Chapter 11

Mr. Granger’s obituary was on the second page of the next morning’s paper. LONGTIME COASTAL BEND BUSINESSMAN DIES. Randolph had sketched in some of Mr. Granger’s biography—his years in South America, his early purchase of a great deal of land in Port Aransas, his lifelong belief that Corpus Christi and vicinity would be “the country’s next Miami Beach.”

It was a standard obit. The picture they had dug out of the files was twenty years old. Mr. Granger’s face had a glossy, retouched look.

At the rosary in Corpus two days later Mr. Granger’s face looked remarkably like that old photograph. It looked younger and stranger than I had ever known it. The Dawsons had managed to find a somewhat tasteful casket, but it was upholstered with an obscene, silky fullness, like the inside of a snake’s mouth. The body lay there as if that was where it belonged, and when a funeral director in a clip-on bow tie closed the lid I could hear the soft rustle of the material meeting itself.

The funeral was held in the cathedral. Several hundred people were there. A monsignor talked in vague terms about eternal life, and then Brad Dawson and I and four older men wheeled the coffin down the aisle to the hearse.

Mary Katherine and I rode in a limousine with the Dawsons.

“What did you think?” Ella asked, turning toward us from the fold-down seat.

“It was fine,” Mary Katherine said.

“Yeah, that was a fine funeral,” the driver said. “Must have been quite a guy.” He and the funeral director sitting beside him began to talk about the limousine’s fuel economy. The four of us kept quiet. Finally the funeral director realized we were listening to them.

“Hey, I’m sorry,” he said. “If you’d rather we didn’t talk, no problem.”

“I think I would,” I said.

“Fine. Sorry.”

At the cemetery we stood beneath the awning as the monsignor struggled to hold the pages of his missal down in the wind. To the east a line of high-rise apartments hogged the horizon, but in the gaps between them I could see Corpus Christi Bay, penetrated by private motel piers.

Canales stood on the far side of the grave, dressed in a three-piece charcoal suit, his head bowed, his hands clasped together over his groin. Sara stood beside him, holding his arm. When it was over Canales came up to me and put his hand on my shoulder.

“See you back in Port A,” he said.

“Yeah.”

After the limo had dropped us off at the cathedral Mary Katherine and I got into my car and drove to the Dawsons’ house, where there was to be what Ella had referred to as “a sort of memorial brunch.”

“Do you like them?” I asked Mary Katherine on the way.

“Yes, I do. They’re pretty well-bred, aren’t they? But they’re very nice.”

The Dawsons lived in a sprawling one-story house on Ocean Drive. There was a large window on the east wall of the living room that looked down a slope to a swimming pool and, beyond that, the open bay with a private dock. In front of the window the caterers had set up a buffet of chicken wings, deviled eggs, ham, and coffee cake, all of it served by black teenagers in red jackets. At the far end of the big room was an open bar.

Perhaps a hundred people were there. Most of them were middle-aged or older. They held Bloody Marys and laughed heartily as they told one another stories about Mr. Granger.

“It sure is a jolly affair,” Mary Katherine whispered to me.

I recognized a few of the guests, people who had come over to my parents’ house occasionally with Mr. Granger. None of them seemed to remember me.

“Would you like to be introduced around?” Ella asked me.

“Frankly, no,” I said. “We can’t stay that long.”

“Get something to eat at least. Jeff, I think Brad wants to talk to you. He’s around here somewhere. There he is.”

She waved him over.

“Why don’t we go back to my office?” he said.

“I’ll take care of Mary Katherine,” Ella volunteered.

Brad led me down a long hallway and into a room paneled in dark wood that matched the leather bindings of the law volumes in his bookcase. On another wall, in glass cases, were other books, first editions, and on a broad coffee table beneath the window a collection of paperweights. The seashell that had been in Mr. Granger’s room was sitting on Brad’s desk, away from the other paperweights, as if he was reluctant to add it to his collection.

“Did you get something to eat?” he asked, wheeling a plush leather chair out from behind his desk and indicating I should sit there.

“I’ll get something in a minute,” I said, taking the chair while Brad hitched up his pants—I hadn’t seen that gesture in a long time—and sat on the edge of the desk. He rubbed his hands together sluggishly and looked out the window at the swath of lawn and the bright turquoise pool sitting by the bay.

“I wanted to let you know that you’ve been named as an heir in his will,” he said. “I talked to the executor today, he’s a good friend of mine. You and I are both included, as a matter of fact. We won’t know what or how much until the formal reading. That’ll probably be in a month or two.

“Frankly, I wouldn’t expect a great deal. From what I understand, his affairs are a mess. It seemed for most of his life he couldn’t miss, and then he just overextended himself toward the end without anybody noticing much. I think—myself—that he was just a little early with all this development. Five years or so might have made a difference. It’s inevitable, the boom he kept talking about, but I’m afraid he missed it.”

“What’ll happen to the Porpoise Circus?”

“Who knows? He may have owned it outright, but most likely it’s a corporate holding like some of these other things, the condominium or the restaurant. It’ll be up to the shareholders, in that case. I’ll try to find out what the deal is for you.”

“I’d appreciate it,” I said.

“I’ll call around and get back to you,” he said, making a note to do so.

“I’ll tell you,” he said, sliding off the desk onto his feet. “He was sure good to us. A lot of people were kind of embarrassed by him, but not us. We went through a pretty hairy time—what Ella told you about the other night—and goddamn he was there every day, rain or shine.”

“I think he got something in return,” I said.

“Jesus, I hope so. Well, look, let’s get back to this party—whatever you call it. I just wanted you to have some idea of your prospects.”

We shook hands again. He was one of those people who shake hands at the conclusion of each stage of a discussion, but it was learned behavior with him. I could tell he found it almost distasteful. There was a basic shyness about him that I liked.

I had a brief image of the two of them looking into the crib that morning, Brad howling perhaps like an animal, Ella standing there silently, something inside her drawing tighter and tighter until at last there was a deep, implosive scream.

In the living room an old man was playing the piano very softly and very badly. It was a song I didn’t know. Mary Katherine was standing in the corner holding a Bloody Mary, speaking politely to the monsignor, who was dressed in black now, his wild vestments stowed in the trunk of his car. He was about forty, with a thin flushed face and small teeth.

“We were arguing about whether animals have souls,” Mary Katherine explained to me. “Apparently they don’t, according to the Church.”

“No, now, that’s not what I said.” He wagged a finger at her good-naturedly. The monsignor was trying to flirt but he did not know how—his voice was too high, and he could not keep still. “They have some sort of soul. What do you call it?” He snapped his fingers. “Animus! But they don’t have a divine soul, because that is the direct result of God’s intervention. Human beings are made in God’s image. Now, I grant you that that could be interpreted loosely, but come on, a pig made in God’s image?”

He began giggling.

“See?” Mary Katherine said to me. She looked flushed and radiant, and the monsignor and I were both charmed.

“Well,” he said, gaining control of himself, “a lot of people are questioning a lot of things we once thought of as fundamental.” He spread his hands in a gesture I remembered from long ago—Oremus—and said, “Who knows?”

We drifted away from him.

“Are you ready to go?” I asked Mary Katherine.

“If you are. What did Brad want?”

“I’m mentioned in the will.”

“What do you get?”

“I won’t know for a while. Come on, let’s go.”

We said our good-bys to Ella. She introduced us to the man she was talking to.

“Christ Almighty!” he said. “You’re Joe Dowling’s boy. You’ve sure grown up some, haven’t you.”

“I guess so,” I said. “Nice to see you again.”

“You had a chance to talk with Brad?” Ella asked me at the door.

“Yes,” I said. “And thank you. This was a nice . . . brunch.”

“We felt the need to do something,” she said, “and I just sort of felt that he wouldn’t have approved of anything gloomy.”

“No, you’re right.”

“I hope we can get to be friends,” she said. “The four of us.”

Mary Katherine leaned forward and hugged her. “I hope so too,” she said.

“What’s going to happen now with the dolphins?” she asked me on the way home.

“There’s no telling. Brad’s going to find out for me.”

“Mason’s going to get them, you know. Sammy’ll be a star and Wanda’ll probably end up in some research lab someplace.”

I said nothing. She slid across the seat to me.

“Jeff, let’s try to think of something.”

“I’m trying.”

At the ferry we both got out of the car, but neither of us saw any porpoises.

“It’s too late in the afternoon,” Mary Katherine said. “They’ll be up in Aransas Bay now.”

I looked up the channel toward Aransas Bay, at the empty water. The seascape had changed, some force was being withheld from it, its “animus.”

Far away in the channel I saw a fin break water, despite Mary Katherine’s dictum. I held her hand, conscious of a desire to dive off the ferry and swim with all my strength toward that wild creature I could barely imagine.

“It looks like Mason’s got your porpoises,” Brad told me on the phone a few days later. “He moves fast, I’ll say that for him. I had no idea how screwed up Dude’s assets were. Apparently he didn’t even have a majrrity of the shares for the Porpoise Circus, so all Mason had to do was wine and dine the board of directors, tell them the place was about to be closed down anyway, and offer them the money for the porpoises. Fifty-two thousand was what it came to.

“Does this interfere with some plans you had? The facility itself is still unsold. Maybe you could convince them to fix it up so it would conform to whatever these standards are, then you could catch a few more porpoises. . . .”

“That’s not what I had in mind,” I said.

“Well, if there’s any way I can help.”

“You’ve done a lot,” I said. “Thank you.”

“Let’s get together for dinner soon. Ella wanted to know if you and Mary Katherine play bridge.”

“No. Maybe we could learn.”

“I’ll give you a call,” he said.

I went to work. Sara was there on the pulpit with a fish in each hand, offering them to the porpoises and then drawing them back.

“You’re teasing them, Sara,” I said. “Don’t.”

“I’m just playing with them.” She threw them the fish.

“Where’s Mando?” I asked.

“In the shed.”

“Hey,” he said. He was thawing fish.

“You didn’t waste any time, did you?”

“You already heard about that, huh? Yeah, Mason was anxious to close the deal. He had to get back to Florida. He’s holding a job open for you.”

“I don’t want a job.”

“Well what, then?”

I started to tell him what Mr. Granger had said about letting the porpoises go, but I decided against it.

“I just think it was in bad taste.”

“Maybe,” he said. “I don’t know. I’m not in a position to worry about that. This is my chance, man. I’ve been in this fucking business twelve, thirteen years and I’ve never come across an animal like Sammy, never had a break like that. Yeah, maybe it would have been better if we’d waited till the body was cold, but what can I say, the guy moves fast, he’s an operator.”

“When are they taking them to Florida?”

“Mason’s coming back up next week. He’ll hang around a few days and then fly back with them. I figure we close down this weekend and let them rest up all next week till he comes. You want the first show today?”

“I don’t care.”

“Look, I’m sorry if this upsets you. You better get on the phone today and tell Mason you want that job. I don’t know how long he’ll hold it open.”

“I don’t want the job,” I said.

“Think about it, man. That’s my advice to you.”

During the first show Sammy was marvelous. He knew something. He was keyed up, and I could sense the even release of tension that was the essence of athletic form and grace. Wanda was sluggish, unconcerned. She broke speed twice during the buildup for her high leap, so that I had to stall at the mike, looking down at the shadow of her submerged body.

“She’s circling now . . . she’s picking up speed . . . she’s really wound up . . . here she comes . . . she’s about to jump . . . almost here. . . .”

Finally her form burst free from the water, the hard beak sailing upward like the nose cone of a rocket, the eyes on the sides of her head swiveling forward, toward me, locking me into the field of their stereoscopic vision. At the crest of her leap she accepted the fish from my hand, her teeth closing gently around it in that split second before gravity pulled her down again.

This was the part of her performance that always touched me the most—the clumsy buildup, and the redeeming delicacy of her flight. The delicacy existed only in my mind. I knew the audience saw only a great mass of scarred blubber exploding into the air. But I knew that behind the power, buried deep inside that blank hulk, there was some incomprehensibly strange awareness.

After work Lois stopped me on my way to my room and handed me a postcard, the only piece of mail I had received in months. She hung around the door for a while, talking about Mr. Granger, and her husband, and how at her age she was all alone.

“Would you like to come in and sit down?” I asked.

“Oh no, I don’t expect I’d better. You’ve got things to do. I just need to let off a little steam now and then.”

The postcard was from the Seamstress. The picture on the front was of a miniature golf course in some town in northern California.

“Here’s where I ended up,” she wrote. “I’m getting my certification as a Rolfe therapist. Still with the porpoises? I miss you sometimes. Come up and see me if you want.”

I threw the postcard on the bed and stared at it, at the goony-looking golfer with a crewcut and baggy pants, his knees together as if he were trying to keep from wetting his pants, about to knock the ball between the legs of a giant chipmunk. For a moment I could smell the pine needles, the exalted air of the Sierras. I thought of what it would be like to sit before a fire again, the Seamstress Rolfing my back while our granola cookies browned in the oven.

I walked to Mary Katherine’s house and stood for a moment in her unpaved driveway, looking up at the kitchen window where I could see her washing dishes in a brilliant frame of yellow light. She moved fluidly, almost as if she were conscious of impressing me, her arms drifting softly in the light from sink to dish drainer.

When she opened the door she wiped her soapy hands on her hips.

“I’m making gumbo,” she said. “Have you eaten?”

“Not yet.”

“Good. And I’m going to make a cake later. Tomorrow’s Nat’s birthday.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It slipped my mind,” she said rather brusquely.

“I’ll drive into Corpus after dinner and get him something.”

“That’s crazy. You don’t have to do that.”

“What do you mean? I want to.”

“Okay,” she said, and went into the kitchen and shifted the magnets around on the refrigerator.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“Nothing. Here, dinner’s ready.” She handed me a bowl of gumbo and got one for herself. It was dark and slick, with an occasional bright pink shrimp drifting up through the slimy film of okra on top.

“It tastes like shit, doesn’t it?” she asked.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m just upset. Number one, I’m a lousy cook. All day long I’ve been thinking about the Dawsons and their baby. And guess what I saw this morning? I passed Mason’s catch boat in Lydia Ann. They’d just caught two dolphins. They were lying on the deck. I didn’t know what to do. I just shot them the finger.

“And then you walk in here like you’re Nat’s father, which you’re not, like you have every right in the world to drive sixty miles to buy him a birthday present. Do you have any idea how many guys there are out there who really get off on giving some poor kid a birthday present and then just dropping out of his life; trying to impress you about how kindhearted they are, how much they love children, but they just can’t get tied down, baby. And you know what they get him, every time? War toys. I mean like plastic M-Sixteens!”

“I’m not like that,” I said.

“I know,” she said. “I know you’re not.” She left the spoon in her gumbo and sat back in her chair. “How did it go today? How are Wanda and Sammy?”

“More bad news. Mason’s bought them.”

“Oh no,” she said. “Already? But they’re not gone yet?”

“No, he’s gone to Florida. He’s coming back for them late next week.”

“Then there’s still time.”

“For what?”

“You know what, Jeff. For us to let them go.”

I didn’t answer her.

“That’s what Mr. Granger wanted,” she said.

“He’s dead now.”

“But that’s what he wanted! You know that!”

“Yes, but what you’re talking about now is a major theft. Besides, how do we know they won’t be better off with Mason?”

“Christ!” she said. She picked up our half-eaten bowls of gumbo and dropped them into the leftover suds in the sink. The water turned dark.

“Tell me,” I said. “How do we know?”

“That’s just something you and I know,” she said patiently. She opened the refrigerator, pulled out the vegetable tray, and pretended to look for something there.

“You’ll catch cold,” I told her.

“I don’t care,” she said, crying now.

I put my hands on her shoulders and drew her away from the cold air. She fell back onto my chest.

“You know I’m thinking about it,” I said.

I drove into Corpus, thinking about it, thinking how it might be done, but the act did not seem as pure to me as it did to Mary Katherine. I was not sure about my motives, whether it might not be an act of cruelty to the porpoises to cast them out now from our company, which they had come to love and even to understand a little.

The only place open in Corpus that sold toys was an all-night drugstore, and they seemed to specialize in various weapons tied in with TV cop shows. I found a benign counterpart of GI Joe among the SWAT arsenals and handcuffs, a figure called Big Bert, whose ankles and wrists swiveled and whose joints moved stiffly back and forth like those of a man crippled with arthritis. On the box it said “Big Bert’s Deep Sea Adventure,” and the package included a diving bell, a giant squid, and a rubber dolphin named Chubby whose job it was, according to the scenario laid out on the side of the box, to deliver Bert’s messages to the surface and to help him out in case of trouble from the giant squid.

I brought it back.

“He’ll love it,” Mary Katherine said. “I’m sorry for what I said before. I can’t believe I said that to you, of all people.

“I decided to shoot for a three-layer cake. It may be a little too ambitious, after the gumbo debacle.”

Three round cake pans were already cooling on the porch. She was working on the frosting now, beating it with a portable electric mixer.

An abrupt thought came to me. “I want to get married,” I said.

She didn’t answer or look up, but concentrated her attention on the cake. She stacked the layers on top of one another, bonding them together with the frosting. All three layers were lopsided, but by fitting the angles together she was able to make the cake reasonably even. When it was completely frosted she took a green aerosol cake-decorating can and wrote “Happy Birthday, Nat” in large droopy letters across the surface, then trimmed the circumference with an uneven hedge of green icing.

“If that doesn’t rot his teeth, nothing will,” she said.

When the cake was finished we went to bed and lay there without speaking.

“I’m thinking,” she said.

“I know you are.”

I fell asleep and did not stir until she woke me in the morning.

“I’ve got to get up,” she said. “I’ve missed too many days lately. You want some breakfast?”

“Sure.”

“Why don’t you wake Nat up?”

“It’s so early.”

“It’s his birthday. He won’t sleep much longer anyway. Besides, I like for you to wake him.”

I went into Nat’s room and whispered “Happy Birthday” softly into his ear.

“Is it time to get up?” he said.

“It’s a little early.”

“Today’s my birthday.”

“I know.”

He stretched, overcome with some sedate joy I could remember feeling a long time ago. The three of us ate breakfast at the little dining-room table. Mary Katherine had bought birthday napkins. Nat kept smiling to himself and covering his mouth with his hand so we wouldn’t see.

“When can I open my presents?”

“This evening, when Jeff comes back from work.”

He looked up at me, wondering who I was now that he had to wait all day for my return.

For most of the day I kept my distance from Canales, and he didn’t seem eager to fall into conversation with me. It was almost over, the whole thing was almost over. We worked the porpoises for form’s sake, to give them something to do.

“We’re almost out of fish,” Canales said. “You want to go into Corpus tomorrow for some more or shall I?”

“I don’t care,” I said.

“You go. If I go I’ll have to take Sara, and she’ll have a list of errands a mile long. Just get the regular amount—if we don’t use it all up before Mason comes he can take it with him. Oh, and stop at the vet and get Wanda some more medicine. I’ll call the prescription in. Take the whole day if you want. There won’t be much happening here.”

After work I went immediately to Mary Katherine’s house. Nat’s birthday cake was on display on a card table, and Molly and Joshua were there, along with a boy from down the street Nat didn’t like but whom Mary Katherine had invited anyway. The two boys were playing with an expensive, nearly full-sized pinball machine Nat’s father had dropped off earlier in the day.

After the cake and ice cream Nat opened his presents. His grandparents had sent him a blackboard and a little desk that I had to assemble. Molly gave him a plain wooden armadillo she had bought in Austin that rolled around on wheels. From his mother he got a set of plastic farm animals and three T-shirts.

“Oh boy, Big Bert!” Nat said when he opened my package.

“Let me see!” the neighbor kid said. He snatched Chubby the Dolphin and ran around the room guiding it through the air and making airplane sounds under his breath. Nat watched him anxiously, exercising a touching forbearance. When the kid finally brought Chubby back and picked up the giant squid instead, Nat slyly hid the rubber dolphin in his pocket. Molly set Joshua down on the pile of wrapping paper, where he rustled about and babbled to himself.

The next morning I drove into Corpus to get the fish. Mary Katherine decided at the last moment to come along, forsaking her work for the day. We dropped Nat off at Molly’s house and then drove to the ferry. There was a long line of cars waiting to get across and we had to wait for almost an hour, inching along behind a carload of hungover surfers who kept leaning their heads out the windows and throwing up on the pavement and then waving to us, thanking us for our indulgence.

Once we were across we made good time. We crossed the harbor bridge and then drove down to a dockside warehouse on the ship channel, where we loaded frozen blocks of herring and smelt and cod—the combination of fish that Canales considered a balanced porpoise diet—into a big cooler in the bed of the pickup.

The veterinarian’s office was a few blocks inland from the bay in a prosperous neighborhood. The waiting room was filled with women holding quivering poodles with long painted nails.

The vet invited us into the back while he dispensed Wanda’s medicine. He was a small, brisk, immaculately groomed man who smelled strongly of flea powder.

“That porpoise doing okay?” he asked me.

“I think so. The fungus seems to be clearing up a little.”

“I’d like to get down there and look her over sometime, I’ve never seen one close up, really, but that’s one animal I’d like to study. They’ve got more than one stomach, did you know that?”

“That’s what I read.”

“And that sonar business is interesting as hell.”

He handed me the medicine. One of the assistants brought in a Pekingese and set it on the examining table. The vet looked into its ears.

“To tell you the truth,” he said, “I’m getting a little tired of these goddamn snothounds.”

We fooled around the rest of the day, went to an afternoon movie and then to the art museum, which featured an exhibit of black canvases that had been contorted in various ways, and groups of geometrical figures sculpted in chocolate and displayed in refrigerated glass cases.

Afterward we sat on the seawall, watching the tiny sailboats shuttling back and forth to the spoil islands, the barren land forms that had been deposited there when the ship channel was dredged. Children in ski belts hiked out over the boats, reining them tightly into the breeze. The water was uncharacteristically luminous.

I was feeling peaceful, far removed from that tortured personality who was trying to decide whether or not to let the porpoises free. I melded into the mood; all I wanted was to be calm, to go about my life in an orderly and reasonable fashion.

“What are we going to do about them?” Mary Katherine asked me.

“I’m giving it a lot of thought.”

“If we did it right, really planned it and did it so that we always had Sammy and Wanda’s interests at heart, we could get so much popular support you wouldn’t believe it. The Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife, Friends of the Earth.”

“Is that what we want? Would we be doing it to impress those people?”

“Not to impress them, Jeff, to involve them! This is an issue!”

“It’s not an issue,” I said. “Not for me.”

We had an early dinner at an oyster bar, both of us sulking a little, and then drove back to Port Aransas. It was nearly dusk when we got back to the ferry. I got out of the car and looked down into the water and saw the change and was unaccountably scared. I could see all the way to the bottom of the channel; I could see stingrays twenty feet below the surface. The water was nearly as clear as a Caribbean lagoon.

“What happened?” Mary Katherine asked me.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “It’s like a weather inversion or something. I’ve heard of it happening before. It lasts a few days and then muddies up again.”

There were divers’ flags all up and down the length of the channel, and as the ferry came in to dock I saw a great shadow pass beneath the boat: a manta ray, drawn inland by the confusion.

As soon as the wedges were pulled from my tires I drove to the Porpoise Circus, picking up speed along the way, not knowing why. Mary Katherine looked at me strangely but did not speak. She felt it too.

For a moment after I unlocked the gate and entered the compound I thought everything was fine. I saw Sammy’s fin break the clear water and then Sammy himself leaping clear, higher up into the air than I had ever seen him go. I went up to the edge of the pool. I could see all the way to the bottom, could see the submerged chain-link fence beneath the dock. But it was all wrong.

“Where’s Wanda?” I shouted.

“Oh, God!” Mary Katherine said.

I went into the shed and dialed Canales’ number.

“Will you promise me one thing, Jeff?” he said. “Will you take it easy?”

“What happened to her, Mando?”

“We don’t know. It was very sudden. It could have been the fungus. That can go to the lungs. It could have been a heart attack. It’s impossible to say. I’m going to do an autopsy.”

“Where is she?”

“Over here.”

“I’m coming over there.”

“Fine. Come on.”

I hung up the phone and looked around at Mary Katherine, who stood in the doorway, watching my face. I wanted to move toward her, but I didn’t know what to do with my body. My arms, that could have held her, all at once seemed absurd, uncontrollable appendages that were of no use in this element.

“I’m going over there,” I said finally. “To Canales’ house.”

She came along silently. It was dark by the time we reached the house. Sara opened the door. Her face was swollen, and there was a newly formed bruise on her cheek. Canales walked in from the kitchen, wearing his disco shirt and the shark’s-tooth necklace.

“Sit down,” he said. “Why don’t I get you a beer or something?”

We sat down together on the couch, beneath a pair of shark jaws he had hung on the wall. I saw him leave and go into the kitchen and bring us two beers. I saw him put the beers down on the coffee table in front of us. I wanted to grab the shark’s tooth and rip it off his neck.

“Okay,” he said, sitting down. “About one o’clock this afternoon, right after the water began to clear, I was taking them through their behaviors, just to keep them from getting bored. Her breathing was a little labored, but slight, you know? Nothing bad. Then it got worse, like she wasn’t breathing at all. So I winched up the false bottom. That took awhile. Okay, she’s up there, I thought she’d swallowed something, that there was an obstruction. But I couldn’t find anything. I didn’t know what to do, all of a sudden she starts to breathe again, very painful breathing but at least she’s getting air, right? So I figured I had a little time. I called this vet I know in Miami. He wasn’t home. I went back out to check on her. She just lay there and sort of gasped, and that was it.”

He leaned back in his chair and made a gesture of resignation with his hands.

“I’m sorry, Jeff, I really am, man. I’ll do the autopsy tonight. We’ll find out what it was. Maybe she caught some sort of weird virus, maybe it has something to do with the clear water, some parasite came in.”

I noticed Sara staring hatefully at him from the kitchen bar, fingering the bruise on her cheek.

Canales stood up. “She’s out here,” he said softly.

I followed him out through the kitchen door and into the garage. He reached up in the darkness and pulled the cord on a bare yellow light bulb. Wanda was lying on a blanket in the center of the concrete floor. I didn’t recognize her—she was twice the girth she had been, all that unsupported weight bearing down on her. Her eyes were open, and I saw the whites, still and swollen, crowding the lifeless iris. There was the hole in her fin, and the propeller scar, and the uncured fungus at the side of her head.

Canales held back reverently and didn’t speak. I looked at the shark’s tooth at his throat and was suddenly no longer able to control myself. I sent my fist flying toward his nose, remembering that other night when I had done the same thing in Wanda’s defense and heard the bone snap beneath my hand.

He ducked the fist easily enough, but slipped in the process and hit his head on a vise. It didn’t hurt him much.

“What sort of piddly shit is this?” he said.

“I’m sorry. I apologize.”

“This is not like you, man.”

“I realize that.”

“Why don’t you just go home now. I’m sorry about your porpoise. I realize you’re completely innocent, of course. The whole thing is my fault.”

Mary Katherine came out now for the first time. She looked down at Wanda and took my hand.

“Jeff?” I heard her say. “Honey?”

“I want to bury her,” I said. “I don’t want her in this garage. It smells like turpentine.”

“It’s dark,” Canales said. “Besides, we have to find out what killed her.”

“We killed her,” I said. “Now let’s bury her.”

“All right,” Canales said. “I’ll put down heart attack on the forms.”

We took her to one of Mr. Granger’s undeveloped subdivision sites on the far side of the island, and the four of us worked for two hours digging a hole deep enough. Then we dragged Wanda’s body from the back of Canales’ pickup, wrapped it in several blankets, and lowered it as gently as possible into the hole. It was unbearable, the thought of Wanda undergoing a terrestrial burial, but it would have been worse to think that she might wash up one day on the beach. We shoveled the sand back on top of her, and stood there awhile with nothing to say, then drove away in our separate cars. “I’m going to the pool,” I told Mary Katherine when we reached her house.

“Will you come back later?” she asked. “I don’t particularly want to be by myself tonight.”

“I’ll be there in a little while,” I said.

“You know how Sara got that bruise?” she asked after a moment.

“I can guess.”

“He threw a bottle of beer at her. That’s what she told me while you were out in the garage. He’s such a jerk.”

I didn’t want to argue with her, knowing I was as much a jerk as Canales. Looking at her, I felt a nagging loss, the realization that something was gone from our life together.

At the pool I stood and watched Sammy swim in circles, his eyes always above the waterline, watching me. He needed something from me, but I didn’t know what it was or how I could give it to him.

I closed my eyes and imagined the sorrow that grew like a tumor deep in Sammy’s body, a growth that could not be dissolved or dislodged. I could see his fear too, understanding that the fear had no focus, that the malevolence it tried to grapple with was as diffuse as the clear water that had invaded his environment.

I tossed a fish out to him. He regarded it with curiosity and left it alone. But I called him over and placed another fish gently in his mouth, like a priest dispensing a host. He reared his head back, holding the fish by its tail, then let it go down into his throat.

Thank God, I thought, at least he’ll eat.

“You were walking in your sleep last night,” Mary Katherine said, “did you know?”

I thought for a moment, and had a dim recollection of cruising around in the darkness on some strange errand.

“You went into Nat’s room,” she said, unplugging the coffee pot and sitting down. Her face was puffy and haggard. “He said you just went in there and sat on his bed and babbled nonsense syllables.”

“Did I scare him?”

“No. I don’t think so. I told him about Wanda. He knows we’re both upset.”

“What time is it?”

“Eleven. I slept late too.”

We could hear Nat beneath the house, playing with his birthday toys, trying to guard them from the boy down the street.

“How was Sammy?”

“He’s functioning,” I said. “I got him to eat.”

“The poor thing.”

“I’m ready to do it,” I told her.

She looked at me solemnly. “You’re sure?”

“We don’t have that much time,” I said, not feeling it was necessary to answer her. “We’ll have to readapt him somehow.”

“You don’t mind committing grand theft or whatever it will be?”

“No.”

“All right. Let’s talk about what we’ll do.”

“I don’t think you should be involved. It isn’t necessary.”

“I’m involved, okay? How will we do it?”

“First we’ll get him used to live fish again. Then one night this week we’ll get David’s boat and let him follow us. We’ll go way down into Laguna Madre. There are a lot of vacant spoil islands down there; we’ll just pitch camp and stay until he feels secure enough to leave us. Of course he may swim off as soon as we let him out of the pool. If that’s the case, fine.”

“He won’t want to leave us,” Mary Katherine said. “There’ve been cases of dolphins who were released going out of their way to jump back into the nets of the capture boats.”

“At least then it’ll be up to him,” I said.

“How will we get him out of the pool? The two of us can’t lift him over by ourselves.”

“I can unhook the chain-link below the dock and close it back again after he’s out.”

She nodded silently. “What about the other thing? Do you still want to marry me?”

“Of course I do.”

“Let’s do it before we let him go.”

“Okay,” I said, and then mouthed the word again. Okay.