Page 18 of The Wild Beneath

“We’ve got catch to take to Rosie’s,” Mara cajoles again from the top of the companionway.

“I don’t want to,” Annie says.

Evan started second grade weeks ago and she’s lonely since he left. There’s a vacancy where excitement had bloomed, each new day, each new thing with him.

Mara descends and sits at the table. Annie moves closer until she’s in full contact with her warm body. She does not ask Annie what’s wrong but says: “He’s not far.”

“He’s too far.” Annie shuts her box of rocks.

Mara sighs in a long, singsong way and gathers Annie closer in. She does not fix or argue. They sit together in this embrace until Aiden calls down from the deck.

The dinghy awaits them. A crate of crabs with dark red shells sits at Aiden’s feet. He starts the ignition, cranks the outboard. He steers them with one hand in the direction of town.

Aiden stays at the wharf to unload while Annie and Marastart down the beach. They walk the south shore while the tide drifts out. Annie collects shells in her pockets, picks up hermit crabs to steal looks at their undersides. Mara gathers oysters from the muddy sand flats.

In the distance, Annie sees something that looks like a boulder.

Mara stops and stares at it, too. Then she’s jogging. Running. Annie tries to keep up but trails further and further behind. Closer, she can tell it’s not a boulder at all. It’s a beached humpback whale with long fins and a knobby head.

They’re frequent visitors toAmphitritein the summer, especially when they’re fishing, or when Aiden plays his harmonica in the evenings and Mara sings. Annie knows their rolls and breaches, acrobatics for the fun of it. But this whale looks like a deflated balloon, a lifeless, grey lump.

Annie jumps back as the whale exhales a puff of air through its blowhole.

“She’s still alive,” Mara says. She touches the whale’s enormous body then pushes against it. It’s half-submerged in tidal water and doesn’t budge.

Annie goes around to the other side. A deep gash runs the length of it.

Mara is on her knees, wedged up, trying to push it toward the water. It’s illogical. She’s so lightweight compared to the creature. Her sweater and jeans are covered in splotches of sand with soaked patches around her knees. Annie watches, helpless, as the tide ebbs out further. Mara finally sits down and pulls Annie into her lap. Tears are running down her cheeks.

“I’ll get Dad,” Annie says.

The whale lifts its tail, drops it, a thump through the ground.

“He’s coming. He’s already coming.”

And he does. Aiden arrives minutes later. Mara doesn’t want to leave. She wants to help get the whale back in the water. But even Annie knows the whale is dying. The gash in its side is too deep.

“Looks like she hit a boat.” Aiden’s hand rests on her barnacled side.

“A boat hither,” Mara says.

A crowd is gathering. Fishermen, off-duty loggers.

“Can’t leave it here on the shore,” says an older man wearing a button-down denim shirt, black work pants, and boots. “Public health risk.”

“We should try to get her back in the water,” Mara responds.

“That whale’s dead. The body’s toxic.” The man’s voice is like sandpaper. He spits his chewing gum onto the sand. “I’ve got orders to saw it up so we can bury it later. Can’t let it leach out or explode here.”

“She’s still alive.” Mara’s pitch rises.

“Nearly dead.” The man walks back to his pickup and drags an axe out of the truck bed, then returns with it.

Mara—­her small, wiry body—­stands in his way.

“You’ve spent too much time at sea, lady. You think you got seawater in your veins?” the chewing-gum man says. He stares at Mara a few more seconds, unblinking, then swings his axe into the uninjured side. It lands with a wet thud. Mara shrieks. Aiden holds her back as the whale stirs and puffs out more air. Mara battles her way out of Aiden’s arms, putting herself between the axe and the whale. Blood seeps onto the sand, around their boots, blue water losing itself to a torrent of red.

Others arrive over the next hour, with their axes and chainsaws, and start more of the same. Mara screeches at them. Aiden tries to get her to leave, eventually gives up, wiping his forehead with his forearm. He takes Annie back to Rosie’s.