Whale Boy Read online

  Spargo went on, ‘When this hotel is completed, JJ and I want to run boat trips for tourists – dolphin watching, you know?’

  Michael did. It was one of the things he and his father had spoken of. They had often seen dolphins when they were out in the fishing boat.

  ‘Obviously we don’t want any competition from other hotels,’ Spargo explained. ‘Your job is to survey the entire west coast of the island and keep a record of where and when you see dolphins. I gather you’ve done something similar in the past with your da, eh? Course, you can fish to make some extra cash and cover your real task, but you’ll be our spy at sea!’

  Michael almost laughed out loud with relief. Nothing illegal – just dolphin spotting! But Spargo wasn’t finished.

  ‘We also want to know where whales can be found in these waters.’ He said the word in a funny way, more like ‘wu-hales’ – slowly, as if he didn’t want the word to get away from his mouth. His eyes glittered as he spoke, and a steel edge slipped into his voice. He was like a miser grasping at a precious jewel.

  Michael’s hand wanted to reach for the medallion under his T-shirt, but he didn’t let it. Spargo couldn’t possibly know about the whale charm. If he really knew anything about the island, then he’d know that no one had seen a whale for decades. It was just wishful thinking, and if the old man wanted to pay Michael to chase something that wasn’t there, that was fine.

  Spargo gave him a compass, a watch and a notebook. ‘Every sighting of a dolphin or wu-hale goes in here,’ he said, tapping the hard cover of the book. ‘Every one with a date, time and position. Right?’

  Michael nodded. He put the watch on his wrist; it was a digital one with lots of buttons and dials. Instantly he felt more grown up and important.

  ‘So then we can mark the sightings on a chart,’ Spargo added, ‘and find the best places to send the tourists when the new hotel opens – that way we’ll be ahead of the competition. One day, Michael, there could be a job for you as skipper of a dolphin-watching boat. What do you say to that?’

  Michael had to remember to close his mouth and then try not to grin like an idiot. ‘I’d like that very much, Spargo,’ he said, as soberly as he could manage.

  Michael was to go out in the boat every day that conditions allowed. This meant giving up on school.

  ‘Shouldn’t think you’re any more of a scholar than I was, eh, lad?’ Spargo said.

  He was right. Michael had never been a good student, and he already knew he’d have to work, not study, to pay Gran’s hospital bills. That was fine. He was tall enough to pass for three or four years older than he was, and plenty of boys that age were working on boats and construction sites rather than staying on at school. Eugenia would have no one to scold there any more, but apart from that, no one would miss him.

  ‘So, I’ll just recap, shall I?’ Spargo sat back in his chair, as if he were about to tell a joke or drink a beer. ‘One: you keep the boat’s ownership quiet. Two: you don’t take crew. And, most important of all, three: you record every dolphin and wu-hale sighting you make. OK?’

  Michael nodded.

  The laser-blue eyes glinted coldly in their deep creases. ‘We may not meet for a while now,’ Spargo said. ‘Better, in fact, if we aren’t seen together. But you’ve given your word and I’ll trust you to keep it.’

  He took Michael’s hand in his big paw. ‘We’ll shake on it, then, man to man, eh?’

  Even though Michael didn’t trust him entirely, it felt good to be spoken to like a grown man. He stopped smiling and squared his shoulders. Yes, there were things about this deal he didn’t like, but there were others he liked very much, such as the prospect of one day being the skipper of a dolphin-watching boat! Wasn’t Gran always saying, Life is not perfect. Sweet always comes with a little salty?

  Maybe there was a hook inside this bait, but for now Michael decided it was best not to look for it.

  7

  Spargo headed back into town, but Michael couldn’t wait to get out on the sea. As he had nothing to do until Gran’s visiting hours began in the evening, he decided to start at once and take the boat out for her first voyage. Spargo didn’t want a name painted on the side, but Michael named her in his head anyway: the Louisa May, after his gran.

  It was a fine, calm day, a good day for getting used to a new boat and a new engine. He was excited, but worried that, after so long, there might be important things he’d forgotten. But from the moment he cast off, everything about the boat – the mooring rope, the tiller, the tone of the engine, the slap of the water on her hull – instantly felt as much a part of him as his own limbs. He felt sharp and alert, a different person from the boy who sat crammed behind a desk in school all day, being scolded by Eugenia Thomson and dreaming of escape. He felt his whole spirit unfold and run free over the water.

  He pointed the boat’s nose straight out. The singing surface of the ocean and the shimmering line of the horizon filled his heart. All the dishes he had washed, the floors he had swept, the worry about Gran and her hospital bills – all of it simply fell away. At last, at long, long last, he was back where he belonged!

  A mile out from shore Michael idled the engine and baited his lines the way his father had taught him. Then he motored gently a short way to trawl the hooks through the water and show them to any fish that might be around, before turning off the engine and waiting.

  Michael looked around and breathed deep. This was what he had longed for – real sea, away from the noise of people and surf. Trucks on the coast road were just silent specks of movement, and all the buildings at Golden Cove had melted into the backdrop of green. The surface stretched out from him in all directions, connected to every other place that the ocean touched, while he floated here, tiny as a leaf.

  He pulled out the compass that Spargo had given him and practised taking bearings. Lapoulet Head was at 70 degrees and Pointe Maron at 109. The point where those two lines crossed was where he was. This was another thing he’d learned from his dad, although when they were out on the boat together, they hardly ever used a compass. They navigated by eye, using landmarks you could see out on the ocean. Michael remembered Samuel saying, When you’re in line with Calibishy church, about a mile out, that’s a good spot for fishing. Halfway between Pointe Caribi and Anse Matoo is a reef; steer clear of that or you’ll put a hole in the boat.

  Samuel had made him learn the names of the mountains that stood along the island’s spine. Their shapes were clear against the sky, trailing little bits of cloud – and steam where their hot, volcanic breath seeped into the air. They’re your friend, son; they’ll always guide you home.

  Michael said their names over in his head: Morne Matin and Morne Marie to the south, Morne Liberty, and the highest, Morne Pierre, in the north. A course set to Morne Matin would get you home to Rose Town. One set to Morne Marie would take you to Soubière, the little town where Gran had been born. There was a reef in the mouth of the bay, but there was a sure way to avoid it: When Pitoo Head hides Soubière church, Samuel had told him, steer hard starboard.

  Michael said the words over again: When Pitoo Head hides Soubière church . . . They reminded him of the mysterious words on his medallion.

  When Peter hides the Devil . . .

  Perhaps the words weren’t a riddle at all, but simply directions; the way to navigate a course, like the way around the Soubière reef? The old whalers had navigated the same way he and his dad did, lining up features on the land to find their way about at sea. Wasn’t Pierre another name for Peter? Morne Pierre could be Peter in the riddle! Michael’s heart gave a jump. For a moment he felt quite excited – but what would Morne Pierre hide that was named after a Devil? He couldn’t think of a single headland, mountain, beach or bay with Devil in its name.

  No. No, no, no! It was crazy. The words on the medallion came from superstitious old whalers, he told himself; it was only a story, just as Dad said it was.

  Besides, the fish were biting. Michael concentrated hard
on hauling jacks as big as silver dinner plates into the boat, until his arms ached and his hands were cut raw by the line.

  As the sun began to sag towards the west, Michael headed home. A school of dolphins surfaced fifty metres from his bow. The low light on the calm water caught the vapour of their spouts, turning them to little puffs of gold. Their round foreheads broke the surface, and the sharp sickle curve of their dorsal fins followed, slicing the water into slivers of light. They were too small to be bottle-nosed dolphins and too big to be spinners. Michael counted ten, twelve, sixteen; there might be twice as many under the surface each time he saw them blow. They swam closer, and he saw the spots freckling their skins, confirming that they were spotted dolphins. He speeded up in the hope that they might bow-ride, but they were heading out to sea, ready for a night’s hunting in deeper waters, and they disappeared like a dream. A few moments later he glimpsed their fins cutting the surface far off; it was always amazing to see how fast dolphins could swim.

  It was the first time since his dad left that Michael had been so close to dolphins. A bubble of longing to share this moment with Samuel rose up, but he pushed it down; this was business now. He took a bearing – on Pointe Maron, Soulant Head, and a third on the needle-like summit of Morne Matin, to be extra sure – and wrote it down with the date and time next to SPOTTED DOLPHIN in the log book Spargo had given him. It was a fine first day’s work.

  8

  Inside a week Michael had established a new routine for himself. He had decided for the time being to keep the boat moored at Golden Cove. That way it was easy to say that the boat wasn’t his, or not to mention it at all. He could still get back into town at the end of the day in time to visit Gran.

  He left Rose Town before dawn on the first minibus running up the coast towards Northport. That early, there were no school kids around, and nobody else he knew to ask awkward questions. He wore an old checked shirt of his father’s and pulled a baseball cap down low on his forehead. That was enough for the other passengers to assume he was an apprentice working on one of the building sites that dotted the coast. He got off at the rise in the road before Golden Cove and walked the rest of the way, down the mile of dirt track to the half-built hotel. He was aboard the Louisa May and casting off just as it got light, before the construction workers had wiped the sleep out of their eyes.

  Her two outboards were small engines and her hull was broad and homely. She was a steady fishing platform, but no speedboat, making his progress slow. Each day he surveyed a different bit of coast, looking out for dolphins and leaving time for fishing in the best spots his father had showed him.

  Michael revelled in the new rhythm of his days and the moods of the ocean: the dawn coming up from the far side of the island and the dreamy stillness of the water close to shore; the hot middays, two miles out, with the breeze picking up and the water choppy and deep blue; and the sweetness of dusk, coming back to land, and the green smell of trees.

  It was exciting to bait his own hooks and haul them in, heavy and wriggling with fish. Carrying his catch from the Louisa May gave him the deepest sense of pleasure. Selling them proved easier than he’d imagined because, from the first time he returned to the jetty with fish, it was clear that the construction workers would buy all he could catch. They never left the site and seemed very pleased to have a ready supply of fresh fish. They spoke only Spanish, but the sign language bargaining worked pretty well. They agreed that every night he’d put the fish in the big fridge in the unfinished kitchen, and they would leave his money in a biscuit tin on top. This was also where Michael had to leave his weekly report of dolphin sightings for Spargo, and where Spargo left his wages. At the end of the first week the repayment of Michael’s boat money had also been in the tin. He’d returned to town with more cash in his pocket than he’d ever seen in his life.

  His daytime life of the boat and sea felt wonderful, free and full of light. But at the end of every day, as dusk fell and he got the bus back to Rose Town, all the worries of life on land came and settled on his heart like shadows: what if Gran didn’t get better? The three hundred dollars from Michael’s boat down payment had taken care of the first hospital bill, but there would be more – and what would happen if he couldn’t pay? Nobody’s gonna look out for you and me, my boy, so we just got to do it for our own selves, Gran had always said, except that now it wasn’t him and Gran; it was just him all alone.

  He’d written to his father telling him about Gran’s illness and asking him to come home, but he’d lost hope even before he posted it: Samuel had never replied before – the address was surely years out of date. The letter would never find him.

  So at the end of every day Michael trudged into the hospital with a heavy heart and sat at his gran’s bedside. For the first few evenings she hadn’t even opened her eyes. The nurses said she was really sick, but told him not to worry. He thought they were crazy: if she was ill, how was he supposed not to worry? Perhaps she was too old and too tired to ever be well again.

  But then, one evening, as he sat beside her, her eyes flew open, and her hand, which had been limp as a wet leaf, gripped his tightly. ‘I hope you aren’t missing your studies to be here,’ she breathed.

  Michael could barely speak for smiling, but he didn’t want to let on that his studies were over.

  ‘No, Gran. School finished hours ago. It’s seven thirty.’ That at least was true. He wanted to tell her about the boat. How he was earning money and behaving like a grown man. But he knew she would only worry.

  ‘You look different,’ she whispered, narrowing her bright eyes and looking at him keenly. ‘You eating properly?’

  ‘Lots of fresh fish, Gran,’ he answered. ‘I think I’m getting taller!’

  She giggled. Michael’s height was always a source of pleasure to her. She sighed and slipped straight back to sleep with a smile on her face. Hope welled up in Michael’s heart: she would get better, and he would pay off all their debts when he was skipper of a big dolphin-watching boat.

  That night, when Michael walked into the kitchen of the Flying Fish, his relief must have shown on his face.

  ‘So,’ said Eugenia, dumping the first load of dirty dishes down by the sink, ‘your gran’s a bit better.’

  ‘Yeah!’ Michael beamed. ‘She spoke to me. Wanted to know if I was eating properly!’

  ‘And are you?’ He could tell Eugenia was ready to waggle her finger at him. But it didn’t irritate him any more. Even when she’d given him a hard time over quitting school he hadn’t been angry. Somehow, these days they understood each other better. But he rolled his eyes at her now in mock anger, just to make her laugh, and she punched him on the arm.

  ‘Well, I’ve got some good news too,’ Eugenia said. ‘Mum’s got a new job at the university. Secretary to some scientist from Japan. So we won’t get kicked out of our house!’

  Michael smiled and then immediately frowned. ‘Does that mean you’ll stop working here?’

  Eugenia flicked the end of her tea towel at him. ‘Certainly not!’ she quipped. ‘Who knows what you’d get up to, Michael Fontaine, if I wasn’t here to watch over you!’

  He wanted to tell her what he was getting up to . . . about the Louisa May, the fishing, and how he was going to be skipper of Liberty’s first dolphin-watching boat. But he knew Eugenia would ask all sorts of questions about Spargo that he didn’t want to answer.

  The relief about Gran carried him through an extra-long shift at the Flying Fish, but as he walked home past Cat’s Paw, a wave of tiredness hit him like a train, and he had to sit down with his back against a tree. The sea sighed up the beach and stars danced on the water. So-So stepped out of the shadows. He was dressed in a robe made of knotted string and strips of fabric, and wore tin foil on his head like a crown.

  ‘My star brother!’ he exclaimed. ‘I have not seen you this long time. Where you been?’

  ‘Been working – on a boat,’ Michael said quickly. ‘Some guy in Northport, he got sick, so he�
��s letting me use his boat.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ So-So’s voice was light as a breeze, but Michael could tell he saw through the lie at once. So-So sat down in front of him and placed his big hand right in the middle of Michael’s chest. Even in the dark, Michael could see the slow burn inside So-So’s eyes as they looked into his face.

  ‘A weight of trouble and a burden of secrets sits on your heart,’ he said, shaking his head.

  ‘No, So-So,’ Michael replied irritably. ‘I’m fine. Just working hard, is all. I need to go home and sleep.’ He pushed his old friend’s hand away and got up.

  ‘I worry for you, brother star,’ So-So said sadly. ‘You have false friends with powerful lies. You may not tell me, but still I know. Beware!’

  So-So’s foil crown clattered a little and caught the moonlight as Michael walked away.

  On land, Michael’s life felt like the dark time that was held between dusk and dawn. But back at sea in the morning he was in the light again, all shadows and worries burned away as the sun rose. The moment he jumped aboard his boat it was as if he was stepping into a different skin, living a different life. It was a relief to untie the boat from her mooring and leave the still sleeping island behind.

  Memories of Samuel came flooding back, so that sometimes Michael felt that if he looked up quickly enough, he’d see his dad sitting by the tiller. He could almost hear his voice, telling him how to bait hooks, find the best spot for fish or tell one kind of dolphin from another.

  The big grey ones, now, they’re the bottle-noses. They like jumping and doing tricks; the spotted ones, though, not so much. But those little skinny ones – the ones you see in a big, big gang – they like jumping! Spinners, they are, ’cos they spin like a top, nose to tail.

  Out in the boat with his father they’d seen dolphins, but not that often. Now there was hardly a day when Michael didn’t see them. It was as if he were tuned into their presence, as if his senses were growing sharper.