Copyright 1968 by Carl L. Biemiller
Published by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, NY
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 68-25597

THE LAST CHAPTER

Sunday arrived on schedule. Kent was half-excited and half-sick of it before it got there. The sports pages of a lot of newspapers had carried stories about the $250,000 prize for the albino blue, and him and Dad, and Dr. Vernon. He had seen big advertisements about beer and great New Jersey fishing, and some of them announced that he was going to be on "The Big Show" as a guest. Dad said that he thought there would be all sorts of advertisements around for the rest of the summer, and maybe the winter, too, in the Florida newspapers.

Kent was full of information. Some of the nervous, young advertising men had come to the Lab and to Rumson to see if his skin would turn green on the color-television cameras. They told him that "The Big Show" was "live," not filmed first and shown later. And that his part would be just a little talk with the star who was a nice man who worked for Mr. Heinrich all year 'round. His part was to tell how he caught the fish. Kent had the idea that if he ran away the advertising men would run after him and catch him.

The college men at the Lab had been generous with advice. They thought he would be a great television star if he wore boots and called himself the Rock-and-Roll Spy. They suggested that he would be very upset on TV and faint dead away. They said he should lead Leo on a leather thong and go as Tarzan.

Leo and Dr. Vernon and Dad had no advice at all.

"You know what you have in mind; do it," they said. They also reminded him that he knew what Mr. Heinrich had in mind.

As he And Dad pulled out of their driveway for the drive to New York, Kent had the flickering thought that he might as well be one of Dr. Todd's bluefish school in the big aquarium being studied for behavior, and that a lot of people were turning lights on and off to see if he knew whether it were sunrise or sunset or full moon on a lonely ocean.

New York had that lovely, ghostlike Sunday feeling when they reached it in the late afternoon, and the streets seemed to be stretching in private, rubbing away the week-long bruising of feet and traffic with the ointment of emptiness. Dad parked the car as near as possible to the West Side Studio Theater where the network put on its "Big Show," and they strolled to it. They were early because the advertising men had asked them to be. And there would be time for a sandwich and a milk shake after the advertising men and the producer of the show told Kent all he needed to know.

The advertising men met them at the door. They said the star of "The Big Show," a very funny man who introduced all the other people who appeared upon it to sing or dance or tell jokes or do tricks, was also early which seemed to excite the advertising men. The star had asked to meet Kent and his father as soon as they arrived, which also excited them.

The theater smelled closed up and musty as Kent and Dad were led through it to a backstage area crawling with snaky cables and bristling with darkened lights still more than an hour away from life. The found the star in a small dressing room, and he was pleased to meet them. He told the advertising men to go away, and found a couple of chairs for Dad and Kent.

"I'll walk you through all the bit myself, son," he said. "Right now, tell me about Jersey fishing. Old Poppa Heinrich promised me some from his boat, then instead he calls me and puts me back to work when I'm supposed to be playing. He told me what's up and it sounds fine. He ought to be in this business instead of me."

Kent felt easy with this man, easy with the familiarity of seeing and knowing his face from watching the show, but even easier with the man's own ease.

The star seemed smaller than he looked on TV. He was a slim, re-headed man with a crook-slanted nose and a wry, rubbery mouth and bushy, which-way eyebrows. He looked somehow older than Dad and limply tired as he relaxed in a straight-backed wooden chair.

Kent tried a shy smile. "The fishing for me has been unusual this year," he said.

"Call me Wally. Wally Kimball," said the man. "And I know it has," he chuckled as he swapped glances with Dad. "It's pretty hard to believe that albino after the thousands of blues I must have taken off that coast. I grew up down there, you know, but real south on the shore, in the Wildwoods."

"Maybe we ought to have kept that fish," said Dad.

"No," said Kent as if he hadn't meant to say anything.

Mr. Kimball smiled wearily. "Hard choice, but I think 'no' is right, and from what Heinrich told me, it's probably right all around. Let's go see where you work tonight."

He took them out upon the stage and showed them an X marked in chalk in the wings. "You'll be here," he said to Kent, "and during three of the acts. Somebody will be with you to tell you when to join me out there." He moved out to the center of the stage and showed Kent another chalk mark X. "You'll stand right on it when we talk. Don't bother about anything but me. There'll be microphones around, but you wouldn't know it. And there'll be lights, but not in your eyes. And there'll be an audience out front, but you're just talking to me, and giving me the big idea. I guarantee you'll be fine, and you won't even know where the cameras are. Mr. Heinrich will join us on stage and yell a little when he feels like it, I guess. That's it. Let's go grab a bite to eat…."

Thinking back on the whole evening later, Kent decided that that was it, and Mr. Kimball had made it so. He was a star.

They went to a nearby delicatessen to eat, and when they returned to the theater, the nervous advertising men joined Kent and Dad while Mr. Kimball, Wally Kimball, went about his business. Then they sat in a cubicle off stage and listened to people shuffle feet, and murmur, and become an audience in a theater.

There was music and lights ablaze on stage and Mr. Kimball, suddenly young and friendly and smiling at work. Kent stood in the wings and watched him and listened as singers joined him and dancers joined him as the singer left. He heard applause from the audience, cheerful and noisy. Then he heard nothing at all except Mr. Kimball mentioning the prize for the albino bluefish and his name, Kent Palmer.

"Go," said a voice at his elbow.

He walked straight for Mr. Kimball as though he were drawn to him on a string and stood on his X. Mr. Kimball put his arm around his shoulder and shook him gently.

"Tell me about the albino," he said, and such was his magic that Kent thought that he and Mr. Kimball were alone and sharing. And simply as though he'd never told anybody, Kent told about that day in the surf, and he never noticed the lights that made his Indian face look like a head on a coin, and he never heard the bubble of his own voice reach out to the audience like a horizon seen from a beach.

"And what do you think of an offering $250,00 to the person who catches the albino again?" asked Mr. Kimball.

Kent's big idea swelled out of him.

"I don't think anybody should be paid to go fishing," he said firmly. "I think that money would be better spent for a research vessel so that all of us could know more about my albino and everything that lives and swims in the sea. I think every real sportsman in the world would agree that if you are going to search for something rare and worthwhile in the ocean, a research vessel with real scientists aboard would be more useful than a rowboat or any boat full of I don't know what. And $250,000 would buy a pretty good one!"

"Wow!" wowed Wally Kimball.

A startled ripple of applause pattered from the audience, suddenly hardened, swelled and crested and burst in a wave of sound, which beat against the walls and echoed. The sound was solid, and it stayed as one minute grew into five and Wally Kimball held up his arms to halt it.

Then out of the wings, moving as deliberately as a glacier, came Mr. Heinrich. He eased through the silence and joined Mr. Kimball and Kent.

"This is the president of the brewery, our sponsor, the sponsor who offered the prize for Kent Palmer's bluefish," announced Wally Kimball making sparks dance through his voice.

Mr. Heinrich's war-drum words boomed.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he rumbled, "the young man, this young sportsman and great fisherman, is right. I hereby state that our original prize to the fisherman who catches the albino still stands. I further promise that an additional $250,00 will go for a research vessel to be donated to the Sandy Hook Marine Laboratory in New Jersey not far from where Kent took his fish. I also announce that my company will set up ten college scholarships for young men interested in studying the sciences necessary to understand our seas and inland waters so that the life within them shall flourish for all coming generations of fishermen."

Mr. Heinrich paused and savored the silence. He was, as Wally Kimball said later, a showman.

"I owe this young man my thanks for the privilege," he said. "I hope the Federal Government agrees that its new research vessel should be named the Albino Blue."

It was ten minutes before "The Big Show" was over. Kent and Dad left the Studio Theater as soon as they could after the show. "You're way ahead, kid," said Wally Kimball. "And you were just as fine as I said you'd be. We'll have a day on the water down there soon," he promised.

Kent slept most of the way home. He didn't know why exactly, but he felt as tired as if he'd played a twenty-inning ball game. He was still sleepy when John Colin stopped by to take him to the Lab in the morning.

Leo did not like "The Big Show." He said it did not grab him here, playing his skinny ribs like a harp. Dr. Vernon liked the performance very much. He almost invited Kent up to his office to read the newspaper stories about the show until he remembered that he was paying Kent a dollar an hour of government money for work. John Colin liked the show, but he was breaking in a new pipe and inclined to be impersonal about things.

The college men said that one of the girl singers on the show was splendid.

It was hot at the Lab anyhow, and the summer promised to go on and on.

Then one weekend in August, Mr. Heinrich showed up with Wally Kimball and took Dad and Kent and Leo on a fishing trip aboard his very practical, no-nonsense cruiser. And as they churned through the warm, green sea watching the outriggers and the stern lines slice through the water, a snow-white bluefish with angry, red eyes and dark-rose markings matched his swimming pace to the underside of the boat. It ignored the lures trolled behind the cruiser and huddled close to the mahogany hull. It humped its back and rubbed along the keel.

It was the albino blue trying to scratch a fish tag from its back.

It was hungry, angrier, heavier and eager to kill and eat. But for the time being it was safe, glued close to the hull of the boat, which leaned through the sea large enough to frighten off sharks and porpoises.

It was, as Dr. Todd once said, alone and smart.