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Ecw Press - Jen Neale

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157 pages

English

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Almost immediately upon Julie Bird s return to the small port town where she was raised, everyday life is turned upside down. Julie s Gulf War vet father, Marty, has been on the losing side of a battle with PTSD for too long. A day of boating takes a dramatic turn when a majestic blue whale beaches itself and dies. A blond stranger sets up camp oceanside: she s an agitator, musician-impersonator, and armchair philosopher named Jennie Lee Lewis and Julie discovers she s connected to her father s mysterious trip to New Mexico 25 years earlier. As the blue whale decays on the beach, more wildlife turns up dead apparently by suicide echoing Marty s deepest desire. But Julie isn t ready for a world without her father.

Informations

Publié par	Ecw Press
Date de parution	08 mai 2018
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781773051826
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Land Mammals and Sea Creatures
A Novel
Jen Neale

Contents
PART I: Arrival
One: Blue Whale
Two: Salmon Shark
Three: Cat
Four: 1992
Five: Elephant
Six: Raccoons
Seven: 1992
Eight: Camouflaging Cuttlefish
PART II: The Whale Has Exploded
Nine: Arctic Hare
Ten: 1992
Eleven: Sole
Twelve: Skunk
Thirteen: 1992
Fourteen: Coyote
Fifteen: Pallid Bat
Sixteen: The Moose
Seventeen: Opossum
Eighteen: Rockfish
Nineteen: Mice
PART III: Three Days Missing
Twenty: Hyena, Jackal
Twenty-one: Halibut
Twenty-two: Dog Bones
Twenty-three: Caribou
Twenty-four: Humans
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright

For my family

PART I
Arrival

One
Blue Whale
Julie Bird closed her eyes and listened to water slap the hull. The tinny taste of lager coated the back of her tongue. She and her father, Marty, spread themselves over lawn chairs on the deck of the old troller. Waves rolled under the boat, and the strips of rainbow vinyl creaked under their weight. Ice sloshed rhythmically against the sides of the cooler.
Ian, Marty’s best and only friend, emerged from the cabin and fished another beer from the ice. He called out to his two passengers. “Set?”
Julie’s father had his beer jammed into his prosthesis—his Captain Hook—and held it in the air for Ian to see. With his good hand he held binoculars fast to his eyes.
For the last half hour, Marty had been watching a figure on shore and giving Julie updates. The details were still shady. The figure, of indeterminate age, gender and height, had been weighted like a pack mule when it’d arrived on the beach, and it was now setting up a bright orange A-frame tent that contrasted the navy water and dark conifers. Marty’s eyebrows, or the fatty lumps where his eyebrows used to be, rose.
“Now they’re stringing up a hammock in the trees. Looks like they’re there for the long haul. I didn’t think anyone camped on Tallicurn.”
“Marty, please stop spying,” Julie said.
“They just seem so familiar.”
“You know a lot of faraway specks?”
By Marty’s feet sat a small Tupperware container of herring pieces that were melting together in the heat. He’d set up a rod on the port side for some mooching, but so far, the line hadn’t budged. Marty wouldn’t have noticed anyway. Earlier, Ian had tossed a piece into the open water to “get the ocean’s juices flowing.”
“Hey,” Marty said. “I think they’re waving at me.” He took off his bandana, scratched his bald head, and retied the fabric.
“Marty, you’re a stick figure on a boat to them,” Julie said.
“Look.” Marty handed the binoculars to her. Through the viewfinder, she saw a crowd of gulls circling above the orange tent. Farther down the beach, the backlit figure appeared with a blond puff of hair catching the light and shining like an anglerfish lure. The person stood in the water, looking in their direction. The waves crashed against their shins. They were gesturing with their arms, but it didn’t seem like a wave. More of a come hither .
Ian barged into the middle of their assembly and pointed starboard. “Hey, you two. Whale.”
Plumes of mist were approaching the troller. With a bird’s-eye view, one could trace a straight line between the puff-topped shadow, the fishing boat and the whale.
“Think it’s an orca?” Julie asked.
“Nah. No pod—it’s solo.” Ian hoisted himself up and took the binoculars from Julie’s hand. He stood on the deck with one leg propped on the railing. His white shorts flapped in the breeze, revealing a vast expanse of untanned thigh. “Too big, too,” he said.
“Grey?” Julie asked.
“Maybe. Look at it.” Ian passed the binoculars back.
All she could see was sun bouncing off waves and a flash of black and white as a flock of murres glided above the surface, but then the whale’s rolling back filled the viewing area. A burst of mist shot into the air and dissipated. Julie adjusted the sight. A group of fat barnacles pocked the skin around its blowhole, but otherwise the whale’s complexion was uninterrupted slate, like a blackboard wiped clean with a damp cloth. It was smoother than the greys Julie had seen.
“Fuck, yeah,” she whispered.
The back of the whale rolled over the surface until the flukes broke free and heaved into the air. The whale dipped below the waves.
Ian’s voice came from behind them, somewhere between a prayer and a curse. “It’s coming toward us.”
Julie imagined the whale as a submarine designed to look like a biological being, but with two soldiers sitting behind the eyes. If they could build a camera the size of a housefly, why not this? The submarine theory seemed so much more likely than a living being double the length of the Greyhound she rode from Port Braid to Vancouver. Fifty-five people could sit inside that Greyhound on a busy holiday, meaning that 110 humans could be comfortably hidden within the whale’s blubber, with leg and luggage room to spare.
Julie zipped her life vest and shoved one at her father as the whale got closer to the boat. As usual, Marty wouldn’t think of his welfare, so she’d have to do it for him. She watched him slide the life vest on and struggle to do it up. When the zipper wouldn’t go past his belly, he visited the cooler for another beer. Julie counted this as his fourth, still within safe limits for a calm day.
The list of events that could disrupt a calm day had shape-shifted since she was last home in Port Braid. Once again the rules had to be relearned. Marty’s triggers developed like allergies. Some were long-term—bird bangers, air brakes, metal-tinged smoke—and others came and went in a matter of years—the smell of Julie’s hair straightener, the rattle of Boggle.
She stood up for a better look, binoculars pressed to her cheekbones.
The whale broke the surface again, much closer to the boat. Its blowhole looked like a nose thieved from an Easter Island statue. It let out another giant breath, and this time Julie could hear the sound—a bucket of ice water hitting a campfire. Julie brought the binoculars down and turned to her father. “It’s a blue, you know.”
Marty scoffed.
Blues migrated by Port Braid but weren’t typically interested in stopping. They were half-starved from raising their young at the equator. Up north, all they’d have to do to be full was open their mouths.
So much of Port Braid’s aesthetic was based on the idea that whale spirits permeated the air: a metallic statue stood proud outside the bank, a badly constructed orca mural graced the side of the pharmacy, and of course, all of the T-shirts in the town’s single gift shop were a blend of semi-transparent moons, whales, wolves, eagles and feathers.
“I’m serious,” Julie said. “It’s a blue.”
Marty brought his beer to his lips and held it there, waiting for the beast to reappear.
A bulge of water appeared a few boat-lengths away. Julie’s breath caught. The whale’s nose pushed through the centre of this water mountain. Its body rose up to its pectoral fins. Columns of water fell away. The animal lunged and sent a boat-rocking wave.
The force of its leap propelled it forward and downward. Its head and body slapped the water in one massive parallel line. At the sound of the collision, the three dropped back to their seats.
Ian started laughing. “Jesus,” he said. “It’s a blue.” He grabbed Marty’s shoulders and planted a kiss on his cheek.
This was a game they played. Julie said something that was true; Marty claimed it couldn’t be true; Ian proclaimed it as truth and thus it became an axiom of their shared reality.
Marty started laughing too. A strange smell wafted through the air—something like sewage combined with the taste of a wet Tylenol tab.
Julie saw the whale’s shadow coming in their direction. “Marty!” Julie gripped the railing with white knuckles.
The whale’s smooth skin surfed above the waves, its torpedo-shaped face just under the surface. The whale exhaled again, sending flecks of mist against their faces and filling their nostrils with the medicinal stench of its breath.
Ian looked to Marty for help. Save his poor baby boat. The whale’s back grazed the farthest reach of their fishing lines and their bobbers were swallowed by the waves.
The three of them held tight to the railing and rope ties. Julie looked over at her father. He had a wet sheen along his lower lids. Under his breath, Ian said, “Not my boat, not my boat.” They all fell silent and waited for the impact. Julie stared down and counted the splashes against the hull. One . . . two . . . three . . . four. The world was devoid of sound except for the slap of waves and the gurgle of upturned water that followed the whale’s progress.
Julie had the urge to jump over the railing and ride the whale to the bottom of the sea, swinging a seaweed cowboy hat over her head.
Just before its nose reached the hull, it began to dive. As the whale slid down, Julie held her breath and closed her eyes. The boat leaned starboard as the great mass passed underneath. Her daily life, being home in Marty’s half-dilapidated bungalow, had consisted of grey mornings eating cold eggs out of a pan and daytime television marathons. Even if I die . . . she thought.
Julie opened her eyes and watched as the mast returned to centre.
“Where’s she going?” Ian’s grip on the railing had released but the parental look of concern stayed.
Julie tasted blood in her spit. She turned to her father. “Marty, I think she’s beaching.”
“I don’t think so, kiddo.”
Another massive plume rose from the whale as it accelerated toward the shoreline. Rocks jutted from the water around the beach at Tallicurn.
The figure