Songs of the Humpback Whale Read online

I walk over to where Joley’s sister is rubbing her back up against the split rail. She’s doing everything she can to keep from touching the stuff. That does it for me; I laugh in her face. She smells awful; even her hair is encrusted with manure. “Tough break,” I say. What I really mean is: I’m sorry.

  She looks so out of place and incredibly miserable that I rediscover my conscience. I’m about to tell her who I am, and how I didn’t really mean for this to happen, when she undergoes this transformation. It’s a physical thing-her shoulders square up and her chin lifts and her eyes get very dark. All of a sudden she has this attitude. “I’m sure this isn’t appropriate behavior for a field hand,” she tells me. “When I tell Joley about this, he’ll report you to the person who runs the place.”

  “I’m not too worried about that,” I say dryly and I tell her who I am. I hold out my hand, and then on second thought, take it back. The girl introduces herself. She’s laughing, which makes me think she’ll turn out all right. “Come on,” I say. “You can get cleaned up at the Big House.”

  I show them their rooms, figuring it’s the least I can do after that fiasco, and tell Jane she’s welcome to the clothes my mother left in her closet. They’ll be big, but she can figure it out. She near about slams the bedroom door in my face, and I walk downstairs to Rebecca again, who’s peeking into each of the drawers of an antique apothecary chest that came from my mother’s mother. “Nothing in there,” I say, catching her in the act.

  She jumps a few feet into the air. “I’m sorry,” she says, “I didn’t mean to be doing that.”

  “Sure you did. It’s okay. This is your house now. For a while, anyways.” I pull open one of the drawers myself, and take out an Indian head penny, 1888. I wonder if she knows that means good luck.

  Rebecca starts to wander into the other rooms: the parlor and the blue tiled kitchen and the library, with wall-to-wall books, mostly on exotic places, that I’ve picked up over the years. “Wow,” she says, lifting a coffeetable book on the Canadian Rockies. “You’ve been to all these places?”

  I walk into the library behind her. “You know what a mental traveler is?”

  “It’s what I was before this summer.” She smiles at me, real open, like she’s got absolutely nothing to hide. I like her.

  “I’m just going to sit outside. You can check out anything you’d like.” I leave her staring at an antique sextant propped over the mantel. “It’s for navigation,” I say, on my way out. She moves closer after I turn away, the old floorboards sigh under her weight.

  It’s warm out, but not oppressive: it’s been that kind of a summer. I stare at my watch, impatient, which isn’t fair. It’s only been about four minutes since I left Joley’s sister, and she has to wash off anyway, and when you get right down to it it’s my fault she’s filthy. I glance over the orchard, which you can pretty much see in total from the Big House, trying to find Joley or Hadley or someone else who can take them off my hands. I’m not much good with visitors; I never know what to say. Especially in this case; I don’t expect a California woman to understand my life any more than I could make heads or tails of hers. My eyes run over the roads that separate the different stocks in the orchard, noticing which groups of trees need to be sprayed, which need to be pruned. I’m staring at these even rows, but I keep seeing her. Standing in the closet, pulling off her shirt. I jam my hands into my pockets and start to whistle.

  When she comes downstairs, she’s wearing my mom’s madras sundress. It’s all these crazy peach colors, like a hot muggy sunset, and Dad gave her so much trouble about it being an eyesore she left it behind when she moved. It’s true, it looked too showy across her wide hips, but on Joley’s sister it’s almost elegant. It pinches at the waist where she’s wrapped it with an old handkerchief-can that possibly fit around her? Her arms, which are kind of thin for my tastes, peek out pale from the too-big cap sleeves. And those peach colors show up again in her cheeks, which makes it all seem to match.

  She’s holding all the dirty clothes. “What should I do with these?”

  My voice is not my own. It’s hoarse and it comes out uneven. “Wash them,” I say, and I turn and walk down the path before she notices the way I sound.

  They catch up quick enough, and I try to keep from holding a conversation by telling them about the orchard. As Lake Boon comes into view at the foot of the orchard, I tell Rebecca it’s great for swimming, and just in case she fishes, I let her know there’s bass. I catch Jane looking around at the thick older trees in this section of the orchard-the McIntosh stock-and then taking note of the pond. When I walk past her I can smell lemons and fresh sheets. Her skin, even this close, reminds me of the inner edge of a crab apple blossom, flawless.

  “Hadley!” I say. He steps off a ladder behind a tree he’s been pruning.-When I introduce him, he does everything I didn’t do at the barn. He takes Jane’s hand and pumps it up and down; he dips his head towards Rebecca. And then he gives me this look, like he knows right there and then he’s already outdone me.

  He immediately drops behind to talk to Rebecca-it figures, Hadley’s a pretty quick judge of character-leaving me to hold a conversation with Jane. I think about just walking the next ten acres without saying a word, but I’ve been rude enough today. Well, Sam, I tell myself, they’ve just come from across the country. Surely you can think of something pertaining to that. “So,” I say, “I hear you’ve done quite a bit of traveling.”

  She jumps, just like Rebecca did when I caught her looking in the apothecary chest. “Yes,” she says, sort of guarded. “All across the country.” She looks at me as if she wants me to evaluate what she’s said, and then that look comes over her again, that haughty I’m-leagues-beyond-you look. “Of course I’ve also been to Europe and South America with my . . . my husband’s research.” That’s right, Joley’s told me about the whale guy, and why Jane left in the first place. “Why?” she asks, “Do you travel?”

  I smile and tell her I’ve gone all over the place, at least in spirit. But I can’t tell what she thinks of that, until she asks me flat out why I don’t just take a real trip. I try to explain why running an orchard is different from running any other business, but she doesn’t understand. Not that I’d expected her to.

  “Where would you really like to go?” she asks, and right away I have an answer. I’d love to go to Tibet, just because of what I could bring back. I know technically it takes months to import agriculture products, and I’d never clear customs with a tree, but if I got a small enough series of grafts I could hide them in my luggage without a problem. Can you imagine what it would be like to bring back an original Spitzenburg, or an even older stock, and make it come alive again?

  I realize I’ve been doing way too much talking, and I turn to find her staring right at me. I’m caught off guard, and like an idiot, I say the first thing that pops into my mind. “Joley tells me you’ve run away from home.”

  All the blood goes out of her cheeks, I swear. “Joley told you that?”

  I mention I think it had something to do with her husband. I don’t mean anything by it, but her eyes get violent, all the light parts filling in black like a cougar’s. She straightens up and tells me it’s none of my business.

  God, she has some attitude. It’s not like I’ve mentioned some big secret. I’m just retelling what her own brother told me. If she wants to get all pissy, she should take it out on Joley, not me.

  I don’t have to take this, not on my own land. I should have known better to begin with. Nothing’s changed between the likes of her and the likes of me: certain trees just cannot be grafted; certain life-styles just do not mix.

  She folds her arms across her chest. “You don’t know anything about me.”

  “You don’t know anything about me, ” I say, almost hollering now. “Let’s just leave it at that. You want to come here to visit your brother, that’s fine. You want to stay a while, okay.” I can feel the sweat starting to run down the sides of my face. “Let’s just say I’ll do my thing, and you can do yours.”

  She jerks her head, so a strand of her ponytail lands across her mouth. “Fine.”

  “Fine.” That settles it. I have a policy with Joley and Hadley: whoever they want t