Songs of the Humpback Whale: A Novel in Five Voices

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.”