Lily and the Octopus

by Steven Rowley

  “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.

  Infinity (∞)

  8 A.M.

  The night is restless and it’s hours before we fall asleep, and when we finally do I wake again with a start to find the bed completely soiled and Lily’s breathing labored, and I know almost immediately that this is our last day. I look down at Lily and the octopus is back and he looks even bigger than I remember and his stranglehold seems more menacing than ever, poised to asphyxiate us both. The room spins, or my head spins; something is spinning in a way that makes everything unclear. Nowhere in the room do I see bags in any state of unpacking, nowhere on my face do I feel the scraggle of a beard, nowhere on my skin do I see color or evidence of weeks spent under the harsh sun aboard Fishful Thinking, nowhere on my hands do I bear the calluses and scars and broken bones of a hard-fought battle at sea. It’s so real to me, so rich in detail—my heart is still soaring from the triumph of our victory over the octopus, the violence of his death, the quiet sweetness of our journey home, the two of us in command of a vessel on the open waters of the Pacific. And yet, there is the octopus.

  My stomach drops at the sharp vicissitude of our fortunes. I feel like I’m going to be sick, but I can’t remember the last thing I ate, or what food is, or what hunger is, or what is real and what is not. I don’t know if dogs can cocaptain fishing trawlers, or shoot harpoon guns, or if octopuses can shape-shift into men and back again. I don’t know if we’re alive or dead, or why the heaven of our complete thrashing of the octopus has turned into the fresh hell of our defeat, of having him back in our bed. I realize I just don’t know anything anymore, and that’s when the octopus says, “Good morning.”

  “Please go away, please go away, please go away,” I plead. It’s the first time I’ve thrown myself on the mercy of the octopus. Maybe I can appeal to something inside of him, some sense of justice or fairness. Convince him of Lily’s sweetness, her innocence, convince him he has the wrong dog. But the octopus just cackles.

  “WHY! WOULD! I! GO! I! HAVE! EVERYTHING! I! NEED! RIGHT! HERE!”

  That’s when I know he has absorbed Lily entirely. That the body drawing shallow breath beside me is only the shell of my beloved dog. That in almost all respects, she is already gone.

  I scoop up Lily and hold her in my arms. She doesn’t even have the strength to lift her head. After a few whispered I love yous, I place her on the floor in the hopes that she can stand and summon the strength to fight again. Her legs buckle and she tips straight onto her side with a thump, staring off into the near distance of the corner.

  She begins to pant.

  The decision is already made. I won’t give the octopus any more of the satisfaction of my begging.

  9 A.M.

  A third of the way through my file cabinet drawer, under D for dog, I find the file I keep that has all of Lily’s paperwork. The AKC certificates that show h
er pedigree, the rabies vaccination certificates, and receipts for the supplies I bought upon first bringing her home—for the bowls and the bed I laid out for her in my empty house the night before we first met, for the little place mat that said woof that sat under her supper dish for our first meal together, for the crate she hated sleeping in. Near the back of the folder I find what I’m looking for. The papers from her back surgery. I can’t go back to Doogie. I have to make one last-ditch effort and reach out to the people who took her in when I last thought she might die. I pull out the invoice for six thousand dollars. Did I really pay six thousand dollars? It seems like forever ago. On the invoice are two numbers, one for emergencies and one for nonemergencies. I hold the invoice in my hands for a good five minutes, crumpling and sweating on the middle of it, completely unsure of which number to dial.

  I peek around the corner into the kitchen; Lily is lying on her side in her own bed, home base, exactly as I placed her a good thirty minutes ago. I retreat into the bedroom and shut the door and hold the invoice for another five minutes. I reach for my cell phone, still on the charger next to the bed, and dial the number for nonemergencies. It seems wrong, but I can’t bring myself to dial the other. The numbers are too jagged.

  “Animal Surgical and Emergency Center. Is this an emergency, or can you hold?” A woman’s voice. Cheerful.

  I look at the invoice and again at my phone. Didn’t I dial the nonemergency number? I did.

  “I can hold.”

  The longer I hold, the longer it’s not real. The longer I don’t have to assign words to the purpose for my call. Yes, I can hold. Put me on hold forever. I’ll live here, set up camp in your phone bank. It has to be better than this. It has to be better than where I am.

  There is no hold music. Just a faint yet deafening hum. It could be the blood in my ears, in the swollen capillaries that feed my ear canals.

  “Thank you for holding.”

  My tongue is thick. “I can hold.” I’m vaguely aware this is the wrong thing to say.

  But it is the right thing to say.

  “How can I help you?”

  I inhale. I exhale.

  “My dog. She has a … mass.” I don’t say octopus. “It’s on her brain. It causes her seizures. She’s on medication. They’re not going to operate. We’ve decided not to operate. I think she has dementia. I don’t think she can stand up. I don’t think she’s there anymore. I think this is the end.”

  I’ve wadded the invoice into a ball in my sweaty hand. It reminds me of a trick my granny taught me when I was a boy that involved crinkling the paper wrapper of a straw, then wetting it with a drop of water and watching it expand and writhe like a worm. I could almost perform the same trick with this scrunched paper and my sweat. Almost.

  My granny is gone.

  My childhood is gone.

  Magic is gone.

  I inhale. I exhale. Again.

  I make two false attempts at speaking, each time my voice cracking between words.

  My words are gone.

  I bite my tongue hard and it finally enables me to speak.

  “Who do I speak with about youth … ?”

  Confusion on the other end. “About youth?”

  I compress my diaphragm and force the word out. “Euthanasia.”

  10 A.M.

  The woman on the phone asked when we would be in and all I could manage was “today.” I sit on the floor next to Lily and I transfer her gently into my lap.

  “What do you want, Tiny Mouse? If you could have anything.”

  Lily does her best to cock one eye, but you can tell that she’s in pain. After a beat she gingerly licks her chops.

  “You probably want chicken and rice, don’t you, Bean? Well, chicken and rice is for when you’re sick, and you’re not sick, you’re perfect. You’re just in pain, is all, and the pain is almost over, so you can have whatever you want. Something even better.”

  Lily nods, and her chin flops over my knee.

  “Anything. You name it.”

  There are heavy weights pressing down on my lungs. It’s almost impossible to draw breath. And when I do the oxygen is leaden with a barbed pain.

  “I know!” I’m barely holding back tears. “Peanut butter. How about peanut butter?” I vaguely remember aboard Fishful Thinking asking her what she would like first upon returning home. Peanut butter was the answer. “You always liked that best.”

  Lily doesn’t protest, so I slowly get up and carry her to the cabinet and I get the peanut butter and this time we sit down at the kitchen table. Carefully, I remove the lid. The jar is almost new, and I hold it under her nose and it takes a long time before she reacts, but then she finally recognizes the sweet scent of peanuts and sugar and oil. Slowly she lifts her head. Slowly she starts licking the air. Slowly I move the jar to her chops so that she makes contact with her prize.

  “Take all that you can. You can have the whole jar if you want.”

  She makes contact with the peanut butter, but she’s so weak she doesn’t ingest much of it. Essence of peanut butter. I put a little on my finger and let her have that. I remember the feel of her tongue when she was young. Soft and rough all at once. How she would get in these trances licking my hand and how they would go on endlessly until I rebooted her like a computer that had crashed.

  Twelve and a half years ago.

  Lily finishes the peanut butter on my finger and returns to the jar, where she continues to lap at it until she doesn’t anymore. Then she puts her head down and makes moist smacking sounds, but eventually those stop, too.

  “Good girl,” I say.

  Jenny and I once talked about how we manage to live despite the knowledge that we are all going to die. What’s the point of it all? Why bother getting up in the morning when faced with such futility? Or is it the promise of death that inspires life? That we must grab what we can while there is still time. Is it the not knowing if today is the day that keeps us going?

  But what if this is the day? What if the hour is here?

  How do you stand?

  How do you breathe?

  How do you go on?

  11 A.M.

  I get dressed in clothes that I would normally never wear outside the house, but I don’t care. I wrap Lily in a blanket in case she becomes incontinent again. We stand in the kitchen, and I wonder if she knows this is the last time she’ll see it. If she knows this, if she understands, she doesn’t make a big deal of it. I, on the other hand, can’t help it. This was her home for ten of her twelve-plus years.

  There on the floor lies her empty bed. There in the bed is her paw-print blanket. There in front of the sink is the morning sunny patch she likes to lie in. There is the rack where we keep the pots and pans, the one that would swallow red ball, the one I’d find her stuck beneath trying her best to retrieve it, just haunches and a wagging tail. There is the vinyl breakfast booth; an understudy for her bed that was occasionally drafted for afternoon naps. There is the closet door that hides the garbage can, the door she would bat with her paw when she thought I’d been hasty in throwing decent food away. There is the drawer that houses her toys, the one she would give expectant looks to when she wanted to play. There was the pen that confined her for twelve weeks as she slowly recovered from surgery. There is the metal tin that holds her puppy chow and there on the floor is her bowl that twice a day gets filled. There is the back door she would guard with the menacing bark of a German shepherd whenever anyone came near. There is the mixer I used to make the batter that became her home-baked birthday cookies. There is the stove she would hit with a clang after her eyesight was gone. There is the corner she would stand and bark into once dementia had set in.

  There is red ball sitting untouched on the floor.

  Frozen.

  Lifeless.

  Still.

  Noon

  We enter the animal hospital through the sliding doors and it’s the same as I remember and the woman behind the desk asks if she can help us (she doesn�
��t ask if we can hold) and I stammer, “I called earlier,” and she nods and flags down a passing coworker by putting her hands on her shoulders.

  She whispers to her friend.

  The second woman ushers us into an examining room and tells us the doctor will be in shortly. When she leaves she closes the door behind us, sealing us in.

  I sit with Lily on the only chair. It’s cold.

  The clock on the wall has no second hand and I look at it for what feels like three minutes before I see the minute hand move once.

  It’s quiet. Not much is going on in the middle of a Thursday.

  Thursday is the day that my dog Lily and I set aside to talk about boys we think are cute.

  “It’s Thursday, Bean. On Thursdays we talk about boys.”

  Lily does the thing where she lifts an eyebrow, but otherwise remains perfectly still.

  “How about we go old school: young Paul Newman, or young Paul McCartney?”

  Lily sighs.

  Q: What sound or noise do you love?

  A: Puppies sighing.

  My voice cracks.

  “I gotta tell you.” I tip my head back to keep my tears from falling on Lily. “I don’t think there was anyone more handsome than a young Paul Newman.”

  Footsteps outside the door. Please don’t come in. Please go away and leave us be. Please go away forever.

  They pass.

  “Butch Cassidy. Cool Hand Luke. Brick in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”

  The clock ticks off another minute. And then several more.

  I want to run, but my feet are encased in cement, glued to the floor, the lower half of my body paralyzed, like Lily’s was when last we sat in this hospital.

  More footsteps. They come to a halt.

  A hand on the doorknob.

  The opening door.

  A woman in a white lab coat enters. She smiles warmly, but not too warmly. She already knows what’s happening.

  “Who do we have here?” she asks.

  I pinch my finger until it hurts. “This is Lily.”

  The woman produces a stool from underneath the examining table, wheels it beside us, and takes a seat.

  “What’s this on Lily’s head?” She places three fingers under Lily’s chin and raises her head very gently to get a better look.