The Whale's Footprints - Rick Boyer (41 page)

At four-thirty, after an hour of warm-up partying,
Joe lighted two big stacks of charcoal, each sitting in its own wide
grill. Down on the beach, people were frolicking in the surf with the
dogs, coming ashore only to warm themselves in the sun and drink
beer. Fall is tremendous on the Cape; the crowds are gone, the
water's still warm, and you have a fire every night. Tony and Smitty
were busy assembling a large pile of driftwood on the beach for that
very purpose. Art Hagstrom had bought scallops in Wellfleet and he
and Mary were wrapping them in bacon strips for grilling. Jim was
filling the big lobster kettle and fiddling with the gas burner
underneath. Moe was shucking corn, humming Haydn, reading a book
propped up on the picnic table, and playing chess games in his head,
all at the same time. Jack and I were leaning over the deck rail,
drinking beer and just hanging out together, talking about whales
again.

Paul Keegan and wife showed up just as Joe was
pouring himself a large G and T. He'd been drinking beer all
afternoon, but announced it was now time for the "heavy
artillery."

"This party's gonna be a real shit-kicker, Doc,"
Joe said. "just what I need."

"Don't we all."

Janice DeGroot, emerging from the cottage in a brand
new, unbelievably brief bikini, walked to the center of the deck and
pirouetted on her toes, spinning around like a model so all could
see.

"
Ta dahhhhh.
"'
she said.

"Wow!" said Joe.

"Can we talk?" said Mary, taking her firmly
by the elbow and hustling her back inside. Janice reappeared moments
later, pouting, wearing conventional swimwear.

"Killjoy," I said to Mary under my breath.

"Just you wait, pal. Just you wait."

"Hey Mary, how's your book?" asked Moe.

"Fine, Moe. I'm just about finished. I think
they're gonna go for it. I just have to, you know, spice it up a
bit."

Spice it up a bit. Give me a break, Mare.

Well, in capsule summary, the gala was one for the
record books. We started in earnest around five-thirty, with
cocktails and the grilled bacon-scallops in butter for appetizers,
moving on to chilled gazpacho or steaming clam chowder—your pick of
one, or both—followed by the surf-and-turf meal of lobster and
filet mignon with corn on the cob, all washed down with vats of beer
and wine, and topped with deep-dish apple pie, ice cream, and
cappuccino. Then back to the keg again.

Everybody got totally out of line. It couldn't have
been better. Sometime around nineish, as the gold faded to crimson
over the bay and we were standing around the big, snapping beach
fire, I felt an expert hand goose me from behind.

"Ahhhhhh, that feels great," I said, and
turned to see Mary, giving me a hard, level gaze.

"
Oh, it's you," I said.

She squinted at me; the jaw crept forward a fraction
of an inch. Uh-oh. Never could take a joke.

But she put her face up to mine and gave me a long,
wet kiss.

"C'mon, hunk. Time for the show ..." She
led me up the beach, up the deck stairs, inside, and upstairs to our
bedroom. "But Mare, what'll the guests think?"

"Whatever they like. You know, Charlie, it's the
strangest thing. I seem to get real horny after a couple of drinks .
. ."

By this time she was just about undressed and was
working on me. Seeing there was no way out, I helped her remove the
rest of my clothes and watched—her go to the door and lock it. Then
she flashed the wall switch off and on, off and on.

"What the—"

"Curtain time!"

Then she jumped into the sack, pulling me after her.

"Ohhhhh, Charlie," she said afterwards, and
began tickling my back. "I'm so lucky."

"You said it."

She kept tickling and rubbing my back. The hoot and
babble of merrymakers wafted up through the window. How sweet the
sound.

"Mary, of all the things I've ever done, or
dreamed of, marrying you and having our kids have been the greatest
things of all."

She leaned over and kissed the back of my neck and
said we'd better get dressed and rejoin our party. So we did. We got
some catcalls and hoots and off-color comments from the crowd as we
reappeared at the beach fire. The worst offender was none other than
Number-Two Son Tony, who had a saucy young thing in tow. I noticed
her blouse was buttoned all wrong. No telling where they'd been, but
what they'd been up to was obvious. Ever notice how the people who
give criticism about something are always the worst offenders
themselves? It's true. Think about that the next time you see a TV
preacher.

We sat down at the fire's edge and sang songs with
our guests. The dogs lay at our feet drying off in the fire's glow. I
noticed Mary gazing wistfully up the beach every so often. Perhaps
she was hoping that Fuente and Company would appear on horseback over
the nearest rise and come thundering up the sand looking for a little
R and R. As for me, sitting on that cool sand, I hadn't thought about
Patty Froelich at all. Hardly.

I was tired, so I lay down with my head on Mary's
thigh. Jack sat down behind me and put his hand on my shoulder. I'm
confident Tony would have done the same if his hands had been free.
But it was all the thanks I needed. I was positive that there was no
luckier man on earth than Charles Adams, M.D.

By and by I dozed off. Mary said later Jack just sat
there in the firelight, watching me sleep. He didn't know it then,
but his old man was dreaming about the whales.
 
 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My thanks to John Boyer, Larry Kessenich, Bill
Tapply, Dan Otis, and Charlotte Wade for their helpful criticisms and
comments on the manuscript. I would also like to thank the following
people for their professional insights and their time and patience: 
Frank Edwards, M.D.; Dr. Kim Klitcord and Dr. David Folger of the
USGS, Woods Hole; and most especially, Dr. Richard Whittaker and his
staff at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. The Mexican
romance is for Geraldine, of course.