On day six we saw lightning, and the swell rose with an advancing storm. We rode out the worst of it belowdecks playing Crazy Eights, but the game reminded me too much of the octopus and I quickly soured on it. I let Lily win two hands, and while shuffling the discard pile a second time I suggested we play War.
On day nine I took to carving some driftwood we picked out of the sea. I’d read in one of the books on sailing that whalers used to carve ivory and bone (and sometimes coconuts and tortoise shells) in an art they called scrimshaw. My knife would never have carved ivory or bone, and I don’t know if I’d call what I did art, but I managed a pretty good likeness of a dachshund out of the driftwood. I told Lily it was her mother, Witchie-Poo, who would look out for us and keep us safe.
“My mother’s name is Witchie-Poo?” she asked.
“Yes,” I replied. “You know that.”
Before two weeks were even out I was unrecognizable as my former self. I was desperate for a shower. My beard had grown out rough and scraggly, filled with salt, both in color and from the ocean air. My skin had burned and peeled and leathered. I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the deckhouse window and thought I was someone else. I don’t think Lily would have recognized me, either, were she not here to witness my slow mutation.
“Your coat is mahogany,” Lily told me. “Like mine.” We both now have gray hairs under our chins.
On day fifteen I swallowed my fear and jumped off the bow and into the ocean. The water was shocking, then invigorating. I thought of the monsters below, of the octopus attaching itself to my leg and pulling me down to great depths, of my head exploding from the density of water, of drowning. But only for the briefest of moments. I felt too alive to die. It took a great deal of encouraging, but at sunset I talked Lily into a swim. I held her tight with two hands and close to my body, using my legs to kick and keep us afloat, and she paddled with her paws but mostly out of panic.
“I’ve got you, Monkey. And I’m never letting go.”
Together we drifted, looking at the orange sky, clouds tinged with lava from an unseen volcano. I put my head back in the water, submerging my ears, and for the first time in days everything fell quiet. I kept one eye on Fishful Thinking so we wouldn’t drift too far, but I let all of our other cares wash away. It felt like a baptism of sorts. Once we had been submerged in the ocean, we were protected by it. We were now pure.
It’s now day seventeen. We’ve stopped putting tuna fish on bread or a plate and just eat it out of the can. It’s easier that way, and there’s less to clean up. I glance at Lily, who finishes her can first. She gazes stoically ahead. The light accentuates the gray on her neck and around her whiskers, and the little bit between her eyes. She is no longer young; she is no longer my girl.
“I think it’s funny you packed canned tuna for an adventure at sea,” she says, with only a modicum of judgment.
I look around at the nets and the trawlers and all the gear that decorates Fishful Thinking. “Funny ha-ha? Or funny strange?”
She doesn’t answer. I finish my meal and I gather the empty tins. We’ll run out of canned tuna eventually and have to fish for our meals from the sea. But I don’t tell her this. There’s no need to play on her fears.
“How will we know when we find the octopus?” she asks again, studying the ever-changing ripples surrounding the hull.
I have only the answer I have given her each time she has asked this question before. I scratch her under the chin and the tags on her collar shake. “We’ll know.”
For the past two and a half weeks, despite the boredom, despite the monotony, I have thought of little else but the octopus. He will not allow us this deep into his waters and resist the urge to announce himself. He’ll take our presence in his home as a personal affront, much the way I resented his presence in ours.
At night, when I have trouble sleeping, I steel myself for a great battle at sea. I picture this monster wrapping his muscular arms around our vessel, trying to pierce the hull with his beak while Lily and I try desperately to outmaneuver, fight back, and harpoon. It’s nothing I haven’t dreamed of doing to him in other ways. With surgery and radiation and pills. It’s two to one, this fight, but I’m still not sure we’re evenly matched. He has the advantage of the sea.
“And why are we hunting him again?” Lily asks.
I check the ship’s compass and correct our course five degrees southwest. “It’s the best chance we have of staying together.”
Lily stands, turns around three times, then sits again. She does this when she’s bored.
“Do you want to sing a song?” I ask.
“Not really,” she replies.
“I could try my hand at the harmonica again.”
Lily cringes, but remains polite. “No, thank you.”
“We’ll find him,” I assure her. “It’s just that the ocean is so vast.”
“So is Los Angeles.” To a dachshund, that probably seems equivalent.
“Not this vast.”