The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  These gropings for reasons and for hope where there were neither partially succeeded in keeping my spirits afloat during fifteen or eighteen lonely months that followed. However, eventually, the novelty of this life was to wear off and my propaganda was to lose its charm. When that time came, all that remained for this octopus was to commit suicide.

  CHAPTER VII

  A Blade Between My Eyes

  Long before my decision to commit the first octopus suicide on record, I constructed certain fanciful symbols that any psychologist would interpret as an expression of my intense desire to return to the ways of man and his civilization.

  Exhibit A will serve as a sample of the symbolical activities: I built a model city of sand and rock.

  No octopus could have gone to more pains than I—and of course I had no help from any other octopus. The others of my breed were out hunting. Night was our hunting time. But we were not a social breed, and we avoided each other’s company. I had seen to it that no others of my kind drifted into Sutter’s Lake. This place was mine. And so I whiled away two or three weeks building a city of rocks and sand.

  It looked like a city.

  To lie at a distance with my head leaning close to the surface of the beach, to see the moon rising behind it, I had all the feeling of seeing the skyline of a far-off city.

  Even to a few lighted windows in the tall buildings—for I had built in a few hollow reeds that would let the little shafts of moonlight shine through.

  Three events must be recorded from those first eighteen months following my conversion into the form of an octopus.

  The first of these was another volcanic eruption which came without warning in the middle of a pitch-black night. The shock of the explosion intruded upon such heavy sleep that I went through the whole violent storm without waking.

  It happened that a state of exhaustion was upon me from a long day of practice swimming. (I had determined that an octopus could learn to use its eight arms in rhythmic swimming strokes, though by and large we beasts were content to flounder along, depending upon our funnels for locomotion.)

  The disturbing noises and the violent shaking of the earth and splashing of water around my arms failed to shake me into consciousness; but I dreamed that the volcano was erupting and that it would bring me death this time unless I ran; and so I ran. Yes, in this dream-turned-nightmare I sprang up with a push from my two hands and raced across the beach on my two feet, and finally stumbled and fell over my city of sand and rocks.

  And there I lay until my dream carried me on into the black oblivion of sleep.

  When I awoke the following forenoon, I paddled along the shoreline with my tentacles, and suddenly I began to make discoveries. That volcanic eruption had been no dream: there were new folds of lava and new heaps of rock all about me. The sign “Sutter’s Lake” now had a new meaning. The bay had been closed off from, the ocean. The two arms of the horseshoe had joined to form a complete lake within my island.

  Further discoveries came hourly and daily for some time after this small but eventful eruption. I found that my old cave, whose opening had been almost obscured by the earlier volcanic action, had now been reopened. Part of its floor level had sunk beneath the water. This was a welcome change, in consideration of my preference for water.

  It was now an octopus’ paradise, and a perfect trap for my favorite foods.

  The stacks of time-bombs in my cave, incidentally, had never been disturbed by any of these shocks; but they no longer bore any more interest for me than if they had been so much riprap. An octopus could have no use for time-bombs.

  Further exploring at the oceanward end of the lake revealed that there were still open passages beneath the newly formed bridge of stone, which led out to the great waters beyond. They were passages beneath the water level, and right away my bumptious old friend and rival, the sixteen-foot alligator-mouthed fish with the green pennant fins, began to make use of these passages.

  Was he surprised that morning when I, an octopus, tossed him a couple of hardtack biscuits from my cave! He eyed me with a curiosity and a respect, the like of which I hadn’t seen since my change.

  But of all the discoveries following upon the heels of this volcanic action, the most disturbing and mystifying was that of some human foot tracks.

  I found these barefoot tracks on the beach, cutting a line straight from my habitual octopus sleeping-quarters in the shore rocks, across the sand to my little model city. There they showed unmistakable signs of having stumbled. There were prints of elbows and a hand where the human form had fallen.

  From there on, back toward the water’s edge, over hard-packed sand, there were hints of further tracks that were too dim to convey any definite impressions.

  I searched the shoreline as rapidly as my eight-armed body would get around, thinking that I might catch evidence of a human visitor.

  I found no such evidence. And all the while I kept pondering on the strange nightmare in which my own action fit the tracks so perfectly . . .

  Some months later came the second of the most impressive three events during my first year and a half as an octopus.

  On a hot summer day came three small boats of Japanese fishermen. The boat made a startling catch just off my shore. It almost capsized as the fishermen struggled to land their net-load. Finally they gave up and dragged it after them all the way to my beach, where they pulled it up on the shore—all to the tune of much excited jabbering.

  From their gestures I guessed that they were content to idle a few hours here on the island while they waited for the wind to change.

  They knew their way to the three houses; some of them rested there, while a few others ventured up the mountain for a look at the crater.

  Meanwhile no moss grew on my arms. I crept along through the water just beneath the surface, and when I approached the well loaded net, which was flopping around helplessly, sure enough it was my old friend, the alligator gar.

  I hadn’t brought my chef’s butcher knife along for nothing. It was a rather long chance, my crawling up over the dry sand to the saplings where the net had been tied. It wasn’t easy, either, and I knew how a fish out of water must feel.

  Mr. Monster Fish looked very much terrified, and sad, too, with his flat alligator nose smeared with sand and one of his green fins knotted up in the net.

  I went to work at once. He recognized me, all right, and it was a good thing, for a little non-cooperation on his part could have queered the rescue. Once or twice he injudiciously eyed my left arm with what was distinctly a hungry look. But he controlled himself. In a matter of three or four minutes I had him out.

  He needed no further hint, once he was freed. He flopped straight for the water with no more lost motions than a ship slides down after a kiss of champagne and glass. But once he struck the safety of the deep, he waited, to my great joy, and with that fine spirit of appreciation that some poets attribute more freely to animals than to men, he allowed me to mount his back and gave me a free ride to my cave.

  This was the clinching of a friendship that was to mean much to a sentimental octopus like the erstwhile Walter Sutter.

  The excited noise of the Jap fishermen when they had first landed this big fellow was a mouse’s whisper compared to the tumult they set up when they found that he had been cut away. They turned savage on the spot and went on the warpath and searched the island for trouble.

  One of them was a bit too adventurous and found his way down the rocky lake-shore to a point within twenty yards of my cave. He might have gone on and found the cave, but I reached up out of the water and grabbed him by the ankle and jerked him in. He gave such a wild squeal that the little snails avoided that corner of the lake for days afterward. I let him go, and he scrambled for shore in a panic. I sat in the water and laughed up my eight sleeves until the three boatloads of them pushed off for home.

  The third event, about six months later, was accompanied by quite a different mood. This was the cumulative crisis of
my octopus life, the mounting despondency, the invisible winds that were causing me to drift toward suicide.

  When the mood seized me this time I knew there was no hope.

  I tossed enough biscuits to the alligator gar to guarantee that he wouldn’t come back for three or four days. I placed some more in a pocket in the rocks just above the water line that he might find later.

  Then I crept to my cave. One of my tentacles closed over the chef’s butcher-knife.

  I moved along through the water. Fish darted out of my path, and shells crowded into the watery crannies of colored stone to escape my eyes. Then they peeked at me, surprised that I didn’t seize them to make my morning feast.

  “What’s the matter with that mean old devilfish?” they seemed to be saying. “He must have an awful grouch on.”

  I moved along the W-shaped coves and came up to the surface. The knife had rusted. I went to work to sharpen it on a fine sandstone rock.

  The moonlight came, and it was beautiful, with thin clouds skimming over, making fleecy pictures of fantastic forms. This night I would have to watch through, as a last full draught of beauty.

  When dawn came, I glanced into the glassy water, and saw myself, ugly form that I was. The horror of such a creature as I, thinking in terms of beauty and loneliness and lost hope, was bitter irony. I would dispatch myself.

  In the clear reflection I could guess the exact point between my eyes where the sensitive little round bundle of nerves could be struck to put the coiling and twisting of my whole body to a sudden end.

  I fastened the knife with the greatest of care. A niche in the rocks only a few inches above the level of the floor of dry sand seemed the most accommodating spot.

  Once it was made secure I found that the level was too low for convenience. My locomotion above the surface was very clumsy and painful. There were my old human traits again, making for inefficiency. I should have found a niche under water in the first place.

  However, this trifling annoyance led me to wonder whether I was not trying to back out of my decision. It is well known that most persons who find pleasure in planning some desperate action will find the best of excuses for postponing and finally avoiding it when the time for a showdown comes.

  I told myself that I was determined. I had thought out all the logical consequences of a long, bitter lifetime of dwelling in this octopus body. I could foresee that never again would there be any interest in life for me.

  By turning my head so that the line between my eyes was vertical instead of horizontal, I found that I could fit the key nerves precisely to the point of the knife.

  Holding my head sidewise, then, I moved back a little distance from the blade, and tried to make what might loosely be called a run for it.

  This combination of arms, or more properly legs, was not as practiced as my “under” ones. I found it necessary to make several “runs” toward the blade as trials, to be sure I could approach it with enough speed to effect my death when I struck.

  At best I would be constrained to hurl my weight forward and continue the thrust from the tips of my tentacles to make sure the point penetrated.

  Like an athlete snatching a brief rest before the final contest, I paused for a few moments, now that I had put myself through the final paces. I allowed my sac-like body to drop into relaxation against the warm, gritty sand.

  My head, still on its side, lopped downward. I allowed my eyes to relax in a long, last gaze at the steamy mirror of ocean. What a long horizon the ocean offers, when one turns his head on the side and sees it as an endless vertical line. It disappears above your eyes, so to speak; it likewise goes out of sight before your eyes. A long, straight, unbroken line—

  Unbroken it was—not quite. At this particular moment it chanced to be sliced through by the dark hull of a ship. The prow was cutting this way.

  Instantly I forgot the knife and all the plans that went with it. I splashed into the water and began propelling myself down to the hidden mouth of the lake with all possible speed.

  CHAPTER VIII

  Iron Man Kunfz

  When the snorting, chugging motor-boat pulled away from the ship’s rope ladder and made for my beach loaded down with leather-lunged men, I was right with them. Of course, I wasn’t a conspicuous member of the party. They were in the boat; I was clinging to the underside of it.

  As an octopus I wouldn’t have been welcome, even as a stowaway among these robust, bronzed, bewhiskered sailors. The reason being that I couldn’t understand German well enough to get along.

  This gang was a Hitler outfit to the core. I knew it within five minutes.

  By the time I made my second submotorboat trip (there were eight trips in all, each unloading eight or ten men on my shore) I had picked up more news—partly in German, partly English—than had ever entered my dreams of the past two years.

  The war was past and gone!

  That, above all else, changed my whole misty outlook upon the old world that I had departed.

  The war was over, the Allies had won! The news very nearly made me leap into the air and wave my tentacles on high. And yet here was a band of seventy or eighty Hitlerite Germans prowling the sea in a modern merchant steamer. What did it mean?

  As soon as I could gather my wits I realized that I’d better get on the job and safeguard my island treasures. This gang would be no respecter of one’s properties.

  The mouth of my cave, fortunately, would not be seen unless these men decided to have a swim in my lake. The old stone path down from my Camel Point observation post had been broken up by spills of stone and lava. From the water, however, the cave was accessible, though quite well hidden.

  I paddled through one of the watery tunnels that led from the ocean into my lake. I crept along in the shadows of the bank until I arrived, unseen, at my cave entrance.

  I could hear the voices from only twenty-five feet above me. Already some of the invaders were planting themselves on Camel Point.

  From their talk, and from what I could see, peering out from my dark alcove of rock, I could keep abreast of the activities of the landing party.

  Looking back of me I could see numerous shadowy objects that they should never be allowed to see.

  There were the metal boxes of food concentrates, stacks of them. There were my riches of dry wood for cooking, scarcely touched since the day I changed to an octopus.

  There were very few tools and weapon s—the chef’s butcher-knife, some spoon-shaped shells and some bits of wire, an old spade.

  Finally, there were long rows of time-bombs. The last of them from the cache in the Japanese hut had long since been removed to these cavernous quarters.

  These things I meant to keep out of the hands of my uninvited visitors. In spite of their apparent uselessness to me, I felt a jealous pride in possessing them. Moreover, I meant to let these invaders come and go without knowing anything about me.

  But there were a few signs sticking around here and there that immediately aroused some curiosity.

  “Sutter’s Lake,” a gutteral voice from Camel Point sounded down to me. “Vot’s der meaning?”

  “English name,” someone answered. “Der Americans must have flew in here.”

  “Must haf flew out again.”

  When the motorboat brought another load, there were more voices above me, and again that question, “Who vas Sutter?”

  One fellow named Ernest was called in on the discussion because he knew all about the Pacific end of the war. He was stumped. In all his books of names of generals he didn’t have anyone that he could blame for the name of the island.

  His surprisingly accurate conclusion was that this uncharted island had been overlooked by the Allies and must have been named by someone who floated in on a rubber raft.

  “Wait till Captain Kuntz comes ashore,” said Ernest. “He’ll haf some ideas.”

  “And if General Sutter iss here?”

  “The captain will make paper dolls out of his hide.”
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  The party went down the beach about half a mile to make camp. They had found one of the island’s best springs, and they kept the little motorboat busy plying back and forth with steel barrels of water for their ship’s supply.

  I waited until dark before I went to work, for fear I’d roil the waters of my lake with mud. When all was safe I got my spade and moved a ton or so of clay. By morning every trace of my cave civilization was pasted over with layers of clay. Moreover, the perilous approaches around the hidden entrance were turned into vertical clay banks to make my sanctum virtually inaccessible.

  That morning I had the pleasure of seeing the chief pirateer of this Nazi pirate band, Captain Adolf Kuntz. Believe me, it was no pleasure, but agony.

  Although most of his crew were rugged and unkempt, and some of them naked to the waist, Adolf Kuntz was as starchy as any military officer you ever saw.

  He was young—perhaps thirty-five.

  His hair was closely cropped, and there was an iron medal on his puffed-out chest. There was iron in his words, too, and a suggestion of something metallic in his tight lined face. There was a slight nervous twitch in the squint line of his tiger eyes when he gave orders.

  His first order that I overheard was, “Search the island. Find this man Sutter and all his tribe and bring them to me.”

  “Suppose we find some Japs,” someone suggested.

  “Whoever you find, bring them here. We’re taking over. We don’t give a damn about the Japs. We’re here. We’ll shake this island down for anything it’s got.”

  “But if there’s a couple hundred or so—” the mate began.

  “Shut up, Blagg. You’ve got your orders.”

  After he had dispatched several parties in several directions, he lit a cigarette and settled down into a comfortable mood of pacing and grumbling.