Whale Talk

In school the next day, T.J. feels tension when Mike and linemen from the football team watch him. T.J. deals with his unease by imagining Mike sinking into the pool after being beaten by Chris Coughlin during the swim-off for the letter jackets. The menace from Mike makes it clear to T.J. that there is some connection between Mike and Rich. After T.J. and John Paul had returned home the previous night, Georgia warned T.J. about this connection. She cautioned him against tangling further with Rich because he is behaving irrationally and is thus more dangerous than ever.

When T.J. arrives at All Night Fitness for the swim-off, Simet, Benson, football players, and the swimmers are already there. The coaches have agreed that Icko will run the swim-off. Chris is nervous that Mike will hurt him if he wins and angry that T.J. volunteered him when there are more muscular people like Tay-Roy on the team. T.J. assures him that he is just the person to beat Mike and reminds him that beating Mike is a chance to get even. Andy also tells Chris that he will beat Mike with his prosthesis if anything happens with Mike.When Mike strips off his shirt, his muscles scare Chris even more. T.J. has Tay-Roy take off his shirt to show Chris that they can match up in terms of muscle. All the team needs is for Chris to swim.

After warm-ups, the swim-off commences. After four laps, Mike is so winded he can’t keep swimming, while Chris has to be stopped from continuing. When T.J. taunts Mike by offering to make the race a relay, Mike curses him and reminds him that he will not be getting a letter because he failed to improve his time in the race he intentionally lost. T.J. claims that this is exactly what he wanted. When Chris attempts to shake hands with Mike, Mike calls him “a retard” (274). Simet stops T.J. from retaliating and reminds him that Mike’s response is a measure of his loss to Chris. Mike leaves. Benson congratulates Chris and apologizes for Mike’s name-calling. Chris complains that Benson should do something about it, then.

The remainder of the school year flies by for T.J.At the end-of-the-year athletics banquet, Coach Simet praises each of his swimmers for their grit and hard work. Chris receives an award for being the most inspirational athlete. The swim team receives it letters and certificates, with the exception of T.J.

The swimmers receive the actual letter jackets at an assembly a week before graduation. The highlight of the ceremony is when Andy takes off his leg and salutes the student body, who had no idea that he swam the entire season on one leg. Watching the spectacle, T.J. feels that he lived up to his name, “The Dao.” “Nothing lives without its opposite,” he remarks, and notes the irony of not receiving a letter despite his ability to do so and his friends receiving letters despite their apparent lack of talent (278). The finishing touch for him is when Simet, on behalf of Chris, awards him Brian Coughlin’s letter jacket in recognition of his efforts. T.J. is overcome with emotion.

As the narrative winds down, T.J. notes that the year did not end on the happy note struck by those ceremonies. During the spring and early summer, T.J. convinces his teammates, Simet, and John Paul to put together a team for Hoopfest. As a group, they are no better at basketball than swimming. Nevertheless, they figure out a way to capitalize on the talents they do have, which include Andy’s three-point shot and alley-oop pass as well asJohn Paul and Simet’s athleticism. By the time Hoopfest comes around, they are a solid team.

Their team, the Slam-Dunking Mermen, is in the same division as the Bushwhackers, Rich and Mike’s team. T.J. feels ambivalent about the thought of facing off with them. The tension between the Mermen and Mike gets even worse when Kristen Sweetwater breaks up with Mike and starts dating Tay-Roy, who makes it clear that if she goes back to Mike, she could expect that Tay-Roy willbeat up Mike.

At Hoopfest, cheered on by an entourage of the swimmers not competing, T.J.’s team wins round after round, making it more and more likely that they will have to play the Bushwhackers. The Mermen win their final game on Saturday, which places them up against the Bushwhackers on Sunday morning. That Sunday morning the game begins asHeidi, the twins, and Alicia look on in the stands. T.J. guards Mike, John Paul guards Rich, and Simet guards a third player. Andy and a fourth player, Weeks, Cutter High’s sixth man on the basketball team, serve as substitutes. 

The game quickly becomes physical, and the referee calls Rich for elbowing John Paul several times. John Paul keeps his composure and grabs defensive rebound after rebound. T.J., unfazed by Mike’s trash-talking, has a jumper that keeps falling, and he executes a flashy block of one of Mike’s shots. Despite bringing in Weeks when they are down by two points, the Bushwhackers lose the game 21-19 when Andy sinks his last shot.After the game, Rich and Mike storm off the court, and everyone celebrates.

As the team is gathering its equipment, Rich comes back onto the court and shoots at Heidi with a deer rifle. John Paul jumps into the path of the bullet to save Heidi and takes the shot for her. Chaos erupts. As he lays dying, John Paul asks for reassurance that Heidi is fine. He tells T.J. the name of the little boy he killed—Tyler—and the widow, Stacy Couples. He forces T.J. to promise that he will spend “[n]ot one minute for revenge” (288) and that he will forgive Rich, who “had no idea…what he was doing” (289). He asks T.J. to tell Abby that he loves her and that he “killed one” and “saved one” (289). 

He dies, and T.J. feels the same sensation he felt when the baby deer died in his arms. He is disappointed because his father will never know that he saved not one person, but two.

The epilogue openslater that summer, with T.J. riding into New Meadows, Idaho, the widow’s hometown and the place where her boy died. He first visits Tyler’s grave, then goes to the Pine Knot, the restaurant where John Paul met the widow. He asks the owner about herand discovers that Stacy Couples moved away eleven years ago to live in Boise after her son graduated from high school. T.J. is shocked to hear that Stacy had another son, Kyle. According to the owner of the restaurant, Kyle is buying a grocery and runs a whitewater rafting company.

T.J. goes to the store to meet Kyle. He introduces himself to Kyle by telling him that they share a father, John Paul. Kyle is puzzled, probably by T.J.’s ethnicity, until T.J. explains that he is adopted. Upstairs in Kyle’s office, T.J. notices that the walls are covered in pictures of whales and Harley motorcycles, John Paul’s two obsessions. Despite this similarity, Kyle never met John Paul and has no idea why he likes bikes and whales. He reluctantly tells T.J. that his mother never recovered after her son died in the truck accident and people criticized her for getting pregnant. From second grade on, Kyle was primarily raised by his aunt and uncle.

T.J. then tells him that John Paul is dead and tells the story that led up to his death.Kyle remarks that he and T.J. are really the only ones who survived these tragedies.T.J. agrees and repeats John Paul’s theory about whale talk: “if we knew more about humans maybe we could accommodate one another better” (294).

When T.J. tells Kyle that he is at loose ends despite having graduated from high school and gotten accepted to the University of Washington, Kyle offers him a job with his whitewater rafting outfit, even if it is just for the summers between school terms. T.J. promises to get back to him. Kyle tells him there is no rush. What he most wants is to learn more about John Paul, whose absence as a father he felt keenly his whole life.

As T.J. bikes back to Cutter, he rehashes the aftermath of Rich’s murder of his father. Rich got life without parole instead of the death penalty because he killed John Paul instead of his actual target. T.J. took in the lesson about revenge and regret that John Paul emphasized as he died, so he was able to move on. Alicia and her children moved in permanently with T.J. and Abby. Icko lives on the edge of the Jones property and coaches a softball team on which Chris plays shortstop and Dan Hole keeps stats. Tay-Roy and Andy left. Mike, who did try to stop Rich, apologized to T.J. for his part in John Paul’s death.

That night, after T.J. gets home, he and his mother listen to the sound of the whale tape playing as they sit on the porch. T.J. tells her he doesn’t know where to put his emotions. She responds by telling him that maybe they “don’t need to put it anywhere” if that is the case (298).