to have compared Walt to a woman. She was the ideal vision of Miss Liberty. When the artist created her, that image was what they saw when they thought of Miss Liberty.
Besides the fact that his penny had a woman on it, another thing that made this coin so special was that it was an experimental penny. To keep the weight down, the mint put silver in the inside and surrounded it with copper. Before that, they were all solid copper.
They should’ve just done away with the coin then. Brixton thought when she read him the history. We wouldn’t be in this mess. If only they knew coins were going to flop anyway.
“I like for it to have a mind of its own,” he said after he caught the boy staring at his hair still.
Brixton immediately jumped and looked down at the floor. He didn’t know how long he stood there staring at the old man and thinking about his penny.
He inched his way further in. Sketches caught his eye as he glossed over the scattered paper on the writing desk by the window overlooking the ocean. By the looks of it, Walter had been laboring over the same equation for months, maybe even years.
Without touching anything, Brixton tried to collect enough information as he could. With the quick glances from the kitchen to the papers, he pieced together some sort of blueprint for an underground tunnel. Two questions came to him.
Why is he so interested in tunnels? Where does this one go?
About that time, Walter hobbled back into the room, bringing fresh lemonade, soft fruit crepes, and gooey butter cookies. He stumbled along with a wooden cane in one hand and a carved mahogany pipe in the other.
Just by looking at it, Brixton knew the pipe had to be as old as Walter; probably even older. Perhaps it was his grandfather’s. He had given it to his father and then his father had given it to him. Whatever the age and how he got the pipe, it remained in excellent condition after all these years.
On the pipe, tiny whales danced along the waves that shaped it. Their flukes and the ocean’s swirls wrapped around to form the bowl. Their heads came up the long part of it.
“Do you know the humpback whale is acknowledged for its musical ability, Mr. Bex?”
Brixton, still quite shy and embarrassed for staring for the second time, didn’t say anything. He shook his head for his response instead.
“You’ve got to answer me better than that. Good heavens, how will we ever hold a proper conversation if all you know how to do is bobble your head? Is it fully attached? Shall I summon your mother to bring us an apparatus to fix it?”
Brixton let out a nervous laugh. He knew then that they would get along just fine.
“No, I didn’t know that,” he replied.
“Brilliant creatures they are. I suggest you study them before our next meeting. Bright as the sun. “The song of the sea” they would call them. I can describe them in three words; one of many. Before even I came to be on this earth,” he paused. “You can grasp what that means can’t you, boy? Surely your mother taught you something?”
“Before you were born?”
“Very good Mr. Bex. There’s hope for you yet. Where was I? Oh yes, before all that, whales traveled in what you would call pods. Mainly groups of fifteen or so. They’re a lot like humans- they stick together,” he paused a moment then added, “maybe those should be my three words.” Walter tapped his pipe with his forefinger. “When I say “one of many,” I mean that the humpback is only one type of whale. There are many more or were I should say. We haven’t studied ocean creatures since fishing became obsolete.”
Close to fifty years ago, some scientist invented a type of cell fish that they could grow in labs instead of actually harming marine life. Since then, nobody has been allowed out in the ocean. And because other ways of transportation came about, like the coast-rail, ships became extinct as well.
“What do you think? Do you think there are still many?” Brixton asked intrigued.
“Every once in a while I see them rise to the surface. Right out there on the horizon. I sit on the balcony upstairs and try to hear their songs. I suspect their style has changed some. There isn’t much to sing about these days.” Walter walked over to the window and looked out at the setting sun. “They’ve changed as well.”
“A whale can change?”
“It’s been half a century since anybody has actually gotten a good look at them. But from what I’ve seen, they’ve grown not only in size but in numbers too. Sometimes, out in the middle there, a dark circle appears out of nowhere. Like the ground is rising from the bottom of the ocean. It moves this way and that; in one uniform motion. I believe it’s the whales. They’ve banned together and have created a new species.”
“You actually believe that?”
“Haven’t you studied evolution boy?”
“I’m five, almost six. I don’t even know what that means.”
Walter laughed. The kid had a very good point. “Evolution is what happens when the environment changes over time; hundreds sometimes thousands of years. Things evolve. They grow or conform to better themselves in their also evolving world around them. The weak die off and the strong get stronger. It’s an awful outcome for mankind.”
Silence followed. Walter stopped so suddenly, Brixton didn’t know how to respond. He was right. It was an awful outcome.
“Why would they need to change? We haven’t done anything to them.”
“Precisely my son. Whales are animals devoted to communication and survival. When we quit fishing, the marine population increased significantly. When that goes up, things get crowded. A new system then gets created.”
Brixton couldn’t tell whether he was still talking about the whales or their current situation they were living in. Today the term was called Genetic Fortitude not evolution.
“Study some literature on them. I’m sure you will find them to be fascinating creatures. Pay particular enough attention to the blue whale, the killer whale, and of course the great humpback.”
Brixton did as he was told and checked out every textbook he could find on whales from the library. He studied everything about them from their anatomy all the way to their individual and social behaviors. Walter was right, they were fascinating.
The humpback whale was said to create a song that lasted up to twenty minutes. They sang this song for hours without pause. During the winter months, they would not eat and solely live on the fat they had reserved.
The killer whale, he read, was much different. They had teeth and traveled in large groups. What made them so unpredictable was the fact that they all had different types of prey. Some ate only small fish while others ate larger sea animals. Their unpredictability made them dangerous.
It was the blue whale that fascinated Brixton the most. Blue whales were the largest animal to have ever existed with humans that scientists knew of. Some of the larger ones could grow to almost one hundred feet long. Brixton couldn’t imagine, no matter how hard he tried, a living breathing creature that long. He immediately ran outside and measured one hundred feet to see how long that actually was.
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