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

We come here every few weeks-everyone’s welcome who works in the fields, to talk about their gripes at a place where it’s common knowledge the boss is buying. Some of the guys make up complaints just for the free beer. The meeting starts unofficially at nine, and usually by eleven-thirty most of the others have cleared out. From nine to ten we actually do discuss the business of the orchard: on my end, I tell everyone about the revenues and the new costs, or about meetings I’ve had with produce buyers, and the guys from the field talk about getting a new tractor, or division of labor. They’re the only guys I know of in an orchard who haven’t unionized, and I think it’s because of these conversations. I don’t know that much ever gets done-money’s tight-but I think they just like knowing that I am willing to listen.

It always ends up with me, Hadley and Joley-most likely because we all live in the Big House, we all drive down here together, and we all have nothing better to do. We participate in the obligatory dumb joke event. We put quarters in the jukebox and talk about whether or not Meatloaf songs really belong with the oldies-Joley says yes, but he’s five years older anyway. Hadley finds some girl and talks to us for about three hours about how he’d like to dance with her and do other unmentionable things, but he chickens out halfway to her table and we get to rib him about it. If Joley has enough to drink, he’ll do his Honeymooners imitations and his best turkey call. Is it any wonder that I’m always the one who drives us home?

“So tell us about your sister,” I say to Joley, who returns from the bar with three more Rolling Rocks.

“Yeah,” says Hadley. “Is she a babe?”

“For Christ’s sake. She’s his sister .”

Hadley lifts his eyebrows-this is a real effort for him by now. “So what, Sam? She’s not my sister.”

Joley laughs. “I don’t know. I guess it depends on what you call a babe.”

Hadley points to a girl in a red leather dress, leaning on the bar and sucking on an olive. “That’s what I call a babe,” he says. He purses up his lips and makes kiss noises.

“Will somebody get that boy laid?” Joley says. “He’s a walking gland.”

We watch Hadley stand (almost) and make his way towards the red-leather girl. He uses the backs of chairs and other people to steer by. He makes it all the way to the bar stool next to her, and then turns to look at us. He mouths, Watch this . Then he taps the girl on her shoulder and she looks at him, grimaces, and flips the olive into his face.

Hadley reels back to our table. “She loves me.”

“So your sister will be getting here soon?” I ask. I haven’t any idea, really. Joley brought it up once, and that was it.

“I figure five more days, maybe.”

“You looking forward to seeing her?”

Joley sticks his thumb into the neck of an empty green bottle. “Like you don’t know, Sam. It’s been so damn long, with her out in California.”

“You guys pretty tight?”

“She’s my best friend.” Joley looks up at me and his eyes are bare, the way they get that makes people so uncomfortable around him.

Hadley sits with his cheek pressed into the table. “But is she a babe? That’s the question.”

Joley pulls Hadley’s head up by a chunk of hair. “You know who’s a babe? I’ll tell you who’s a babe. My niece. Rebecca. She’s fifteen, and she’s gonna be a knockout.” He lets Hadley’s face fall back down, slapping against the formica.

“Jailbait,” Hadley murmurs.

I look at Hadley. “You gonna get sick, Hadley? Do you need to get to the john?”

Hadley tries to shake his head without lifting it off the table. “What I really need, is another beer.” He waves his hand in the air. “Gar-konn!”

“That’s garÁon, you idiot. He’s pathetic,” I say to Joley, like I do every week.

“So tell me about this Jane.” Someone’s got to hold up a conversation.

“Number one, she’s on the run. I figure her husband will show up at the orchard some time after she gets there.”

“That’s nice,” I say, sarcastic. “Nothing like a scandal in Stow.”

“It’s not anything like that. The guy’s an asshole.”

“What are we talking about?” Hadley says.

I pat him on the shoulder. “Go back to sleep,” I say. “But isn’t he a famous asshole?”

“I guess.” Joley rolls his empty beer bottle on its side. “That doesn’t make him any less of an asshole.”

“If he’s such an asshole why is he coming after her?”

“Because she’s a babe,” Hadley says, “remember?”

“Because he doesn’t know how to let go. He doesn’t understand that she’d be better off without him because he doesn’t know how to think about anything but himself.”

Joley looks at Hadley, who says, “This is too fucking deep,” and leaves to go to the bathroom.

“Sounds like a soap opera to me,” I say. “Couldn’t she just have stopped off in Mexico for a divorce?”

“She can’t do anything until she comes here and talks to me. This hasn’t only got to do with Oliver. This has to do with us, when we were kids, and the whole way she grew up. She needs me,” Joley says, and for his sake I hope she does.

I am trying so hard not to pass judgment on Joley’s sister. I mean, I don’t even know her, right? And for all practical purposes I should feel about her the same way I feel about Joley. Joley’s proven himself. He loves to watch things grow, same as me. But every time I picture his sister, I see her like every other girl who looked down her nose at where I came from; what I wanted to be.

A little while after Joley started to work at the orchard we realized I had dated a girl, Emily, who lived two houses down the street from him as a kid. She had long black hair that hung to her waist and eyes like emeralds, and to top it all off, she had tits like a Playboy bunny’s. I was watching her at a hardware store, and she asked if I could help her with the difference between a nut and a bolt. I now suspect this was all a ploy. Of course I took her home and on that street where Joley was growing up, she gave me my first hand job.

Emily invited me to a party at some friend’s house. I remember I came wearing the clothes I wore for church, and she was dressed in this skin-tight purple skirt. I spent the first two hours of this party gawking at the cathedral ceilings and stained glass windows of this mansion. Then Emily grabbed me and asked me to dance. She pushed us into the middle of this parquet floor, next to another couple. She wheeled me around so I was looking into the face of a tall guy in a tennis sweater, and then she burst into tears. “You see what you’ve done to me!” I thought she was talking to me, and I looked down to see if I was stepping on her feet. But she was talking to this guy, who it turned out had dumped her a couple of weeks before. “Because of you,” she cried, “look at what I have to go out with!”

What, not who. I stopped dancing with her there and then, and with all those rich kids looking at me like I had three heads, I ran out the heavy beautiful door of that house and drove back to Stow. Joley mentioned that Emily’s older sister and Jane were friends. That they all moved in the same circles. It is quite possible Jane was even at that party.

This is what comes to mind when Joley brings up his sister: that maybe she saw me, and will walk up to me the minute she sets foot on my orchard, and laugh her head off. “Aren’t you-?” she’ll say, and on my own land, she’ll make me feel as worthless as I did when I was just a kid.

“Earth to Sam,” Hadley says, coming back from the bathroom. He’s got the red-leather girl in tow. “Look who wants to buy us all beers.” He winks at the girl. “I’m just kidding. I told her you wanted to buy her a beer.”