Songs of the Humpback Whale: A Novel in Five Voices Read online

  “Thank you,” I say to the boy. “You have made my day.”

  The boy grins. He needs braces. “That’s a buck twenty-five,” he says. “Hell. It’s on the house.”

  I run from the gas station without thanking the boy. I do not notice the heat or the distance on the journey back. The Grand Canyon. I feed in the gas and turn the ignition, imagining this union of Jane, Rebecca and the majestic red walls that were cut by the Colorado River.

  18 SAM

  In my opinion, if you leave things to their natural course, they go bad. Apples that grow wild along the shores of brooks tend towards blight. I’m not saying that you can’t get a perfect apple without chemical help, but I’ll tell you it’s not easy.

  The reason I keep sheep at the orchard is so that I don’t have to spray so much. I don’t know; I never liked the idea of pesticides. Guthion, Thiodan, Dieldin, Elgetol- they don’t sound right, do they? I’m caught in the system, though-as a commercial grower I have to produce fruit that is competitive with other commercial orchards, or else the supermarkets won’t buy. So I try to use the less toxic ones that I’ve heard of: dodine instead of parathion to prevent apple scab and mildew; Guthion sprayed only once, so I risk bull’s-eye rot. I completely avoid 2,4-D-I can’t stand things without real word names--and that’s what I use my sheep for. They graze on the grass and weeds around the trees, like lawnmowers, so I don’t need chemicals. And although it kills me, I spray the trees that are cordoned off for the supermarkets with Ethrel and NAA before the harvest, because quite frankly if mine aren’t as red and as ripe as everyone else’s, I’ll go under.

  Joley is in the barn mixing up the Thiodan: it’s time to spray for the woolly aphid; nobody wants an apple with a worm in it. He’s the first person I’ve seen since the night before, the night with Joellen, and I’m glad it’s him and not Hadley. Joley’s a good guy; he knows when to leave you alone and when not to. “Morning, Sam,” he says to me, without looking up.

  “You know to only spray the northwest half of the orchard?” Even without being told, Joley is a natural farmer. He’s older than I am-I’m not quite sure how much-but I have no trouble getting on with him. Hadley talks back from time to time, but Joley wouldn’t. Absolutely no farming experience, and he’s a natural, did I say that?

  He came in a couple of seasons ago, a Sunday U-Pick-Em day, when there were little kids all over the place. Like mosquitoes, they get in places you don’t want them, and when you slap at them to make them go away, they hover in front of your face to bug you a little bit more. We get lots of the Boston crowd because we’ve got a good reputation, and since he looked like another one of those button-down preppies I assumed he’d come out here to get a bushel or two, to bring them home to some condo on the Harbor. But he came into the retail outlet we open for the fall. He stood in front of the dormant conveyors we use to sort the best from the mediocre apples, and he just kept fingering the gears over and over. He stood there for so long I thought he was sick, and then I thought maybe he was slow-witted so I didn’t go over to him. Finally he walked into the orchards, and, fascinated, I followed him.

  I’ve never told anyone this but it was the most amazing thing I have ever seen. I’ve been working on this orchard my entire life. I learned how to walk by hanging on the low branches of the apple trees. And I have never done the things that I saw him do that day. Joley just walked past the crowds, way past to the roped-off area we keep for the commercial apples, and stood in front of a tree. I held back from yelling at him; instead I followed him, hiding behind trees. Joley stopped at a tree-Mac, I believe-and cupped his hands around a small pink blossom. It was a young tree, grafted maybe two seasons ago, and so it wasn’t bearing fruit yet. Or so I thought. He held this blossom in his hands and he rubbed the petal with his fingers, he touched the soft throat of the inside and then he knotted his hands around it, like he was praying. He stood like this for a few minutes and I was too spooked to make a sound. Then he opened is palms. Inside was a smooth, round, red apple, plain as day. The guy’s a magician, I thought. Incredible. It hung from the still-thin branch, which bent under the unnatural weight. Joley picked it and turned around to face me as if he knew I was there all along. He held out the apple to me.

  I don’t think I ever officially offered him the job, or that I even knew I was looking for someone. But Joley stayed on the rest of that day and after that, moving into one of the extra bedrooms of the Big House. He became as good a worker as Hadley, who grew up on a farm in New Hampshire before his dad died and his mom sold out to a real estate developer. All you’d have to do is show Joley once, and he became an expert. He’s a better grafter than I am, now. His specialty, though, is pruning. He can cut branches off a young tree without a second thought, without feeling like he’s killing the thing, and just a season later it is the most beautiful umbrella of leaves you’ve ever seen.

  “Did someone pen up the sheep?” I ask. They can’t get near this stuff. Joley nods and hands me a hose and a nozzle. The really big orchards have machines for this stuff, but I like to work with my hands. It makes me feel, when I pick the fruit, like it actually came from me.

  We head up towards the early Macs and the Miltons, which will come to harvest in last August and September. I wonder how long it will take before he asks me about last night.

  “I’ve got a favor, Sam,” Joley says, aiming at a middle-size tree. “I need your permission for something.”

  “Well, shit, Joley. You can just about do anything you want around here. You know that.”

  Joley turns the nozzle so that the pesticide dribbles at his feet. It makes me nervous. He keeps staring at me, and finally, noticing, he gives the nozzle a hard twist to the left to shut the flow. “My sister and niece are in trouble and I need a place for them to stay a while. I invited them here. I don’t know how long they’ll stay.”

  “Oh.” I don’t know what I had expected, but somehow it was worse. “I don’t think that’s a problem. What kind of trouble?” I don’t want to pry, but I feel like I ought to know. If it’s illegal, I may have to reconsider.

  “She left her husband. She belted him, and she took the kid and left.”

  I try to place Joley’s sister; I know he has talked about her in the past. I’d always pictured her like Joley-thin and dark, honest, easy. I pictured her the way I picture most girls from Newton where I know Joley grew up-dressed well, smelling like lilac, their hair smooth and heavy. The girls I knew from the Boston suburbs were rich and stuckup. They’d shake my hand if introduced to me, and then check when they thought I wasn’t looking to see if they had gotten dirty. A farmer, they’d say. How interesting. Meaning: I didn’t know there were any left in Massachusetts.

  But girls like this didn’t leave their husbands, and especially didn’t hit their husbands. They got quiet divorces and half the summer homes. Maybe she’s fat and looks like a sumo wrestler, I think. Because of Joley, I always gave this unknown woman the benefit of the doubt. He’s talked about her a lot, a little bit at a time, and you get the sense she’s his hero.

  “So where is she?” I ask.

  “Headed towards Salt Lake City,” Joley says. “I’m writing her across the country. She doesn’t have a super sense of direction.” He pauses. “Hey. If her husband calls, just tell him you don’t know a thing.”

  Husband. The whale guy. I am starting to remember bits and pieces of a person. Rebecca, the girl’s name. A picture in Joley’s room of a beautiful little boy (himself ) and a thin, pale girl holding him tight, beside her. A plain girl I had asked about, and was surprised to find out was related. “She’s the one in San Diego,” I say, and Joley nods.

  “She isn’t going to go back there,” Joley says, and I wonder how he knows with such conviction. He reaches under the tree, holding the pesticide stream away, to pick up a fallen branch. He tucks it into a back pocket. “The guy she married is an idiot. I never understood what it was about him she couldn’t live without. Goddamned humpback whales.” />
  “Whales,” I say. “Wow.” I’ve never heard Joley get so emotional about anything. Most of the time I’ve been with him, he moves in shadows, quiet, keeping in his thoughts. He lifts the stream of chemicals into the sky, letting it come down, artificial rain, on the top of a neighboring tree.

  Joley cuts the line of spray and drops the can softly onto the lawn. “Why do you spray, anyway? Isn’t there something you can use that’s natural?”

  I sit down on a dry patch of grass and stretch out on my back. “You wouldn’t believe the crap that goes on with the commercial crop when you don’t spray. Aphids and worms and scabs and all kinds of other things. There’s just too many of them to take care of individually.” I shade the sun from my eyes. “You leave it up to nature, and the whole thing goes to shit.”

  “Yeah,” says Joley. “Tell me about it.” He comes to sit down beside me. “You’ll like her. You remind me of her, a little.”

  I think about asking, In what way? but I am not sure that I want to know the answer. Maybe it’s the way I’ve taken him in, I think. I find myself wanting to know more about this Jane, what she looks like and the kinds of books she reads and where she got the nerve to hit her own husband. She sounds like, as my father would say, hell on wheels. “Women don’t know what they want anymore. They tell you they’re getting married, and then they jump you. Go figure.”

  Joley laughs. “Jane always knew she wanted Oliver. The rest of us just couldn’t understand why.” He leans up on one elbow. “Sam, you gotta see this guy. He’s your classic scientist, you know? In a fog the whole day, and then he sees his daughter, and he’s lucky if he can remember her name. Talks and talks about these fucking tapes he makes of whole songs-”

  “Joley, if I didn’t know better I’d say you were jealous.”

  He pulls a thistle from the ground beside him. “Maybe I am,” he says, sighing. “See, here’s this great person. And Oliver gets to make her over in his own image, you know? He didn’t ever care about what a great person she was to begin with. If she had stayed with me-well, I know it doesn’t work like that, but in theory -she’d be totally different now. She’d be like she used to be. For one thing, she wouldn’t be scared of her own shadow.” He stretches out on his back again. “I’ll put it in your terms. She used to be an Astrachan, and now she’s a crab apple.”

  I smile at him. Crab apples are tart, almost inedible, except in jellies. But Astrachans, well, they’re the best all-arounds-sweet in cooking, sweet when eaten raw. I roll away from Joley, anxious to change the conversation. I feel weird talking like this to him. It is one thing if we are talking about the orchard, or my own life, but he is older than me, and when I remember that, I don’t feel right about giving him advice. About all I can do is listen.

  “So you going to tell us what happened last night?” Joley says, my way out.

  “You heard me.” I sit up and hug my knees, wiping off grass stains on my jeans. “Joellen’s getting married. She tells me this and then she comes on to me.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “Would I joke about something like that?” I mean it as a light remark but Joley stares at my face, as if he is trying to evaluate me before making a decision.

  “I’m not going to ask you what happened,” Joley says, laughing.

  “You don’t want to know-”

  “Oh, I don’t?”

  I shake my head, grinning. Getting it out, saying it in the freedom of this great spread of land, my own land, somehow makes it seem all right. Once it is out, I can forget about it. I turn to Joley. “This kind of shit ever happen to you, or is it me?”

  He laughs and stands up, leaning against a tree that he recently grafted. “I only fell in love once in my life,” he says, “so I’m no expert.”

  “Some help you are.” He offers me a hand to pull myself up. We pick up the hose and the spray bottle and head further into the commercial half of the orchard. I walk ahead and stand at the crest of the hill, surveying the four corners of this place. There are men pruning younger trees straight ahead of me, and further along in the commercial section I can make out Hadley, supervising the spraying of more Thiodan. Now that it’s July all the leaves and blossoms are out, reaching against the sky like fingers.

  Joley hands me the fallen branch he picked up earlier, a likely candidate-for late summer bud-grafting. “Cheer up, Sam,” he tells me. “If you’re lucky, I’ll introduce you to my big sister.”

  19 REBECCA July 22, 1990

  While we are waiting in line for our ice cream, my mother brings up the subject of Sam. “So,” she says to me. “What do you think? Really.”

  I have to say, I have been expecting this. They haven’t argued all day. In fact, most of the times I have seen my mother this morning, she has been in the company of Sam, strolling through the south corner of the orchard, or snapping beans with him on the porch as the sun beats down, or just talking. I’ve wondered what they are saying-Sam having no experience in speech disorders, and my mother knowing next to nothing about agriculture. I figure they talk about Uncle Joley, their common ground. Once or twice, I’ve pretended they are talking about me.

  “I don’t know him really well,” I say. “He seems nice enough.”

  My mother steps in front of my line of vision so that all I can see is her. “Nice enough for what?”

  What does she expect me to say? She stares so hard that I know she demands a better answer, a right answer, and I haven’t any idea what that could be. “If you mean, Should I screw him, then, if you want to, yes.”

  “Rebecca!” My mother says it so loudly that the woman in front of us, Hadley, Joley and Sam himself all turn around. She smiles, and waves them all away. Then she says more quietly, “I don’t know what has gotten into you here. Sometimes I think you aren’t the same kid I brought out East.”

  I’m not, I want to say, I’m crazy in love. But you don’t tell your mother that, especially when she’s all of a sudden best friends with a different guy who happens to be the same age as the guy you love. My mother turns to Uncle Joley. “She wants a small chocolate. I’ll have a javaberry. Can you order, we’re going to walk a ways.”

  I pull my arm away from her grasp. “I don’t want chocolate,” I tell my uncle, although that was what I had planned to order. “She doesn’t know what I want.” I shook a look at my mother. “ Creamsicle sherbert.”

  “Creamsicle? You hate creamsicle. You told me last year it reminds you of St. Joseph’s children’s aspirin.”

  “Creamsicle,” I repeat. “That’s what I want.” To avoid a scene, I walk with my mother. When we leave, Hadley and Sam are pointing at an all-terrain bicycle.

  “What is it?” I say, figuring if I get it out into the open then this will all be over. I know it is about Hadley, and how much time I have been spending with him. For all I know, maybe she found out about us in the barn.

  I have worked this all out in my mind, the product of several nights that I have lain awake missing the sounds of California. You don’t hear passing cars, or Big Wheels on the sidewalk, or the surf from miles away. Instead there are cicadas (peepers, Hadley says), and the wind in the branches and blossoms and the bleating of sheep. I swear you can hear headlights here. I cannot see the drive from my bedroom; at least three times I have run to the window at the end of the upper hall to survey the cars below-count them, and make sure my father hasn’t come yet. The only thing I can imagine worse than confronting my mother about Hadley is confronting my father about this entire trip.

  This is what I am going to say to my mother: I know you think that I am young. But I was old enough to come here with you. And I was old enough to know what was going on between you and Daddy, and what was better for us in the long run. So don’t tell me I don’t know what I am doing. After all, you weren’t any older than I am when you began to date Daddy.

  What my mother says is: “I know you think I’m betraying your father.”

  I stare up at her in amazement.
This isn’t about me at all. She hasn’t even noticed me and Hadley.

  “I know that I am still married to him. Don’t you think every time I see you in the morning I think about what I’ve left behind in California? A whole life, Rebecca, I left my whole life. I left a man who, at least in some ways, depends on me. And that’s why sometimes I wonder what I’m doing out here, in this godforsaken farm zone-”She waves her arm in the air, “-with this-”

  When her voice falls off, I interrupt her. “This what?”

  “This absolutely incredible man,” she says.

  An absolutely incredible man?

  My mother stops walking. “You’re pissed off at me.”

  “No I’m not.”

  “I can tell.”

  “I’m not. Really.”

  “You don’t have to lie . . .”

  “Mom,” I say, louder. “I’m not lying.” Am I? I face her and put my hands on my hips. I think, who is the child here? “So what’s been going on between you and Sam, anyway?”

  My mother turns beet red. Beet red, on my own mother! “Nothing,” she admits. “But I’ve been having some crazy thoughts. It’s nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

  My own mother. Who would have thought. “I didn’t think you two got along.”

  “Well, neither did I,” she says. “But I guess compatibility isn’t the issue.” She stares in the direction of Hadley and Sam, who are waiting with Uncle Joley at the front of the ice cream line. This place is different from the one we went to yesterday, back when my mother and Sam didn’t like each other. This place makes its own ice cream. It has only seven flavors and Sam says it’s always busy. “We should head back,” my mother says, without any real determination.

  When we first got here, Sam wanted nothing to do with my mother. After the whole sheep-shearing fiasco, which was a lousy first impression, he’d told Hadley my mother was some uptown bitch with a lot to learn about real life. And when Hadley told me, and I’d told my mother, she’d snorted and said that an apple farm in East Jesus wasn’t real life.