Jodie Picoult - Songs of the Humpback Whale - A Novel in Five Voices

The reason I keep sheep at the orchard is so that I don’t have to spray so much. I don’t know; I never liked the idea of pesticides. Guthion, Thiodan, Dieldin, Elgetol- they don’t sound right, do they? I’m caught in the system, though-as a commercial grower I have to produce fruit that is competitive with other commercial orchards, or else the supermarkets won’t buy. So I try to use the less toxic ones that I’ve heard of: dodine instead of parathion to prevent apple scab and mildew; Guthion sprayed only once, so I risk bull’s-eye rot. I completely avoid 2,4-D-I can’t stand things without real word names--and that’s what I use my sheep for. They graze on the grass and weeds around the trees, like lawnmowers, so I don’t need chemicals. And although it kills me, I spray the trees that are cordoned off for the supermarkets with Ethrel and NAA before the harvest, because quite frankly if mine aren’t as red and as ripe as everyone else’s, I’ll go under.

Joley is in the barn mixing up the Thiodan: it’s time to spray for the woolly aphid; nobody wants an apple with a worm in it. He’s the first person I’ve seen since the night before, the night with Joellen, and I’m glad it’s him and not Hadley. Joley’s a good guy; he knows when to leave you alone and when not to. “Morning, Sam,” he says to me, without looking up.

“You know to only spray the northwest half of the orchard?” Even without being told, Joley is a natural farmer. He’s older than I am-I’m not quite sure how much-but I have no trouble getting on with him. Hadley talks back from time to time, but Joley wouldn’t. Absolutely no farming experience, and he’s a natural, did I say that?

He came in a couple of seasons ago, a Sunday U-Pick-Em day, when there were little kids all over the place. Like mosquitoes, they get in places you don’t want them, and when you slap at them to make them go away, they hover in front of your face to bug you a little bit more. We get lots of the Boston crowd because we’ve got a good reputation, and since he looked like another one of those button-down preppies I assumed he’d come out here to get a bushel or two, to bring them home to some condo on the Harbor. But he came into the retail outlet we open for the fall. He stood in front of the dormant conveyors we use to sort the best from the mediocre apples, and he just kept fingering the gears over and over. He stood there for so long I thought he was sick, and then I thought maybe he was slow-witted so I didn’t go over to him. Finally he walked into the orchards, and, fascinated, I followed him.

I’ve never told anyone this but it was the most amazing thing I have ever seen. I’ve been working on this orchard my entire life. I learned how to walk by hanging on the low branches of the apple trees. And I have never done the things that I saw him do that day. Joley just walked past the crowds, way past to the roped-off area we keep for the commercial apples, and stood in front of a tree. I held back from yelling at him; instead I followed him, hiding behind trees. Joley stopped at a tree-Mac, I believe-and cupped his hands around a small pink blossom. It was a young tree, grafted maybe two seasons ago, and so it wasn’t bearing fruit yet. Or so I thought. He held this blossom in his hands and he rubbed the petal with his fingers, he touched the soft throat of the inside and then he knotted his hands around it, like he was praying. He stood like this for a few minutes and I was too spooked to make a sound. Then he opened is palms. Inside was a smooth, round, red apple, plain as day. The guy’s a magician, I thought. Incredible. It hung from the still-thin branch, which bent under the unnatural weight. Joley picked it and turned around to face me as if he knew I was there all along. He held out the apple to me.

I don’t think I ever officially offered him the job, or that I even knew I was looking for someone. But Joley stayed on the rest of that day and after that, moving into one of the extra bedrooms of the Big House. He became as good a worker as Hadley, who grew up on a farm in New Hampshire before his dad died and his mom sold out to a real estate developer. All you’d have to do is show Joley once, and he became an expert. He’s a better grafter than I am, now. His specialty, though, is pruning. He can cut branches off a young tree without a second thought, without feeling like he’s killing the thing, and just a season later it is the most beautiful umbrella of leaves you’ve ever seen.

“Did someone pen up the sheep?” I ask. They can’t get near this stuff. Joley nods and hands me a hose and a nozzle. The really big orchards have machines for this stuff, but I like to work with my hands. It makes me feel, when I pick the fruit, like it actually came from me.

We head up towards the early Macs and the Miltons, which will come to harvest in last August and September. I wonder how long it will take before he asks me about last night.

“I’ve got a favor, Sam,” Joley says, aiming at a middle-size tree. “I need your permission for something.”

“Well, shit, Joley. You can just about do anything you want around here. You know that.”

Joley turns the nozzle so that the pesticide dribbles at his feet. It makes me nervous. He keeps staring at me, and finally, noticing, he gives the nozzle a hard twist to the left to shut the flow. “My sister and niece are in trouble and I need a place for them to stay a while. I invited them here. I don’t know how long they’ll stay.”

“Oh.” I don’t know what I had expected, but somehow it was worse. “I don’t think that’s a problem. What kind of trouble?” I don’t want to pry, but I feel like I ought to know. If it’s illegal, I may have to reconsider.

“She left her husband. She belted him, and she took the kid and left.”

I try to place Joley’s sister; I know he has talked about her in the past. I’d always pictured her like Joley-thin and dark, honest, easy. I pictured her the way I picture most girls from Newton where I know Joley grew up-dressed well, smelling like lilac, their hair smooth and heavy. The girls I knew from the Boston suburbs were rich and stuckup. They’d shake my hand if introduced to me, and then check when they thought I wasn’t looking to see if they had gotten dirty. A farmer, they’d say. How interesting. Meaning: I didn’t know there were any left in Massachusetts.

But girls like this didn’t leave their husbands, and especially didn’t hit their husbands. They got quiet divorces and half the summer homes. Maybe she’s fat and looks like a sumo wrestler, I think. Because of Joley, I always gave this unknown woman the benefit of the doubt. He’s talked about her a lot, a little bit at a time, and you get the sense she’s his hero.

“So where is she?” I ask.

“Headed towards Salt Lake City,” Joley says. “I’m writing her across the country. She doesn’t have a super sense of direction.” He pauses. “Hey. If her husband calls, just tell him you don’t know a thing.”

Husband. The whale guy. I am starting to remember bits and pieces of a person. Rebecca, the girl’s name. A picture in Joley’s room of a beautiful little boy (himself ) and a thin, pale girl holding him tight, beside her. A plain girl I had asked about, and was surprised to find out was related. “She’s the one in San Diego,” I say, and Joley nods.

“She isn’t going to go back there,” Joley says, and I wonder how he knows with such conviction. He reaches under the tree, holding the pesticide stream away, to pick up a fallen branch. He tucks it into a back pocket. “The guy she married is an idiot. I never understood what it was about him she couldn’t live without. Goddamned humpback whales.”

“Whales,” I say. “Wow.” I’ve never heard Joley get so emotional about anything. Most of the time I’ve been with him, he moves in shadows, quiet, keeping in his thoughts. He lifts the stream of chemicals into the sky, letting it come down, artificial rain, on the top of a neighboring tree.