But Tibbet must have nicked the meninges, for the fabric began to sag at the base, then simply to rip, the contents dribbling out. Within a moment, no matter how he grasped and hugged the organ, he ended up holding just the wet and empty bag.

Not that it really mattered.

For from the moment he cupped the weight of that brain—easily twice as much as a human’s—he knew his life’s direction had been changed.

THREE
May 1965

On St. Thomas, Cora got a position at the Cantab, a bar on a dock in the harbor. When the boats landed, the Cantab was the first place the tourists saw. It was always crowded.

There was a Help Wanted sign in the window, so she’d stepped inside to ask about it. When she said she had experience, the manager hired her.

Dishwasher?—she asked, hoping for a job with minimal conversation.

He blew air out of his mouth, amused. He looked her over and said—Waitress.

It was a noisy restaurant, the clatter of silverware and plates, the blender in the kitchen and the background chatter. With the customers sitting down, facing their menus, it was hard to see their tongues. Even with her hearing glasses, she frequently had to ask people to repeat.

The men would smile and lean toward her, wanting a reason to get closer. Staring at their mouths, she’d try to figure out if they were saying Some fries or Beers, guys? They liked her looking. On the other hand, when she asked the women to repeat, their eyes got hard and they tightened their mouths, making it harder to see what they were saying.

(Most of us understand so little about sound. Having always had good hearing, we take it for granted, never analyzing it.

So much of what we experience as sound is not the original sound, but its reflection off nearby objects.

Say the word Hello in a large auditorium with hard surfaces. The word ricochets around, tiny and lost.

Now say Hello at the same volume in a living room full of furniture. It bounces once off the walls and is caught in the soft cushions. The sound is clear and solid.

Finally say Hello on a lake, in the fog. The word flies away and is gone without a ripple.

As a child, her favorite place was the pig barn, the hay and the dirt floor, the wood walls and the backs of the pigs. Sound reflected just enough. Her second favorite place was the mudroom at home, a contained area with raincoats, shoes, bags of laundry and a carpet. The sound gentle and warm. If she wanted to talk to anyone in her family, if it was going to be a conversation longer than a sentence or two, she would time for this moment as they stood in this room, pulling on or off their shoes.)

The restaurant had three distinct sections.

• The main seating area was long and narrow, with a wood floor and old rafters. It functioned as an echo chamber that two or three tables of customers could fill, every sound multiplied. A single laugh barked back and forth, harsh, hurting the ears.