He had been sick once. He couldn’t remember the sensation now. He knew, if he forced his brain into the task of retrieving the memory, that there had been a time not long ago when he had spent several hours with his head over the side–whether it was port or starboard took even more mental work to withdraw–sending everything left in his stomach down into the murky sea.
The sea. It had been a romantic idea to him once, a word that you said with reverence and respect, the way only the most dedicated religious people now would use the word “God.” Even that wasn’t a good description. Even the faithful believers didn’t have sensory responses when they spoke of God. Anyone, even desert rats like him, had some sensory response at the mention of the sea, even if it was just an image of a big blue splotch stretching all the way to the beach, where the more interesting figures of humans strayed along the surf.
Well, that was a long time ago. Long before he’d caught the lifeboat off a ship that wasn’t really sinking, and gone too far adrift to get back. It was the kind of accident you could imagine happening, but never thought would ever happen to you.
He had come to do two things: One, see a whale, finally, after fifty years of collecting photos, browsing magazine articles, reading the occasional book, and falling asleep to certain documentaries on Sunday evenings. Once, before he’d reached the point of falling asleep during those documentaries, he’d seen footage of a diver filming a humpback whale that moved gracefully through the deep like an acrobat, like a dancer, like someone who did something beautiful because it was a joy to do, and no other reason. Those thoughts might not have occurred to him at the moment. What did occur to him was the presence of such a beast, and the real existence of what had been only an intellectual fact, like the fact of the sun. He found himself crying.
And that had started the collection of photos, computer wallpapers, blog posts, magazine articles, etc. etc. He’d read Moby Dick, but only once; it was too human-centric. All of it, chasing after that moment, when the truth of whales had broken on him, and he’d wept to know there was such beauty in the world.
And then the other goal when he started out on the trip was to meet a woman who shared his bizarre attraction to these creatures of the deep. Surely one had to be out there, and surely fate was kind enough to decree that she would be single, yes?
No. Instead he was on this rocking boat, throat still a little burned from vomiting, mind numbed by the endless motion of the waves and a little cooked by the sun overhead. He imagined that his skin would soon be burned to a crisp. The good news, if he was looking for good news, was that he would probably starve before he died of skin cancer.
Well, even in this apparent misery, stomach raising an unending outcry for food that wasn’t there, even now, he thought he could try to appreciate some of the beauty of the sea. Maybe. Although, if he looked too close to the boat, he thought he saw a shark fin or two, as the undersea predators drew near to investigate what he’d just deposited from his gut.
But further out there, where the sky met the distant horizon, the deep blue water below touching the light blue water above, that was something he could try to appreciate. The clouds out there, a few light, faint whiffs drifted by in peace. The world was unconcerned about him, hollow and cooked as a potato skin, adrift in the great wide deep.
Something bumped the boat. He moved to the side, too brain-dead to think of being cautious. A question ran across the back of his mind, how painful might death by shark teeth be, compared to starvation or sun-roasting.
But there weren’t sharks there. He couldn’t see anything there for a moment. Then a dim shape rose, clarifying itself.
He nearly fell into the water. Could it be–? He saw the long, curved outline of a huge head, ship-like, submerged there, two crescent shapes sliding away from the main curve down at the bulk of the body. He looked, but couldn’t see far enough to identify the narrowing of the body into the tail.
A whale?
It rose from the deep in a sleepy motion, as if not caring much, letting the water’s motion bring it up. Now he could make out the shape of the head, drawing together into a point like an almond, no, like the prow of a boat. Almost like the prow of his boat, as tiny as it was compared to this creature.
He was breathless. It was. A whale. There beneath him, a giant of the deep, a living mountain of the sea, and he was floating tenuously over it.
If the whale should decide to breach….
But instead it hung there, in the ocean, like the clouds above, idling in the sky. A beast borne up by the blue waves. Asleep? He remembered that whales slept by resting one half of their brains at a time. So even if this one was asleep, it was still conscious, sort of.
What did it think? Why was it here? What did half its brain dream about, while the other half was awake and ready?
His stomach groaned again, and then he realized it. It’s there! Right there, beneath me! I could jump out of the boat and swim down to it if I wanted. I could touch it. I could touch it! It’s there, an enormous, gorgeous creature unlike anything else in the whole creation. It’s right there and I could touch it if I wanted!
The whale moved. He leapt back in terror, bracing for the moment when the beast broke the surface and sent him flying away into the sea, smashing into the waves and sinking with a miserable splash.
But the breach never came. He went to the side and saw the whale’s outline slide through the deep, the tail now, sweeping together almost to a point before flying outward in the wings of the flukes, beating against the sea to move its great bulk forward.
Something hissed from his mouth, and this time it was clean air, not vomit. A hiss of recognition, and relief. But then, it’s leaving.
He watched the shape below as long as he could, till it disappeared completely. Even then, his gaze trailed after the whale, unseeing.
His eyes started to drift.
A sharp, white plume of water shot from the water’s surface and dissipated. His eyes jerked back to the spot, and he saw the deep gray, almost black shape of the whale’s back rise above the sea, like the last patch of land left in this wide open water. It slid along forward, and then the flukes rose, like a flourish of the hand, as a monarch saluting his people, and lowering his hand to bid them be at peace.
Be at peace. The flukes sank into the sea, and it was still. He sat back in the boat and wept.