The Greyhound bus chugged out of the station in downtown Charleston into the South Carolina night.
There were 4,000 miles between him and Point Hope.
“That's about how far blue whales migrate from Mexico to Alaska," thought Little Salt.
"If they can make it, I can make it, too."
This first part of the journey would take four days.
He closed his eyes.
He felt the tires of the bus thump against the road, listened to the soft snore of a soldier in the seat behind him, and swayed gently from side to side as the driver moved from lane to lane around late night drivers.
He drifted off to sleep.
He became a blue whale, the thump of his giant fluke in the deep waters moving him along, the songs from other blue whales from different waters touching his gigantic heart, his giant body swaying from side to side in the ocean waters.
He woke to the hand of a frail, old woman on his shoulder.
"'Scuse me," she whispered, "I hate to wake you up but my ticket says I'm 'sposed to sit here beside you."
"Yes ma'am," said Little Salt.
He rubbed his eyes with the fists of his hands and looked up into the face of the woman in the soft glow of the bus lights.
There were deep wrinkles in the corners of her eyes and across her forehead.
They didn't seem to be wrinkles of worry that he'd seen form on his mamí and abuelo’s faces as they worked the fields and lived among strangers in small southern towns.
No, they seemed to be wrinkles of kindness that might have come from years and years of loving and hoping, the kind of wrinkles you get when you cradle a baby in your arms and rock it deep into the night, the kind that come when you study the small, quiet things in the world and wonder why so few people see or hear them.
She tried to keep her eyes open, but they stayed closed a bit longer with each blink.
Her head nodded with each passing mile along the highway.
Her breathing came into rhythm with the wheels of the bus on the road.
The bus moved around a curve.
She slid ever so slightly against Little Salt’s body.
His small shoulder sank into her tired, withered breasts.
His smooth cheek rested on the folds of skin on her thin, bony neck.
Her gentle breaths made a soft whistle through her nose, so soft that anyone who wasn’t as close to her as Little Salt could hear it.
He listened to the soft whistles of her breathing.
He listened to her heart.
"A blue whale's heart is as big as a Volkswagon," he thought.
"It must feel love very deeply and widely, because it's heart is so deep and wide.
My heart is just the size of my fist.
I don't think it can hold as much love as a blue whale's heart.
I surely feel a deep and wide love for her, though.
Maybe it's because we're both the small, quiet ones who no one sees or hears.
I hope my heart is as beautiful as her.
I hope I whistle her same beautiful song.”
He put his tiny hand on top of hers.
Have you heard narwhal whales?
Along with bowhead and beluga whales, they are an Arctic whale, living all their lives in the icy waters of the Arctic Ocean.
They’re called the unicorns of the sea because they have a single horn that protrudes up to nine feet out of their foreheads.
In older days, their horns were given to the kings and queens of Europe to use as scepters, for many thought there was great power and even magic in them.
The horns aren’t really horns, though.
The horns are teeth.
Like human teeth, they are very, very sensitive.
If a narwhal breaks a tooth, it causes the poor narwhal a sharp and abiding pain.
When that break happens, an astonishing thing happens in the life of narwhal whales.
Another narwhal places it's tooth into the broken tooth of the hurting narwhal.
That act of kindness assuages the pain.
He hoped his hand might somehow help her know he was there.
He hoped he might somehow be a narwhal to her.
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