Read Whale Season for Free Online

spoke, fierce and low.
    â€œYou better keep your
vo-lay-vo
to your
vo-lay
self.”
    The table went silent. Uncle Joe cleared his throat. Dagmar turned red. Jimmy Ray looked hurt.
    â€œDon’t mean no harm, sweetheart,” he said to Annie. His voice was whiskey soft. “You know that, no harm at all. I’d kill the man who touched her.”
    And then Jimmy Ray and her mother exchanged a look that Dagmar would never forget. It was the kind of look she’d seen other men and women give each other. The kind of look that says they have secrets. That surprised her. Until that moment, Dagmar never thought much about Jimmy Ray. He was just there, always, a part of her life. He was like the sun in the morning, like the gators in the creek. She never noticed how he always sat next to her mother. How it was his arm draped over her chair.
    She never noticed any of that until they exchanged that look—and then Dagmar noticed everything.
    Her mother’s eyes narrowed. “You’d better watch over her,” she said, roughly. “Better do the right thing.”
    â€œThe child knows I love her,” Jimmy Ray said.
    And Dagmar did. Still does. Doesn’t need to know much more. The look between Jimmy Ray and her mother said it all. And Jimmy Ray’s love, constant and unflinching, confirms it.
    Dagmar never saw her mother again. There were plenty of letters postmarked from all over the country, but never Chicago. They all ended with “See you soon. Luv, Mama,” which always struck Dagmar as odd. Annie never liked to be called “Mama.” There was never a return address.
    When Dagmar turned eighteen, her mother sent her a birthday card with lace edges and a poem about a mother’s love. She didn’t write “See you soon.” She signed it “Ann,” not “Mama.” Underneath her name was a single sentence: “Being a mama isn’t for everybody, but that don’t mean I never loved you.”
    But she never came back.
    All Jimmy Ray could say was, “Your mama had a hole in her that love couldn’t plug.”
    And Dagmar inherited it.
    All these years later, the heartbroken girl inside of her still waits for her mother’s return. That’s why she’s put her face on the billboards. That’s part of the reason she stays. If she left, her mother wouldn’t know where to find her. Besides, where would she go? Like it or not, The Dream Café is her home.
    â€œCome join the fun!’ it says on the back of the matchbooks. And fun is what Dagmar feels she sells. Twenty-four hours a day. Seven days a week. Three hundred sixty-five days a year. “We are the Wal-Mart of fun,” she tells anyone who’ll listen, and nearly believes herself, even though it’s clear by the look on her face that it’s difficult for her to watch the dancers at work, difficult for her to see the calloused hands of the men who sit up close.
    â€œShe’s got no stomach for it,” the dancers say among themselves. Some say it with pity because they know that she’ll eventually close the place and that would be a shame. In towns like Whale Harbor jobs are scarce. You do what you can. What there’s a market for. What’s more or less legal.
    There’s a club near Orlando that does Shakespeare in the nude because the town has an ordinance that says that nudity is legal in legitimate theater. “To be or not to be,” never had so many layers of meaning before.
    But that’s the way it is in Florida. It’s paradise. The visitors want fun. That’s what they pay for. They’re gonna have fun if it kills them. Or you. Or both.
    So it’s 6 A.M. on Christmas morning and The Dream Café is open for business, but it doesn’t seem that there’s much fun to be had. A handful of truck drivers sit at the edge of the stage. They’re not regulars, but Dagmar’s seen them once or twice before.