Songs of the Humpback Whale: A Novel in Five Voices

66 SAM

We come to a quiet understanding, Oliver and me. We don’t talk too much in the car on the way to the White Mountains. Oliver drives, and I fidget with the cigarette lighter button and the power window controls. I keep my space, and he keeps his.

From time to time I get to study his face. I do it in a curious, kind of jealous way. You know: What has he got that I don’t have? He’s very dark, tanned, I guess, but I work outside as much as he does and I don’t look like that. Maybe it’s the salt water. It’s cut lines in his face, around his eyes and mouth, that make him look so tired. Or determined. It depends on the angle. He’s got hair like Rebecca’s and vacant blue eyes with tiny little pinpoint black pupils. I try, really, I do-but I cannot picture Jane with him. I can’t even think of him standing next to her, without the picture looking all funny. She wasn’t meant to be with someone like him; someone so stuffy, with his head up in the clouds. She was meant to be with someone like me.

I’ve got my eye on him when the car starts to choke. We’re on 93. I think I remember passing Manchester, but I can’t be sure. About all I know for certain is that we’re running out of gas.

“Shit,” Oliver says, maneuvering the car onto the shoulder of the road. “I didn’t even notice I was low.”

I fold my arms across my chest. “Don’t suppose you have a gas can?”

Oliver turns to me and smirks. “As a matter of fact I do. And we’re both going for a walk down the highway with it.”

“Someone should stay with the car. You don’t want to come back and find it towed. This isn’t even really a shoulder, here. You can’t just leave it.”

“You’re not staying here,” Oliver says. “I don’t trust you.”

“You don’t trust me. What am I going to do with a car like this?” But Oliver isn’t listening. He’s popped the trunk, and he takes a blue plastic gas can out. He sticks his head inside my window and tells me to get a move on.

We walk along the highway. It’s hot, and there are bugs everywhere. “So,” I say, as friendly as I can, “how’s work?”

“Shut up. I don’t want to carry on a conversation with you. I don’t even want to believe that you exist.”

“Believe me,” I say, “hanging around with you isn’t up there on my list of things to do.”

Oliver mutters something I can’t hear, what with an eighteenwheeler zooming by. It ends with: “. . . you should tell me what exactly prompted my daughter to leave.”

So I tell him about Hadley, and about what Jane said. He takes this all very well, kind of weighing the information before he comes to any early conclusions. I finish the story about three miles down the road, when we reach the exit. Then I look at Oliver to see his expression.

He looks up at me. “Are they sleeping together?”

“How the hell should I know? I doubt it.”

“I thought you’d know everything that goes on under your roof,” Oliver says.

“He’s a good person.” I point up the road at a Texaco. “He’s a lot like me, actually.”

The second after I say it I realize it was the wrong thing to say. Oliver looks at me with disgust. “I’ll bet.”

At the service station Oliver fills up the gas can while I buy a Mountain-Dew from a vending machine. Next to Jolt cola, it’s got the most caffeine out of any soft drink and I figure I’m going to need it. I sit on the curb at the edge of the road and count the cars that go by. When I close my eyes, I get this picture of Jane: last night, when I came to her, and she was a blue silhouette against the white curtains in the window. She was wearing that slinky silky thing with thin straps, you know what I mean. Those sexy nightgowns. I don’t know where she got it; God knows my mother didn’t leave any behind in her bedroom. But Jesus was she something. When I touched her the fabric spilled through my fingers, and to my surprise, her own skin was even softer.

I open my eyes and jump up about a foot. Oliver’s face is inches from mine, purple and angry. “You’re thinking about her,” he shouts. “I don’t want you doing that.”

Like he could possibly stop me. I could pommel this guy to a pulp in a matter of minutes; I’m restraining myself because Jane would fall apart, and besides, he may be instrumental in getting Rebecca away from Hadley. “Did it ever occur to you that this didn’t develop just because of me? Did it ever occur to you that Jane wanted to be with me too?”

Oliver raises his free hand, probably to punch me, but I stand up. I’m a good four inches taller than him, and both of us know that now I’m awake I could kill him. He puts his hand down. “Shut up,” he says between his teeth. “Just shut up.” He walks a few feet in front of me all three and a half miles back towards the car. He won’t speak to me, and frankly I don’t care. The sooner he’s out of here, the sooner Jane and I are alone again, the better.

It costs Oliver sixty-five bucks to get his car released from the garage where it’s been towed. We’ve had to walk another five miles because of this, in the other direction. It sets us back about another two hours. It is after three when we leave, having cleared the ticket with the police station in Goffstown. The attendant is an old guy with white hair that sticks up in tufts all over his head. He rubs his palm up against the windshield, which is filmy with dust. “Looks like you’re outta gas,” he says. “I’d do something about that if I were you.”

Oliver pushes past the man. He empties the can he’s been hauling around most of the day into the gas tank. It chugs, like it’s gulping down a good imported beer. When he finishes he throws the can into the back seat and stares at me. “What are you looking at? Are you going to get in or what?”

“I’ve been thinking,” I say. “You ought to let me drive.”

Oliver leans across the hood of the car. “Give me one good reason.”

“So we can find Rebecca tonight. We’re going to be getting off the major highways really soon, and I barely know where to go. I can do it by feel but I couldn’t really direct you.” I shrug; it’s the truth. I want this to be over with as soon as possible, so that I can call Jane and hear her voice on the other end of the line. Hear her tell me to come home.

We reach Carroll, Hadley’s hometown, just after dinnertime. I’m driving,-like I suggested. I take a couple of wrong turns, but I get us to the Slegg house. “Why, hello, Sam!” Mrs. Slegg says when she answers the door. “It sure is nice to see you. Hadley’s enjoying his vacation.” She gracefully sweeps her arm towards the hallway. “Won’t you come inside?”

“I’m afraid I can’t, Mrs. Slegg. This is my-this is Oliver Jones. We’re trying to find his daughter, and I think she may have come here to visit Hadley.”

Mrs. Slegg pulls her bathrobe tighter around her neck. “Hadley isn’t in some kind of trouble, is he?”

“Not at all.” I give my best happy-go-lucky smile. Hadley does it better,I think. “They’re just good friends, and well, we figure she came up this way.”

Mrs. Slegg flicks on the porch light from inside. “He’s not here now. He went out to a bar with a friend. Someone came to the door, I don’t think it was a girl but I can’t say for sure. And he said he was going out.”

Oliver steps in front of me. “Ma’am, do you mind if I take a look around? You can imagine what it’s like . . . your own child running away, wondering if she’s in some terrible danger.”

Mrs. Slegg nods with Oliver. “Oh, please, heavens, yes. I understand. Really I do.”

Oliver gives a quick grateful smile. “Do you know the names of the bars your son might frequent?”

“Oh,” Mrs. Slegg says, surprised. I’m not even watching Detective Jones anymore. “I don’t really know, exactly. I don’t get out much myself into town. Come to think of it, Sam, I don’t believe Hadley knows of any bars around here.” She turns to Oliver again. “You see, ever since I moved, Hadley’s been working with Sam back in Stow. I just came to live here after Mr. Slegg died; before that we had a farm too. Right near the Hansens, isn’t that right? Hadley comes up here but a couple of weekends a year, and at Christmastime, so he’s usually at home with his brother and me. He’s a quiet boy, you know, he’s not one of those rowdy types.”

Oliver nods. “He’s not at a bar,” he tells me.

“How do you know that?” I say, more to disagree with him than anything else. “Why would he lie to his own mother?”

“If you can’t answer that you’re more stupid than I thought. Check inside. See if there are any traces of him leaving, or of my daughter. I’m going into the backyard.”

Reluctantly, I trudge to the back end of the little ranch, to the room Hadley uses when he’s home. Mrs. Slegg stands behind me. “I’m sorry about intruding. We’ll be out of here very soon. And when Hadley gets home, maybe you can ask him to-” I stop, watching Mrs. Slegg run her hands over the bed.

“Isn’t this the strangest thing?” she says. “I gave Hadley an extra blanket just last night because it was so cold up here in the mountains. It was a really old one, from my grandma, and I told him to take good care of it because it’s an antique. And here it’s gone.”

I check under the bed, and in the closet and the empty drawers. Nothing.-Running to the next room over, Hadley’s brother’s, Mrs. Slegg tells me the blanket’s missing on his bed too. “Oh, Sam,” she says, her voice wavering. “My boy’s not going to get hurt, now, is he? You’ve got to promise me that!”

She reaches out to me. I’ve known her all my life. How can I tell her that her son’s run away, with a minor, and we haven’t a clue where they are? “Nothing’s going to happen to Hadley. Trust me.” I kiss her lightly on the cheek and dash outside, to where Oliver is crouched near the rocky wall that abuts the backyard. It’s the bottom of a mountain, actually: Mount Deception. Hadley and I climbed it once when we came up here for a long camping weekend. I remember it being steep, with few places for good strong footholds. And beautiful. Once you get to the top, if you ever do make it, there’s quite a view.

Oliver dusts the edges of some of the rocks that make up the looming-wall. “See this? Dirt. Mud. And it’s fresh. I’ll bet you ten-to-one Hadley and Rebecca have climbed up there.”

“There are two blankets missing from the house. I don’t know if that proves anything.”

Oliver cranes his neck. From this angle, right at the very bottom, it’s impossible to see to the top of Mount Deception. It hurts to just think about it. He anchors one leg in the crevice of the rocks. “Give me a lift up.”

“Oliver,” I tell him. “You can’t go climbing this mountain right now.” He is pulling himself up, and the remarkable thing is his agility, given the fact that he’s wearing street shoes instead of boots. “It’s getting dark, and you’re going to be stuck halfway up this mountain in the freezing cold. We’ll get a ranger; we’ll go first thing in the morning.”

“She’s going to be up there the whole night. God only knows what sort of shape she’s in, and how she got here.”

“I don’t like it any more than you do,” I say. And I don’t. I wasn’t planning on spending the night in the company of Oliver Jones. By now the sky has turned a milky color, like the background on blueprints. There are a few stars here and there. “Let’s go find a ranger. The sooner we get there the better.”

The nearest ranger station is at a campground about ten miles south of Hadley’s place. When we get there two rangers are inside the little log shack, cooking a can of Heinz beans.

Oliver just walks right in without being invited. He sits down at the kitchen table and starts to tell the rangers about Rebecca and Hadley. I interrupt him after about five minutes of extraneous background history. “Look, I know we can’t get up there tonight, but we’d really like to go there first thing in the morning. Maybe you can help us; a trail or something.”

The ranger who is just coming on duty takes out a relief map of the area and asks me to show him where the Sleggs live. I mention that I’ve hiked the mountain once with Hadley; I might remember things as we go.

We sleep on the floor of the cabin and when the sun comes up, we begin to pick our way through several trails. Oliver walks first, then the ranger, then me. From time to time Oliver slides on the worn soles of his loafers, knocking over the ranger and me like dominoes.

At a certain point it starts coming back to me. The cliff, the winding path and the little clump of trees in the distance. “We camped there,” I say. “Last time I hiked this mountain we camped in those trees. There’s a little clearing there, and you’re close by to the water, so it makes a good site.”

We hike up the eastern edge, keeping the increasingly deep drop just an arm’s length away. We can hear the river splashing over the rocks. Oliver’s jaw tenses up when he sees the cliff. I know what he is thinking: What if she’s down there? We are all out of breath by the time the ground levels off in front of us. Straight ahead is the clearing, through the pine trees, and I think I can make out something blue. We tiptoe in through the maze of trunks, and there on a blanket are Hadley and Rebecca, wound around each other. They are still, so still I think maybe this was a suicide pact, but then I see Hadley’s chest rising and falling. He’s practically naked, except for his boxers, and Rebecca’s just wearing his shirt. The funny thing is, they look really peaceful. Like you say about angels. They’re holding each other so tight, even fast asleep, that it’s as if the rest of the world couldn’t possibly matter.

“Jesus, Hadley,” I say, more out of shock than anything else. In spite of what Jane has told me about him and Rebecca, in spite of the fact that I repeated the story myself to Oliver, I didn’t really believe he was carrying on with her. She looks about nine years old with her hair spread out in back of her like that, all skinny arms and legs. She certainly doesn’t look old enough to be wrapped in Hadley’s arms this way. I can tell Oliver isn’t taking it too well, either. He is rasping, choking on everyday air.

Hadley sits up at the sound of my voice. He’s got an erection, for Christ’s sake. He blinks a few times and looks around like a captured animal. By now Rebecca is sitting up too. The thing I notice about her is that her eyes are all fuzzy, and she doesn’t seem to be surprised. “Hadley,” she says calmly, “this is my father.”

Hadley pulls a blanket over his lap and holds out his hand. Oliver doesn’t take it. Rebecca lies back down on the blanket. How far have they gone? I wonder. I stare at Hadley, but he’s not revealing anything. As Rebecca hits the ground heavily, he crawls to her side. So does the ranger, for that matter. Hadley holds his hand under Rebecca’s neck, incredibly tender.

“Get the hell away from her.” Oliver says, finally. “Don’t touch her.”

Seeing this may be harder for him than seeing me and Jane together. There’s a rotten, stale smell that’s hovering; disgrace. “Do it, Hadley. Just move away. It’s the best thing.”

Hadley turns to me and he looks like he’s been wounded. “What do you know?”

Oliver ignores what’s going on between Hadley and me. He takes a step towards his daughter, holding out his hand but not quite touching her. “Rebecca, are you all right? Did he hurt you?”

Hadley looks at me, as if to say: Don’t do this to me twice. Stand up for me, now. Please. Believe in me.

I keep eye contact with him, and he nods, just the slightest bit. I turn to Rebecca. There’s something wrong here, any fool could tell that from the way she’s just lying there. “Can you stand up?” I say, stepping close.

When Rebecca shakes her head, which looks like it takes up all her energy, Hadley moves back next to her. He props her up by her shoulders. “She came to me. She hitched. We were headed to your place today to work this all out.” He’s shouting, I wonder if he knows.

I look from Hadley’s face to Oliver’s He’s got this look in his eyes that I didn’t see even yesterday morning. I have never seen it on a human. It’s the way raccoons get, when they’re rabid. They walk right up to you, even though normally they’re scared shitless of people, and they just attack, scratching and biting and clawing. It’s like they have no idea where they are, or how they got there. They’ve just absolutely gone crazy. “Hadley,” I say real slowly, trying not to set Oliver off, “I think you’d better let Rebecca come home with us. And I think you’d better stay here for a while.”

Hadley glares at him, a vein in his temple pulsing angrily. “You know me,” he says. “You’ve known me forever. I can’t believe . . . I cannot believe that you’d doubt me.” He walks towards me, so close I could reach out and just touch him, tell him it’s over. “You’re my friend, Sam,” he says. “You’re like my brother. I didn’t tell her to come here. I wouldn’t do that.” He swallows; I think he’s about to cry. In all the years, I’ve never seen him do that. “I’m not going to turn my back. I’m not going to let you take her away.” He looks at Rebecca. “Jesus, Sam, I love her.”

He takes a step backwards, towards the chasm, and I lean forward, worried about his safety, but Rebecca lurches forward between us and throws her arms around Hadley’s knees. Hadley crouches, holding her and brushing back her hair.

It is at this moment that Oliver loses control. “Let go of her, you bastard!” I grab his arm and pull him back. “Let go of my daughter!”

I kneel, eye-level with Rebecca and Hadley. “Give her to us, Hadley,” I whisper. “Give her to us.”

Rebecca’s face is pressed into Hadley’s shoulder. He talks to her quietly,and from the words I catch over the calls of circling hawks, I think he is trying to convince her to come to us.

“You have to go with them,” Hadley says. He lifts her chin with her finger. “Don’t you want to make me happy? Don’t you see?”

I start to wonder if this is going to turn out all right. Oliver stands with his fists at his side, watching Rebecca as if there is a wall between them. I imagine it is next to impossible to see your child grow up; even harder when it comes in a matter of minutes.

Rebecca and Hadley are struggling. She clutches him, and Hadley is trying to push her away. Watching them, I have started to believe. I think I am on their side, now. In spite of Oliver, in spite of Jane. For the last time, Hadley looks at me, and he’s begging for just five minutes. Five lousy minutes.

Because I am looking into the sun to give them privacy, I don’t really know what happens next. All of a sudden, Rebecca and Hadley tear apart. In the effort to push her towards me, he falls. I see all this through blind orange sunspots, my own fault. And then Rebecca is in my arms, tiny and hot with sweat, reaching back towards the cliff as Hadley falls over the edge.

I will remember many things about that day in years to come, but the thing that will stick with me most vividly is Rebecca. Just that second her eyes clear, and she begins to scream. It isn’t a scream, though, not really; it’s the howling of an animal. I recognize it as the sound of death, and it never surprises me that it comes from her throat instead of Hadley’s. I will remember that noise, and the way Rebecca looks over the edge of the cliff when none of us have the nerve. She rips the shirt she is wearing at the buttons and rakes her nails over her chest. All three of us-three men-just stand there, not doing anything; not knowing what we are supposed to do. We are speechless. She tears at her flesh, scoring her legs and her arms. We all watch the blood from the marks she’s made seep into the earth.