Trial and Error

Three

One hour before Bobby Solomon begged his uncle to stop Darth Vader from stealing the two dolphins, the boy had climbed a chain-link fence, sneaked across a concrete dock, and crept over a catwalk to a floating wooden platform.

Praying he wouldn’t be caught.

Uncle Steve would be so pissed. But Bobby had decided to take the risk.

I need to talk to Misty and Spunky.

His best friends.

Waiting for their signal, Bobby sprawled on his back. He let his eyes grow accustomed to the dark. In a moment, he spotted the constellation Sagittarius in the clear night sky.

A splash, then a rapid-fire click-creak-click. A second splash and a familiar high-pitched whistle.

Misty and Spunky saying hello.

They were the stars at Cetacean Park. Spunky was the color of a blue-steel revolver, with a long beak and a gray belly. His fluke-the wing-shaped paddle at the end of his tail-was oversize, powering his giant leaps. He weighed about 250 pounds, depending on how much mackerel he’d had for breakfast. Misty, his girlfriend, had a sleek, silvery-blue body with a pink belly. She loved to be rubbed at the base of her dorsal fin.

Bobby put two fingers to his lips and whistled. Two short blasts. “Hi guys.”

Spunky slapped the water with a fin, splashing Bobby. The Spunkster joking around.

No tanks to confine them, the two dolphins lived in a channel that ran to Biscayne Bay, a steel gate blocking their path to open water. Bobby swam with the dolphins, fed them, played with them. Even watched them have sex, belly-to-belly.

Not an everyday sighting. Not like seeing Pamela Anderson or Paris Hilton do the big nasty on video.

Pennants strung across the channel crackled in the sea breeze. The park had been closed for hours, but sugary songs about a thousand years old still poured from the speakers. Barbra Streisand was ordering someone not to rain on her parade. Barbra Streisand. SAD BREAST BRAIN.

So easy. You just picture the letters, and they fly around and anagrammatize themselves. Bobby thought in pictures and sounds, just like the dolphins. He could remember almost everything he’d ever seen or heard.

For the past year, he’d been listening to the sounds coming from Spunky’s and Misty’s blowholes, trying to untangle their language. Building a dictionary of dolphin talk. The clicks and squeaks, moans and whistles all meant something, but you had to be patient. You had to really listen and remember the patterns. Tonight, he hoped to add a few new phrases to his notebook. Then he’d bicycle home, sneak back into the house without waking Uncle Steve and Victoria, and catch some z’s before school.

Earlier tonight, he’d told Victoria a big fat fib. More than one, really. She’d been cooking meat loaf, filled with onions and dripping with Worcestershire and Tabasco sauce. She wouldn’t eat a bite, but she always made meals Bobby loved. That’s the way Victoria was. Making sure his clothes were clean, his homework finished, his hair combed. So he was bummed to fake her out.

She’d been worried about him, Bobby knew. Tonight, he promised not to break curfew, not to sneak out, not to slink into places he didn’t belong. Then, when she came into his bedroom around eleven P.M., while Uncle Steve was watching Sports Center, Bobby pretended to be asleep. Victoria sat on the edge of his bed, stroked his hair, and sang a lullaby to him. “Goodnight, My Angel,” the Billy Joel song. Like he was a little kid, except no one ever sang to him when he was little, including his real mom, who-let’s face it-was basically a coke whore who didn’t care about anyone but herself.

As Victoria sang, Bobby squeezed his eyes shut and bit his lower lip to keep from crying. Wishing she was his mom. Hoping Uncle Steve didn’t blow it with her.

Now, two hours after Victoria pulled the blanket up to his chin and softly closed his bedroom door, Bobby lay on the floating platform at Cetacean Park. After a few moments, Misty swam up to him.

Bobby click-clacked his tongue. “Hungry, Misty?”

She whistled a two-syllable reply. “Feed me.”

That’s what it sounded like, anyway. Bobby reached into a rubber pail and lobbed a chunk of mackerel toward the water. Misty gulped it down and whistled again. “Thanks.”

He dug into the pail for another fish, and chirped a high-pitched sound from the back of his throat. “Squid or crab, Spunky?”

“Who’s there?”

Oh, shit. Mr. Grisby.

Bobby could see the owner of Cetacean Park, silhouetted by a spotlight on the dock. A nice guy-but then, he’d never caught Bobby breaking into the place.

“Goddammit! Answer me! I know you’re there.”

And if Uncle Steve finds out…

Bobby peered through the darkness, his heart pounding. Mr. Grisby was holding something in both hands. A rifle? A shotgun? No, why would he…?

“Who the hell’s there!”

Southern accent. Sounding riled.

Bobby pressed down flat on the platform. It was hard to tell in the spotlight’s glare, but Mr. Grisby seemed to be looking his way.

“Dammit! Answer me.”

Nowhere to swim, nowhere to hide.

A thunderclap. Spunky broke the surface, twirled a backflip ten feet above the waterline, hung in the air a second, then hit the surface with a quiet splash. Showing off, but blowing Bobby’s cover, too.

On the speakers, Celine Dion was singing, “My Heart Will Go On.” Somewhere, Bobby thought, a big ship was about to sideswipe an iceberg. Celine Dion. END ICON LIE.

Spunky surfaced and whistled. A trilling wee-o, wee-o, wee-o. Calling Misty, Bobby knew. Then another sound. Not the dolphin.

A sliding metallic clack.

Bobby knew that sound. He’d gone skeet shooting with his grandpop.

A shotgun racking.

“Last chance, dammit! You, on the platform! Hands up!”

“Don’t shoot, Mr. Grisby.” Bobby’s voice wobbled.

“Robert Solomon. That you?”

“Yes, sir.” Bobby got to one knee, raised his hands in surrender.

Grisby chuckled. “Dammit, boy. Your uncle know where you are?”

“No, sir. I sneaked out.”

“Gonna call him right now. I’ll bet he tans your hide before the sun comes up.”

“Uncle Steve doesn’t believe in spanking.”

“Then he’s a damn fool.”

A blast of water. Spunky and Misty exploded above the surface, side by side. The dolphins’ bodies were silvery-black against the moonlight. They hit the surface together, smooth as knives, and vanished.

They had heard something, Bobby thought. Or sensed it with their sonar. What we call “sonar,” anyway. Their echolocation ability. Sending out sound waves, getting readings back. Seeing in the dark by picturing the shapes of objects.

So totally cool to be a dolphin. To swim so fast, dive so deep, jump so high.

Bobby wondered what they sensed in the darkness. Mr. Grisby stared out at the channel, toward the open water of the Bay. Bobby followed his gaze. Nothing there.

“I want you out of here quick.” Grisby didn’t take his eyes from the horizon.

Bobby heard something in the man’s voice. Saw it as a picture, felt it on his skin. Something cold and sharp, an icicle poking him in the back.

“Dammit, boy! You hear me? This is no place for you.”

The sound a freezing liquid now, covering Bobby as if he were encased in a glacier. It was the sound of fear.