More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
It was fit for experienced divers only, and even they had to respect the hidden trough just inside the surf line that, if they didn’t choose their entry right, might roll them over and over, a morsel softened for swallowing.
There’s a set of wooden stairs, but the ocean air has chewed them up. The steps, about fifteen, are helixed, wrung like a towel.
Last night Jay dreamed of his father’s bones, buttery in a nest of purple kelp, bejeweled with red sea slugs like holiday lights.
swell lifts him, the kelp vanishes, then the wave rolls on and he’s dropped into an open palm of mustard-colored leaves half his size. They slop around Jay’s arms and legs like tongues, a heavy, drooling grip.
God might have been a handy wrench to carry these last two years. He nearly grabbed hold of that wrench once, right there in the monastery.
Belly flop like another of God’s dropped boulders. But regression to gills and fins comes quick. Or is it evolution? Were legs a grand mistake?
Jay pauses to ensure he’s breathing clean, inhaling dry cylinder air and exhaling grape-bunch bubbles, then turns from the yellow-and-green kelp canopy, that last glow of sky, and kicks down into the cold.
An egg-yolk jellyfish.
His heart withers like newsprint in fire. He’s never felt more male, more destructive, more like Mitt Gardiner.
what looks like flowing hair is a clutch of palm kelp. What looks like a moldered face is the kelp’s webby wad of roots. The ocean is like this; it seems to grow human beings asexually.
waiting outside are the tones of Jay’s voice, the organs in Jay’s body.
Eight arms, four feet long each and as thick as Jay’s wrists, ribboning as freely as eight pours of milk.
Mitt, in his foulest of moods, pissed at some landlubber who got the best of him, said human beings were suckers to think they, with their matchstick villages balanced atop bread crusts of dry land, controlled anything at all. The lords lived below.
In all the art Jay’s seen, sperm whales are barges of fat. But when the whale before him curls its fluked tail to the side, muscles larger than Jay pull tight, pinching seams through the blubber. It must be the strongest thing that ever lived, matched only by its unexpected grace. It holds the pose: a comma in a sentence so large only gods can read it.
The white arcs of its closed mouth and genitals are only the most conspicuous deviations from its charcoal color. Pale squiggles roadmap its wadded skin. These are scars—hieroglyphics that tell the violent saga of this primeval giant. Battles with other bull sperms. Skirmishes with killer whales. Clashes with human debris. Both the whale’s flukes are hatcheted, probably from propellors. For a flash, Jay sees Mitt instead. The wedge gone from Mitt’s left ear—a fishhook. The white scar across Mitt’s chin—a ship engine room fire. The top half of Mitt’s ring finger gone—bitten off by a winch. The
...more
Jay’s fins are EVA plastic and the left one snaps in half, the blade pinwheeling into blackness. Could have been Jay’s foot—his toes, white tapioca beads, are exposed. A
But how? How when he’s so shaken? When he’s one small heart against nature’s scalpel.
Squid beaks were the base ingredient of ambergris, the waxy lumps shat by sperm whales and used in luxury perfumes, every poor fisherman’s dream, selling for roughly twenty-five grand per pound.
“You just assumed I’d always be there to order around.” (Did you not assume) (That we would always be there too)
Off the map, lost, no compass except Dad, Dad, Dad.
The war between him and his father was never a war at all. A series of skirmishes at most, which only felt significant because their eyes were on the fronts of their heads and never the sides, where the grandeur of life could have been better viewed, the thrill of every falling leaf and stinging wasp and crashing rain. Even their setbacks were magnificent and their bloodshed stirring, all of it working together in a machine called family.
Jay’s the same, heart a kick drum, pulse whipped to cream, head fired like a billiard ball, regulator chiseling his gums.
“But if I hadn’t gotten swallowed. That one-in-a-billion chance. All the stuff you told me would have been useless bullshit. Was it really worth it? For me to hate you?” (Yes) “Why?” (Because you are still alive)
Yet Jay’s thrilled because the old whale is thrilled. For a few seconds, a gift: it’s young again.
(We should have asked what your favorite part was) (We are sorry we never asked questions) (We wanted to know but were afraid)
(Answers to questions have weight) (And we wanted to stay light) (We are sorry)
No one carries the best parts of themselves. The best parts are those held inside of others.
“I’m going to screw you up.” (Of course you are Daddy) “But maybe I can teach you things.” (I am sure you will Daddy) “So one day you can live the life you want. Anything you want.” (Why are you in such a hurry Daddy) “I’ll make sure of that. I’ll give you all the tools.” (I do not want tools Daddy) “So when it matters, Son, you’ll know what to do.” (Daddy all I want is you)
His arm muscles grind, grind until they sag, useless, then his shoulder muscles take over and employ his arms like cheap tools.
