Page 144 of What You Wish For

“Now you’re just being insulting.”

Good God, I felt like I was talking to Jacques Cousteau.

“If we don’t free him before the tide goes out, he’s a goner.”

I took a look at the net. Clay still had a long way to go.

“How long have you been here?” I asked.

“A long time,” Clay said.

That’s when I noticed the blisters on his hands. He was wet and shaking—more from exhaustion than hypothermia, I suspected, since the Gulf water is warm this time of year in Texas. Either way, he’d been out here a long time.

“Let me take a turn,” I said, stepping closer and putting my hand out for the knife.

Clay turned to read my face, deciding if he could trust me or not.

He could trust me. I hoped he knew that.

Then he nodded, so solemn, and handed me his knife. “You have to sing to him,” he said, before he moved away. “He’s frightened.”

“How can you tell?”

But Clay just met my eyes. “Haven’t you ever been frightened?”

I sighed.

“Go explain all this to Alice,” I said, “so she can warn the officers.”

And then I started sawing at the net with everything I had.

By some miracle, the police got the memo and did not run their sirens.

They all had utility knives anyway, and as soon as they arrived, about ten different guys waded right into the water to start working on the net.

Clay didn’t protest, and neither did I. Clay’s pocketknife was pretty dull. I’d been sawing like hell, and I’d only managed to cut two strands.

Plus, if I’m honest, it was a little scary to be so close to this giant beast out in the black water all alone. I could feel the whale’s essential gentleness. Its wise, regal otherworldliness was palpable. I was humbled in its presence.

But I also knew that I was about one big wave away from getting crushed.

And something, too, about being so close to the blowhole, being able to feel its slow and ancient breaths, about suddenly having such intimate access to one of the most inaccessible creatures on the earth… it was intense.

When Clay’s mom showed up, she was almost hyperventilating with sobs. She fell to her knees in the sand as she clutched hold of Clay. He put his arms around her, too, but he kept his eyes on his charge in the water. And when the paramedics—Kenny and Josh, the same paramedics who had tried to save Max—wanted to evaluate Clay and check for hypothermia, he let them. They cleaned and bandaged his hands, and they changed him out of his wet shirt into a too-big Galveston Fire Department T-shirt they’d had stashed somewhere in the truck.

One of the guys put his bunker coat on him. “That’ll keep him warm,” he said, ruffling Clay’s hair.

Clay kept giving me instructions to relay to the team—and they followed them. A mass of giant men, working frantically and taking instructions from a nine-year-old: Make sure not to let water into the blowhole.No shouting or scary movements. Keep their voices gentle and calm. Don’t forget to sing.

When Clay spoke, they listened, and that’s how, as the rescue wore on, a whole crowd of adults, chest deep in the water, huddled around a hulking creature and fighting like hell to beat the tide—on Clay’s instructions, slow and gentle—wound up singing “Silent Night” to a whale.

Some of them even harmonizing.

I will never forget the sight of it—of so many people trying so hard to help. To rise above themselves and do the right thing.See that?I told Duncan in my head.This is what it means to be fully alive. To feel it all—the joy and the sorrow, the hope and the fear. This is what life demands of us. You just have to stay, and try, and let life break your heart.

Mrs. Kline notified the search teams that Clay had been found, and they made their way to the beach in pairs as they all heard the news and gathered on the shore to watch the rescue. Carlos and Coach Gordo went back to the school to gather buckets, and the group formed a bucket brigade, sloshing salt water over the whale’s exposed skin as the rescue team worked.

Once he trusted that we were following his instructions, Clay allowed the grown-ups to take over. He was clearly exhausted, and he was, after all,a child.

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