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

I sigh and start the car. “You’d better get used to it. I hear drivingin the Midwest is lousy.”

  “Can we just go,” Rebecca says. “Please.”

  After a few miles we pass a blue metal sign that says JAKE’S, with an arrow. Rebecca shrugs, which means Yes, let’s turn. “Jake’s is the name of a diner if I’ve ever heard one,” I say.

  The interesting thing about the environs surrounding the Grand Canyon is that they’re ugly. Dusty, plain, as if all their splendor has been sucked out by the area’s main attraction. You can drive, even on a highway, for miles without spotting desert vegetation or the hint of color.

  “Jake’s!” Rebecca screams, and I slam my brakes. We do a 180-degree turn in the dust, which points us toward the little shack I’ve passed. There are no other cars, in fact there isn’t even a diner. What is there is an airfield, and a tiny plane in the distance, puttering.

  A man with very short yellow hair and spectacles approaches the car. “Hello. Interested in a ride?”

  “No,” Rebecca says quickly.

  He holds his hand out to her across my chest. “Name’s Jake Feathers. Honest to God.”

  “Let’s go,” Rebecca says. “This isn’t a diner.”

  “I fly over the canyon,” Jake says, as if we are listening. “Cheapest-deal you’ll find. Unlike anything you’ll ever see.” He winks at Rebecca. “Fifty dollars apiece.”

  “How long?” I ask.

  “Mom,” Rebecca says. “Please.”

  “As long as it takes,” Jake tells me. I get out of the car and stand up. I hear Rebecca swear and recline her seat. The plane, in the distance, seems as if it is rolling forward.

  “You ain’t seen the Canyon unless you’ve seen it from the inside. You won’t believe it till you do it.”

  I have been thinking this very thing. “We don’t have the money,” Rebecca whines.

  I stick my head in the window. “You don’t have to go.”

  “I’m not getting on that plane.”

  “I understand. But do you mind if I do?” I lean in closer for privacy. “I mean, we can’t ride the burros, and I think one of us ought to see it. We came all the way here, and you know, you can’t say you’ve seen it-”

  “-if you don’t see it from the inside,” Jake says, finishing my sentence. He tips an imaginary hat.

  Rebecca sighs and closes her eyes. “Ask if he has any food.”

  Minutes later, with my daughter waving from the hood of the car, Jake takes me up in his Cessna. I do not believe this contraption is going to fly, with its rusted studs and notched propellers. The control panel-something I’ve always conceived of with flashing lights and radar gadgets-is no more complex than the dashboard of the station wagon. Even the throttle Jake uses for takeoff resembles the knobs for the air conditioning.

  As we lift off the ground my head whacks against the metal of the airplane’s frame. I am surprised at the roughness of the flight, the way the plane chugs as if there could be bumps in the air. Next time, I think, a Dramamine. Jake says something to me, but I can’t hear him over the engine.

  Inside this plastic bubble I can see panoramically-the trees, the highway, Rebecca, getting smaller, disappearing. I watch the ground run behind us and then suddenly there is nothing there at all.

  We’ve fallen of a cliff, I think, panicking, but there’s no drop. We turn to the right and I see the perimeter of this beautiful gully in a way I haven’t seen-ridges and textures so close they become real. We pass lakes in the valley of the canyon, emeralds that grow larger as we inch farther down. We fly over peaks and past furrows; we hum across carved rocks. Under us at one point is a green village, a trembling ledge dotted with the red roofs of homes and minute fenced-in farms. I find myself wanting to go to this village; I want to know what it is like to live in the shadow of natural walls.

  Too quickly we turn around, letting the sun wash us full-force, so powerful I have to shade my eyes. I breathe deeply, trying to internalize this amazing open space where there is no firm footing, where there once was water. When we fly back over the edge of ordinary ground, I see Rebecca sitting on the hood of our station wagon. As Jake lands I wonder what cities and sculptures lie millions of miles beneath the sea.

  15 JOLEY

  Dear Jane,

  I was cleaning out my closet in anticipation of your arrival, and do you know what I found? The wave machine, which incidentally still works. Remember? Plug it into the wall and the sound of the ocean fills your room, pounding against the walls. Mama got it for me when I started to lose sleep. It was new in its day-a machine that simulated the way nature should be, that drowned the sounds of a house falling apart at its foundations.

  When I was nine and you were thirteen the arguments began to get louder-so loud the attic rattled and the moon sank. You bitch, Daddy screamed, you whore-you had to spell that word for me, and learn about the meaning from the bad girls at school. On Mondays and Thursdays, Daddy came home drunk, his breath smelling like silage. He’d slam the door open and he’d walk so heavily the ceiling (our bedroom floors) shook. And when you’re nine and you’re in a room with tall ships stenciled on the walls that begin to move out of fear or shock or both-the last thing you want is to be alone. I’d wait until the coast was clear-when Mama’s crying carpeted my footsteps-and I’d run into your room, which was soft and pink and full of you.

  You waited for me, awake. You pulled back the covers and let me crawl in, hugging me when I needed it. Sometimes we turned on the lights and played Old Maid. Sometimes we made up ghost stories, or sang TV commercials, and sometimes we couldn’t help but listen. And then when we heard Mama creep up the stairs and close her bedroom door behind her, followed by Daddy, thunderous, minutes later, we covered our ears. We snuck out of your bedroom and tiptoed downstairs, looking for traces-a broken vase, a bloody tissue-that might keep our attention a little longer. Most of the time we found nothing at all, just our living room, where we were allowed to buy into the fantasy that we were your average happy American kids.

  When Mama found me in your room some months later- on a morning we had happened to sleep later than her-she didn’t tell Daddy. She half-carried me, asleep, into my own room and told me I must never never go in there again at night. But when it all happened again and I was forced to cry just to keep myself from listening, Daddy ran upstairs and threw open my door. Before I had time to consider the consequences you squeezed under his arm and ran to my side. Get away, Daddy, you said. You don’t know what you’re doing.

  Mama bought me the wave machine the next day. To some extent it worked, I didn’t hear a lot of the fighting. But I couldn’t curl into the small of your neck-baby shampoo and talcum powder-and I couldn’t hear your voice singing me kangaroo lullabies. All that I had was the solace of a wall that connected our rooms, where I could scratch a pattern you’d know how to answer. That was all I had, that and the sound of water where there was none, insisting I push from my mind the hollow sounds of Daddy hitting Mama, and then hitting you, again. Take Route 89 to Salt Lake City. There’s water there you can’t see. Give my love to Rebecca. As always,

  Joley

  16 REBECCA July 25, 1990

  When I see myself in the reflection of the truck’s window, I understand why nobody has stopped to pick me up. I’ve been in the rain for three hours, and I haven’t even reached the highway yet. My hair is plastered against my head, and my features remind me of a soft-boiled egg. Mud is caked on my arms and legs in paisley shapes: I don’t look like a hitchhiker; I look like a Vietnam vet.

  “Thank God,” I say under my breath, and I blow a cloud of frost between my teeth. Massachusetts is not California. It can’t be more than fifty degrees out here, although it’s July, and the sun’s barely set.

  I am not put off by truckers anymore, not since coming crosscountry. They look worse than they are, for the most part, like the so-called tough guys in school who refuse to throw the first punch. The man in the cab of this truck is shaved bald, with a tattoo of a
snake running from the crown of his head down his neck. So I smile at him. “I’m trying to get to New Hampshire.”

  The trucker stares at me blankly, as if I have mentioned a state he’s never heard of. He says something out loud, and it’s not directed to me, and suddenly I see another person appear in the passenger seat. I cannot tell if it is a boy or a girl but it seems this person had just woken up. She-no, he-runs a hand through his hair and sniffs in to clear his nose. My shoulders begin to shiver again; I can see there isn’t room for me.

  “Listen,” the driver says, “You ain’t running away from home.”

  “Okay. I’m not.”

  “Is she thick, or what.” He squints at me. “We can’t stow away minors.”

  “Minors? I’m eighteen. I just don’t look it right now. I’ve been on the road for hours.”

  The boy in the passenger seat, who is wearing a White Snake shirt with cut-off sleeves, turns my way. He grins. He is missing his two front teeth. “Eighteen, hey?” For the first time I understand what it is like to be undressed by someone’s eyes. I cross my hands in front of me. “Let her get in the back, Spud. She can ride with the rest of the meat.” The two of them start to laugh hysterically.

  “The back?”

  The White Snake boy points with his thumb. “Lift the hatch and make sure you lock it from the inside. And,” he leans out the window so that I can smell the chocolate curdles of his breath. “We’ll stop for a little rest, baby. Real soon.” He slaps the driver high five, rolls up his window.

  It is an unmarked white truck so I don’t know what to expect from its contents. I have to swing myself up on the steel frame to unhook the latch, then swing down and pull the handle with me. I know they are in a hurry so I climb back inside and pull the doors shut with the strings someone has attached to the padded inside.

  There are no windows. It is pitch dark, and freezing. I reach around me like I am blind and feel the shapes of chickens shrinkwrapped in plastic, the T-bones in steaks. The truck begins to bounce. Through a wall of raw flesh I can hear the boy with the White Snake shirt, singing along to a tape of Guns ‘n’ Roses.

  I am going to die, I think, and I am much more terrified than I was walking along the road at night. I am going to freeze to death and when they open this hatch two hours from now I’ll be blue and curled like an embryo. Think, I tell myself. Think. How in God’s name do the Eskimos live?

  Then I remember. Way back, in fifth grade we studied them-the Inuit-and I had asked Miss Cleary how they stay warm in a home made of ice. Well, they have fires, she said. But believe it or not the ice is a house. Astrange house but a house indeed. It traps their body heat.

  There is not much room to move in here but it is enough. I squat, wary of standing in a moving truck. Little by little I move meat away from the wall of the truck and pile it back up, leaving a tiny enclosure for my own body. It gets easier as my eyes adjust to the dark. I find that if I layer chicken with tenderloins, the walls don’t come tumbling down.

  “What you doing back there, baby,” I hear. “You getting yourself-ready for me?”

  And then the rough voice of the driver: “You gonna shut up Earl, or I’ll have to throw you back there to cool down.”

  I curl into the small space I’ve created and wrap my arms tight around myself. Soon, I think, there’ll be someone else to do this for me. I don’t know that it is any warmer, but in my head I think it is and that really makes a difference.

  I know it was her. I know that she was the one who told Sam to get rid of Hadley, or else why would Hadley go? He was happy there, Sam was happy with him there, there weren’t any problems. It was my mother; she gets in her head an idea that she can run the world for everyone and she actually thinks she’s right.

  It’s okay for her to run around giggling like an idiot with Sam, right? But if I fall in love-real love, you know-it’s the end of the world. Hadley and I really have something. I know what I’m talking about, too. I’ve had boyfriends for a week or so in school, and this is nothing like it. Hadley’s told me about the way his father died working in front of him; about the time he almost drowned in a frozen pond. He’s told me about the time he stole a pack of Twinkies from the Wal-Mart, and couldn’t sleep till he gave it back. He’s cried, sometimes, telling me these things. He’s said there’s no one quite like me.

  We’ll get married-isn’t it Mississippi or someplace like that where fifteen is legal?-and we’ll live on a farm of our own. We’ll have strawberries and wax beans and cherry tomatoes and apples, I suppose, and absolutely no rhubarb. We’ll have five kids, and if they all look like Hadley that’s fine with me, as long as I have one little girl to myself. I’ve always wanted someone like me.

  I’ll invite my father for the weekend-that’ll drive my mother crazy. And when she and Sam come to visit we won’t let them in. We’ll post Dobermans trained for her scent. And when she stands outside her car and calls to us, begging forgiveness, we’ll turn on the outside stereo speakers and flood away her voice with Tracy Chapman, Buffalo Springfield and those other ballads Hadley likes.

  He came to me before he left. He sneaked into my room and pressed his hand against my mouth before I could speak. He told me he had to leave and then he slipped off his boots and got under the covers. He put his hands up my nightgown. I told him they were cold, but he just laughed and pressed them against my belly until he caught my heat. “I don’t understand,” he whispered. “Sam and me have been together for almost fifteen years. He’s more my brother than my brother. This is more my home.” I thought he might be crying and that was something I did not want to see, so I didn’t turn to face him. He said, “I’ll be back to get you, Rebecca, I mean that. I’ve never been with anyone like you.” Those, I think, were the exact words.

  But I wasn’t going to sit around and wait for him, watching my mother coring Macs with Sam in the kitchen or rubbing his feet after dinner. I wasn’t going to watch that and pretend like nothing had happened. Obviously, she doesn’t care about me, or she wouldn’t have pushed Hadley away.

  Once I said to Hadley, “You know you’re almost old enough to be my father.” I mean, ten years is some difference. And he told me I was no ordinary fifteen-year-old. Fifteen-year-olds in Stow read Tiger Beat and go to the Boston malls to see visiting soap opera stars. I told him that Stow was about three years behind, then-in San Diego that’s what twelve-year-olds do. And Hadley said, “Well, maybe these kids are twelve after all.”

  I believe in love. I think it just hits you and pulls the rug out from underneath you and, like a baby, demands your attention every minute of the day. When I get close to Hadley I breathe faster. My knees shake. If I rub my eyes hard, I can see his image in the corners. We’ve been together one whole week.

  We haven’t done it yet. We’ve come awfully close-like that time in the hay on the horse blankets. But he’s the one who keeps pushing me away, what do you make of that? I thought all guys wanted was sex-which is another reason I’m crazy about him. He said to me, “Don’t you want to be a kid for a couple of days longer?”

  My mother told me about sex when I was four. She started by saying, “When a man and a woman love each other very much . . .” and then she stopped herself and said, “When a man and a woman are married and love each other very much . . .” I don’t think she knows I caught the slip. I’m not supposed to have sex until I’m married, which doesn’t make any sense to me. Number one, most girls in high school have done it by the time they graduate and very few get pregnant-we aren’t stupid. And number two, it’s not like marriage is the peak of your life. You can be married, I think, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you are in love.

  Maybe I fall asleep for a while in this chicken igloo. When I wake up I am not sure if it is my eyes blinking or the door opening that lets in a slice of light. Whatever it is it goes away very quickly, and it is several seconds too late when I notice we aren’t moving.

  The boy is there, tossing away the wall of ice with the forc
e of a superhero. In the darkness his teeth are blue like lightning. I can see his ribs. “You been quiet,” he says, revealing me.

  I am not as frightened as I should be. I consider playing dead but I am not sure that will stop him.

  “Let’s play a game. I’ll go first.” He strips off his T-shirt, to show his skin, which glows.

  “Where are we?” I hope it is a McDonald’s, where, if I scream, I have a chance of being heard.

  “If you’re real good I’ll let you out to take a look.” He thinks about what he’s said and then he laughs, and takes a step forward. “Real good.” He pokes my shoulder. “It’s your turn, baby. The shirt. Take off the shirt.”

  I collect all the saliva I can and spit at his chest. “You,” I say, “are a pig.”

  Because his eyes are still adjusting to the light I have the advantage. While he is trying to figure out what I’ve done I push past him and lunge for the latch on the door. He grabs me by the hair and, pinning me by the throat, presses me up against the cold, cold wall. With his free hand he grabs mine and holds it against his crotch. Through his jeans, I can feel him twitch.

  I bring my knee up with power that surprises me and crush it against him. He falls back on the broiler-fryers and the strip streaks, clutching his groin. “You little fuck!” he yells. I throw open the latch and tear into the fast-food restaurant.

  I hide in the ladies room, figuring that is the safest place. Inside the stall I lock the door and crouch on the toilet seat. I count to five hundred and try to ignore the people who rattle the lock to see if there is someone inside. I will not ride with men, I vow. I can’t afford to.

  When the coast is clear I come out of the stall and stand in front of the sink area. I wash the mud off my arms and legs with warm industrial soap and scrub my face; then I hold my head under the air blower to dry my hair. There are icicles in the scalp. As I poke my head out the bathroom door, an older woman wearing a green wool suit with a matching fedora and a strand of pearls goes inside.