Jay goes fetal, comfiest pose for his final cradle. The whale will bleed out soon. If eaters don’t annihilate it instantly, the whale’s carcass—and Jay’s carcass inside it—will sink quietly through the fathoms, all six and a half thousand feet of Monterey Canyon, before gentling onto the sea bottom, soft and pliable from its own putrefying gases. Every scorching wound in Jay’s body cools as he fancies it. Scientists call it a whale fall.
