Vacation (14 page)

Chapter Thirteen

CLAIRE

My father could twist your arm off, I shouted.

The bartender blew on a glass, rubbed it.

He’s the greatest dolphin trainer who ever lived! I said.

That’s a step up from being a clown, someone said.

The line of men beside me looked like they’d been locked into their stools with a wrench. I had my skinny elbows up on the counter. I had my skinny butt on the stool. I had my skinny skirt over my knees, my last skinny bucks in my hand. The sun was going down, putting a scrape in the haze. Out the window was Chicago—streets of four-flats washed up from the lake and dried out on a flatland of convenience stores. My hair was a staticky knot from a night on the train and my clothes were frilly with wrinkles. Two dogs sat on the sidewalk, waiting for me to come out. I could see them. This day had been so long, it seemed like it should have been over for hours by now, like I should have been able to slash two from the calendar. I’d even gained an hour in Indiana.

I brought out the photo, put it on the bar. The bartender picked it up.

You know him? he said.

I’ve never seen him in my life.

He shook his head, laughed.

What? I said.

You don’t read the papers? Go to the show?

No.

Well, he
is
the greatest dolphin trainer who ever lived, he said.

Really? I said. I took the photo. He’s my dad.

THE UNTRAINER

I was born underwater. My mother wove seaweed baskets for the Mexican ships in the Gulf. Say what you want, a job’s a job. She worked in water, the long hours of the poor, so all I heard was sea sounds for nine months. She did not get Labor Day off—there’s a shameless asshole overman for you. I washed out of her womb and the foreman had me fetching starfish by the time I was five. I never knew my father. My mother told me nothing and I wasn’t going to ask. Some water-dog prick, no doubt. Nothing manly in leaving your egged-up woman behind. As soon as I was old enough, I went to Cancún, where I grew up against a skyline of sails. I dove with the dolphins for tourists who threw coins that I caught in my fist.

One day I came out of the water and onto the hard earth of Mexico. I took buses clean across the country, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, through the cities and towns, the ruins, the rivers. When I got to Mazatlán, I took a boat through international waters around Baja and over the border. I walked up onshore and into California. Hollywood felt brittle under my feet and the smog kept the air cool.

No, I wasn’t after some minor-league American dream—TV, savings, packaged applesauce, frequent-mile flying. You think there’s something special about that? Let me be the one to tell you: You’ve got nothing special going on in the States.

No, I went to find someone. Place was bigger than I thought.

I got a job training dolphins for the movies, the movies where the dolphin saves the kid but almost doesn’t. The movies where the dolphin almost dies but doesn’t. Where the mother smiles like the one you have at home, the one who almost never smiles but when she does she almost looks like that. Where the father pals around like no father ever does anywhere. That sort of thing, that’s what I threw in with.

Sure, I pulled a little stunt on the side. I was the guy with the underwater gun, the guy swallowed by the whale, the one who fell to the deep tangled in a net so the stars could sit around and eat carrot cake up top. I blew off the tip of my thumb. I shattered my cap. That stunt shit is for cowards. But many lives are carried out that way. I wasn’t going to be the first to complain. That’s a rule you can live by.

I preferred to work with the fish.

CLAIRE

You’ve seen these movies? I said to the guys. You’re sure it’s him? These are confirmed sightings?

Of course, they said. Movies and shows. You turn on the TV, anything with tots and sea mammals splashing across the screen, your father did it, they said.

These boys had grown up on those shows. Without him, they assured me, the dolphins would have swum away years before.

This is interesting, I thought. This is like finding out your sandbox is the seashore. Like your bathtub is the sea. Very interesting. This is like finding out somebody stole your sandbox, which turned out to be the seashore, took it away bucket by bucket, and now everyone in the world is over there making castles in it, lying on it in the sun.

Neat.

THE UNTRAINER

Then I had a conversion. It’s the best conversion story you ever heard. That’s why I can’t tell it to you unless you pay me ten bucks. For ten bucks I give you the book and you read it. I don’t have time to tell it all again. A man could spend a life telling stories.

A conversion story? It’s like any story about a thing that stops doing one activity and starts doing another—like a season changing cycles or an animal dying off. It happened twelve years ago, after I’d trained every dolphin Hollywood had ever seen, played funnyman to the octopi.

Why did I stride over to the other side, leave my movie-making ways and means? Oh, come on. That’s a really stupid question. You ever see a chicken lock a person in a box? You ever see a bear make a human dance on a ball? You ever see a dog make a man beg? I know what it is to have a human heart and to know what is in it.

CLAIRE

The men wanted to know: had my father taught me to train? They were feeding bills into the music box. They were balling up napkins.

No, I said for the millionth time.

Are you sure? Are you sure? they said. What a shame, what a waste, they all agreed. My father was the best the world had ever seen, they said, and now he didn’t train anymore. Shame his talents weren’t passed on.

He’s a nutcase now, they said. A terrorist or something.

That’s wonderful, I said. That’s great news.

THE UNTRAINER

I steal dolphins. I track them, I follow them out of the water from where they’ve been captured, follow their wet bloody prints to their prisons—their pools, their parks, their zoos. I kidnap them in the night or I burst in with henchmen and take them at gunpoint. I call it a rescue. The papers called it, let’s see, vandalism, as if the dolphins were a can of paint, or environmentalism, like bringing back your tinfoil, or terrorism, the kind of terrorism where you save the innocent and set them free.

The rescue is the easy part. The hard part is the untraining. You can’t just drop them into the sea and expect them to swim off triumphantly. You think you’d be fine if someone dumped you out onto some vast plain, no map, no cellphone, no ticket? They’re like anything else. You have to bring them home.

Once I have a dolphin or two, I bring them to deserted islands or almost-deserted islands like this one. I put up some nets in the ocean like the ones you see here—these nets and sticks. They protrude from the water. I build a hut out of thatch at the ocean’s rim. That’s for me. Then I have to ignore the dolphins. Sometimes it takes weeks. Sometimes months. We have to sever the tie between animal and man. I spend all day and night here, except once a day I trudge over the sand dune and under the incredible sun with my hat and my water and the dogs (dogs follow me everywhere, always have) to civilization or whatever dumbed-down version of it is closest. I get what I need—fish for them, water for me—and go back. I walk along my own line of footprints, following myself there and back. There are no variations, no detours.
I am well-thumbed.

I stay as long as it takes. The dolphin goes back and forth and
I go back and forth and after a while I begin to feel trapped, like I’ll never get away, I’ll always be alone, far from home, among strangers who don’t speak my language, and the loneliness feels like a choke chain. In moments like that I am tempted to simply lift the net before they’re ready, let everyone wander over the earth, each according to their nature, the dolphin in water, me on sand or concrete or grass. Why not?

And it isn’t just these little pony acts I break up. I also go to places on the other side of the earth where fishers empty their nets, drop the dolphins on the docks, and hack them to bits, toss them aside. I go underwater, cut their lines, explode their boats. I leave the fishers notes.
The next slice you make on a dolphin will be matched on the anatomy of your wife.
I slash their bedding, clothing, whatever dumb-eyed pet happens to be at hand, as a visual example for the illiterate. I do my best, but there is far too much evil in the world for one person to counter.

You think it’s easy doing what I do? Let me ask you—you think what you do is hard? Think about it. Is what you do hard? My guess is yes. What I do is harder.

CLAIRE

No, I’ve never seen the shows. No, I’ve never seen his picture in the paper. Never heard of him. Never watched the shows. I don’t read a lot. I don’t watch TV. The truth is I have no sense of my mother. And I don’t know who this man was either. Even the man who raised me—how did he do it, knowing I wasn’t his? I don’t know these people or what I was to them. The proof of their connection to me is scant, is practically nonexistent. No one on the outside looking in at me would see it. But I inspect them in my mind, I study them for any sign, any trace or hint that could illuminate. I would take any reasonable explanation.

He’s in Central America right now, the guy next to me said. I saw it on the news.

He left the country, I said. Okay, fine.

Go to one of those animal-rights groups, said the bartender. Go tomorrow. They’ll know him. They’ll know how to contact him.

I tipped the drink to the photo. One thing that man does not need, I said, is a daughter.

THE UNTRAINER

No, I don’t miss Hollywood. God, no. I didn’t care about the cash. Oh, I know people do, all right. Halfwits on the ukulele earn a coin. A lineup of jingles, a few strings tied to a post, you got a peso in your hand. I have nothing to do with that. I’m an untrainer, not a circus.

I only went to the States in the first place to find a woman I had fallen in love with. I met her in a Cancún resort. She didn’t want me. She was married with a kid last I heard. That was a long time ago now. Sure, I’ve had others. It’s a bad life to do alone. But no one wants to lead the kind of life I have to lead. I’m a solo show.

After this release, I’m off to New York. There are two at Coney Island I need to fetch. They’re shutting the place down. Guy there called me on the sly. Said I better get them out while I can.

CLAIRE

Pour me another, I said. I held out my glass. I’m dying of thirst over here.

Slow down, the bartender told me. You want to die? Keep drinking like that.

He swiped the bar with a rag.

He doesn’t know you’re here, that’s all, the bartender said. How could he know?

I didn’t say this to the bartender, but my mother was a TV star. Her life was not private. And they were even in the same business. My father knew I was there.

Don’t you want to meet him? He’d be easy to find.

Hey smart guy, I said. Hey genius. I held out my glass. All I want is another one of these.

You know how it is to want something. Desire builds like a little house in your head and it sits there, half-constructed in your mind. Women who want children are this way. Artists are this way about pictures. It doesn’t go away. You may forget for a few months but then it’s back, the unfinished pieces of what you want.

I don’t want to want anything. I’m fine.

I could hardly move my head.

There was a man on the train with a broken brain, I was saying.

All right, said the bartender. Okay.

Okay, I said. Okay, okay, okay, okay.

When the bartender leaned over, I pulled him in and shut his mouth with mine.

I don’t recall leaving the bar. A slow fog settled in over the long horizon of the counter. The stools turned like boats on the water. The men bobbed away. The next thing I knew I was lying in a light, in a warm envelope of brightness. There was a thrumming sound nearby. For a moment
I thought I’d died and that these were my final moments floating in the holy sunrise and it was as nice as everyone says. Then the old will to live stepped in: Don’t let me be dead, it said. What a tired thought.

I opened my eyes. I was on a paisley spread, the bartender in the bed, my head dissolving like a sugar cube.