“All he said was to trust him, which makes me nervous. Because with him, things could either go really good or really bad. It’s usually nothing in between.”
Wonderful.
Minnow went back inside and set her glass ball on the table and surrounded it by a few cowrie shells so it wouldn’t roll off. She wondered how long the hand-blown float had been riding the ocean currents and how far it had traveled. Decades and probably thousands of miles. Japanese fisherman were said to have stopped using them in the eighties. Replaced with plastic. Like everything else.
She sat down, pulled out her address book and found Doc Finnegan’s number. “Hey, can I make a long distance call? I’m good for it,” she asked Woody, who was rustling around in the kitchen.
“Shoots.”
She dialed, enjoying the feel of the old rotary phone. It made her feel like she’d walked back in time to when her mother was here. Like maybe Layla would come through the door at any moment, dripping wet and sun-kissed.
He picked up right away. “Pete Finnegan.”
It was how he always answered, and my God, she wished he were here, big ego and all. He had a way about him that made people listen.
“Doc, it’s me, Minnow.”
“My favorite student calling from Hawai?i. What the hell is going on over there?” he boomed.
“I don’t know how much you’ve been following the news, but I gave it my all and they’re still sending out a fleet of boats tomorrow and all through the weekend to kill as many sharks as they can,” she said with a quivering voice.
“I got back three days ago and I’ve seen the news, but I want to hear it from you.”
She told him everything. Her secret hope was that he would hop on a plane and come to her rescue. That he would somehow know what to do.
Instead, he said, “All you can do is all you can do, kid. Sounds like you put up a good fight, but you also have to know when to throw in the towel.”
His words sparked a rage inside her. “Not yet.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
Nalu called and said the flight from Honolulu was delayed, and it would be a couple more hours before the other scientist arrived. Thunderstorms had settled over O?ahu. Minnow was at a loss for what to do, so she lay on the bed leafing through the photo album. Layla looked so young and innocent. Cheeks full and round. Hair just as wild as Minnow’s, only hers was blonde and down to her waist. She’d been six years younger than Minnow was now. A babe with a babe in her womb. Minnow ran a finger over the photo in which her belly looked so round and ripe.
A flurry of inner warmth spread through her and for a few moments the fear and guilt of the past few days melted away. She was swaddled in feathers and radiant sunshine and a mother’s undying love. The sensation was intense and comforting, but the minute she grasped at it, it slipped away. If only she could bottle the feeling and drink from it whenever life became too much.
She kept turning the pages, studying her mother for some sign of instability, when all she could see was this undiluted happiness. It was hard to imagine her coming here in despair and considering leaving Minnow’s father. How quickly things changed. But that was the way of her mind. Cycling through hills and valleys and mountaintops. And then falling into the abyss.
Woody walked in a few minutes later. “Think I’m going to head out too. I want to check in on Cliff and make sure he’s not going to cause more trouble than good. But I’ll be back early in the morning. Wait for me.”
Minnow shut the album. “What kind of trouble are we talking about?”
He shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. Burn all the boats, slash the tires of the trailers. He has no trouble waving that rifle of his around, either.”
Yeah, not good at all.
“He would do that?”
“Maybe.”
Maybe it was time someone did something radical if it was the only way to be heard. Animals and plant species were becoming extinct by the hour, or something like that, and she suddenly knew how those Greenpeace guys felt, or the woman who’d camped out for two years perched in the top of a redwood tree.
What happens if it never stops?
Alone with time on her hands, Minnow decided to take the boat to Papapa Bay and nose around for any signs of a shark-diving operation.If nothing else, she could see the little black sand cove Woody said was a slice out of old Hawai?i. The seas were quiet today and she opened up the throttle, appreciating the warm wind against her skin. About twenty minutes later, once she hit the spot on the coast that was in from the sunken buoy, she slowed. Up ahead she could see the green of treetops, and soon the cliffs gave way to a wide, flat shelf of tidal pools.
She drove in so she was hugging the rocks and putted along in amazement. According to Woody,papapawas a flat and expansive reef, and she could already see a proliferation of purples, golds and blues lining the shallows beneath her. Fish swam in multitudes.
