Free Freaky Green Eyes by Joyce Carol Oates Page B

water because they surfaced and sank again in nearly the same motion. I wondered if the whales were teasing us, laughing at us. After about fifteen minutes Samantha’s lips and fingernails were turning blue and she was shivering so badly, I hunted up a sweater for her in the cabin and wrapped it around her. Samantha tried gamely to seewhat Dad was pointing at, but she was dazed and vacant eyed. The boat dipped and heaved, rocked and rolled. The wind sucked our breaths away. I couldn’t even see the Blounts’ lodge above the bluff, there was so much spray and mist. But the mood on Triumph II was mostly festive, since the adults had been drinking. This was a party after all. Fourth of July.
    The Blount brothers, Sean and Chris, had come with us. Sean was a familiar high school type: one of those guys who look slantwise at you like they’re assessing you, maybe liking what they see, but maybe not. Ever since we’d been introduced up at the house, Sean seemed undecided about me, impressed that I was Reid Pierson’s daughter but unconvinced that I was pretty enough, or sexy enough, for him to waste time on. I was only a year younger than Sean, but probably he thought I was even younger. Still, he seemed to like me. He wanted to impress me. He had a pair of binoculars for me to look through, to see whales in the distance, surfacing and leaping up to flash their sleek, glistening faces in the air, then disappearing again. “See? They’recool, whales.” I thanked Sean and handed the binoculars to Samantha.
    Sean said he wished they could hunt whales like in Moby-Dick . With harpoons. “Know what I’d like to do someday? Catch a baby whale in a net and train it in our pool. And videotape it.”
    I wondered, could this guy be serious? He seemed to be.
    â€œThat’s illegal, isn’t it?”
    Sean grinned and shrugged. “Who’s to know? The Coast Guard? The FBI?”
    After thirty minutes of bucking the waves, Mr. Blount turned the boat around and we headed back to his dock, where the sweet-sickening odor of roasting pig greeted us.
    The adults returned to the party on the redwood deck, but Sean had something to show me, his “private zoo.” It was a hike uphill from the dock to a grassy area behind the Blounts’ three-car garage, where Sean and Chris had a number of cages. Samantha and I were quiet, seeing the brothers’collection of animals: a hare, a fox cub, two nervous raccoons, and a young owl. “Pretty cool, huh?” Sean boasted. “The fox especially. The mother comes around, making these barking, mewing noises.” He laughed. “If she doesn’t watch out, we’ll catch her, too. See this trap?”
    At least it was a Havahart trap, not a leg-iron trap.
    A feeling like flame passed over me. I was so disgusted! But I managed to speak calmly. “Where’d you get all these?” I asked, as if I was truly impressed.
    Sean gestured toward the forest. “Right around here. It’s a wildlife refuge, that way. We trapped them. There’s thousands of them—it’s no big deal. I mean, they’re not endangered species or anything.”
    â€œWhat are you going to do with them?”
    Sean shrugged. “Who cares? It’s cool.”
    Chris echoed his older brother, grinning. “It’s cool.”
    â€œYour parents don’t care?”
    Again, Sean shrugged. “No big deal.”
    Samantha was staring at the hare. He was much larger than a bunny of the kind you see in pet stores at Easter. He was a beautiful, sad-looking creature with dark moist eyes and a quivering nose and strangely short, collapsed-seeming ears. She said, “Don’t you feel sorry for them?”
    â€œHell, no. We feed them real well.”
    They didn’t, though. The plastic water bowls were almost empty, and not very clean. The cages were dirty. Chris was poking a stick at the raccoons and laughing at their