Prelude
Baja December 29, 1995
Freddie
I was diving off the coast of Punta Eugenia, in the cool blue waters above Isla Natividad, when a grey whale plowed through a kelp bed. It moved like a train bearing down on a weedy crossroads. I thought I wouldn't have time to get out of the way, but at the last possible second, the whale veered 90 degrees, rising at a slant. I looked up and saw forty feet of living tissue, lungs the size of a Volkswagen, a 250-pound heart beating nine times a minute. I'd been all over the world and seen thousands of whales, but I never really stopped being awestruck. That was a little amazing when you considered my career--I'm a cetalogist, specializing in the study of "Eschrichtius gibbosus," the grey whale.
My husband, Dr. Sam Espy, studied whales, too, but he was about twenty feet above me, sitting in a borrowed boat with his blond assistant. The only way I could reach him was through telepathy, but I was firmly rooted in the scientific world. Although I was born in Tallulah, Tennessee, I no longer considered myself "from" the South--that realm of fantastic cooks, ancestor worshipers, prejudiced fools, and eccentric ladies who took to their beds for decades.
Now I lived on the West Coast in a little seaside town named Dewey, due north of San Francisco. Every November Sam and I braved the California current to Baja, specifically the 28th Parallel, to the lagoons in and around Guerrero Negro, where the grey whales gather from December until March, to breed and give birth. The rest of the year we lived in Dewey, where Sam's dad, Mackie, owned a sheep ranch. Our whale-watching delighted the residents. They loved to tell tourists how we boughtand converted a secondhand tuna boat for the price of a double-wide trailer. It had been dry-docked for a while, but it was seaworthy, with a solid wooden hull, the same as Jacques Cousteau's old mine sweeper. The folks in Dewey always pointed this out to the tourists, adding that John Wayne had a mine sweep, bought for a song and refurbished into a swanky yacht. Sam named the tuna boat "Miss Freddie, "and while the town looked on admiringly, I smashed a bottle of good California champagne against the bow.
Now I was close enough to see lice around the whale's eye, all etched with lice. Greys aren't sonic like toothed whales, but this one knew I was here. Only about ten percent of the greys in Baja are "friendlies"--they'll seek you out in the lagoons. I didn't know about this one, but I decided to swim for a closer look. The whale, sensing my approach, shot forward, and the giant fluke slapped down inches from my face, parting the water with such force that it lifted me out of the kelp. The blast knocked the regulator out of my mouth. For a moment I saw nothing but bubbles spinning away from me. The plush side of a rock loomed up. I threw out my hands, but I couldn't avoid the rock; I crashed into it, grazing my forehead, then drifted backward in the current. I was dimly aware of my mask spiraling down toward the kelp. A little to the right, a rocky slope disappeared into a thousand shades of blue.
Right about then I seemed to lose time. A tight sensation spread through my chest. With a start, I realized I was holding my breath; I frantically groped for the regulator, fit it into my mouth, and sucked in air. I stared anxiously at the exhaled oxygen as it rose in large, flattenedbubbles. The surface was dappled and wavering, its radiance partially obscured by the curved hull of the boat, and I thought this is what heaven must look like when you die.
I shook my head to clear it, and water swirled around me, cool and effervescent, the way champagne feels when you swallow it straight from the bottle. A plume of red spun out, feathering in the water. It looked like spilled ink. I felt a little stunned, but I knew I was in fairly shallow water because colors began to disappear at twenty-five feet. Reds and oranges leave first; by the time you reach one hundred feet, all that remains is blue. I ran my fingers through the ink; then I slowly realized that it wasn't ink, it was blood. Every diver in the world, dazed or not, knew what that meant--what it attracted. Sharks, I thought, turning 180 degrees. Oh, my god, "sharks." I didn't see anything ominous in the murky blue, but those shadows could be anything. On the way down to Baja, we had seen a macerated seal--no doubt the work of a great white. Although I had shared other waters with predatory fish, mainly tigers and blues, it wasn't in the presence of blood; a shark can detect a single drop in thirty gallons of water. I didn't have to think twice about it; I began digging through the water, screaming bubbles all the way to the surface.
By the time Sam and his assistant, Nina VanHook, dragged me onto the boat, I was sobbing. "Oh, my "god," Freddie. What the hell happened?" Sam straddled me, peering down into my face. It was a relief to look into those sweet, almond-shaped eyes, the irises flecked green. His hair was cropped even shorter than mine, and the bright Baja sun was turning it sherry-colored. Iopened my mouth wide, fully expecting to say something like, Thank god you saved me. Instead, I reached for the side of the boat and pulled myself up, thinking I might have to retch into the water. I couldn't help it; this was a family trait: vomiting during a crisis. After Mother died, my sisters and I couldn't stop gagging. I remembered crowding around the commode, bumping heads with Eleanor and Jo-Nell. Our grandmother, Minerva Pray, who hadn't inherited the regurgitation gene, solved the problem by handing out Tupperware bowls, a different color for each sister.
"Freddie, were you too deep?" Sam was saying. He sounded every inch the scientist, but I thought I heard real fear in his voice. He faced Nina VanHook. "Could she have decompressed?"
"In these waters?" said Nina. "Decompensate is more like it." She had chin-length blond hair, sooty at the roots, permed within an inch of its life; she wore a loose T-shirt over her bikini. From the bottom of the boat, I gazed up at her. She was a graduate student at Scripps, my old alma mater, and she'd just turned twenty-three--that made her six years younger than my baby sister, Jo-Nell. I felt very sad. At thirty-three I was too old to be having conniption fits, in a boat or anywhere else.
"Maybe she just freaked out," Nina was saying. "It happens."
I tried not to look at the girl--and she really was just a girl. What did she know about life? I thought about saying something just a little crazy: Look, I didn't panic down there, I got bit. See the mark? "Infecto un mosquito. Comprende? "I knew she'd already made up her mind about me. Well, fine. I'd composed an unflattering picture of her, too. She probably drank raspberrymineral water because the bottle was cute; and I hated the way she measured distances in kilometers. I myself stuck to the American mile.
"Freddie? "Freddie,"" Sam was saying. "Look at me, honey. Look at me. You didn't get spooked by a shark, did you?"
"Shark?" Nina spat out the word, then crossed her arms. "You've got to be kidding."
Sam ignored her and said, "Honey, what did you see down there? And what scraped your head?" He gingerly lifted my bangs. I have very short hair, with weird, wispy bangs. I licked my lips, waiting for the nausea to pass.
"I think she must have swallowed her tongue or something," said Nina.
"No, she just needs to get her breath." Sam patted my arm. I hated when people talked about me like I wasn't there. I shut my eyes, straining to collect myself; before I could admit the truth or even shape my lips into a "W" and say "whale," it was just a whale, Sam touched my forehead. His fingers felt sharp and cold, and I worried that they might draw out the truth. I knew he wouldn't understand what I'd done. I myself barely