Lily and the Octopus(60)

Blip. Blip.

The echo sounder picks up something off the stern. I run back to the deckhouse and call to Lily. “He’s behind us! Headed right for you!” I see her place one paw on the harpoon gun’s trigger. The octopus is forty feet away. Thirty. Twenty. “Steady! Steady! Get ready to fire on my command!”

Lily takes careful aim.

“Remember what I told you!”

I turn back to the echo sounder. Ten feet.

Lily makes one final adjustment, nosing the harpoon gun down just a hair.

NOT! WHERE! THE! OCTOPUS! IS! WHERE! THE! OCTOPUS! IS! GOING! TO! BE!

“Fire!”

She pulls the trigger.

The harpoon catches and I pump my fist with excitement. Lily knocks the gun from the mount as the rope pulls taut and the gun rides up the side of the boat, anchoring just under the lip of the gunwale. I pull the wheel sharp, to the right this time, causing the net to drag toward the stern.

“Lily! Switch!”

Lily scampers to take the wheel as I charge to the back of the boat. I pry the gun loose, reeling in the rope attached to the harpoon. I give it one final yank as I see the net open wide and I drag the stunned octopus in.

“Raise the winch!”

Lily jumps with all her might and noses the winch switch upward. The net snatches closed as the jib starts to rise. The net emerges from the water slowly, the weight of its monstrous catch holding it down. The octopus rises from the ocean, beak first, his seven remaining arms pinned backward behind his head.

“Hello, octopus,” I say coldly. “It’s good to see you again.” And like this, helpless, hanging in his prison of woven rope, for the first time I can say this is true.

Lily trots up beside me and sits.

“Let me out of this thing!” the octopus bellows. His breathing is shallow, his arms pinioned to his body by the net. I can see they are tightly covering his gills.

“You try to kill me, we have business. You try to kill my dog, you die.”

Lily noses me in the calf as if to ask if this is really necessary. I look down at her in that way that I do when I ask for her trust—when we get in the car and we’re not going to the vet and I want her to know we’re about to have fun; when we try a new walk and she balks at the unfamiliar route; when I place her in a cool bath on the hottest of summer days, knowing this will end her discomfort. The way I did when I told her we were going on this awfully big adventure.

“You can’t kill me! You’ll never kill me!” The octopus starts to rock and the net begins to swing. The boat sways and the jib creaks and moans. Then the octopus crashes into the side of Fishful Thinking and the rope holding the net jumps off the pulley. The net plummets into the ocean and rope rapidly unspools off the crank. At the last second, Lily grabs the rope with her teeth and hunkers down with everything she’s got. She’s barely able to keep the rope from disappearing as her claws plow deeply into the deck.

“Hold on!” I sprint for the deckhouse, straighten the wheel, and give the engine full throttle. The boat lurches forward. I dive toward Lily and grab the rope. The octopus gives such a tug at the other end that it splinters painfully in my fingers. Together, Lily and I are able to maintain our tight grip as the boat gains speed, the rope sliding around to the stern. I know with his arms pinned back flush against his gills he can no longer breathe underwater, and with his beak exposed we only have to plow forward and force enough water down his throat to drown him.

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.