Perhaps because of this, she didn’t have as strong a faith in words as most people did. Faced with this notebook, instead of writing down words, she started off with sketching the dolphins. She needed to learn how they moved normally and how to read their emotions. She used to draw the pigs in her dad’s barn as they rubbed against a barn pole, or the horses at Beach Ride Bobby’s as they plodded off to the evening beach ride with a tourist sitting on top. Drawing was how she’d learned an animal’s body and posture and typical movements. Drawing was how she learned how to read an animal’s moods and health and interactions. Sometimes while she sketched and erased, sketched and erased, trying to get the line of a rump or jowl right, a sow would amble up to the fence to watch, its nostrils blowing heat into her hair.

Underwater, she would observe one of the dolphins for a while, then wade out, dry her hands and start to sketch, using a pencil so she could erase what looked wrong and try again.

The curves took the longest time to get right. She’d drawn fish before, the ones her family were about to eat for dinner, but fish had flat bodies with surprised eyes as though they’d been squished between two books. At first her drawings of the dolphins looked like fish with dolphin beaks and tails grafted on.

So she tried again and again, sketching and erasing, trying to figure out how to show the muscled curves, the placement of fins and flippers. Her drawings got better when she began to think of them as misplaced mammals, as piglets that had wandered into the water, losing limbs and ears, growing fins and flippers and a streamlined form. An underwater pig that had traded its snout for a beak and a toddler’s playful eyes.

Once she could draw a recognizable dolphin, she sketched each of the four dolphins individually, noting down the distinguishing marks, writing their names below the sketches. Physically sketching the differences between them helped her know what to look for: the notch in Burns’ fin, Cut’s missing tooth, the scratches from old wounds on Other’s fin and the rounder unscratched Junior.

Once she was able to draw them, she started writing actual notes. She wrote down only what she was sure of and what seemed important. She described specific actions, using the fewest words she could. Unlike the men, she wrote in pencil, never assuming that what she’d written was right or couldn’t be improved later.

No matter how she dried herself off, the paper got a bit wet at the edges, like the dolphins themselves were keeping the notes.

* * *

One day while the dolphins were roughhousing, she noticed Burn had what looked like a thumb sticking out from below as it chased Cut around and around.

Oh, she thought.

She began watching the others for this same protruding thumb during the chasing. The penis emerged from the slit at the base of the belly. Evidently Burn and Junior were males, Cut and Other were females. The coupling was fast and performed stomach to stomach. Once she comprehended this action, she saw they did it many times a day. Perhaps they did it just as frequently in the wild, or maybe, in the lagoon, they were bored.