Whale Talk

A school dance is going on when the team arrives home from a meet. T.J. runs into Coach Benson, who has finally figured out that setting the personal best standard for lettering is a scam. He tells T.J. that the statewide athletic conference competition, based on the total number of points each school gains across all sports, is very close and that Cutter High needs the swim team to do well to win this year. Carly is also waiting for him, so T.J. joins her in the gym to dance. 

During the dance, a scuffle breaks out between Mike Barbour and Kristen Sweetwater, who has gone out with Mike despite Carly’s warning to stay away from Mike. Kristen’s arm is bruised where Mike hurt her. She tells Carly and T.J. that Mike lured her down to the river for a party, but no one was there when she arrived. When Kristen told Mike what Carly told her about him, Mike got angry and cursed both T.J. and Carly. Mike told Kristen she could make up for believing what Carly said by having sex with him. When she refused, he began to punch her arm more and more violently. 

Kristen managed to escape and catch a ride back to the gym, but Mike showed up moments later. Despite what happened between the two of them, Kristen agreed to get into Mike’s truck to talk. Mike cried and promised that he would not act in that way again, but then he groped Kristen and followed her into the gym when she ran away from him.

T.J. is so angered by what he hears that he decides to confront Mike. He jumps in his car and chases after Mike in his car. The chase ends only after he is pulled over by a policeman who threatens to arrest him because of his angry talk as the officer writes the speeding ticket. The officer tells him to go home to calm down. The officer also explains that there is nothing he can legally do about Mike’s actions unless Kristen is willing to press charges. If T.J. retaliates (especially since he is almost eighteen), he is the one who will suffer the consequences.

When he shows his mother the ticket after his return home, she lectures him just as the officer did. It is not his place to punish Mike Barbour, she tells him, and that if T.J. were jailed and tried, his desire to protect Kristen would not be a factor because Kristen, like many young women, would never have enough self-worth to follow through with pressing charges. Furthermore, his desire to teach Mike Barbour to pick on someone his own size would be wasted. Abby speculates that Mike feels out of control when he attacks Kristen. Afterward, he may rationalize his treatment of her by calling her a bitch and placing the responsibility for keeping his anger in check on her shoulders. Kristen’s own father probably has the same ideas about women. 

Abby also tells T.J. about what he was like when they got him from Glenda, whose drug abuse meant she would leave him alone and starving for days. He was in bad physical shape and “inconsolable” when they first fostered him (200). They cared for him, but the only time he ever stopped crying in those initial months was one day when his birth mother held him. Just like Mike and Rich, T.J. could only respond to what he was accustomed to, not “what was good for him” (201). 

With Georgia’s guidance, T.J. “played out [his] life, until finally [he] had done it all enough to feel at some primitive level like [he] had it under control” (201). It took nine months, during which Abby was tempted to put an end to the process, but she did not because Georgia explained that doing so “would have set the fear and rage so deep” that T.J. would never have recovered (201).

John Paul also talks with T.J. later. He explains to him that if T.J. beats up Mike Barbour, it will only reinforce Mike’s violent personality and that Mike will “immediately turn it racial and respond by hurting someone else” (203). People like Mike and Rich believe their actions are always someone else’s fault. Beating up Mike won’t even help Kristen, who will only feel empowered when T.J. or Carly are around. Nothing short of death can change people like that, John Paul tells T.J., who grows increasingly frustrated as he listens. John Paul says he is sure that this is not the first time Mike has gotten violent with a woman and this is probably not the first time Kristen has found herself in this position. The only thing T.J. can do is “‘protect people in the moment they need protection, or ahead of time. But not after. After, you work with them’” (204).

John Paul argues that people like Mike and Rich will stop being presences in T.J.’s life when he stops giving them so much power. T.J. admits that he did invite them in with his quest to get the letter jackets. John Paul encourages him and his teammates to focus on the letter jackets because they can do so without ever interacting with Mike and Rich. T.J. accepts the advice and ends the conversation by telling his father that he “‘should have been a whale’” (205).

Although T.J. takes his parents’ advice to heart, Heidi’s continued presence at the Jones’ house intensifies Rich’s focus on T.J. After Rich came to their home at midnight, Abby demanded that Principal Morgan ban Rich from school grounds. Morgan calls T.J. in to a meeting with Coach Benson to discuss rumors he has heard about conflict between T.J. and Mike. T.J. confirms the rumors and tells Morgan about Mike’s attack on Kristen. 

Benson interjects to say that Mike’s account of what happened differs from T.J.’s and that Kristen has gotten back together with Mike.Benson tells T.J. that Mike has the potential to get a full football scholarshipif T.J. doesn’t destroy his reputation. T.J. sarcastically responds that the swim team won’t damage Mike’s reputation, which should allow Mike to “last long enough in college to beat up plenty of girls’” (209). The remark angers Coach Benson. If T.J. keeps it up, Benson promises to raise the issue of the swim team’s letter requirements at the Athletic Council again.

T.J. tells Simet about the conversation after the meeting. Simet tries to reassure him by praising the work ethic of the team, while acknowledging that the requirements will certainly get harder after this season. He also asks T.J. not to discuss this conversation with anyone else.

When T.J. arrives home, he discovers that Alicia and her children have been placed with the Jones family on the advice of Georgia and the Marshall family caseworker. The family establishes a response plan to deal with Rich. If Rich violates his restraining order by calling or coming to the Jones’ house, they will call 911, which will land Rich in jail. Alicia is frazzled because she has to deal with all three of the children without getting angry, a task that is made more difficult because Heidi takes advantage once she realizes that Alicia must treat her just like her brothers.

T.J. comes across Alicia smoking a cigarette on the front porch later that evening. When T.J. asks why Alicia tolerates Rich, she attempts to explain by repeating what she has learned in her therapy sessions. Her attraction to Rich is rooted in her need for approval, being accustomed to the same kind of treatment from her father, and her hope that allowing Rich to abuse her will eventually bring him back to her once he feels remorseful. While she understands this dynamic intellectually, she still hasn’t been able to change it. Willis, Heidi’s father, didn’t treat her like that. She warns T.J. that Rich hates T.J. more than he knows and believes that Alicia wants to be with another black man—T.J., in this case. 

Although Alicia wants things to work out this time, she admits that she will eventually end up with Rich again. “Deal is, if you’ve been treated bad, you’re going to have to find a way to get over it,” says Alicia, noting that this is true for her, Chris, and Kristen (216). T.J. is surprised that Alicia knows about Chris, but Alicia tells him that Rich and Mike talk about him.

When the team prepares to depart for their conference meet in Spokane, at Frost High, all the coaches, even Benson, are eager for them to do well because Cutter High’s chance to win the all-sport championship for the first time is dependent on T.J. doing well in his events. T.J. believes the team is likely to letter with this leverage. The school, except for the silent football team, is behind them as well: the team gets cheers from a crowd of students and cheerleaders as they head out for the meet, a first.

When they arrive at Frost, T.J. is feeling confident because there are few other swimmers who are competitive with him in his events. Several coaches at other schools have even asked T.J. to swim with their teams over the summer because they believe he has the potential to swim in the Olympic trials with more training. T.J. isn’t interested in swimming and plans to return to Hoopfest basketball when the swim season ends.

Chris basks in all the positive attention he receives from the crowds at Frost. Because everyone knows his difficult story, he has become a crowd favorite. He is so overwhelmed at the start of one event that Jackie has to push him into the water to swim. Chris, as usual, manages to beat his personal best time, and T.J. places well in his events.

The Mermen have “the best meet of [their] lives,” and are elated as they head home on the bus (221). It is their last trip together, since the school will only pay for T.J. and Simet to go to post-season competitions. Simet praises the work ethic of the team in a speech, and the team promises to keep training with T.J. for the next two weeks to help him prepare for the championship, despite the end of the season.

That night, Andy finally tells them the full story of what happened to his leg. Andy’s mother had a boyfriend, Rance Haskins, who was better known in Washington later for having killed one baby and blinded another. Rance forced Andy’s mother to work as an exotic dancer at a club in Spokane. She would leave Andy with Rance, who would in turn tie Andy to a kitchen sink pipe by the leg and leave him with a bowl to urinate in while Rance went out with his friends or had them over to do drugs. One night, Rance got so high that his friends took him to the hospital, and Andy was tied to the pipe for almost an entire day. 

As he tried to escape from the rope, the knot got so tight that it cut off circulation to his foot. When his mother got home, it was too late to save his leg. Rance took Andy to a doctor in his hometown of Haskin Falls, where he was able to cover up his actions with a lie. The family moved to Oregon for a while, and no one there questioned the cause of the boy’s amputation. Rance left Andy’s mother and went on to the crimes that made him infamous in Cutter. Andy’s mother forced Rance to put money in trust for Andy and to buy his prosthesis in exchange for her silence. T.J. understands as he listens that Andy’s disclosure is “a gift” (227). 

Icko and Simet are silent during the conversation, and T.J. wonders what it must feel like for the two men, “the only decent adults” that most of the swimmers have ever known and who can only do something for them by standing up for their letter requirements on the Athletic Council (227). T.J. feels proud of his teammates, especially since their performance that day guaranteed that everyone except him would letter. Although he knows an athletic letter seems trivial, he understands that “it lets [the Mermen] stand up for [themselves] in the language that is understood at” Cutter (228). T.J. knows he will miss what he experienced with the team.

On the Monday after the last team meet, Simet tells T.J. that the Athletic Council will be meeting to discuss the Mermen’s letter requirements. Simet asks T.J. to attend. T.J. runs into Carly, who will also be in as an alternate at the meeting because another student representative is out. When the meeting begins, Mike calls for a re-vote on the letter requirements because he believes the letter requirements were misrepresented to the Council. Simet acts as if he is offended by the suggestion and points out that the Council’s vote was the result of not having enough knowledge, not misrepresentation.

When Benson responds by saying the Council assumed the swim team requirements were as hard as those imposed by other teams, Simet responds by challenging his right to do anything beyond run the meeting. This response angers Benson, but he hands off the meeting to Coach Roundtree as a result.Carly argues that it would be unfair to change the standard at the end of the season.

Benson explains that he cannot think of any other team on which every member lettered in the first season. Simet tells him that the entire chess club lettered twice. Benson responds by arguing that chess is not a real sport, and Roundtree follows up by pointing out that these exceptions explain why chess was excluded as a sport. Simet sidesteps the argument by insisting that what is important is that there is a precedent for every member of a team lettering.

When Roundtree calls for a vote to reconsider the letter requirements, T.J. objects. He argues that no other coach has had to argue his team’s letter requirements. Benson responds by saying that the approval for other sports is just a formality because those sports have been around for a long time. T.J. then asks what bylaws allow the vote.Benson says that the council’s authority in this matter is just assumed. Simet backs up T.J.’s challenge, but Benson calls for the vote. Simet is able to get the council to delay the vote until more research can be completed on the matter of the bylaws.

After the meeting, Simet explains to T.J. that he was stalling for time to drum up support, and Carly worries that it would have been better to vote because the person for whom she is an alternate is likely to vote with Coach Benson.

Back at home, the Jones family begins to suspect that Rich is responsible for the many hang-up calls the family has been receiving. They assume he is hoping that Alicia will answer one day. While John Paul thinks that it would be good if Alicia talked to Rich while she is in a safe, supportive place, Abby thinks they should document the calls so that Rich can be jailed for breaking his no-contact order. With additional phone features, the Jones family figures out that Rich is calling from a local convenience store close to their house. 

Rich also leaves coffee cups, an axe, and a blue hard hat in their yard. The axe, which he leaves stuck in a tree, is especially worrying to Alicia, who believes that at some point Rich will feel backed into a corner and come after them. John Paul promises to be ready when he does do something, however, which reassures T.J.Late one night,the pace of the hang-up calls pick up so much that T.J. and his dad rush to the convenience store to catch Rich. They find Rich there with an open container of alcohol. 

When John Paul confronts him and promises trouble if he does not back off, Rich tells him that he has a lot of nerve. Rich calls John Paul a “baby killer” and T.J. a “Sambo” (a racial slur), but he does back down (241). John Paul tells T.J. that he will hold on to the evidence of Rich breaking the no-contact order: doing so sidesteps the possibility of Rich feeling like he has no options, a state of affairs John Paul wants to avoid because it might make Rich dangerous. John Paul warns T.J. that they need to be alert in order to avoid an unexpected attack from Rich.

Days later, when T.J. and Simet head out for the state championships at the University of Washington, very few people from Cutter are there to see them off, probably because of the conflict with the Athletic Council. Simet has borrowed his uncle’s Winnebago, so the whole team, including Icko, is able to be there with T.J. T.J. wins the one-hundred-meter event, and Simet relays his winning time to the TV station to get the news back home.

A confident T.J. wins the fifty-meter swim, placing Cutter at eighth place for the statewide points competition.T.J. takes a call from Benson before he competes in the two-hundred-meter event. Benson tells T.J. that he needs to win because Cutter High’s wrestling team underperformed at their competition. 

T.J. tells Benson he will do just that if the team gets Benson’s vote to maintain the requirements for lettering at the Athletic Council meeting. Benson is offended, believing that T.J. is threatening to lose intentionally. Simet takes the phone and engages in a heated conversation with Benson. When he hangs up, he tells T.J. that although Benson wanted him to withhold the information, he feels that T.J. should know that while they were gone, the Athletic Council voted down their letter requirements. This news leaves the team feeling defeated, despite Simet’s assurances that he will work to get the vote reversed when he returns.

Jackie takes the news hardest of all. He cries and tells the team the thought of losing the feeling of belonging, of being without the team, is what upsets him, not the thought of losing the chance to get the letter jackets. He stayed quiet all season because he was worried that if the team noticed him, he would lose his place. Andy tells him that they were awful swimmers anyway and can find some other sport to work at together in the upcoming season.

Before his final swim, T.J. watches Roy Roscoe, his main competition, and wonders if he could beat him. He also sees his dejected teammates in the bleachers and feels hatred for Benson and Mike Barbour. The chapter closes with T.J.’s feelings of “new resolve for this race” and his “fury” as he begins to swim (252).