Lily and the Octopus(55)
I know the octopus is out there. I move to the ship’s edge and grab the boat by the stern. “You hear me? I know you’re out there!” I yell. My voice is swallowed by the murky night; the only echo is in my head.
I check the data one more time before turning off the sounder. Nothing. Instead, I find a pen and some paper in the deckhouse and scrawl my ominous warning. I KNOW YOU’RE OUT THERE. I cram the message into the empty scotch bottle and screw the lid back on tightly. With all my might I hurl it into the darkness.
I do not hear it land.
The Squall
Three days later when the storm begins, it comes without mercy or warning or forgiveness. I have just enough time to secure Lily’s harness over her life jacket and anchor her to Fishful Thinking’s wheel before we take the brunt of it. It is a fight to keep the bow of the boat heading into the gale. Lily vomits twice outside the deckhouse and asks for chicken and rice. I barely have time to explain how impossible a request that is while I scramble to weigh down our charts and maps and do my best to secure the trawls. The sky blackens so completely I forget that it isn’t night; the falling rain hits like ice picks, every drop a skin-piercing sting. The boat takes on water until the engine sputters and quits. The waves crash hard over the sides of the boat, and Lily fights to keep her nose above the sudden onboard surf. I try bailing with a tackle bucket, but all of my efforts seem futile. The storm is going to rage.
There’s nothing to do except pitch into the surf; at least with my hands free of the wheel I can focus my attention on bailing and keeping Lily afloat. In the back of my mind I think we might capsize, yet I have no choice but to banish those thoughts. Survival dictates absolute focus.
Lily shivers on her tether, and I crawl to lift her out of the water and onto a low shelf in the deckhouse. I don’t want to put her atop her usual perch on the stool; the center of gravity is too high and I worry about her falling.
“Stay here!” She can barely hear me over the wind.
She nods her understanding and I return to bailing.
As if on cue the hail begins, hitting the deck with rhythmic applause. I thought nothing would hurt like the driving rain, but I was wrong—I can actually feel my body bruising. A forty-knot wind gust drives the hail and the rain every which way and visibility drops to nothing. I scramble for the cover of the deckhouse to be by Lily’s side.
I! DO! NOT! LIKE! THIS! STORM! I’M! SCARED!
I huddle close to her for warmth. The wind shrieks across Fishful Thinking’s deck like a coven of angry witches. The gusts actually seem to flatten the seas, and the rocking calms just enough to keep me from vomiting, too. The water washing aboard over the sides seems to slow, and we drift, taking the wind and the seas a few degrees abaft the bow.
“I don’t like being wet.” Lily shakes as best she can in my grip and a wriggle moves through her whole body like a wave until it has been released from the very tip of her tail.
“I know you don’t.” I tell her a story to calm her. “When you were a puppy you wouldn’t even go out in the rain at all. I bought you a little raincoat and everything, but you would have none of it. One night it rained very hard, and I was determined to get you to pee. I didn’t want to crawl into a warm, dry bed only to have to take you outside again in the middle of the rainy night. You were being stubborn in not peeing, and I was being stubborn in not going back inside until you did, and we were each trying to outstubborn the other.”
“How did we resolve that?”
“I found a small overhang with some dry gravel underneath and eventually you relented.” I remember the satisfaction of victory, and how short-lived it would be in our relationship. “It was the first and last time you ever really gave in to me.”
Lily seems to enjoy the story, and for a brief moment as we focus on each other the storm melts away. But it is in this sudden calm that I fear the octopus may strike, and once again I am shivering and clambering for direction. I spent so long thinking of the octopus as my only enemy, I hadn’t dreamed of him double-teaming me with as mighty a foe as the sea. I realize how foolish it all sounds, how na?ve, underestimating the ocean. This could be the end of us both.
Then Lily points with her nose off the bow where a shadow emerges from the darkness and fog.
LOOK! LOOK! LOOK!
The shadow becomes a shape and the shape becomes a ship and hope washes over me in a way I would have thought impossible just minutes before. Is it possible we are not alone out here after all? I sound Fishful Thinking’s horn to announce our presence. Foremost in my mind is avoiding a collision. I sound the horn again, and again every ten seconds until we’re answered by the quiet bellowing of the other ship, which is closer than the horn’s blast would suggest, most of her yell swallowed by the wind.
The other ship is a deep-sea yacht, and by the way it approaches, steadily and with purpose, it seems it still has the use of both its engines. I step out of the deckhouse and wave my arms furiously, signaling our inability to steer. The yacht approaches slowly, skillfully, eventually pulling up beside us before she cuts her engines.
After a beat, a man appears holding a coil of rope.
“Ahoy!” he yells.
“Ahoy there!” I reply. Water belches between us, wetting me with spray, but I don’t care—I’m just so overwhelmed and relieved that out of nowhere help has arrived.