If we can just hold on.
The more the octopus fights, the more we dig in our heels. I don’t care if I lose all my fingers to splinters. I brace my feet against the bulwark as Fishful Thinking rams full speed ahead. I can feel the octopus flailing.
“If we can just grasp on for ten more seconds!” Lily nods and bites down harder.
I count backward from ten.
“Ten. Nine. Eight.”
I loop the rope tightly around my left hand and pull.
“Seven. Six. Five.”
There is a great final tug from beneath the surface of the water and I can hear one of my fingers break with a deafening snap.
I scream in agony.
Lily steels herself and takes up my count, gargled, though, with her mouth full of rope.
FOUR! THREE! TWO!
I look over at Lily and we lock eyes. Together we say, “ONE!”
It’s only after the count hits zero and I keep a stranglehold on the rope for even another good thirty seconds that I realize the octopus stopped fighting when our count reached three.
I look to Lily. “It’s done.” My shoulders droop with relief and I loosen my grip on the rope. “He won’t bother us again.”
Lily lets go with her teeth and tackles me back onto the deck. She climbs my torso and stands with her feet on either side of my sternum and starts madly licking my face. It may take ten tickles to make an octopus laugh, but it only takes a few licks from a dog to get me going. We shower each other with kisses, laughing until we can’t breathe.
Happiness.
When we regain our composure, I look down at my broken finger and the rope still clutched in my hand.
Solemnly we reattach the rope to the winch and I set my broken finger with some electrical tape. I turn Fishful Thinking again so that for the first time in weeks we are heading toward home, in the direction the sun rises. In the direction of new beginnings. Lily and I take our berths in the deckhouse, silently looking east, toward California, as we tow the dead octopus in our wake.
Infinity (
∞
)
8 A.M.
The night is restless and it’s hours before we fall asleep, and when we finally do I wake again with a start to find the bed completely soiled and Lily’s breathing labored, and I know almost immediately that this is our last day. I look down at Lily and the octopus is back and he looks even bigger than I remember and his stranglehold seems more menacing than ever, poised to asphyxiate us both. The room spins, or my head spins; something is spinning in a way that makes everything unclear. Nowhere in the room do I see bags in any state of unpacking, nowhere on my face do I feel the scraggle of a beard, nowhere on my skin do I see color or evidence of weeks spent under the harsh sun aboard Fishful Thinking, nowhere on my hands do I bear the calluses and scars and broken bones of a hard-fought battle at sea. It’s so real to me, so rich in detail—my heart is still soaring from the triumph of our victory over the octopus, the violence of his death, the quiet sweetness of our journey home, the two of us in command of a vessel on the open waters of the Pacific. And yet, there is the octopus.
My stomach drops at the sharp vicissitude of our fortunes. I feel like I’m going to be sick, but I can’t remember the last thing I ate, or what food is, or what hunger is, or what is real and what is not. I don’t know if dogs can cocaptain fishing trawlers, or shoot harpoon guns, or if octopuses can shape-shift into men and back again. I don’t know if we’re alive or dead, or why the heaven of our complete thrashing of the octopus has turned into the fresh hell of our defeat, of having him back in our bed. I realize I just don’t know anything anymore, and that’s when the octopus says, “Good morning.”
“Please go away, please go away, please go away,” I plead. It’s the first time I’ve thrown myself on the mercy of the octopus. Maybe I can appeal to something inside of him, some sense of justice or fairness. Convince him of Lily’s sweetness, her innocence, convince him he has the wrong dog. But the octopus just cackles.
“WHY! WOULD! I! GO! I! HAVE! EVERYTHING! I! NEED! RIGHT! HERE!”
That’s when I know he has absorbed Lily entirely. That the body drawing shallow breath beside me is only the shell of my beloved dog. That in almost all respects, she is already gone.
I scoop up Lily and hold her in my arms. She doesn’t even have the strength to lift her head. After a few whispered I love yous, I place her on the floor in the hopes that she can stand and summon the strength to fight again. Her legs buckle and she tips straight onto her side with a thump, staring off into the near distance of the corner.
She begins to pant.
The decision is already made. I won’t give the octopus any more of the satisfaction of my begging.
9 A.M.
A third of the way through my file cabinet drawer, under D for dog, I find the file I keep that has
