Whale Season (21 page)
Chapter 37
T
he story Harlan Oakley wrote for the
National Examiner
was not titled “The Next Refrigerator Perry Asks Jesus for a Leg Up,” as Sam thought it would be. Instead, “Killer on Rampage” was splashed across page one.
Sam the Gator Boy was remembered fondly as a large angry child filled with promise who was never quite lucky enough. Harlan wept as he wrote it. The
Examiner
ran it straight. No Photoshopped pictures of Jesus being abducted by aliens, just an all-American shot of Sam in his University of Florida football uniform, full of hope and dreams.
Because of the story people came to Whale Harbor once more. Not just the media with their live shots and TV tans, but visitors. Everyone wanted to travel the murderer's trail. They wanted to see where Sam's body washed ashore.
Some even thought they saw whales.
The town slowly began to come back to life. The Pink was suddenly crowded at lunch. Bender dyed his hair a tarnished spoon platinum. He finally settled on Weimaraner as his inner dog and now thanks customers with an aristocratic silver bark. Mrs. Sitwell opened a Kettle Korn stand.
As the story of Sam spread, those who called themselves “Believers” came to pray for his soul. A group of Evangelicals even set up a tent and a gospel mission outside The Dream CafŽ. Now, daily, they give the dancers comfortable shoes with Bible quotes written in them and ask them to repent. The minister has tied himself to a cross that he planted under the sign that reads, “Naughty but Nice!” He's wearing a rainbow-colored umbrella hat to ward off the sun. His hands are bound to the wood with Velcro, as are his feet. “Just in case he has to tinkle,” his wife tells the press. It's a great photo opportunity, but not so great for business.
So when Leon drives up in his mandarin orange Pimp Daddy Caddy, the place is nearly deserted. Dagmar is sitting on a folding chair watching potential customers make U-turns out of the driveway. Leon hasn't seen her for nearly a month, ever since he saved Jimmy Ray. So much has changed since then.
Leon has moved into Grammy Lettie's, mostly for crowd control, at least that's what he says. But at night he sits in the dark kitchen and remembers the days when he was a boy, when Whale Harbor was a real town, and Miss Pearl was his best girl.
Howdy.
He thinks about the idea of opening Pettit's again. He still has that shrink-wrapped bag of the Levis' moneyânobody ever asked after it. So he has the capital. But he wants to spend it right. The money feels like a second chance. He doesn't want to blow it.
If he reopens Pettit's, he knows it can't be the way it used to be. Got to be something classy. Got to be something that lets the wild cats play on the beach, and lets the peacocks screech, and the fat manatees, with their stuffed toy smiles, play tag in the bright green water. But Leon has no idea how all these things can happen at a first-rate tourist attraction. And he has no one to ask. Carlotta has moved on.
So much has changed, he thinks, except for Dagmar. As he parks the Pimp Daddy Caddy he can see that she is still every inch the Egyptian queen. It took him a month to get his courage up to stop by to see her. His hands shake. He stuffs them in his pockets.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey.”
He watches along with her for a while as if the line of deserting customers is some sort of a parade.
“Pretty soon,” he says. “Things will get back to normal.”
“I hope not,” she says. “I've decided to franchise, and then go public. Use the publicity, and the national exposure, as a marketing push.
“As Jimmy Ray says, âIt's all good.'”
“You miss him?”
Dagmar shrugs. “New Orleans isn't that far away.”
Leon sits in the chair next to her. “So what do you know about running a first-rate tourist attraction?”
She looks at him, honey-eyed, and laughs. “More than you do.”
“I guess that's the story of our lives.”
He reaches his hand out to her, and she takes it.
“I guess it is,” she says.
Chapter 38
T
rot and Carlotta are in his boat trolling the shoreline. Not fishing, just watching the sun set. Trot's still sore, taped up tight, but happy. The horizon, which he's seen so many times on his own, is turning that particular shade of pink that only can be found in this part of the world. As the fading light spreads, it washes over them. Turns their skin blush.
“Flamingos,” she says. “The belly of conch shells. Hibiscus.”
“Pepto-Bismol?”
“I can see that.”
Trot can't help but grin. The waves lap up against the boat, gently rock it back and forth.
“Now what?” she says and leans into him slightly. With her hair piled onto her head and the delicate lace of her scar, she is more beautiful than any one woman has a right to be. So Trot tells her the story of Hurricane Donna. It's the most romantic thing he can think of.
“My grandpa Buck was mayor at the time. He was well into his seventies, lean as driftwood. Grammy Jules, his twin.
“The thing was, nobody thought Donna would be that bad,” he says. Trot's never told this story to any woman beforeânot even Dagmar. Unfortunately, the best part of it he doesn't know. It's long dead.
As Hurricane Donna approached there was something about the low sky, bruise green and churning, that made Buck and Jules feel uneasy. But the roads were washed away. They couldn't leave.
“Don't matter now,” Jules whispered. Her voice was smoky like it was when they first met, and they were still a mystery to each other.
As Donna neared, the two made love in their own bed with slowness that comes not from age, but deep pleasure. And knowing.
And when they were through, Buck and Jules moved into a large pantry near the center of the house. A safe place. At the first word of the storm, Jules had taken all her orchids from under the orange trees and placed them there. In the dark room, surrounded by dozens of orchids and their gentle sweet perfume, Old Buck and Jules fell in and out of an uneasy sleep. Kissed every now and then, just because.
The rest of the story, everyone knows.
Hurricane Donna finally lumbered ashore around midnight. Her surge was enormous, several stories high. When she hit Old Buck and Jules' tiny bungalow the roof lifted. The harbor poured in over the walls and overflowed the house like a bucket. Furniture. Orchids. Everything gone in one great wave. Old Buck grabbed for Jules and caught her by the hair.
“One thing I learned through forty-seven years of marriage,” he later said, “you hang on to each other no matter what. You don't let go.”
“Grandpa Buck rode the surge into town,” Trot tells Carlotta. “Swam the flooded streets for hours. Too tough to drown, some said. Probably was true.
“When he was finally rescued, dehydrated, delirious, he thought Grammy Jules was still there. He held wisps of long gray hair tightly in his fist. Wouldn't let go.
“âForty-seven years,' he said over and over again until he grew hoarse.”
Trot took a deep breath. The story overwhelmed him.
“Till death do you part,” Carlotta says.
“Grandpa Buck never really got over it. Threw himself into the harbor and drowned on the first anniversary of the storm. âMissing Jules,' the note read.”
Trot's voice cracks when he says this. He falls silent.
“That's a wonderful story. Thank you,” Carlotta says softly. Bites her lip. Doesn't want to cry.
“Ever been married?” he asks.
She shrugs. “Not like that. What about you?”
Trot shakes his head. His hand moves to his chest, to the wound.
“I've been waiting for a woman who won't let go,” he says, and Carlotta remembers sitting in the surf with himâremembers the prayers she prayed, the promises she made to a god she seldom believed inâso she leans over and kisses him.
Cherry pie, he thinks.
In the distance, well beyond them, in the fading fuchsia of the sky, there is an amazing sight.
Whale.
A real whale. A lost “firecracker,” as they're called in Japan. Also known as “pygmy.” Its belly is filled with crab and squid. Happy, it lies on top of the waves, floating, bobbing. Its gray skin reflects the sky, turns the color of roses. When its mate finally catches up, the two dive underwater, somersaulting around each other. Playful.
As the sun extinguishes into the Gulf, and the world goes dark again, the firecrackers break through the surface of the water and blow ink into the sky like a
tsunabi,
as the Japanese fisherman say, a rocketing firework.
They are twin fireworks against the darkness of night.
But Trot and Carlotta don't notice.
About the Author
Novelist
N. M. KELBY
is also the author of
In the Company of Angels
and
Theater of the Stars.
She spent more than twenty years as a print and television journalist before she began writing. Her poems and short stories have appeared in more than fifty journals including
Zoetrope All-Story Extra, One Story, Southeast Review,
and
The Mississippi Review.
She is the recipient of a Bush Artist Fellowship in Literature, the Heekin Group Foundation's James Fellowship for the Novel, both a Florida and Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship in fiction, two Jerome Travel Study Grants, and a Jewish Arts Endowment Fellowship. She grew up in Florida, where she currently lives. Her website is
www.nmkelby.com
.
ALSO BY N. M. KELBY
In the Company of Angels
Theater of the Stars:
A Novel of Physics and Memory
Copyright © 2006 by Nicole Mary Kelby
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Shaye Areheart Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
Shaye Areheart Books and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kelby, N. M. (Nicole M.)
Whale season : a novel / Nicole Mary Kelby.
1. Recreational vehicle industryâFiction. 2. Eccentrics and eccentricitiesâFiction. 3. Sales personnelâFiction. 4. FloridaâFiction. I. Title.
PS3561.E382W47 2006
813'.6âdc22 2005010836
eISBN: 978-0-307-34185-3
v3.0