Warning
Anastasia Lugo Mendez
The moon refused to leave, hanging in the morning sky like a lemon wedge. Sun filtered through the fog that smoked the hills. By noon the Pacific would be invisible, walled off by the fog bank, thick, gray clouds hanging heavy on the water. The rest of the sky would still be the brilliant blue of early spring, though it was now late summer. To life-long inhabitants, nothing about this weather, this August, made sense. This slight shift of their world was heightened by the presence of a whale that had left its ocean to swim up their river and trap itself in their midst.
This morning the whale circled under the Walton E. Midlake Memorial Bridge. It surfaced occasionally, sending up a foamy spout of air and water that the onlookers crowded on the bridge’s sidewalks swore they could feel. A police car cycled the road, over the bridge and back again, throughout the day, a patrol as out of the ordinary as the whale in the river. Unlike the whale in the river, no one paid it any mind. Tourists parked their RVs and minivans on the side of the street and crossed the bridge to stare. Children threw bits of food into the river: chocolate chip cookies and fruit roll-ups and small slices of cheese from their Lunchables. Eventually, empty packets of Capri-Sun. The whale remained indifferent to their offerings.
One astute entrepreneur set up a food truck on the north side of the bridge, where he sold sandwiches, burgers, overpriced water, sodas, and whale-shaped keychains. A once-celebrated artist put up a booth next to the food truck and drew caricatures of tourists alongside a whale giving them a thumbs-up. There was so much demand he called an old art school friend who set up another booth on the south side, bookending the river and the whale. They set up speakers by their booths and played whale songs, sold CDs to people who had almost forgotten their cars could play them.
The police officer patrolling the bridge ate a Philly cheesesteak purchased from the food truck. He had asked to be moved to a different patrol, but the staff sergeant said to hold tight, that the whale would be gone soon. The police officer left his car and watched people throng the south side of the bridge, where the whale floated listlessly. It had been three weeks.
Biologists had given interviews to NPR and appeared on CNN, had written news articles and brewed Twitter storms, and held private phone conversations to discuss the whale’s future. When the whale first tried to leave, approaching the ocean at low tide, it met the sand bar at the river’s mouth and floundered. It didn’t try again. It fell to man to find a solution. The scientists discussed baiting the whale; they considered running a tarp under its body and tugging it back to sea. Behind closed doors, city officials discussed explosives, while hoping for an announcement: the whale was dead. It would be bad PR, but bad PR could be fixed. A whale in the river, it appeared, could not.
The whale would not leave, and the whale would not die. The police officer had been watching it for three weeks, first with awe, then with resentment. Whale patrol forced him to cross Midlake Bridge so often he could close his eyes and tell by the feel of the pavement what stretch of it he was on. His eyes went glassy and dull, and he stopped looking at the whale. There were jumpers. He’d stopped fifteen of them. Ten of them wanted to swim with the whale, three of them had seen someone else try and thought it was a good idea. One wanted to die when he hit the water, the other sought a second chance with God, and wanted to be eaten by the whale. All had incurred an extensive amount of paperwork back at the precinct.
Four people weren’t stopped, but were quickly recovered—stunned, or broken, in one case, too broken to live, deceived by the whale’s presence and forgetting the rocks underwater. One or two made the front page, but no one wanted to read about disaster. Public and media alike demanded miraculous recoveries, spontaneous healing, Mother Earth speaking through the whale who was speaking through a medium on Instagram Live.
The whale’s plight was drowned in a sludge of celebrities, war, disease, and speculation. The story got less and less time on the morning shows, until it wasn’t a story at all, anymore. But it was still summer, and parents needed something to do with their children. They drove in from California or Washington, from Oregon and Idaho’s inland deserts to the rocky coast, and on their way through town they remembered the whale. With their novelty keychains and wide-eyed, toothy-smiled portraits, some thought they would always remember.
This morning the whale circled under the Walton E. Midlake Memorial Bridge. It surfaced occasionally, sending up a foamy spout of air and water that the onlookers crowded on the bridge’s sidewalks swore they could feel. A police car cycled the road, over the bridge and back again, throughout the day, a patrol as out of the ordinary as the whale in the river. Unlike the whale in the river, no one paid it any mind. Tourists parked their RVs and minivans on the side of the street and crossed the bridge to stare. Children threw bits of food into the river: chocolate chip cookies and fruit roll-ups and small slices of cheese from their Lunchables. Eventually, empty packets of Capri-Sun. The whale remained indifferent to their offerings.
One astute entrepreneur set up a food truck on the north side of the bridge, where he sold sandwiches, burgers, overpriced water, sodas, and whale-shaped keychains. A once-celebrated artist put up a booth next to the food truck and drew caricatures of tourists alongside a whale giving them a thumbs-up. There was so much demand he called an old art school friend who set up another booth on the south side, bookending the river and the whale. They set up speakers by their booths and played whale songs, sold CDs to people who had almost forgotten their cars could play them.
The police officer patrolling the bridge ate a Philly cheesesteak purchased from the food truck. He had asked to be moved to a different patrol, but the staff sergeant said to hold tight, that the whale would be gone soon. The police officer left his car and watched people throng the south side of the bridge, where the whale floated listlessly. It had been three weeks.
Biologists had given interviews to NPR and appeared on CNN, had written news articles and brewed Twitter storms, and held private phone conversations to discuss the whale’s future. When the whale first tried to leave, approaching the ocean at low tide, it met the sand bar at the river’s mouth and floundered. It didn’t try again. It fell to man to find a solution. The scientists discussed baiting the whale; they considered running a tarp under its body and tugging it back to sea. Behind closed doors, city officials discussed explosives, while hoping for an announcement: the whale was dead. It would be bad PR, but bad PR could be fixed. A whale in the river, it appeared, could not.
The whale would not leave, and the whale would not die. The police officer had been watching it for three weeks, first with awe, then with resentment. Whale patrol forced him to cross Midlake Bridge so often he could close his eyes and tell by the feel of the pavement what stretch of it he was on. His eyes went glassy and dull, and he stopped looking at the whale. There were jumpers. He’d stopped fifteen of them. Ten of them wanted to swim with the whale, three of them had seen someone else try and thought it was a good idea. One wanted to die when he hit the water, the other sought a second chance with God, and wanted to be eaten by the whale. All had incurred an extensive amount of paperwork back at the precinct.
Four people weren’t stopped, but were quickly recovered—stunned, or broken, in one case, too broken to live, deceived by the whale’s presence and forgetting the rocks underwater. One or two made the front page, but no one wanted to read about disaster. Public and media alike demanded miraculous recoveries, spontaneous healing, Mother Earth speaking through the whale who was speaking through a medium on Instagram Live.
The whale’s plight was drowned in a sludge of celebrities, war, disease, and speculation. The story got less and less time on the morning shows, until it wasn’t a story at all, anymore. But it was still summer, and parents needed something to do with their children. They drove in from California or Washington, from Oregon and Idaho’s inland deserts to the rocky coast, and on their way through town they remembered the whale. With their novelty keychains and wide-eyed, toothy-smiled portraits, some thought they would always remember.
***
The police officer could not sleep. He lived on the river, eight miles from the whale, but at night he thought he could hear it singing, an echo of his days patrolling the bridge. The first week he wore earplugs and the sound got louder. The second week he drank whiskey and he heard it in his dreams. By the third week, he rolled a joint, got high, and started singing along with the whale.
One night he picked up a barfly at the Seashell. She looked familiar, someone’s little sister from back in high school, blonde hair stiff from bleach, lipstick drawn over her upper lip like a child in her mother’s makeup. He drank an IPA and nodded at the bartender when the barfly asked for the special—a Blue Whale: rum, pineapple juice, blue curacao. She licked rock sugar off the martini glass rim with a blue-tinged tongue.
This is what his days had been like before the whale—a few domestic disturbance calls, car break-ins at the surf beach, foisting his paperwork off on a rookie and flirting with a woman in admin. For a while, he had avoided the Seashell, dating a teacher who preferred the tourist bars with the big glass windows overlooking the ocean. And then he stopped calling her, and she texted him to call him an asshole, and he went back to the Seashell, until the whale, anyway. He just had to walk the walk, was all, and the song would stop. He pulled the barfly closer to him by her belt loops, listened to her high-pitched voice, the blare of shitty rock from the soulless, touchscreen jukebox, the clink of glassware behind the bar. He drank until he saw the bottom of one glass and then another.
They stumbled to his car and he pressed the barfly up against the driver’s side door. She giggled, and he buried his face in her hair, smelling rum, perfume, powder, hairspray. Her neck tasted of crayon. He brought her home, playing the radio as loud as it would go, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel.
He tried to undress her, fingers struggling with her blouse, low-cut and wrapped around her body and tied in a bow at the small of her back. “Can you hear the whale?” he asked.
“All I hear is you still talking.” She tried to kiss him.
The sound grew louder. “You have to hear it. Are you sure you can’t hear it?”
She squinted at him, then smiled. “Yeah, I hear it.”
He got the bow loose. “You can?”
“Mmmhmm. Whooooooo.” Her voice quavered, breathy. “Whoooooooooooo. Is that what you want, baby? Whoooooooo,” she crooned in his ear.
He pushed the blouse off her shoulders, then studied the fabric, shimmery and cheap, tails dangling like strands of kelp. He draped the blouse over his shoulders, then pulled it up to the nape of his neck, holding a long tail in each hand. He rustled the fabric over his ears, shimmying like a dancer with a feather boa. He heard the whale, and the fabric, and the barfly’s sigh, he heard his comforter crinkle as she threw herself down on the bed. She grabbed one end of the blouse and pulled it out of his hands.
She couldn’t hear the music. She couldn’t hear the whale. He wondered if the teacher would have heard the music. He excused himself, locked himself in the bathroom. The sound echoed off the tile walls. The barfly knocked on the door, cajoled, called baby, baby. He didn’t answer. She rattled the doorknob.
“What the fuck,” she said. “What the fuck.” She kicked the bottom of the door. “This isn’t funny. How am I supposed to get home?”
He barely heard her over the song. He hummed with the whale as she pounded on the door, until he couldn’t hear her at all, only the whale. He hummed until he nodded off to sleep.
He woke to the sound of the whale. His eyes stared back at him in the mirror, heavy and blood-lined in a bloated face. He called work and told them he was sick. He did not cough or call it a 24-hour bug. They told him to stay home for a day or two if he needed. They would find someone else to cover bridge duty.
He slept. The singing stopped during the day. In the afternoon, ravenous, he baked a tray of chicken thighs he had marinated in soy sauce, cooking wine, sugar and garlic, and ate like a king. He tore the meat off the bones and let the juices drip down his chin. He watched the Seahawks win. At dusk he heard the whale singing again. He left the door to his house open and walked to the riverbank. He waded into the river till he was waist deep, and felt the current pull sluggishly at his legs. He pressed one ear to the water. The singing got louder. He listened. The current pulled him off his feet. He let himself turn onto his back and float, ears dipping in and out of the water. The song sounded clear when his ears were below the surface, watery when above.
He was not sure how long or how far he floated. The night sky, cloudy, backlit by the wedge of moon, roiled above him. The whale song stretched from riverbank to riverbank, to the river mouth, into the sea. He could feel it reach the sandbar at the sea, could feel as it burrowed deep into the river bottom. He could follow it to the ocean, into the depths, be swept beyond the edges of his known world. The song met no resistance as it traveled. It did not tire. It did not cease.
He bobbed along the river, feet first. The current slowed and he looked up to see the Midlake Bridge above him, the lights from street and town drifting to him through the fog. He stared at the bottom of the bridge, picking out girders and the distant flares of graffiti between them, but the river pulled him through and beyond before he could make anything out. He turned his eyes up, wondering if the tourists could see him, would marvel at his body, his rightful place in the river. The fog hazed above him, and he saw nothing. He hummed into the water, let the river carry him on. He could drift to the sea.
The thin fingers of a downed tree jutted out into the water, leaves and branches sweeping the water, roots still reaching for the mud of the riverbank. The river rippled around the branches, and the pattern caught his eye long enough to break through the sound. It was within reach. It was all within reach—the ocean, the riverbank, the whale. Life as it had been three weeks back, before the whale, before the song. Or life as it could be after.
He grasped a branch and felt the pull of the river as it swept past him, the pull of the song as it drew nearer to the sea.
The police officer rolled onto his stomach and swam to the river’s edge, pulling himself out and into a mass of willows and blackberry brambles that bit into his skin. He tore through the plants, which gave way to road. He walked the roads till they gave way to home. It was nearly dawn before he was in bed again, in a silent house in a silent bedroom. He called in sick. He slept.
One night he picked up a barfly at the Seashell. She looked familiar, someone’s little sister from back in high school, blonde hair stiff from bleach, lipstick drawn over her upper lip like a child in her mother’s makeup. He drank an IPA and nodded at the bartender when the barfly asked for the special—a Blue Whale: rum, pineapple juice, blue curacao. She licked rock sugar off the martini glass rim with a blue-tinged tongue.
This is what his days had been like before the whale—a few domestic disturbance calls, car break-ins at the surf beach, foisting his paperwork off on a rookie and flirting with a woman in admin. For a while, he had avoided the Seashell, dating a teacher who preferred the tourist bars with the big glass windows overlooking the ocean. And then he stopped calling her, and she texted him to call him an asshole, and he went back to the Seashell, until the whale, anyway. He just had to walk the walk, was all, and the song would stop. He pulled the barfly closer to him by her belt loops, listened to her high-pitched voice, the blare of shitty rock from the soulless, touchscreen jukebox, the clink of glassware behind the bar. He drank until he saw the bottom of one glass and then another.
They stumbled to his car and he pressed the barfly up against the driver’s side door. She giggled, and he buried his face in her hair, smelling rum, perfume, powder, hairspray. Her neck tasted of crayon. He brought her home, playing the radio as loud as it would go, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel.
He tried to undress her, fingers struggling with her blouse, low-cut and wrapped around her body and tied in a bow at the small of her back. “Can you hear the whale?” he asked.
“All I hear is you still talking.” She tried to kiss him.
The sound grew louder. “You have to hear it. Are you sure you can’t hear it?”
She squinted at him, then smiled. “Yeah, I hear it.”
He got the bow loose. “You can?”
“Mmmhmm. Whooooooo.” Her voice quavered, breathy. “Whoooooooooooo. Is that what you want, baby? Whoooooooo,” she crooned in his ear.
He pushed the blouse off her shoulders, then studied the fabric, shimmery and cheap, tails dangling like strands of kelp. He draped the blouse over his shoulders, then pulled it up to the nape of his neck, holding a long tail in each hand. He rustled the fabric over his ears, shimmying like a dancer with a feather boa. He heard the whale, and the fabric, and the barfly’s sigh, he heard his comforter crinkle as she threw herself down on the bed. She grabbed one end of the blouse and pulled it out of his hands.
She couldn’t hear the music. She couldn’t hear the whale. He wondered if the teacher would have heard the music. He excused himself, locked himself in the bathroom. The sound echoed off the tile walls. The barfly knocked on the door, cajoled, called baby, baby. He didn’t answer. She rattled the doorknob.
“What the fuck,” she said. “What the fuck.” She kicked the bottom of the door. “This isn’t funny. How am I supposed to get home?”
He barely heard her over the song. He hummed with the whale as she pounded on the door, until he couldn’t hear her at all, only the whale. He hummed until he nodded off to sleep.
He woke to the sound of the whale. His eyes stared back at him in the mirror, heavy and blood-lined in a bloated face. He called work and told them he was sick. He did not cough or call it a 24-hour bug. They told him to stay home for a day or two if he needed. They would find someone else to cover bridge duty.
He slept. The singing stopped during the day. In the afternoon, ravenous, he baked a tray of chicken thighs he had marinated in soy sauce, cooking wine, sugar and garlic, and ate like a king. He tore the meat off the bones and let the juices drip down his chin. He watched the Seahawks win. At dusk he heard the whale singing again. He left the door to his house open and walked to the riverbank. He waded into the river till he was waist deep, and felt the current pull sluggishly at his legs. He pressed one ear to the water. The singing got louder. He listened. The current pulled him off his feet. He let himself turn onto his back and float, ears dipping in and out of the water. The song sounded clear when his ears were below the surface, watery when above.
He was not sure how long or how far he floated. The night sky, cloudy, backlit by the wedge of moon, roiled above him. The whale song stretched from riverbank to riverbank, to the river mouth, into the sea. He could feel it reach the sandbar at the sea, could feel as it burrowed deep into the river bottom. He could follow it to the ocean, into the depths, be swept beyond the edges of his known world. The song met no resistance as it traveled. It did not tire. It did not cease.
He bobbed along the river, feet first. The current slowed and he looked up to see the Midlake Bridge above him, the lights from street and town drifting to him through the fog. He stared at the bottom of the bridge, picking out girders and the distant flares of graffiti between them, but the river pulled him through and beyond before he could make anything out. He turned his eyes up, wondering if the tourists could see him, would marvel at his body, his rightful place in the river. The fog hazed above him, and he saw nothing. He hummed into the water, let the river carry him on. He could drift to the sea.
The thin fingers of a downed tree jutted out into the water, leaves and branches sweeping the water, roots still reaching for the mud of the riverbank. The river rippled around the branches, and the pattern caught his eye long enough to break through the sound. It was within reach. It was all within reach—the ocean, the riverbank, the whale. Life as it had been three weeks back, before the whale, before the song. Or life as it could be after.
He grasped a branch and felt the pull of the river as it swept past him, the pull of the song as it drew nearer to the sea.
The police officer rolled onto his stomach and swam to the river’s edge, pulling himself out and into a mass of willows and blackberry brambles that bit into his skin. He tore through the plants, which gave way to road. He walked the roads till they gave way to home. It was nearly dawn before he was in bed again, in a silent house in a silent bedroom. He called in sick. He slept.
***
The whale swam back to the ocean. Over the next few days, the crowds dispersed. The food truck moved back to the beer garden. The artists tore down their booths. A ragged dozen hung around, hoping to see the whale again. The more sensible seekers drove coastal roads to bluffs and beaches and watched the ocean with their binoculars. Every time they saw a water spout they’d say, “That’s it, that’s the river whale. Look at that.” The local paper proclaimed it a triumph of human spirit, forgetting that man had done nothing at all. The whale had come, and gone, as it willed.
There were one hundred sightings the first day, seventy-five the next, twenty after that, and then none. The river whale was an ocean whale. It always had been.
The police officer slept soundly most nights, the whale song silent in memory. He didn’t go back to the Seashell. He thought about calling the teacher, but he let her be. When he found himself awake, searching for a forgotten sound, he got in his car and patrolled the bridge. He closed his eyes and felt the pavement, thinking, now I am a quarter way over, now I am halfway over, now I am almost to the dedication column on the south side. Every so often, he felt a jolt or bump he did not recognize, and he would think, now the whale is underneath me.
With the crowds gone, he was reassigned to his usual haunt, an unused pullout four miles up the road where out-of-towners could regularly be caught speeding. Biologists and anchormen had nothing more to say, though one tabloid printed a full-page story about a woman who married the whale in a spiritual ceremony attended by Elvis. The facing page ran a story about a woman who lived off sunlight alone. City officials inventoried their explosives and tried to justify their budgets. “You never know when we’ll need it,” they said to each other.
That was the last whale the river would see. Unable, now, to hear it, the police officer imagined the song spreading through the water, upriver, downriver, into bays and through ocean currents, singing its song of getting lost, and of going home. Singing a warning against rivers.
There were one hundred sightings the first day, seventy-five the next, twenty after that, and then none. The river whale was an ocean whale. It always had been.
The police officer slept soundly most nights, the whale song silent in memory. He didn’t go back to the Seashell. He thought about calling the teacher, but he let her be. When he found himself awake, searching for a forgotten sound, he got in his car and patrolled the bridge. He closed his eyes and felt the pavement, thinking, now I am a quarter way over, now I am halfway over, now I am almost to the dedication column on the south side. Every so often, he felt a jolt or bump he did not recognize, and he would think, now the whale is underneath me.
With the crowds gone, he was reassigned to his usual haunt, an unused pullout four miles up the road where out-of-towners could regularly be caught speeding. Biologists and anchormen had nothing more to say, though one tabloid printed a full-page story about a woman who married the whale in a spiritual ceremony attended by Elvis. The facing page ran a story about a woman who lived off sunlight alone. City officials inventoried their explosives and tried to justify their budgets. “You never know when we’ll need it,” they said to each other.
That was the last whale the river would see. Unable, now, to hear it, the police officer imagined the song spreading through the water, upriver, downriver, into bays and through ocean currents, singing its song of getting lost, and of going home. Singing a warning against rivers.
|
Anastasia Lugo Mendez is a writer and archaeologist based in Oregon. Her work may be found in JMWW, Sink Hollow, and elsewhere.
Social Media Instagram: @alm.endragua Website: www.anastasialugomendez.com |
|
