Shallcross: The Underwater Panthers, page 10
Half Track stood nodding and saying “Long story, long story,” over and over.
Arquette sat back down in his chair. He had never known about Aubrey’s secret life or the world of slippers. At first, no one talked until it was Aubrey. “I have to go way back eight years to begin all this for you, Arquette. I mean, it’s not like I was keeping secrets from you, man, I only saw you and Leda at the hospital in Miami when Christaine was in that coma, and then for a couple of weeks after we dug up Sonny and those bottles of Freon he liked to huff. You left Florida after that.”
“What secrets Aubrey? Where are you going with this?”
Aubrey knew he had to tell him everything now, and the most difficult would be the supernatural parts. He started to explain the world of slippers that inhabit humans and animals. Arquette wasn’t there when the two rogue gators crashed through the floor of the Blue Goose porch eight years ago in Florida, but he knew the story from the newspapers, so Aubrey explained the backstory of what happened—how Roberta’s snake with a slipper named Roy, marked the spot under the floor above the river for the gators to punch through, and the other snake, with Martha inside it, wrapped around Big Jim’s legs at the table right before Big Jim and his man Greely were pulled to their deaths. He told Arquette the whole thing with the gators that day had been orchestrated in advance by Freddie and Billie Monday, the Seminole medicine man.
Next Aubrey went into the fantastical part about Captain Nemo and the Seminole warrior, Osceola, that lived in the minds of the two alligators, and how he, Aubrey, could see and hear these slippers and communicate with them. Aubrey didn’t know if Arquette would believe him or he just thought Aubrey always had a screw loose, but then that got settled with what happened next.
Aubrey stood up. “I want to show you something.”
“Is it something to do with that big stock trailer you brought back with you?” By this time Arquette had a telling smile, and Aubrey was sure he had chosen the “screw loose” opinion. Regardless, they walked to the trailer.
Aubrey opened the side door in the front part and they stepped inside. “All this trailer for a little jon boat?” Arquette said as they shimmied along the side of the boat towards the back. Then Aubrey opened the partition between the two sections. “What’s all the wood shavings piled so high in here for?” Arquette asked him. “And is that blood, a lot of blood I see?” Aubrey looked at him, “Don’t be shocked or scared of what’s under the tarp.”
“Oh no! You guys didn’t murder some land developer, did you? Try me anyway. I’m ready for anything lately.”
But he was shocked. He staggered backwards and hit his head on the partition door when Aubrey pulled the tarp back. And there, lying quiet and still were two of the largest tropical monsters Arquette had ever seen, and of all things, they had entered his cold home state of Massachusetts.
“My God almighty. What, what? You weren’t kidding.”
“No.”
“Won’t they kill us right now?”
“No. And I need your help getting them into Allens Pond for the summer.”
“But.”
“Everyone in the state of Florida is looking for them—and once, they even had them cornered, but they got away. I had no choice but to bring them to the one place no one would ever look for them: the Northeast Kingdom as you call it, Arquette.”
“They’ll die here in the winter.”
“No. I’ll take them back in late September. You remember I told you we, my group, sank that tug boat in the St. Lucie Locks? Well, Freddie and I got away that day by hanging on to the backs of these two big gators while they swam underwater. You don’t know how badly my group needs them for our cause.”
“Cause?”
“One day out there somewhere and sometime, we are going to take down the Lake Okeechobee dike.”
“Why? How?”
“To send the water back into the Everglades where it belongs. Are you with us? I took a big chance bringing the gators here, counting on you to be one of us like old times, remember, you’re a charter member of our old Blue Goose Bunch anyway, a member of our House, and now we plan to take our bunch to the ultima thule as a friend of mine likes to say, the farthest region, and blow up the dike.”
“What friend?”
“His name is Triple Suiter, but let me explain that another time. So, are you with us?”
“Am I with you? I’m with you because I’ve been searching for something in my stalled life ever since I left Jensen Beach, and this is more than I wished for so I don’t put a gun in my mouth. A good cause? Perfect! Now I can construct some kind of future for myself. You guys are really some sort of wild-ass edgelords.”
“Yeah. Guess so.”
“Holy shit I just realized, we’re standing here staring at these killer alligators and talking about my mental state, and I noticed the missing toes on the one. Is that the gator they call Two-toed Tom?”
“That’s him. The one and only.”
“You say they have two people, or spirits, living inside them?”
“They do—they are called Captain Nemo and Osceola.”
“And you say you can actually communicate with the two, what did you call them, slippers? Wait a minute. Is that why you are so crazy about that song, Slip Away? That one of Clarence Carter’s from the ‘60s?”
“Some I guess. One of the reasons. When I was twelve years old, someone turned on a radio in my head and they never came back to turn it off. I have a slipper I talk to that lives inside of me, Arquette. His name, as I mentioned before, is Triple Suiter. And he and I do like to slip away, don’t you know, doo lang doo lang.”
“Is that what you were always doing in high school when The Junior, Punky and me would see your lips moving? Remember how we kidded you about it?”
“That was it. Slipping away. You’re right. Everyone probably has a slipper or two that lives in their brain, but most people don’t know it. The ones that do know it are called schizophrenics, Arquette, however members of this club prefer to call it voice hearing, and most of these people won’t tell anyone because people will think they’re crazy. So I guess it’s like that movie, Fight Club—the first rule of Fight Club is: You do not talk about Fight Club, because if you do, people will think you’re Peter Cracked Head Pan.”
“Ah. Yeah, I remember that movie. I get it. And if I remember, Fight Club was all about schizophrenia.”
“It was. I was born with the type of brain that makes me this way—and yes, believe it or not, I can see and talk to the spirits of the two great men, the slippers that live inside these gators, and I can talk to other slippers like Martha, the slipper that lives inside the coachwhip snake, and by the way—Freddie and I have Martha and the snake with us. They’re tucked into the back seat of the truck. And by the way again, Freddie is the way I am—he can talk to slippers. And by the way for the last time, Nell Kitching back home is a talk-walker like us too, and sees and hears slippers.”
“And Christaine?”
“No. But she knows how I am and about Freddie and Nell. Turns out Half Track who came with us today is a talkwalker too, but then he has autism, so when he tells people he sees little people they don’t believe him.”
Arquette nodded his head in a slight resignation. Aubrey could see he was trying, trying to believe these preternatural things he was telling him. “All this being said, take your time to chew on it, Arquette, right now you have to help me get these large boys in the water at Allens Pond.”
“Why is all this blood in here?”
“Tell you later.”
“We can go over to Jordan Road through the woods, and access the pond west of there. It’s not that far.”
So there they were, backing the big gators out of the horse trailer into the Massachusetts’s night, the monsters from the tropics setting foot on the boreal soil for the first time. If only a Wampanoag Indian or a Pilgrim could have seen it, it would have stirred up plenty of legends about what God or the Great Spirit sent north one summer.
Aubrey let Martha and her coachwhip out of the truck to go with them, so Martha would know where the gators were and could run messages back and forth. When Arquette saw the snake, he jumped behind Aubrey. Aubrey picked it up and showed him how tame it was. Half Track pointed to the snake and said, “That’s where Miss Martha lives.”
Martha came out of her snake’s eyes and increased her size. “Hello, Half Track. It’s nice to see you again. Aubrey, I think you know this man can see us.”
“Yes by God I do. You told me he showed up at Sonny’s.”
“Sonny. I miss Sonny. Gonna see Sonny and tell him,” Half Track said.
“Tell him what?”
“My momma loves me. Gets down on her knees and hugs me.”
“Right, but I don’t think Sonny’s momma loved him very much.”
“My momma does.”
“Well, that’s good.”
“Will he stay with us, Aubrey?” Martha asked.
“Just long enough for his brother to figure out how to come get him.”
They walked towards the marsh area with the animals, animals that had never smelled the Yankee biota or soil, or heard the night sounds of this place; crawling around boulders and white pine for the first time, crushing the old dead branches on the ground and green fiddle head ferns, mint, mud, and leaves, with Arquette, the leader, in sort of a glorious daze, and Half Track the gone minded, stumbling along behind them, until they were closer and closer to the inland tidal area—the thousand acres of grassy marsh and deep channels of crystal clear water called Allens Pond.
When they reached the edge, Arquette stopped them. “They will find the water is colder here, but I guess they will get used to it. The idea is to stay out of sight. Hide in the daytime, especially from airplanes and helicopters. The tidal pond is full of fish and other food for them.” Then Arquette turned to Aubrey. “Who the hell am I talking to, alligators?”
“Believe me Arquette, their slippers heard you.” Aubrey looked down and spoke to the eyes of the large creatures. “I will send Martha and the snake every evening to this spot at eight o’clock to see if you are alright. It is not far for her to come since the coachwhip is as fast as a running horse.”
Nemo and Osceola came out on the long wide noses of their gators and increased their size to four inches tall. Aubrey knelt down to hear them. They nodded to Aubrey that they understood. “I think this is a perfect spot for us. And, Aubrey, we did not know this man who can see us was in the trailer, until the incident with those pirates on the highway we had to kill.” Nemo told him.
“That’s a Indian,” Half Track pointed at Osceola.
“Yes he is, Half Track,” Aubrey said, “Oh well. His brother will come for him. If you want to explore this place, then only at night of course. You can swim out to the inlet, even into the ocean if you like. I have seen the inlet and the channel, and it is a beautiful clean stretch of water. I’ll send Martha and the snake to you tomorrow at eight P.M., to see if you’re okay.”
“Thank you, merci merci for all of this, Monsieur Aubrey, and thank Monsieur Arquette for his kindness, because I know he cannot hear me as you can,” Nemo said.
“Of course. I have told him everything about all of this and us,” Aubrey said, turning his head to Arquette, “But he will need a day or two with it. And now we must leave you here in what I think you will find to be an interesting water paradise, especially for Osceola who has never been in the north country. Good night. Explore this place.”
“Yes, goodnight, Arquette said, nodding his head awkwardly.
“Yes Messieurs. Bon soirée to both of you,” Nemo waved.
The air was getting warmer as the great Yankee weather moved further into its short summer. There was another vacant apartment over the car barn, and that was given to Freddie Tommie and temporarily to Half Track, who Christaine especially looked out for. Freddie was more than happy to be in Massachusetts for the summer with his young son.
Martha, the gypsy slipper, would ride in the eyes of her snake through the trees and scrub, down to the edge of Allens Pond just before dark. She’d wait on the shoreline where they had taken the gators. Then she would ride the eight-foot-long living rope back to the farm and report her conversation with Captain Nemo and Osceola to Aubrey and Freddie. Twice a week, Aubrey would go with Martha, though he was always scared someone would see him.
~
The excitement over the white whale calf was growing and spread through the memes of the scientific community. At first there was an effort to keep the sighting of the baby quiet and out of the press, but everyone knew it would be spotted by fishermen and boaters any day, and that is what happened when Sean Kponovich, looked off the starboard side of his big commercial factory boat, the Svetlana, at a group of humpback whales and saw the anomalous baby, white as a small cloud swimming next to its mother.
At first, only the beauty of the animal spread in his mind, until the economics of an ocean freebooter like him, flushed it into a monetary forethought. He would capture this marvel and sell it for millions to an aquarium on the Black Sea or the black market in Russia or China. They would give him a fortune for this swimming miracle.
The pair, mother and baby, surfaced for air again, and Sean leaned back on his heels and swallowed. Did his crew on the Svetlana see it too? He yelled to his first mate on the bridge, and he could see the man had seen, so he knew he was in his right mind.
In Russian he hollered, “Osip! Man, did you see it?”
“Yes, yes captain, I saw, I saw. My God I never thought I would live to see one. It is the Moby Dick, come back to get vengeance!”
“No Osip. It is a gift from God to you and me.”
Sean knew this pod of whales that came here in the summer to feed on the krill and fish off the tip of Cape Cod and Nantucket. He knew they would be here all summer, and that he could find them most of the time. But what this bandit was thinking in his timeserving, peccable mind, worried him—someone else would get this white baby even though it was illegal; they would beat him to it. He had to get on with what he was boiling right away.
Docked again in New Bedford, he called his uncle Fyodor in New York, a Russian with dual American citizenship and the owner of the boat listed as American. He told him about the baby. Fyodor said “Yes, the baby would be worth a lot to any number of customers in Russia and China.”
Sean had already captured beluga whales and sold them—whales he had taken alive off the mouth of the St. Lawrence in northern Quebec. The big boat, the Svetlana, was a mid-size processing or factory ship and had been outfitted with a floatation tank six feet deep and twenty feet long to keep the beluga whales alive, while he transported them to the Baltic Sea, a ten-day trip from the Bay of Fundy. Sean also captained two mid-size trawlers, the Anastasia, and the Marina flagged as American, used to catch and bring fish to be processed in New Bedford. The Svetlana had one single clandestine purpose this summer, and that was to transport large exotics like small whales or dolphins to be sold to aquariums in places like Russia and China, or any other country that would accept live contraband.
At the Woods Hole Institute, the excitement was high—and also the concern. It seems the mother of the calf was an older humpback and was not healthy, lagging behind the pod when it moved to another area to feed, so much so that the veterinarians were called in and agreed something was wrong. Plans were already being put in place to take the young calf if the mother died. The Institute had done this twice before with baby whales in the same straits. Those calves were netted and carefully pulled along the side of a large boat and taken just inside the Westport River where Dr. Murphy’s property was on a small cove. The egg-shaped cove was deep and about two acres in size; it had a narrow mouth twenty meters across, with a dock off to one side where his sixteen-foot motor launch was moored. The mouth could be cordoned off with a net, giving the calves room to swim and be fed until they were ready to be towed back out to sea, and hopefully join the whale pod again.
On Wednesday of that same week, the mother died, and the calf was seen alone by a whale watch boat. The captain radioed Woods Hole and two boats were dispatched to check on the baby. They found the calf swimming aimlessly around where the mother sank in what’s called a whale fall. Her body could be seen, with special sonar equipment, lying on the bottom.
They surrounded the baby with a large circle of seine net and pulled the net in tighter and tighter until they had the twenty-foot-long mammal secured against the side of the boat. They took blood samples and swabs. A diver went down and examined. They determined the sex; it was a female. Then they began the slow and careful transport to the Westport River and Dr. Murphy’s cove. It took two and a half hours to make the trip; the white baby struggled some, but they were careful to keep the calf’s blow hole exposed the whole time. It was an exciting day. Eira, Dr. Murphy’s daughter, called the Deer Track farm. Everybody on the farm jumped into a truck, and they were there when the white baby arrived.
“What will you feed it, Dr. Murphy?” Arquette’s father asked.
“I’ve made arrangements. There’s a tank truck on the way with small live fish, salmon, and shrimp from an aquaculture farm. It will be interesting to see if the baby will feed on its own, but if not, we have had experience with two other babies before this getting food into them. Luckily this calf is six months old, we think, old enough to have started feeding on its own some.”
Eira was the most excited because the whale was a girl. Yuchee was standing next to her. “Want to walk along the river and see the owl nest again, Yuchee? Maybe there are more bones at the bottom of the tree.”
“Yes.”
“That man with you, who is he?”
“His name is Half Track. He is from Florida. He has autism. Mr. Shallcross knows his family well.”
“I thought he …?”
“This whale is like you,” Yuchee said as they walked.
“Yes. Like me.”
