The two men stood shoulder to shoulder. The sun, doing its best to push through the heavy clouds, bathed them in a wan grayish light. The smell of saltwater and the cawing of gulls had faded from their minds as the men stared, together, down the beach. Even the chill November air was forgotten, and their hands abandoned the warm refuge of pockets, with no thought to the growing numbness in their fingertips.
They didn’t watch the crash of the waves, or count sets as surfers might. They didn’t look like any of the stereotypical beach denizens. Both wore denim blue-jeans and reinforced workboots, orange safety vests belted over their button-up shirts. Their hats said “Oregon D.O.T” in a proud shade of gold, which belied the spirit of the Department.
Finally, the shorter of the two turned slightly and spoke, still not taking his eyes away from the bulbous gray shape that seemed to have erupted from the surface of the sand.
“This is going to be bad, isn’t it?”, Hector said.
George nodded, then took a deep breath, let it out and started walking. Hector followed, head down, legs working twice as hard as usual it seemed, to push through the sand. Within two dozen paces both men were short of breath, and trying to hide that fact from one another. Then the smell hit them. Hector had once discovered a sack of potatoes in the back of his pantry, a sack which he did not remember buying. When he found the sack, the potatoes had congealed into a syrupy black fluid with tufts of sickly green mold growing on its surface. The smell, he would tell you, was putrid, a word which he had learned specifically so that he could describe the rancid black puddle. He used it now.
“It’s…putrid.” He said.
George, who understood the reverence with which Hector treated that word, grunted his agreement through gritted teeth.
By the time they came within spitting distance of the carcass, Hectors’ body had adjusted to the stench, though waves of nausea still rolled through him if he moved too quickly. He surveyed the gargantuan corpse.
“It’s big…It’s a Humpback, yeah?” He asked.
“No,” George said “sperm. We need to measure it.”
Hector nodded, and they set to it. They worked through the rest of the morning and into the afternoon, measuring the length and circumference of the body, the fins and everything else they knew the name of, scribbling quickly as they went. Small crowds of people gathered and dispersed, some of them standing nearby for hours, others only coming close enough for a quick look, but all of them staying upwind.
After the measuring was done they retreated up the beach. Hector sat on a hill, staring out into the ocean and trying to breathe the scent of dead whale out of his nostrils, as George made his phone calls.
“Eight tons.” George said.
Hector looked up, realizing that George was speaking to him.
“Really?” he said, “Eight tons? That’s a big one. That’s too big, man. We can’t…there’s no way we can get that on a truck, is there?”
George laughed. “Nothing we’ve got,” he said. “We’d have to rent something. Won’t get approval.”
“Well…” Hector squinted, the way he did when he was thinking very hard, or lying, “if we don’t have a truck, how can we move it?”
George was already walking away, and couldn’t see the excitement on Hector’s face when he jumped to his feet. “Hey! We can cut it up!” he said, sliding down the hill after George. “Cut it into smaller pieces and load the dumptrucks!”
“Stupid.” said George.
Hector stopped, looking crestfallen. George glanced back, mid-stride, and seeing the look on Hector’s face said, “Well, do you want to do it? Cut up a rotting whale, flesh and bone and sinew, put it in bags and load it onto trucks? I’ll loan you a machete.”
Hector blanched, then nodded.
“You’re right George. That’s right. No one would do that. What can we do?” he asked.
George smiled, it was a smile that Hector had seen too much of in High School. It meant George had been inspired. When George got inspired, bad things happened. Usually to Hector. The worst of them involved fire.
“W…what?” Hector asked, involuntarily stepping back, which caused George to laugh.
“We can’t move it, and we can’t bury it. We’re not allowed to push it back into the ocean. I only see one option.” George said, his smile growing slowly, just at the edges.
“We’re not allowed to light it on fire, George.” Hector said. George laughed harder at this than he had at Hectors fear a moment before.
“No, Hec. Not fire.” George said, “Dynamite.”
Hector only had to think about this for a moment before his stomach flipped over. He leaned to the left, bent at the waist, and vomited into the coarse Oregon sand.
## END ##
This scene is fiction, but it is based on a true story. In November of 1970 a team of Oregon DoT workers used dynamite in an attempt to disintegrate a beached whale. The results were captured on video tape, and were disastrous. Flying whale blubber rained down in a half-mile radius around the site of the explosion, causing extensive damage to nearby cars.
It was such an awesome story that I had to invent a fun backstory for it. I was able to use it as an exercise in characterization. I think it’s a little cheesy, but fun.
As always, comments are welcome!
For more on the exploding whale, check Wikipedia and YouTube.