The boy emerged from the trees on his bike onto the small dusty parking lot of Hospital Beach. He saw a gaggle of chattering men crowded close together, looking down. Concerned and curious, the boy knew that when adults were so collectively attentive, something had happened.
He rode on one pedal until he reached the picnic benches. The Alcan metal plant lay across the water a few hundred yards away, propane swelling out of a smokestack, a giant cargo ship lying in wait to be loaded. The boy gazed past a man’s knees and gasped when he saw the tail flukes of an orca whale perfectly still and bent round on the gravel. He let his bike fall to the ground and he went closer. He almost stumbled, as he focused on the whale and not on his steps. One of the men put out his arm to prevent the boy from getting nearer. He didn’t want to though; as soon as the man had put out his arm the whale’s heavy smell smacked the boy like a blast wave, and sank into his chest, making him cough. He spun around, choking on air. The men noticed him, and chuckled. He held his nose and breathed sharply through his mouth. When he finally had his breath back and steady, he turned to look at the dead orca.
The whale was big, unreal. It lay on its right side, Its left flipper was shining, motionless, as though it were a plastic sculpture on display. Its mouth was partway open; flies collected about its pink gums and gathered in clumps on its long tongue. The tip of its dorsal fin was submerged in the sand and gravel of the beach. The tide, when it came up with a rushing sound like the wind, licked the end of the fluke. The boy swallowed and inhaled through his mouth.
“Poor thing, eh?” said one of the men.
“For sure,” said another.
“You should probably go home, kiddo,” said the man standing next to the boy. “I’m not so sure your mother’d want you out here lookin at this.”
The boy looked up and saw a chin covered in stubble and a pair of blue sunglasses.
“Let 'im alone, Chet. Kids are curious, and he’s already seen it,” said one of the men. “Not much harm it’ll do now.”
“Yeah, he’ll be fine,” said another, waving his hand. “You’ve seen dead things before, right buddy?”
The boy nodded at them. He had seen dead animals—squirrels, beetles, moose, his dog. He noticed the men all held white cans in their hands, each of them marked with red letters that spelled MOLSON. The man beside him turned back to the whale, adjusted his sunglasses. He scoffed and took a sip from his can.
“Yeah, he’s fine.” One of the men chortled. “He looks man enough to look at something like this. I’ve seen 'im before, he’s a good tough guy.”
The boy blushed and turned his feet and elbows inwards, making himself as small as possible. He observed the whale. The overcast turned its underside from light grey to brownish-white in a matter of seconds. Its rubbery skin took on a matted appearance as the wind dried it out. The flies spread out of its mouth onto its white lips and chin. The boy wondered if they had gone down its gullet and were dancing and buzzing in its stomach. He resisted the urge to go up to it and listen through its side. He was seen as a man by the others, and men stood firm and withheld such curiosity.
“I wonder how it got way the hell over here,” said one of them. “Orcas usually don’t come this close to shore, do they?”
And a conversation was started, between pairs, between any two men, with notions and conjectures bouncing back and forth, the boy listening to it all as he watched the whale.
“Happens sometimes, I guess. I saw on the news the other day that hundreds of fish were beached on some beach in the States.”
“Maybe it died way out past the marina and the tide brought it in.”
“Tide couldn’t bring that thing way in here.”
“It coulda slammed into the rocks out there, and just kinda fought its way onto shore. I donno, just an idea.”
“It could’ve slammed into shore and just dried out. It takes time for a smell like that to come. S’probably been there since last night.”
“Damn that thing smells.”
“Yeah, I know man.”
Soon the chattering died down and all focus returned to the whale. The boy was pleased with the mutual silence. Mosquitoes had joined the flies in the feasting and writhed around the great body. The sun overhead was curtained by the clouds and the whale’s underside became grey again. The sound of the ocean sweeping and breathing gave the boy peace.
A certain pressure had fallen on him. He was now a part of the group, and so had to remain until they left. If he went before they did, he would be seen as weak in their eyes, so staying with them and with the rotting whale had become a test on the strength of his nerves. He tried his best to replace the orca’s acrid scent with memories of the smell of his mother’s cookies. He coughed and lowered his hands from his nose.
“Whale smells pretty bad, doesn’t it?” the man in the blue sunglasses asked him. The boy nodded, inhaling through his teeth.
“Wow…just something you don’t see very often, eh?” one of them asked.
They muttered in agreement, and drank from their cans.
“Hey, anybody know what they do with these things when this type a thing happens?”
There was a brief silence, followed by grunts of pondering. The boy shrugged. He didn’t know, either. He watched the orca and listened for answers.
“I don’t know. I see news reports about these things, but I never see how they get rid of the damn things. They just say something like ‘The animal was disposed of,’ or ‘The matter was quickly solved.’”
“Mmm, I would think the conservation officers would do something about it.”
“Do what? Push it out to sea? It’d come back in again.”
“Nah. They’d probably haul it off and put it in the garbage.”
The men laughed. The boy tilted his head at them, his eyes wide.
“Garbage…they’d need a crane to put that thing on a dump truck.”
“Or a semi truck.”
“Or a helicopter.”
“Or a catapult!”
“Or—ah, you friggin' idiot.”
They laughed again. The boy’s mouth came open. He swatted at a fly that skittered near his temple. He didn’t understand why the men were laughing. He turned to his right and found the calming image of the ocean, the green water sliding in perfect rhythm towards him. But then he remembered the test he was enduring, so he faced the decaying whale.
“Maybe we could use it for meat or…or even cut it up and sell it for bait.”
“They could smell its own kind, couldn’t they? They’d come after us if we went out on a boat.”
“No, no I’d wanna cook it. Right here. Cover it with gas and cook it. Nothing better’n the smell of cooking whale blubber.”
“Yeah. Then they could garbage it and haul it away.”
"With a catapult!”
More laughter. The boy whined as the men's voices rose and their guffaws boomed.
“Did I tell you ‘bout the time my nephew took his crossbow out past the marina? Saw a grey whale out there one time, and what he did was he went down by the rocks, and loaded the bow up and took a shot. Hit it right near the blowhole. His dad, my brother, was mad as hell but I told him he had a near bulls-eye.”
The laughter of the men reached an apex in pitch and volume. The boy’s eyes were pained and disbelieving. His bottom lip shook, near to sobbing. His chest flared from both shame and disgust. He could not be one of them and he did not want to be. He looked longingly at the whale. It was precious and pathetic. The boy’s dog had died the previous year of old age. The love he felt for this whale, multiplied by the brutality of the men, was ten times that which he had for his dog. He wanted to throw his arms around it and scream and shoo the men away and make them scared of the whale as though it were alive. A tear escaped his eye. He didn’t bother wiping it away. He hoped the men would see it. “Stop,” he whispered.
“Burn it! Burn it! Burn it!” the men began to chant. They lifted their cans and voices to celebratory heights. The man with sunglasses turned and gave the boy a thumbs-up.
The boy screamed. He ran to his bike, lifted it and rode away. Sobbing, he shouted in his shrill voice,“No! Don’t! Don’t put it in the garbage!”
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