Song of the Humpback

A drop of sweat tickles my back. I fidget and try to get it off. The annoying thing just slicks down behind my shoulder blades. The air is stuffy in the car, and Mother refuses to crack a window. Something about my ears and hospitals. I swear I can squeeze the air and make some candyfloss. What would it taste like?

“Jimmy, stop wrigglin’! You’ll get crumbs on the cover.”

I stuff the cookie in my mouth and press my forehead to the cool window. Tree, stream, hill, more trees, a sign saying “Bear Crossing.”

“Let the boy be.” Father turns to look at me. “If I notice any dirt when we get back, you will clean it up, right, buddy?”

I nod slightly and continue staring out of the window.

“Come on, Jack, watch the road! Remember Aunt Margaret’s niece? She got in a hospital with a broken collarbone, all for chattin’ with her girlfriends and not watchin’ the bloody road! Darlin’, close your ears.”

I put my hands over my ears and watch the trees and hills and signs blend into a bright mush. They are doing it again. I know the routine by heart. Mother would say something to correct me. Father would say something against it. Then Mother would either find fault in his argument or sidestep to her many relatives and find an example that still proves she’s right. Father would go to the garage, and mother would start making a winter’s supply of apricot jam. That’s fine. But in the  car, they can’t just walk away. I wish I had brought my marine encyclopedia.

I sit up straight and look at their faces in the mirror. Father is clenching his teeth, a vein pulsing on his forehead. Mother is frowning into  her phone. I figure I can open my ears, so I pick up my notebook and start drawing. The great white gets six gills instead of five, and the moray looks more like a worm out of our garden, but it will do. Four hours in a car! Don’t know what stuffy air-candyfloss tastes like, but it’s definitely better than the one from their tense silence.

The trip is also part of the routine. After the tenth or fifteenth big fight, they decide to spend some time together. Usually, it’s a cinema or an amusement park. When Father feels particularly giving, he takes me to the aquarium half an hour away. This time, he decided to go to Tahoe. Mother tried to say something about her job, but father scowled at her and pointedly looked at me. And here we are. One hour down, three more to go.

We hit a bump, and my pen rolls somewhere under my seat. I try to quietly roll it back with my sneakers, but the pen is stuck. I look down. The sneaky thing got itself under the rubber mat. I glance at the mirror. Father is staring at the heated asphalt and drumming fingers to some AC/DC song he doesn’t dare to put on. Mother is wiping her face and neck with tissues, glaring at father’s fingers. It’s as safe as it’s going to get. I put my notebook beside me and slowly lean to pick up the pen. As my fingers curl up on it, we hit another bump, and I flop on the floor.

“Jimmy, what’re you doin’? Stop foolin’ around on that filthy floor and sit back up!”

“I washed the floor yesterday after your nephew spilled orange juice all over the back seat!”

“Tom is my cousin! Can’t you pay just a little attention?”

I crouch on the floor and rummage under the mat. The pen rolled even further away. The mat does smell faintly of oranges; it’s better than the fishy stink of the rubber. I love everything about sea creatures, except for their smell. Just when I think I might never straighten up again, I close my fist around the pen. I start crawling back up and stop as I look out of the window.

The whales are flying in the skies.

A beluga is drifting just above the top leaves of pine trees like a pale blue canary with blubbery wings. Two pinkish botos are chasing each other between the branches, whistling, and cackling, and squawking, better than any Amazon ones I’ve seen in the aquarium. My back is aching, and the one drop of sweat must be a little stream down my spine, but I cannot look away.

“… Say that again! Hey, what’s goin’ on? I told you to sit back!”

“Everything’s alright, buddy?”

I drag myself on the seat with the pointy end of the pen digging into my palm. Parents must be asking me something else, I don’t know. All I know is, the whales are here.

“Mom?”

“What now, Jimmy?”

“Look out the window, please, open it!”

“I told you already, you’ll hurt your ears. You’re still not over the last year. Why is nobody listenin’ to me in this family?”

“Because you keep saying the same thing, over and over again, Sarah. Where is your Aunt Janet’s old cassette? Oh, was it Aunt Judith?”

“How dare you!..”

I want to close my ears again, but then I won’t hear the whales, so I just hunch closer to the window. I can barely hear them even now behind parents’ shouting and closed windows. The botos have darted away somewhere deeper into the forest. I can see their rosy flippers getting smaller, and their laughter is quieter. I envy them a bit. They can easily swim through the Amazon underwater jungle, now, apparently, fly through Tahoe wild forest, and never, ever, ever touch the ground, not in the water, not in the air. I am always stuck.

A shrill cry makes me lift my head. The fluffy clouds look like sheep jumping in the sunshine. Wouldn’t that be fun? Everyone flying in the skies, even me. The sheep-clouds move, and a dark giant covers the sun. A humpback! I feel like crying, but I don’t want to miss anything. I have never seen a humpback before. He must be over 60 feet long. And who knows how many tons. If he falls, the road won’t be repaired for months. What am I even thinking? There’s a humpback flying over our car.

He’s singing. The moving world outside gets blurry, and I rub violently on my eyes to wipe the tears because I know I will never see or hear anything as beautiful again. The song is haunting, low growls turning into high thrills. That piece I learned just a week ago… Tchaikovsky’s Concerto. I wonder if I should tell Miss Schulz that a humpback’s song sounds like a violin underwater. Better keep it to myself.

I want to listen to it for the rest of my life. If I can’t fly, I want to sit on the ground and look at the whales swimming in the sky oceans.

Parents are still arguing. Father says he brought me to school last week and is swamped at work. Mother says he doesn’t know what swamped means. She has to be in Baltimore tomorrow, Portland the day after that, and Tacoma yesterday. He must drive me to school next week. Father doesn’t like it. She should spend more time with me.

How can they not hear the humpback? Even with the windows closed, the song’s rumbling within the car. Why can’t they see it? Or the beluga still floating in the distance? Or the pink and cackling botos, when they whirled near the highway?

“I’m the demanding one?”

“Yeah, you are! Always tellin’ me what to do, never bein’ there for Jimmy and me! Great-uncle Ben was right, he would always say…”

“Oh, don’t you start with that old…”

Can they even see themselves?

I suddenly want to get away from the car, from the stuffy air, from their yelling. The world gets blurry, but I don’t move my hands. I can’t hear the humpback’s song behind the screams around and inside me. My back is a field after the wet season. It’s hot. Hot like a whale baking in a Tongan oven. Warm blood runs down my hand where the pointy pen cut my palm.

Everything is salt. Tears, sweat, blood. Spout.

Splash. Splash. Splash.

I open my eyes. A pod of orcas circles the car. I always thought orcas are the meat-eating zebras of the ocean. The black-and-white thing does work because I feel a bit dizzy. Maybe it’s not them. The killer whales, such an eerie name for such nice creatures. They are just dancing with each other. And spouting water. How can they do that? They are in the sky. I wipe the moisture from my face and rub my hand and pen over my black jeans. The red almost blends in.

I pick up my notebook and open a new page. I first sketch the orcas, pivoting around with their dorsal fins like masts. Then the pearly beluga, neck angled, unlike any other whale, looking up and right. Then the two Amazon dolphins, skinny snouts against each other as if they are about to start a rapier duel. And finally, the humpback, a loner, his magnificent tail bent, ready to plunge into deep waters, except it’s not waters but air. These are my best drawings. Despite my shaky knees and even shakier hand, despite the bad light of the setting sun, despite the steady screeching in the background. The whales are alive on the paper. And they live among the clouds.

“Common, Jimmy, get out! We still have to get back before night.”

“Leave your doodles in the car. You don’t want to lose them, right, buddy?”

Tahoe is the sky’s eye. The sun is low, and the water is a palette of an invisible artist. Blush and cherry in the center. Honey and apricot where the sun is closest. Olive and mint near the forest line. And azure of the ether. The world took a breath.

I walk closer to the water surface, mother can’t find a mobile signal, and father glowers at the brown streaks on the green of the SUV. I turn back to the forest and watch the whales fly over the ancient pines. They must have fallen a bit behind. I look at my parents. They do not see them.

I wait for two minutes and go back. I take my father’s hands out of his pockets, and my mother’s from around her phone. They start to say something but stop after looking at my face. I hold my parents’ hands as we walk towards the lake. We stop near a white stone, a cachalot bursting from the still water. Father is frowning at me, and mother is pursing her mouth the way she does before a rant when both of their faces turn blank. Not the blank of ignoring each other or the blank of pretending not to care. It’s the blank of listening.

The humpback gives a high keen and breaks the skies. He soars in the lilac clouds, singing his joy and anguish. The cry echoes in the mountains, carries to the bottom of the lake and back, making the water ring. The orcas join him and add their voices to the chant. And the beluga. And the botos. I hold my parents’ hands tighter. They look at the whales. They see them.

The Sun sets to the song of the humpback.


Image reference: Whale in the sky, Artem Chebokha, digital art 2018https://www.reddit.com/r/Art/comments/c91bff/whale_in_the_sky_artem_chebokha_digital_2018/