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

“Hey Hadley,” Sam yells approaching a tree, “come meet Joley’s relatives.”

A man steps off a ladder, which has been hidden by the trunk of the apple tree. He is tall, and he has an easygoing smile. I’d put him at the same age as Sam, by the looks of things. He grabs my hand and shakes it. “Hadley Slegg. It’s nice to meet you, ma’am.”

Ma’am. Such decorum. He’s obviously not a close relative of Sam’s.

He walks with us towards the lower quarter of the orchard, where I imagine we’ll find Joley. I can’t wait to see him-it has been so long, really, I don’t know what to expect. Will his hair be longer? Will he speak first, or just hug me? Will he be different?

“So I hear you’ve done quite a bit of traveling,” Sam says.

I jump; I’ve forgotten he’s here. “Yes,” I tell him. “All across the country. Of course I’ve also been to Europe and South America, with my husband’s research.” I stumble a little over the word husband and I catch Sam looking at me. “Lots of interesting places, actually. Why? Do you travel?”

“All the time. In spirit, at least.” He leaves it like that, cryptic, for a moment, long enough to make me wonder if there is more to him than meets the eye. “I’ve never been outside of New England, but I’ve probably read more books on travel and exploring than anyone.”

“Why don’t you take a trip?”

“You don’t get time off when you run a place like this.” He has a nice smile; he just doesn’t seem to use it a lot. “The second I set foot away from here, I think about all the things that are going wrong. It’s easier now that your brother’s here. Between him and Hadley I’ve split a lot of the responsibility. But it’s not like a regular business. You can’t reschedule a tree bearing fruit like you’d reschedule an appointment.”

“I see,” I say, not really understanding at all. We walk a few yards without saying anything. “So where would you really like to go?”

“Tibet,” Sam says without hesitation. It surprises me. Most people say France or England. “I’d like to bring back some of the Asian strains of apples and propagate them in this climate. In a greenhouse, if need be.”

I find myself staring at him. He is young-younger than Joley- but he already has the beginnings of lines around the corners of his mouth. He has thick dark hair and a strong square chin and what looks like a perpetual tan. As for his eyes, you can’t tell anything from them. They are neon, really, blue but not like Oliver’s. They burn.

Sam looks up and, embarrassed, I turn away. “Joley tells us you’ve run away from home,” he says.

“Joley told you that?”

“Something about a fight with your husband.”

Sam is bluffing, I think. Joley wouldn’t tell people that. “I don’t think it’s any of your business.”

“Well, in a way it is. What you do is what you do, but I don’t want any trouble going on here.”

“Don’t worry. If Oliver shows up there won’t be a Tombstone showdown. No blood. I promise.”

“Too bad,” he says. “Blood’s good for fertilizer.” he starts to laugh, surprised that I don’t find this funny at all. He clears his throat. “So, what do you do for a living?”

I tell him I’m a speech pathologist. I look at him. “That means I go to schools in the San Diego area and diagnose children with speech problems caused by lisps, cleft palates, what have you.”

“Believe it or not,” Sam says sarcastically, “I did go to school.” He shakes his head and walks faster.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” I say. “A lot of people don’t know what a speech pathologist does. I’ve just gotten used to explaining it.”

“Look, I know where you’re from. I know what you think about guys like me. And to tell you the truth I don’t give a shit.”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“And you don’t know anything about me, ” Sam says. “So let’s just leave it at that. You want to come here to visit your brother, that’s fine. You want to stay a while, okay. Let’s just say I’ll do my thing, and you can do yours.”

“Fine!”

“Fine.”

I cross my arms and stare over the flat calm of the lake in the valley. “I want to know why you didn’t help me up back there.”

“In the manure?” Sam leans close to me and I can smell sweat and sheep and the honey of hay. “Because I knew exactly who you were.”

“What does that mean?” I call after him. He’s already begun to walk off, long carefree strides. “What the hell does that mean!” He squares his shoulders. “Pig,” I say, under my breath.

I take just two more steps and then I see the ladder propped against the tall budding tree. “It’s Joley,” I shout. “Joley!” I pick up the long skirt of Sam’s mother’s sundress and run across the field.

Joley is wrapping some kind of green electrical tape around a branch. His hair is still light and curling around his ears. He is wiry, strong, graceful. He opens his eyes, with their long dark lashes, and turns to me. “Jane!” he says, as if it truly is unexpected to find me standing there. He smiles, and the world turns inside out.

He jumps off the ladder and folds me into his arms. “How are you doing,” he whispers into my neck.

I blink back tears. I’ve waited so long.

Joley holds me at arm’s length, passing his eyes gently over my face and my shoulders and my hips. Still holding onto one of my hands, he walks over to Rebecca. “Looks like you survived the trip,” he says, and kisses her on the forehead. She bends in close, like she is receiving a benediction. He grins at Sam and Hadley. “I assume you’ve all met.”

“Unfortunately,” I murmur. Sam glowers at me, and Joley looks back and forth between us but neither of us will say a thing.

Joley claps his hands together and locks his fingers. “Well, it’s great that you’re here. We’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”

Sam, in a stroke of unexpected kindness, gives Joley the afternoon off. We stand in front of each other, just staring, until everyone else disappears. My baby brother, I think. What would I do without him?

Joley walks me over to a fat stunted tree with low branches. From the looks of the tree, which is blackened and leafless, it is not going to make it. “I’m doing my best,” he says, “but you’re right. I’m not sure about this one at all.” He straddles one of the bent arms and pats the space beside him for me to do the same. We look at each other and both begin to talk at the same time. We laugh. “Where are we going to start?” Joley says.

“We could start with you. I want to thank you for getting me here.” I smile, thinking about his reflective letters, on yellow ruled paper, words written without margins, precipitous, as if they would have fallen right off the page without the adhesive structure of sentence. “I certainly couldn’t have done it without you.”

“I’m glad you didn’t have to. You look great. You’re prettier than you’ve ever been.”

“Oh, that’s a crock,” I say, but Joley shakes his head.

“I mean it.” He smiles at me, and he holds one of my hands, kneading it with his fingers as if that is the way to start resuscitation.

“Are you happy here?” I ask.

“Look at the place, Jane! It’s like God just dropped down this gorgeous hill and lake, and I have the good fortune to work here. If you can call this work. I fix the unfixable. I bring trees back from the dead.” He looks into my eyes. “I’ve become mythic. The god of second chances.”

I laugh. “Sounds right up your alley. No wonder I’m here.”

“Which brings us to you.” Joley looks at me, waiting for me to start talking.

“I don’t know where to begin.”