Lily and the Octopus (20 page)

“What do you mean?”

I grab the cleaver and crouch low to look the octopus in the eye. Lily continues to cooperate by licking the floor where the octopus bits have landed. With her head bowed, the octopus and I are
face-to-face, eye-to-eye.
Mano a mano
. I hold the cleaver an inch from his face.

“Make no mistake, octopus. You leave tonight. You leave tonight or I will rent a boat and I swear to god, I will trawl the oceans with a fucking net until I catch everyone you love.”
The octopus looks up at me like I wouldn’t dare. “And then I will come back here and I will chop them up and I will feed them to my dog and you can taste their stinking
flesh.”

To drive my point home, I stand up and firm my grip around the cleaver.

WHOMP!

“Your mother!” I toss a piece of octopus to Lily and she catches it before it hits the ground.

WHOMP!

Another piece. “Your father!” This one hits the floor with a splat and Lily is on it in seconds.

WHOMP!

“Your brother!”

“I don’t have a brother!”

I snarl.

WHOMP!

“Your sister!”

“Stop it!”

“You got a wife? I’ve got all day! How about it, Lily—do you like this game?”

YES! CHEWY! HAPPINESS! MORE! SALTY! MEAT! FOR! LILY! PLEASE!

“Okay, okay, okay! You’ve made your point.”

“You’ll leave?” I wave the cleaver ominously in front of him.

“You said I have until tonight.” The octopus remains sly to the very end.

Did I say that? I don’t remember what I said. I’ll have to find out if blinding rage—murderous rage—is a natural part of grief. Is it normal for me in this stage to want
to make my enemies suffer, or have I gone irreparably too far?

I lock eyes with the octopus and tug at my shirtsleeve.

“What?” he asks.

I roll up the sleeve to slowly reveal my tattoo. Eight octopus arms hang from my bicep, and I can feel the octopus’s eyes growing bigger. I pull up my shirt even farther, revealing
Kal’s work from the bottom up in dramatic fashion. Finally my shirtsleeve is up near my shoulder and my entire tattoo is revealed: a dachshund standing triumphantly on the head of an
octopus.

“This is good-bye, you sonofabitch.”

I flex, making sure the octopus drinks it in before striking the cleaver down on the cutting board with such force it shatters the board in two.

“
I AM THE OCTOPUS NOW!
”

I
have been preparing and packing for days, meticulously checking off items and tasks on a half dozen carefully constructed lists. Lily is still
asleep when I zip the last of our bags closed; they lie stacked in a pile by the bedroom door, dwarfing Lily and maybe even me, waiting to be carried, first to the car and then onto our waiting
ship. The supplies are daunting; there’s no telling how long we’ll be gone, how dangerous our voyage will be. Trent (despite his suggestion that I need to stop playing the
octopus’s game) has warned me that I am running from an obvious fate, and I understand his concern for us: This is a dangerous undertaking. I, on the other hand, feel like I’m in
control for the very first time since this whole ordeal began.

I drink in the sight of my sweet gosling resting peacefully in the feathered nest of our bed’s duvet. It’s almost enough to make me want to crawl back under the covers with her. It
has been two days since the octopus left. Without fanfare or goodbyes, he just fled in the night. Disappeared, just as he promised he would when I fed Lily her gruesome meal. Without our unwanted
visitor, it feels like we are in the calm eye of a storm. The waters are still and the winds have subsided and there’s great beauty in the fragile peace, despite the promise of the storm soon
to rage again.

Asleep like this, whiskered cheeks puffing with each gentle breath, Lily reminds me of her puppy self. The puppy who dreamed of badgers and beaches, of warm laps and wrestling and sunshine and
hunting. I don’t know if I’ve scared the octopus into permanent retreat, or where he has even gone. It almost doesn’t matter.

Almost
.

Neither Lily nor I can sit idly by hoping he doesn’t return, perhaps this time with reinforcements. There’s only one option that lies ahead for us. I place one hand on Lily’s
chest and, startled, she jerks awake. “Shhhhh. Shhhhh. Shhhhh,” I say.

She looks up at me and yawns, her jaw squeaking like a hinge and her legs stretching horizontally for ground that isn’t there. It takes her a moment to notice the stack of weathered
oilcloth duffel bags creating a mountainous sculpture in the corner. With the octopus gone, she can once again see.

“What in the world?” Lily asks. I remember again her climbing into my suitcase as a puppy when I would haul it out of the closet to pack for a trip. A pile of bags such as this one
must be confusing. Which one should she jump into?

“Those are our supplies.”

“Those are our supplies for
what
?” She slowly sits upright on the mattress and shakes the sleep out of her head, ears flapping madly like wings.

“For our adventure.” I scratch her on top of her head where the octopus used to sit. My touch is gentle, in case it’s sore. It’s good to feel her soft fur there again.
“Remember? I told you. We’re going on an awfully big adventure.”

Lily turns and licks herself in an awkward place before asking, “Yes, but an awfully big adventure
where
?”

I look her square in the eyes. I want to protect her, at the very least not to startle her. But there’s no benefit in soft-pedaling if she is to be my cocaptain on this voyage.
“We’re going on an octopus hunt.”

It’s still dark when Lily drags the last duffel bag down the few steps from the house to the curb with her teeth. I load them carefully into the car. Inside are clothes for me, to protect
against the elements (including a cabled sweater I wear during Christmases back east because it makes me look like a fisherman); blankets for Lily, as well as a lifejacket, like Weezie’s,
sized just for her; canned goods and kibble; rawhide chews; a few books on sailing and the sea including works by Hemingway, Melville, and several by Patrick O’Brian; fishing nets and a
harpoon; a compass; jugs of drinking water; matches; a deck of cards; Lily’s red ball; three bottles of Glenlivet, aged eighteen years; and a harmonica—which I don’t know how to
play. The car full, we say good-bye to the house. It’s hard; I didn’t really think about this part in formulating my plan. Neither of us can say with certainty when (or if ) we’ll
see our home again.

We drive the thirty or so miles to Long Beach. Despite the early hour the route is surprisingly populated with cars, but not enough to cause a delay. The drive is mostly silent, except for quiet
wet sounds as Lily continues to lick herself. I wonder if in the course of this whole ordeal I’ve forgotten to give her her flea medicine. Nothing I can do about it now. On the plus side,
there probably aren’t many fleas at sea. The sun is just cracking the skyline when we reach the marina and I pull into the only available spot and stop the car. It sits underneath a sign that
says No Overnight Parking and I can only imagine the stack of tickets that will greet us if we ever return.

Through some tough negotiating via telephone over the past two days, I’ve secured us the use of a trawler named
Fishful Thinking
. She presents herself at the end of the docks just
as the morning fog is lifting, and I get my first real glimpse of her. The boat is not fancy and needs a fresh coat of paint, but she’s sturdy, romantic even in her slight weariness, and she
has logged time at sea.
Fishful Thinking
has a forward deckhouse, two masts—main and secondary—an aft working deck, and outriggers on either side that extend beyond the gunwales.
Our lease is open-ended.

“Are you Ted?” The man who owns her is salty and gray; he wears a sweater like the one I’ve packed, but his is full of holes. Instead of a pipe, he smokes (or
vapes
, I
guess) an e-cigarette, which surprises me, and I find the whole thing distasteful and inauthentic. I don’t know why his poor lung health would be essential for a successful launch, but
somehow in my head it is.

“I am. And this is she?” I ask, tapping my hand on the roof of the deckhouse.

“This be her.” He helps me load our supplies belowdecks as Lily mostly sits back on the wharf and watches. She shifts her feet when the dock rocks underfoot as we carry the heavy
bags. I let her sit and enjoy a quiet moment getting used to her surroundings. She will need to gain four sea legs, while I will only need two.

“Sure aren’t packing light,” the man says, his voice full of gravel and booze.

“No, sir. We aim to be prepared.”

“What are you preparing for?”

I think about this. I’ve never been on an octopus hunt before, and since it’s impossible to foresee all the potential dangers ahead, I choose my reply carefully. “For
anything.”

“There’s only one of you, and the little one can’t require much.” He nods at Lily.

“We may be gone some time.” The truth.

“Where you headed? Can I get that much out of you?”

I throw down a heavy duffel and it kicks up dust and we both cough. The man inhales deeply on his cigarette and his vapor cloud mixes with the dust before the air settles and I answer,
“Out where the octopuses live.”

The man looks startled and nearly drops the bag he’s carrying, but he catches it at the last second and sets it down. I can hear the clink of glass bottles; it must be the bag with the
scotch. His face takes on an apprehensive expression and he stands and twists, cracking the bones in his spine, his old sweater hanging loose and tattered off his frame. “The waters neither
close to the bottom, nor near to the top, nor within reach of any shore.”

“The pelagic zone.” I’ve done my reading. “That’s where our destiny lies.”

The man nods. “What the Greeks would call the open sea.”

I don’t give a damn about the Greeks, but I smile anyway. I only care about one thing. “Will
Fishful Thinking
make it?”

The man takes another drag on his blue-tipped cigarette and sizes me up and down. He blows vapor into our tight quarters, our shared breathing space. “It’s not the boat I’m
worried about.”

I look past the man just in time to see Lily appear on the steps that lead below the deck to where we are. She sits quietly and listens. I wonder if she overheard his concern.

“You don’t need to worry about us,” I say. “We’re adventurers, she and I. This is nothing new. We may not look like much, but we are stout of heart. And we have a
mission. The open seas don’t frighten us.” At least not as much as doing nothing, sitting home and waiting for the octopus, or worse, to return. I suppose we had a deal, a truce of
sorts, but I’m confident he won’t keep his end of the bargain, so why should I keep mine?

“The sea is full of things not seen, things that don’t care how stout you’ve been.” There’s menace in the rhyme.

“It’s exactly one of those things we are seeking.” And oh, what I’ll do to him when I find him.

The boat rocks gently in the harbor. Not far away, angry gulls are fighting over a scrap of food.

“Suit yourself,” the man says. He can see that there’s no changing our minds.

“We’ll have her back safe,” I say, rapping the walls of the boat with my knuckles. Made of solid bones, she echoes a sturdy reply.

The man takes another puff of vapor. “Either way. I have your deposit,” he says, and cackles a smoker’s laugh, full of phlegm and wheeze. He turns and heads for the deck before
stopping. “How many tickles does it take to make an octopus laugh?”

Is he serious? In my experience, octopuses are foul creatures incapable of the lightness of laughter. Not knowing what else to say, I answer, “Does it matter?”

“Ten—tickles.” The man guffaws until he almost chokes. He bends forward, almost in half, and braces himself on the rail. I tense up, worried I may have to perform CPR—I
don’t want to put my mouth anywhere near that old goat. Slowly, he gets himself under control and waves us off. “That’s an old joke.”

On his way up the stairs he pats Lily on the head, and repeats himself to her. “An old joke, that one.”

The whole time Lily doesn’t break wary eye contact with me.

When the man is gone, I do my best to deflect her concern. “Don’t worry,” I tell her. “I remembered to pack red ball.”

She looks at me like I’d better have.

N
o matter which direction you look from our perch inside the deckhouse, there’s nothing to see but sea. There’s blue and there’s
gray and there’s green, plus every combination those colors can make, and it’s hard to spot the horizon. I can no longer tell what is water and what is the great expanse of cloudy sky.
We’re seventeen days into our journey and I wonder if we’re still alive. The pelagic zone is unyielding.

Lily and I were game at first, keen for the adventure that lay ahead. But around day eight we succumbed to the lethargic nature of life at sea, to the monotony of it all. The deckhouse was
closing in on us and could, in the extended days, roast as hot as an oven, the air fouled by our own perspiration and cooking flesh. (The one thing I forgot to pack was sunscreen, and we burned for
days until we tanned.) Everything on the boat seemed coated with grime and salt. We took turns with the chores—scrubbing the deck, cleaning up after meals, steering, keeping watch for the
octopus. I did most of the food preparation, mostly because Lily has no ability to stop herself from eating whatever rations she can get her paws on before it’s even cooked. At night we
traded the watch, sleeping in shifts so we always had two eyes on the water. That lasted three nights before exhaustion settled in and we curled up together, she in the nook behind my knees, the
way we would always sleep at home. It was comforting for us both. I kept a logbook of our progress, detailed accounts of the days and how the time ticked by. At least I did at the outset of our
journey. The last entry reads simply:
Daylight. Head W by S, distance 65 nautical miles. Winds light.