Hilcias and the Whales

a small part of a novel in the works ✏️


Hilcias loved whales.

He walked beside his abuelo down rows and rows of tomato plants and peach trees, shielded from the sun by his trusty cap with a whale stitched onto the front of it.

“A blue whale’s heart is the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.”

“A beluga whale is called the canary of the sea because it sings so much.”

“A fin whale can make a sound on our side of the Atlantic Ocean and another fin whale on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean can hear it,” he whistled.

“Boy,” his abuelo smiled, “you must be whistling about whales.”

Now, as he sat beside his side of the Atlantic Ocean in a state park on Kiawah Island, something wonderful happened.

A gigantic tooth and a mysterious conch shell washed up with the waves onto the shore.

He was astonished.

The tooth was a sperm whale's tooth, of this he was sure.

The sperm whale was one of his favorite whales.

The first picture he ever drew of a whale, before he visited the public library and checked out every book he found about whales, was a picture of a sperm whale.

This was before he learned that the brightness of a light bulb is measured by a lumen, which is simply the light one cup of sperm whale oil gives off.

This was before he memorized the field guide to the whales of the world.

This was before he sketched a picture of how he thought a whale should look, a sketch that was a picture of a sperm whale.

He picked up the tooth with both hands.

It was almost a foot long, shaped like a cone, and made of ivory.

"This came from the lower jaw of a sperm whale," he thought, "because they don't have any teeth in their upper jaws, only slots that the teeth from the lower jaws fit into.

If I sliced the tooth in half, it would show the age of the whale as the rings of a trunk show the age of the tree.”

He gently laid the tooth beside him on the sand.

He picked up the conch shell with both of his hands, too.

"What a wonderful shell,” he thought. “Look at it’s shape and color.”

The shape was a common shape in nature, formed by graphing the numbers 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 and so on, the Fibonacci numbers, a special shape that appears many times in geometry, architecture, art and music.

Some people call the shape ‘God’s blueprint,’ because it seems to be the plan from which God creates the world.

It's color was a common color in nature, too.

It was three shades of yellow.

It's spine was the brilliant yellow of the sun that rose that very morning.

It's siphonal canal was the quiet yellow of the corn he and his abuelo shucked in early August.

It's aperture was the deep yellow of sunflowers in a summer field.

He raised it to his tiny ear.

Someone told him once that if you hold a conch shell to your ear, you can hear the ocean inside of it.

"I wonder if it's true," he thought.

"If it is, I can take it home to our bus and bring the the great whales with me.”

He expected to hear only the ocean.

Boy, was he surprised.

The sound he heard inside the shell wasn’t only of breaking waves and rolling tides.

There was also a song.

It was the most beautiful song he had ever heard.

He closed his eyes and saw the notes dancing before him.

“This song comes from a humpback whale,” he thought.

“I...understand it.

I understand it!”

The whale sang to him in his own language, with his own whistles!

They were notes of love, forgiveness, faith, hope, light, joy, consolation, understanding - all of the notes he whistled, all of the notes that made up his life, all of the notes that he whistled to the world but that the world couldn’t or wouldn’t understand.

All of those notes came back to him in the song of the humpback whale.

A tear rolled down his cheek.

He wept as if all of the hatred, injury, doubt, despair, darkness, sadness and loneliness poured out of him onto the sand and into the vast reaches of the waters of the ocean.

“I hear you!

I understand you!” he whistled into the shell.

To his great surprise, he heard a response.

“I hear you, too!

I understand you!

Finally, we’ve found you!”

A sperm whale, a humpback whale and a blue whale surfaced out beyond the waves.

“There’s a story we tell along our migratory way,” sang the blue whale, “about a boy on land, a boy who can sing our language, a boy who can understand our songs, a boy...who is hope.

You’re that boy, Hilcias.”

“Me?”

“You.”

“But, how?”

“We’re looking for the world’s loneliest whale,” sang the blue whale.

“We call him 52 Blue because he sings at a frequency we can’t hear.

But you’ll be able to hear him.

And he’ll be able to hear you.”

And we’ll be able to help him find a family.”


- Trevor Scott Barton, stories for a brown-eyed girl, 2020

Whales Sing

Whales sing. 

We know this because of the life and work of Katy Payne. 

She is a scientist who lived and worked on the coast of Argentina. 

She studied the whales that migrated along that coast.

She loved those whales.

In 1964, she took a trip to Bermuda to meet with a Navy engineer named Frank Watlington, who also loved whales. He was recording with underwater microphones called hydrophones, which were tools the U.S. Navy used to listen for Soviet submarines during the Cold War. It was during this recording that he picked up the sound of a humpback whale.

When Payne boarded Watlington’s ship, she didn’t know they’d be listening to anything. 

“I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard the sound whales make, have you?” asked Watlington. 

He played the sound of the humpback whale for her.

Payne would later say, “I had never heard anything like it. Oh, my God, tears flowed down my cheeks. I was just completely transfixed and amazed because the sounds are so beautiful, so powerful - so variable. They were, as I learned later, the sounds of just one animal. Just one animal.”

Up until that moment, Watlington had kept the recordings a secret. He was afraid whalers would use his discovery to help them hunt and kill whales. He gave the recording to Payne. 

“Go and save the whales,” he told her.

There was something peculiar about the sounds that Payne didn’t recognize at first. 

It took special ears and knowledge to find it. 

She had both. 

She had grown up on a farm and gone to college to study music and biology. 

She would become an acoustic biologist, and spend her life watching and listening to elephants and whales, an amazing thing for a human being to do.

As she listened to the humpback whale, she wanted to see the sounds. 

She used a spectrogram to see pictures of their peaks, valleys and gaps. 

She traced them with a pencil on the paper and began to see structure, a structure that looked like rhythms and melodies.

“The whale is singing a song,” she whispered.

Whales sing.

- Trevor Scott Barton, stories for a brown-eyed girl, 2020

The Stranger

The Stranger

You are the tears in the eyes of the child who scrapes her knee; you are the smells in the tattered clothes of the broken man who sips his wine; you are the curses in the mouths of the teens who hang out on the corner; you are the breath in the life of the old woman who dies.

Go away from me. 

No. I will go away from you.

I will go to a place with no scraped knees, smelly drunks, arrogant kids, dying women. 

I will make a woundless, pleasant, respectable, happy place for me.

A wound that cannot be seen; a stench that cannot be smelled; an arrogance clothed in niceties; a life that is death or a death that is life dying slowly - self-created, self-preserved, selfish.

May your tears wash me; gently lay your dirty coat over me for I am cold; curse away my own arrogance until my heart can hear your blessing.

- Trevor Scott Barton, poems for a brown-eyed girl, 2020

We Will Have Water

We Will Have Water

The ground is dry.

A drought of biblical proportions has gripped the land, and the people, the poor people, who struggle for their daily bread, must now struggle for water.

Water, a mist down from the mountains, or in from the sea, drifts over the land, and over the people, the poor people, who thirst for a drink of cool, clean water that just won't fall.

See the woman, the poor woman, walking on rocks and dust, searching for water. Don't see through your eyes. See through her eyes, and look and look for water that is there, but isn't.

Hear the children, the poor children, asking for water, rolling their wheels in the dust. Don't hear through your ears. Hear through their ears, and listen for water that is there, but isn't.

Touch the hands, the hands of the men, the poor men, planting their fields in the dust. Don't touch them with your hands. Touch through their hands, and feel the ground for water that is there, but isn't.

Smell the air, the dust from the ground, the mist in the sky, and breathe in the dusty mist, and gasp until your lungs weep without tears, crying for water. Don't breathe with your lungs. Breathe through their lungs, and gasp for water that is there, but isn't.

Taste the water? No, there is no water for them, though there is water. Cry out for cool, clear water streaming over your face and onto your tongue, quenching the thirst of your family, of you, with water.

Water that is here, but isn't. 

The people, the poor people, touch the hems of the garments of the few who have water, cool clean water.

"Yes, you will have water, but not yet, not in the here and now, only in the there and then."

"No, we will have water, already, not in the there and then, but in the here and now, we will have water."

- Trevor Scott Barton, poems for a brown-eyed girl, 2020

evening poem

the earth
was in her brown eyes
for they were the color
of the soil
after his abuelo
plowed the ground
in the first days
of spring

the trees
were in her brown eyes
for they were the color
of bark
in the soft light
of the sunrise and sunset

the sea
was in her brown eyes
for they were the color
of the water
as it turned with sand and shells
in the broken waves
along the shore

he loved the plowed earth,
walking through the cool dirt
with bare feet

he loved the bark of the trees,
climbing the smooth branches
in the heat of the day

he loved the sea,
floating naked
in the gently rocking waters
of the evening tide

she was the earth,
the trees,
the sea

- Trevor Scott Barton, poems for a brown-eyed girl, 2020

simple kindness

Simple kindness. 

He remembered a time when he was a boy. He was sitting on a wooden stool in front of a broken window, looking out at the rain falling in great sheets from a cloudy sky. His mamí stood behind him with her arms around his chest. "I love you," she whispered in his ear. Then she walked away and returned to her work cleaning their shack and cooking their supper. In that moment, he knew that he was loved...and that he was able to love.

Did his mamí know that her simple kindness helped him love the world?

     

Simple kindness. 

He remembered a time when he was a teenager. He was walking beside his papí in the late afternoon sun down a long row of beans. "Take my hand and come with me," said his papí. He took him to a tree and sat down with him under the shade of the giant branches. He took out a notebook, a notebook filled with words, beautiful words, powerful words, about people and about life, words he had written but never spoken, for he was a quiet person who spoke a little and worked a lot. "These words are for you, my son," he said. Then he walked away and returned to his work weeding the plants and nurturing the beans. In that moment, he knew that his own thoughts and words were important. 

Did his papí know that his simple kindness helped him write stories?

Simple kindness. 

He remembered a time when he was a young man. He was sitting at the foot of his bed. Gabby stood in front of him. She lowered her dress to the ground. He saw her naked for the first time. He looked at her sonrisa, her smile, and it was as if the sun had risen upon him. He looked at her brown skin, and it was as if the rich soil of the land was before him. He looked at her body and couldn’t breathe for a moment, and it was as if all of the beauty of the world had fallen on him. "Hold me close," she said. They held each other for a long time, and they didn’t speak but only held each other. In that moment, he knew companionship and compassion. 

Did Gabby know that her simple kindness helped him find the meaning of life?

Simple kindness.

- Trevor Scott Barton, stories for a brown-eyed girl, 2020

Vespers

Fragments of Hilcias and Taki's Notebook

Taki put the palm of her hand on the trunk of the tree.

"When I was an agnaiyaaq, a little girl, my aaka held this hand and walked with me outside of Point Hope," she said, "and talked with me about the plants around us, the ones animals can and cannot eat, the ones people can and cannot eat, the ones animals and people can use for medicine.

This, Hilcias, is called the Balm of Gilead tree."

Hilcias looked closely at the buds on the lower branches of the tree and breathed deeply the sweet smell of the resin.

He whistled for the wonder of it all.

"Balm of Gilead resin can soothe a cough or keep a small wound or cut or scrape from getting infected.

Maybe it could help a mute boy from El Salvador talk, huh?

Just kidding.

You can rub the resin on your skin or gargle it with water and it helps relieve burns and sore throats.

It grows here even out of the hard, frozen land.

Look at the heart shaped leaves. They remind us that the heart is the place where we learn to share, cooperate, take responsibility, avoid conflict and respect others, all of the qualities the old ones try to pass along to us.

Aaka told me, she said, 'Taki, these are the values of The People. They keep hearts beating and life living in these frozen, Arctic lands.'"

Taki closed her eyes.

She put her ear on the smooth, light brown bark of the tree.

"I hear the tree," she whispered. "It is saying, 'Take only what you need from nature. Use what you have to help others. Always speak your own language.'"

Hilcias put the fingers of his hand on the petals of the flower.

"When I was a niño pequeño, a little boy, my abuelo held this hand and walked me outside of the migrant camps where we stayed," he whistled, "and taught me about the plants around us there, the ones you can eat, the ones you can use for medicine. 

This is the izote flower. 

It's the national flower of El Salvador."

Taki looked at the milky, bell shaped flowers clustered above the leaves of the plant.

She breathed in the sweet smell of the flowers.

"You can eat the flowers and they help relieve arthritis and headaches.

You can break the stems, plant them in the ground, and they will take root and grow new leaves and flowers."

Look at the sword shaped leaves," whistled Hilcias softly. "They remind us of our will to live. They remind us that the pen is a sword and that we can write stories to help us understand each other and be kind to each other."

He closed his eyes. 

He put his ear to the evergreen leaves.

Their sharp spines pricked his skin.

"I hear the flowers," he whistled. "They're saying, 'Give ingenuity, beauty and wonder to world with the simplicity, plainness and ordinariness of your own language...of you.'"

Trevor Scott Barton, stories for a brown-eyed girl, 2020