He sang, whistled, clicked, and trilled at the calf in a long and constant song. And the calf sang back.
“Can they understand each other?” Neva asked Gabriel, who was tossing in fish every time Friday opened his mouth. “I mean, they speak different languages, don’t they?”
“That’s a little simplistic, but yes, something like that.”
“What do you mean?” asked Ivy, who was watching Libertine feed Juan on the other side of the watertight partition. The calf was a voracious eater, opening his mouth wide anytime someone appeared, with or without a bucket. Gabriel suspected that the calf had been weak even before it was injured.
“Friday is an Atlantic whale, and Juan is from the Pacific,” Gabriel said. “We know there’s such a thing as killer whale dialects because even within the Pacific population, transient whales have different calls than resident ones. We don’t know exactly how much they overlap, or even if there is any overlap between Atlantic and Pacific animals. But Friday will teach the kid what he needs to know so they can communicate. Right now, he’s so excited he may not be communicating anything besides a ton of variations of ‘Ooh!’ ”
“Can you imagine?” said Truman. “For Friday, it must feel just like Christmas.”
They had decided to document the entire introduction process with a video camera. Libertine, their self-appointed videographer, popped out from behind a camera on a tripod and said, “He’s like a little kid. He keeps asking, When? When? When? over and over.”
“Tell him it’ll be soon,” said Gabriel. “As soon as it’s safe.”
That afternoon, at least one day ahead of plan, Gabriel decided to lower a metal grid between the pools in place of the solid, watertight gate. That way, Friday and Juan would have visual as well as auditory contact. With the video camera rolling, they watched Friday lay his entire body along the grid separating the two pools, his eye staring through to the calf. At first the calf was hesitant, but after a few minutes he approached Friday, laying his side against Friday’s.
And then, abruptly, Friday turned around and left.
“What’s he doing? Hey! Don’t leave,” Neva called, dismayed.
Both Gabriel and Libertine were smiling. “Just wait,” said Gabriel. “Watch him.”
Friday swam all the way across the pool, where he rounded up his blue ball. Then he pushed it back until it bumped up against the gate.
“Is he bringing it to Juan?” Neva asked Gabriel.
“Can’t we let the little one into the main pool?” Libertine asked.
“Not yet,” said Gabriel. “We have all the time in the world. I don’t want to go too fast and have to net the calf to get him back into the med pool.”
“Why would you have to do that?” Neva asked.
“Look, he’s not a puppy. You’re assuming these two will get along, but it’s also plausible that Friday will look at him as a competitor for the pool’s resources—for food, attention, toys, or anything else Friday values.”
“But he brought him his blue ball, for god’s sake!” said Ivy. “His most coveted possession!”
“You’re seeing it as a generous gesture. It’s equally possible that he’s showing it to the calf to make sure he knows he’s got dibs on it.”
“So you think Friday might actually be aggressive toward him? There’s no reason to think he’d hurt him, is there?” Neva asked.
“No—if there were, we wouldn’t have brought him down here,” said Gabriel, “but it’s within the realm of possibility. Anytime you get two animals together, there’s some risk, especially when it’s two males. All I’m saying is, let’s not hurry. Let’s give them a chance to get used to each other gradually. You don’t want Friday to be alone anymore, and I get that, but he’s already not. They can see each other. They can hear each other.”
Ivy huffed impatiently, but she didn’t challenge him.
FOR TWO DAYS and nights Friday rarely left the gate that separated him from the calf. He vocalized continuously through all his waking hours. Even a screening of The Day After Tomorrow, a movie he loved, failed to tear him away. A hydrophone in the pool recorded not only Friday’s vocalizations, but also the calf’s. By the morning of the third day, some of the vocalizations synched up. The calf was learning Friday’s calls.
It was time to remove the gate.
As Gabriel choreographed it, they would let the two whales meet right after the gallery closed for the day, so they’d have as much time as possible to interact without visitors looking on. No one expected it to go badly, but YouTube was full of animal encounters gone wrong, and Truman had expressed a certain amount of concern that the two killer whales might join their ranks. So at seven fifteen that evening, Ivy, Gabriel, Libertine, Neva, Truman, Sam, Winslow, and Reginald all gathered on the pool top. There was an air of barely controlled expectation. Gabriel brought up two full buckets of fish, sent Neva to the opposite side of the pool with one bucket, and kept the other at the gate between the two pools.
On his signal, Libertine started the hydraulics that lifted the gate.
No one spoke as the gate started to move. The only sounds were the creaking equipment and the whales’ breathing. Even Julio Iglesias stayed stock still in Ivy’s arms.
Friday took a deep breath and sank below the waterline.
Sam, positioned in the gallery, transmitted, “Friday’s going into the med pool. I can only see half his body.”
“He’s just rubbed his head along the calf’s side,” Neva announced from her radio beside the med pool. “He’s moving really slowly, like he doesn’t want to hurt him or scare him or anything.”
Then they all heard it, even in the gallery: a high, thin, sustained duet. Ivy, standing beside Gabriel at the near end of the pool, grasped his arm tightly and whispered, “Oh my god.”
With infinite gentleness, Friday backed out of the med pool, drawing the calf out with him until they were through. Once they were in the deep water, Juan slipped below and just off of Friday’s right side—what would normally be his swimming position beside an adult female. Friday swam very slowly, very deliberately, barely moving his flukes. Despite his injuries, the calf was able to keep up.
“What are they doing?” Ivy asked Gabriel.
“Watch,” Gabriel said. “Friday is showing him the pool.”
Once the big whale had taken the calf around the pool’s perimeter, he brought him to the bottom, where they swam around the rock work and along the gallery windows. “You got to see this,” Sam transmitted. “It’s like they’re attached. Friday’s going real slow, too, so the little one can look around.”
Together, the whales continued their explorations until the calf began to flag and a thin trail of blood seeped into the water from his damaged flukes. Friday brought him to his favorite corner of the pool, leaving him there while he swam to his blue ball, which had fetched up onto the broad slide-out area of the wet walk. By creating turbulence with his pectoral flipper, he coaxed the ball closer and closer until it was near enough for him to move it with his nose. As the entire staff watched, Friday swam the ball across the pool to the calf, placing it by his cheek. Then he began to sing, the notes rising into the air, sweet, joyful, and pure. “Ladies and gentlemen,” said Truman over the security radio, after having to clear his throat twice, “I believe it’s time to alert the media.”