The Whale

Prince Namor was a loner and that is why Billy loved him: half human, half Atlantean with little wings at his ankles that allowed him to fly.  He was holding his own in a battle against the Incredible Hulk which is more than can be expected from someone less than half the Hulk's size.  Namor, aka "The Submariner," was also known for his quick temper and thirst for vengeance for his people.  Billy did not have a people, but he knew of that deep down anger that could come rising up out of the ocean like a new volcano.

"Billy!  Did you feed Mick-mick?" His Mom yelled from another part of the trailer.  There was no place to hide in a place so small and with walls so thin.  Billy could even hear when people used the bathroom which he thought was super gross.

"Yeah, I did!" he lied.  It was a little miserable rat dog that he thought must be his Mom's only friend in the world.  The little turd had ripped up some comic books he had stashed under his bed while he was at school and he'd never forgiven it.  They included his prized Wolverine four part series that was irreplaceable.  It was as if Wolverine himself had come slashing out of the pages with his retractable claws.  His Mom's love for the dog was the only thing that kept him from clubbing it with his baseball bat and burying it under the trailer.  He was not a monster, after all.

"Don't you have school today?" She stood in the doorway of his room with an unlit cigarette dangling from her lips, hand on hip.  She was wearing a bathrobe and her hair was wrapped in a Holiday Inn towel looking like a weathered swami.

"No, it's one of those teacher day things," he lied again without looking at her over the comic book.

She lit the cigarette and then headed back down the hallway in a huff.  "Just stay out of my hair.  Rick's coming over later and you need to be somewhere else, got it?"  Her voice seemed to echo in his head in a way that was hard to explain, like it was coming from a different place.  He considered the possibility she'd somehow crossed over into the Negative Zone at the end of the hall, the walls between worlds as thin as those of their trailer.  But that was a bit too dramatic, even for him.  Maybe just wishful thinking.

"Yeah, whatever."  He felt his anger rising at the thought of Rick coming over with his condescending smile and snide remarks that made Billy feel small and inadequate.  His hands clenched into fists and his breathing quickened as he noticed them swelling up and taking on a greenish hue.  He caught himself and unclenched them, slowed his breathing, and relaxed back into his clothes.

***

It was Friday and he was playing hooky despite it being only the second month of his sixth grade year.  Middle school was a pain and he had already missed more than a few days, but no one seemed to care.

There was a chilly breeze blowing when he stepped out of the trailer and descended the rickety metal frame steps.  He pulled a frayed knit hat over his substantial head to cover the tops of his ears, but not before a chill shot through his thin frame.  The smell of burning leaves was in the air and the neighbor's St. Bernard immediately jumped up to bark at him, pulling hard at its chain.

"Shut up, Smokem!"  The matted hulk of a dog had terrified him when he was younger, but now he was just an annoyance.  As long as he avoided the packed dirt circle that indicated the range of Smokem's chain he was safe.  He drug his bike out from under the end of the trailer and hopped on, wobbling through the loose gravel until he reached the road.

To his right a scattering of rundown houses and trailers rolled by, trees at their backs demarcating the line between town and country.  Some of the yards were overgrown, littered with trash and a random assortment of rusting machines.  Even as a twelve year old he sensed it was not even really considered a neighborhood as much as a forgotten spot that most people of the town tried to pretend wasn't there.  Billy felt eyes on him from the dirty windows between slots of broken blinds.  They belonged to people who judged him harshly, he was sure of it.  He flipped the bird in that general direction, then hit the road that led into the town proper.

He scanned the street to find opportunities to pop wheelies or ramp his bike up into the air.  A fallen branch provided the first opportunity and he hit it bringing the front tire up off the ground.  It quickly came back down when the back tire hit the branch in turn.  He then veered off of the road and up onto the sidewalk via someone's driveway and pumped the pedals until flying off the end of the curb, nearly clipping the stop sign on the corner in the process.

Down a side street he caught sight of a UPS truck making its deliveries.  It was just pulling away from a house when he caught up to it and paralleled the driver sitting perched by his open sliding door.

"Hey kid, why aren't you at school?" The driver shouted over the rumble of the engine.

"I'm too cool for school, man!"  Billy thought he was being clever with his word play and was satisfied when the driver gave him a grin.  He peeled off left and made a u-turn to see what had been dropped off after he was sure the driver could no longer see him in his side mirrors.

The house looked to be a rundown cottage with high grass and gutters full of maple shoots and weeds.  He had never seen anyone at this particular house and had assumed it was abandoned.  He laid his bike down on the sidewalk and approached the covered porch while looking left and right to make sure no one was watching him.  His eye caught sight of an overturned row boat that lay in the side yard and he briefly forgot about the UPS package.  The boat was an old wooden affair with something painted in large pealing letters on the flat back side.  By turning his head sideways he was able to make out the upside down name, "CM Ishmael."  He placed his foot under a space at its point and applied upward pressure to lift it a bit and gauge if he could flip it upright.  A rustling noise underneath sent him scurrying back to the porch like a startled cat.

He waited for his heart beat to slow down, then once again scanned the immediate area to make sure he was not being observed before kneeling in front of the package.  He thought it odd that there was no writing on it, no address, no name, nothing.  He pulled a butterfly knife out of his pocket and did the flick-spin-flick motion necessary to open it.  It was one of many martial arts type weapons that he collected and practiced on regularly in order to one day defend himself or maybe even kill a small menacing animal if needs be.  His eyes flicked over to the boat to make sure nothing had emerged from underneath it.

The package covering yielded easily to his knife and he found a box with a picture of an odd device on it with the words "The Pocket Fisherman! by Ronco" emblazoned across it.  A small red square in the corner indicated "as seen on TV."  He did not have a TV.  He removed it from the box and looked to find some instructions to guide him.  It had a short folding pole connected to a plastic box with a winding reel on the side, a handle, and compartment with a bobber and some extra hooks in it.  It was a portable fishing pole, but could hardly fit in your pocket, he thought.

He heard a voice from under the boat whisper, "you are not worthy of it."

His fingers clinched around the fishing pole's handle as he bolted for his bike, not looking back.  He tried to get his bike upright and on it, but with only one hand available the bike went up and over taking him with it.  He sprawled out into the street but never let go of the handle.  With a skip, a jump, and a few wobbles he was back up on his bike and peddling away as fast as his legs would let him.

The distinctive sight of his Mom's mustard yellow Ford Pinto was disappearing over a hill going  the opposite direction when he careened around the corner and onto his road.  He dropped his bike in the yard and leapt onto the landing skipping the first two steps.  The screen door was missing its spring and slammed against the side of the trailer as he pushed though the main door and stumbled inside.  It took him a few minutes to catch his breath, hands on knees, before retreating to his room with the stolen fishing pole.

He shut his door, plopped onto the bed, and stared at the large water stain on his ceiling while waiting for his breathing to slow.  Like watching cloud formations, the stain appeared to take on various shapes the longer he lay there looking at it and it calmed him.  A school of fish circled the ceiling fan before coalescing into the shape of a whale whose mouth arced downwards, expanding, reaching for him, encircling him.  He slept.

***

When Billy awakened he knew what he had to do.  His room was dark, but some light was trickling in between the curtains.  He thought it must be some time in the early evening, having slept the day away.  He gathered up some clothes, his nunchucks, a few comic books, and shoved them all into an Army surplus backpack.  Rummaging in the back of his closet he found his stash of Halloween candy and packed that as well.  Last of all he added the pocket fisherman.

He crept out into the hallway moving quietly, but his foot immediately made contact with an empty can in the semi-darkness and sent it clanging into another.  He froze and listened for movement in the trailer.  Someone was snoring and briefly stopped.  He heard them roll over before resuming again.  Beer cans were strewn on the floor making his progress to the front door like navigating a mine field.  In the kitchen he was confronted by Mick-mick who came over to sniff his foot and then began to make a low growling noise that threatened to escalate into barking.  Billy quickly reached into a side pocket of his backpack and pulled out a beef jerky strip and pulled off a piece to give to the dog.  Micky snatched it greedily and retreated behind the couch.

The air outside was moist and a layer of fog was clinging to the ground.  It made little swirls around him as he pushed his bike to the road and then headed in the direction away from town.  The fog was thick enough to obscure the ground so that he needed to use the telephone poles and tree line to maintain himself in the middle of the road and away from the ditches on either side.  Billy marveled at the fact it was slowly getting lighter instead of darker until he realized that he must have slept all day and through the night as well.

The country road he was looking for was at least a few miles from his house and obscured by trees and overgrown brush.  The fog had lifted by the time he reached it and some sun was streaming down through the trees.  Two metal poles marked the width of its entrance, but were hard to see due to a covering of rust.  It was only their unnatural straightness that gave them away in the underbrush.  A thin chain ran between poles with a sign dangling from the center obscured by a clump of roadside weeds that he quickly stomped flat, "Town Reservoir - no swimming, fishing, or dumping."

He maneuvered his bike around one of the poles, then dropped it in the underbrush.  The trail led upwards until reaching its highest point where a visual break in the trees opened up and he found himself looking down upon a body of water a hundred or so feet farther along sitting in a natural bowl.  Near the spot where the path hit the water sat a small pump house with some pipes leading out into the water that did not look like it had functioned in quite some time.  The reservoir's size was something between a smallish lake and a largish pond.  The water was always cold, fed by water pouring out from a rocky opening that led into a cave on the far side.  Billy had discovered it the year before and it had become a place of refuge for him.

He circled around to a flattened area that sat nestled between the water and a steep hillside with a flat rock face from the cave making up the third side.  Some old wooden pallets lay in a pile against the rock that he'd collected in the past year, found in the underbrush of the surrounding forest.  They were remnants of a primitive civilization that he had stumbled upon, wooden koans of indeterminate use and purpose, or so he had convinced himself.

The cave mouth exhaled its bitter cold breath into the sunlight, murmuring in agreement.

***

The sun was directly overhead by the time Billy finished putting together his makeshift hovel.  He wrapped a bandana around his head to protect his ears and wide forehead from the sun and found perch on a boulder that sat at the water's edge.  The water was smooth and mirror-like, interrupted only by the speckling of brightly colored leaves which swirled in patterns from an unseen current that emanated from the cave's small mouth.  He thought of the swirl of fish that had formed from the water stain on his ceiling and remembered the pocket fisherman in his backpack.

Part of his packed equipment included an Army entrenching tool that had been his Dad's before he'd left for god-knows-where and never came back.  At least he'd been good for something, thought Billy.  He walked into the tree line and dug a cat hole a foot or so deep for his latrine.  The effort also yielded a few worms for a try at fishing.

Back on the boulder he hooked his worm and adjusted the bobber for a depth of a few feet.  It took him several tries to get used to the truncated rod and its stiff release button.  He was finally able to get it out about twenty feet or so and had to be content with that.  This was the hardest part, waiting for a bite and trying not to let his mind wander too far afield so that he wouldn't miss a hit on his worm.  His past experience had taught him that if you missed the first hit or two your worm was likely gone.  If you were alert and paying attention, a bounce of the bobber could trigger a twitch that might set the hook whether the fish bit it or not.

This was all well and good, but his mind was not one that could remain fixed for even a minute or two.  The Submariner was once again battling the Hulk in his mind's eye, an epic pitting of wills and brute strength.  He could almost feel the rock shake underneath him with their blows.  His mind suddenly snapped back to reality when he realized the rock had actually shook underneath him.  Not only that, but his arm holding the fishing pole was being pulled out and away from his body.

The line was not only unwinding at a high rate of speed, but it was angling downwards, not outwards.  Billy wondered at how deep this pondish lake might be and a knot of fear began to form in the pit of his stomach.  When the line reached its end, the pocket fisherman leapt from his hand and disappeared under the water.  Easy come easy go, he thought.

He scanned the surface of the water trying to make sense of what had just happened.  All sound was being drowned out by the pounding of his heart and a kind of ringing in his ears.  For the first time that day it occurred to him that his perception of reality had been fraying, but now he wondered if it hadn't snapped altogether.

Somewhere in the middle of the reservoir bubbles began to break the surface with a swell raising the contour of the water.  Billy stood transfixed, focusing on the spot, not knowing what to make of it.

An explosion of water sent him sprawling off of the boulder and face down onto the ground.  He rolled over in time to see a massive white object the size of a boxcar hurtling up out of the water, peaking, then flopping back into the water sending a tremendous wave washing over him.  The cold water sent his senses into overdrive.  The sky took on a greenish cast to Billy's eye as he felt himself changing, growing, rippling with surprise and anger.

The object resurfaced and revealed itself to be a sperm whale with its massive squared off head and small backset beady eyes.  It thrashed its back fin and sped towards Billy who could feel his clothes constricting around him and splitting as his muscles expanded and his shoes exploded off of his feet.  With the monster bearing down on him he snatched up the boulder and hurled it at its approaching head.  The impact stunned the whale and it flopped over on its side in the shallow water.  Billy-thing was immediately upon it, pounding it with his oversized fists until he was sure it was dead.

The rage coursing through him was intoxicating. Billy-thing waded farther out into the water and got ahold of the whale's back fin and drug it up onto the shore where he swept it over his head and smashed it onto the ground obliterating his hovel.  The creature's lower jaw hung open revealing its large cone-shaped teeth.  He got ahold of the jaw near its base and ripped it free from the body, then snapped it in half to form an improbable handsaw that Billy-thing used to denude its flesh until all that was left was a skeleton.  Next he lumbered into the tree line and pulled up some trees from their roots and used them to prop up the skeleton's spine.

Billy-thing was exhausted.  His massive shoulders drooped in on himself as he sat under the morbid frame of his newly constructed shelter.  He felt his body shrinking, his mind shrinking, his heart shrinking.  He felt things going black as he plopped over to the ground and fell into a deep sleep.

***

"What the hell was that?"  The two boys looked at each other in amused disbelief.

"Man!  Ol' Batty Bill went ape shit, didn't he?" The second boy laughed, but still kept his voice down for fear of waking him.  They were crouched behind some trees overlooking the reservoir and had witnessed the tattered and homeless man splashing in the water, throwing his things around, and dragging fallen branches out from the forest before lying down and seemingly falling asleep.

"Let's get out of here before he wakes up and goes berserk again."  They made their way back to the path and ran up over the hill to the road.  The smaller of the two tripped and fell, rolling over and grabbing his shin.  His friend knelt down to check on him.

"What happened?  Did you trip over something, numb nuts?"

The injured boy pushed him over and went back to rubbing his shin vigorously.  "It was something sticking out of the bushes, man."

When the pain had subsided they investigated the presumed spot and found a rusted pedal sticking up from the ground.  With some digging and tugging they pulled the deteriorating remains of an old bike out from under the dirt and undergrowth.