A Whale of a Time by Kelly Hossaini

The parking lot was empty.  But that wasn’t unusual, partly because it was midnight and partly because, since the sparkling new Saver General came to town, Dan Burns’s General Merchandiser rarely had any customers anymore.  Dan learned with dread the coming of the Saver General and he knew that, slow or fast, the death of his store was probably imminent.  Before he had closed up earlier that evening, he stood looking out the front door onto the empty lot.  It was getting cold.  Winter was certainly coming and in a high desert climate it would be dry and cold for months.  Dan didn’t mind that too much.  In the not-so-distant past, the chill would keep the townspeople coming in for heaters, batteries, warm socks, and hatchets to break icy ponds so livestock could drink.  Now the cold seemed to make things more desolate and hopeless.  Dan turned from the front door and left out the back to his truck.  At least the truck was paid for.  That would help him survive a bit longer.  Probably.

The next morning, Dan drove along Main Street to his store.  About two blocks before he got to the General Merchandiser, he passed the Saver General.  It opened at 6 a.m. and the lot already had cars in it.  Dan wished he could afford the help so that he could open that early, too.  Seconds later he turned left into Oak Street, which ran along General Merchandiser’s west side, but abruptly stopped in the street.  The parking lot was no longer empty.  Instead, right in the middle of the lot, parallel with Main Street, lay a huge gray lump.  If he had to guess, Dan would say it was about 50 feet long, given that he had 150-feet of road frontage on Main Street and the lump took up about a third of it.  He gaped for several minutes and then finally drove up into the lot, a bit closer to the lump, continuing to stare and trying to comprehend.  It looked like a whale. 

Dan had never seen a real whale before, but he knew their shape and recognized the tail fluke.  It was definitely a fish or sea creature of some sort.  He carefully got out of his truck, cell phone in hand, and looked from one side of the parking lot to the other.  There was no obvious clue as to what this thing was doing in his parking lot.  He looked up, in case there were additional whales hanging in the air, just waiting to drop.  He smelled the faint odor of the ocean and the seafood counter at the grocery store.  It then occurred to him that it was a good thing it was November.  It was cold enough that the whale would likely not start to really stink for the foreseeable future.  The whale had effectively landed in a giant outdoor refrigerator, if, indeed, landing is what it had done.  The nearest ocean was 300 miles away.  How in the heck . . .?

Beginning to regain some of his reasoning abilities, Dan called the sheriff’s office and asked for Sheriff Wallace.  “Bob?”  Said Dan.  “You need to get over to my store right away.”

“Do I need backup?”  Sheriff Wallace asked.  “What’s the nature of this issue?”  Dan hesitated.

“Um, I don’t think you need backup.  But you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

Sheriff Wallace grunted.  “Try me.”

“Okay.  There’s a giant whale in my parking lot.”  Dan said simply.  He was not surprised by the long silence. 

“I’ll be right there.”  And the line went dead. 

Within four minutes, Sheriff Wallace pulled up in his county-issued Ford Expedition, emblazoned with the colors (brown and green) and motto (We Aim to Serve) of the Cascade County sheriff’s office.  He parked behind Dan’s truck.  Sheriff Wallace got out and stood next to Dan.  Sheriff Wallace was a rural sheriff from central casting.  He was in his late-50s, heavy around the middle, enough hair left to not be embarrassed when he took off his hat, and unlikely to take any guff.   He said nothing for a minute and then, Dan noticed, looked directly up into the bright grey sky.  It was a hard thing to keep yourself from doing.

“How did it get here?”  Sheriff Wallace asked.  Dan shook his head.

“Beats me.” 

“I don’t see any drag marks and if it had dropped from some height it likely would’ve splattered all over the place.  This guy seems to be in pretty good condition, just in the wrong place.” 

“Yep.”  Agreed Dan.  Because the town was now waking up, other vehicles joined Dan’s and Officer Wallace’s trucks in the parking lot.  People had begun passing by and then couldn’t believe their eyes.  Every one of them got out of their vehicles and within a minute or so looked up into the sky.  By 9 a.m. nearly 100 townspeople were milling around General Merchandiser’s parking lot, looking at the whale. 

“Hey, Dan,” said Robert Purdy, a farmer from the west side of the county, “do you have any coffee on yet?  It’s awful cold out here.”  Dan said he’d get some right on and opened the front door of his store.  He had purchased a fancy coffee machine about six months ago, hoping that maybe that would intrigue the townspeople, but so far it hadn’t.  As he was putting on a large pot of drip coffee and also firing up the fancy coffee machine, Robert Purdy and several others came in rubbing their hands together and asking for coffee, as well.

“Actually,” said Purdy, grinning, “make mine one of them fancy latte things.  This is all feeling kind of festive.”  Dan laughed and others began to ask for fancy coffees, too.  While waiting, they also perused his snack aisle and picked up pre-packaged pastries and chips.  Several went further into the store and purchased tools, toothpaste and soap, and cleaning supplies – items they had meant to purchase, but hadn’t made it to a store yet.  Dan bubbled over with gratitude and excitement as he rung up a steady stream of items.  The cash register had not gotten such a work-out in months.  At noon, Travis Smith, Dan’s part-time worker came in and took care of the store, after staring in disbelief at the whale, and Dan was finally able to go back outside and see his whale.  He was starting to feel territorial over it.  It was on his property after all. 

The crowd outside had grown exponentially bigger.  All sorts of people were standing around the whale.  Sheriff Wallace had given up trying to keep people from getting too close to the whale.  As soon as he cleared off one section of people and moved to the next, the already cleared section would shuffle right back up to the beast.  He called his deputies on the radio and told them to arrange for fencing of some kind – a lot of it.  The whale needed to be kept unmolested until they could figure out what to do with it. 

That afternoon, Mayor Tilly Wentworth called an emergency city council meeting to discuss just what should be done about the whale.  Not only did the majority of the town and surrounding area show up, but local TV crews and newspaper reporters were there to report on this fantastical occurrence.  There was standing room only with most of the crowd outside the council chambers, spilling into the hallway and down the front steps of the building.  For a while, the people right outside the council chambers would shout a narrative of the proceedings to the people in the hallway who would then shout what they had heard to those at the front steps.  Mayor Tilly soon got tired of that and threatened that any further such narration would result in removal and possibly even a few hours in jail.  There was grumbling but no outright rebellion. 

After a couple of hours of discussion, it was determined that Bill Dickey would haul his D6 Caterpillar and Josie Finny would drive her John Deere 8R tractor to the parking lot and together they would drag the whale off to an empty lot outside of town, where it could be cut up and buried or perhaps fed to pigs.  Councilor Daltrey said that he would research whether pigs could eat whale meat.  Very heavy gauge chain would be necessary to drag the whale and Dan was tasked with supplying that chain, to be reimbursed by the town.  It would take several days for all of the necessary arrangements to be made and the whale to be moved.

In the meantime, Dan was enjoying all the attention that the whale brought to his store.  He had never had so many customers even before the Saver General came to town.  People from outside the state were now starting to show up, take pictures, and buy something from his store, usually a baseball cap with the store name on it or a key chain with a tractor hanging from it.  At one point, Dan saw the manager of the Saver General standing next to the fence that protected the whale, arms crossed in front of his chest, staring at the whale and wishing he had one in front of his store, too.  It was Travis Smith who suggested that Dan should sell T-shirts with the whale on it so that the gawkers would have more stuff to buy.  Dan tasked Travis with putting that together and promised him a 20% cut of the profits.   

On the day the whale was to be moved, a woman from the state department of fish and wildlife showed up to inspect the whale.  She queried Dan and others but had no answers or useful thoughts as to how the whale may have ended up there.  She did say, though, that dragging the whole whale anywhere was unlikely to be successful.  Left intact, it was just too heavy.

On the morning of the appointed day, Bill Dickey and Josie Finny pulled up to the tail fluke, Dickey in his Caterpillar, Finny in her tractor.  The noise from the vehicles was considerable and, to his delight, Dan quickly sold out of ear plugs.  Two chains were secured around the fluke.  The end of one was then attached to the Caterpillar and the end of the other to the tractor.  Upon Mayor Tilly’s signal, the Caterpillar and the tractor began to pull, gingerly at first, but then with much vigor.  It didn’t matter.  The lady from fish and wildlife was right.  The whale wasn’t going anywhere.  After about 20 minutes, the Caterpillar and the tractor were turned off and there was an almost painful silence.  Mayor Tilly called another emergency council meeting for that evening. 

At this meeting, there were formal overflow rooms set up with closed circuit televisions so that everyone could watch the proceedings.  All sorts of ideas were floated for what to do now.  How about cutting up the whale and hauling it off?  Yes, but what would they use for such a chore and who would volunteer to do it?  Further, there was no telling what state the inside of the whale was in.  It could burst its guts all over the parking lot and cause a huge headache for the General Merchandiser and the County road department.  Okay, how about just letting it decompose naturally for a while until it got to the point it could be hauled away?  That suggestion merited almost no response. 

Finally, a tall, lanky man from the middle of the room came up to the microphone.  He had a plug of tobacco lodged firmly in one cheek and carried a paper cup, which, no one doubted, he used to spit into.  He sat up at the table in front of the council, set his spit cup next to the microphone, and introduced himself.

“Greg Daily, State Department of Transportation.”  He said, voice gravely.  “I say we should blow it up.  We have explosives we use in road building that we could put inside the whale.  The whale would just disintegrate.  Well, there might be a few bigger chunks, but those could be cleaned up pretty easily and the next heavy rain would take care of the rest.”  He then leaned over to his spit cup and added to its contents. 

The mayor and councilors were quiet for a moment and looked at each other.  Could that really work?  It sounded a bit risky and potentially really messy.  But this guy was from the State and seemed to know his explosives.  If he had road building experience, surely he would understand the physics of explosions.

“Are you sure that would work?”  Mayor Tilly asked tentatively.  “And how much explosives are we talking about here?”  Greg Daily leaned back over to his cup and made a p-tew sound before sitting up again and directing himself to the microphone.

“Sure, it would likely work.  Can’t see why it wouldn’t.  We’d bury the explosives inside the whale.  I’d say a ton of explosives should do it.  We’ve got that.  The thing would disintegrate”  P-tew.  And so it was settled.  The whale would be disintegrated.  Hopefully.

One week later, the whale was packed with explosives and ready to go.  Greg Daily and two other guys from the Department of Transportation drilled into the whale in several places, packed it with explosives, and then ran the numerous fuses out across Main Street.  Dan was sorry to see the whale go.  His store was so popular now that he had to hire two more employees just to keep up, and they couldn’t keep the whale T-shirts in stock.  Travis was working on expanding the merchandise into key chains, hats, and sweatshirts. 

The public was kept at least a block and a half from the whale.  Greg Daily insisted that a block would do, likely, but Mayor Tilly and Sheriff Wallace saw no harm in being extra cautious.  As a result, the explosion was delayed while several tailgate parties were moved.  Some people had purchased umbrellas from General Merchandiser before Dan ran out.  Dan made a mental note to add umbrellas to the memorabilia that he would sell.  The detonation then proceeded.

If merely exploding the whale was the only criterion of success, then Greg Daily’s plan was a triumph.  The explosion did not, however, somehow vaporize the whale into a baleen mist that disappeared harmlessly into the atmosphere.  Instead, a volcano of whale guts spewed hundreds of feet into the air and then fell from all directions.  Fragrant barbequed ribs and hamburgers, only moments before safely sizzling on grills, were soon covered in a blubbery paste.  The umbrellas broke under the weight of that same detritus and spectators were generally slimed.  Screams and pandemonium ensued.  While no one was seriously hurt, some unfortunates were pelted with chunks of whale, large and small, as they fled the area.  The streets and neighboring properties looked as though a giant, chunky marshmallow had exploded everywhere.  The smell was ghastly.  A combination of rotting, seared whale and gun powder. 

Greg Daily grinned happily, even with the blubbery chunks of whale dripping from his head and shoulders.  “I’m glad we didn’t try to cut it up and haul it away,” he said to an incredulous Mayor Tilly.  “That sucker was definitely rotting from the inside out.” 

About five minutes after the initial blast, Dan heard a lot of shouting and commotion down Main Street in the direction of the Saver General.  Covered in whale blubber himself, he trotted down the street with several dozen other people and stood in front of that once-sparkling store.  The front of the store had completely collapsed.  Sitting on the roof was a huge chunk of what looked like the whale’s head.  The store structure was likely a total loss.  Dan suppressed a smile. 

A few weeks later, the town was mostly cleaned up.  Miraculously, the General Merchandiser was unharmed by the exploding whale.  Certainly, there was clean-up to do, but no structural damage – and the people just kept coming.  Now people wanted to see where the whale had exploded and wanted to buy exploding whale merchandise.  (Dan now had eight different T-shirts to choose from.)  It also wasn’t too unusual for those same people to pick up a few extra items at the General Merchandiser while they were there.  Dan had to buy a second fancy coffee machine.  He also began to work with Travis to commission an appropriate monument to the whale to install in the parking lot. 

As for the Saver General, it wasn’t clear if it would be rebuilt.  When asked, the corporate office would only respond that it was still making its decision.  But for Dan there was no sense of dread one way or another.  The General Merchandiser would be just fine. 

Kelly Hossaini

Image: Statue of a whale in the street by Piotr Strębski, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons