The Blue (Book 3)

by Joseph Turkot

  For most of the afternoon we stay huddled up right on top of each other. Every hour Russell gets up and tries the fishing pole again, even though I’ve told him I’m sorry and I was wrong. That the seal must just be accepting death in its own bizarre way. And that’s all it was doing—a death dance. Because look, I tell him, and I point to the seal, who lies lazily on his floe, eyes closed, no longer watching us at all. But it’s too late, and Russell won’t give it up. Like he has to keep hurting himself now with the thought of tasting fish. He mumbles something about the rotting fish that must be sitting all the way back on the Resilience, like the waste of it has become a new parasite in his mind. I wait his trips out alone at first, and later in the day with Voley, on the center of the ice, periodically checking the blue and the plane. I rub Voley’s neck and watch his sleepy eyes, and I know he knows how cold I am, and that must be why he stopped following Russell to the edge. He just stays right up against me, pulling his whole body into my legs and stomach. He lets me pet him and talk to him. And for no reason at all, I start apologizing to him. I say I’m sorry Vole, for taking you away from your home in Blue City. You had it good there, boy. And I tell him how sorry I am for getting him stranded out here. Where there’s no warm water, or dry tarps to sleep under. No other dogs to know, or food to eat. Nothing at all here but useless apologies and the cold. I feel the weight of our path, Russell’s and mine, the burden we brought, traveling all the way from Philadelphia, and how crossing Voley’s path did this to him. Tears come down my cheek because I can’t stop imagining Voley snuggled in the blue tarp with Dusty back in Blue City, maybe by a fire, well-fed and dry. His life if we missed their island. That’s where you’d be, I tell him. Voley doesn’t even look at me. And I think it’s because he understands, and he’s mad at me. But then he yawns, long and drawn out, and I think that maybe he’s just tired. But I don’t have time to ask him more questions and figure it out because Russell startles me from my daydream. Pack’s closing in again, he says, We can make it to the next floe I think. And then, before I even acknowledge him, he’s pulling me up to my feet, and the pain rides up my leg before I remember to shift my weight off it and onto Russell’s shoulder.

  Chapter 11

  The pack’s only about three feet apart where Russell leads me, but he thinks it won’t last, so we have to move now. I don’t like the look of the floe it leads to—small and filled with pockets of blue holes—but I don’t argue with him. There’s nothing to stay for anymore. Russell says he still feels uneasy about Voley making the jump for himself, and he squats down and lifts him up. Then, with one quick vaulting assist, Voley slides onto the new floe. One closer to the blue.

  We follow after him together. I tell Russell I can do it on my own, but he doesn’t want to hear it. He doesn’t trust me on my bad leg any more than Voley on his three. And we do a quick run together, and he gives me a lift. I more than clear the short gap and land awkwardly on my good leg. It slides out from under me before I can right myself and I go down on my side, slipping across firm ice and then stopping in a small pool of slush. When I sit upright and look around, I realize I’ve landed right in one of the light blue streams, a long vein running deep into the floe. Panicked that it will break under my weight, I stand as fast as I can, wincing from my calf as I lunge away. But the ice doesn’t moan or creak or make thunder, and no new sea opens up to swallow us. I turn and wait for Russell to throw the bag and jump over. And then, he’s across. All of us one step closer to something—I try to figure out in my head what it actually is that we’re getting closer to, but I can’t. The plane. To die under a blue sky. To starve to death while we march forward under the spell of a fake hope that’s nothing like our real circumstances. And as we all start to move, and I tell Russell I can do it on my own again, I watch the seal. And he watches us. He stares from our left now, one floe over. Lying still, quiet and motionless. Just like that, out of nowhere, as we approach the center of the ice floe, I say it: We should give him a name.

  At first Russell is confused and asks why I want to name the thing we’re hunting. To name it would just trick us into thinking it could survive. But it can’t, he says, Only we can. I tell him I understand that. It’s only him, me and Voley now. But then, after a prolonged silence, he succumbs. Okay, he says. But I don’t have any ideas to begin with, so I don’t say anything back to him. And just like that, my mind starts racing.

  When we get to the center of the ice floe and I tell Russell my first name choice, he tells me to make sure the seal isn’t dead first. And I stop—I hadn’t thought of that—so I study the seal, watching, waiting for movement. And I’m sure that I finally do see him move his head—just for a moment. Just a twitch. And I ask Russell again, life confirmed, about his feelings about my name. What do you think? I say it again. Spots? he repeats the name. Yea, Spots. And he just nods his head. Soft and slow, but deliberate, like he approves. And then, Russell goes off. Almost a jog. Like he has to get away from whatever place my head is in. He tells me he’s going to check the next floe, see how close the pack is, and that I can wait here. I watch him go, almost at a sprint, but dancing over the blue indents, avoiding the fissures, making sure he doesn’t slip into the miles of dark nothing that are only a couple of icy feet below us. Be careful, I shout after him. But he doesn’t need my warning. He’s become an ice adept, hyper-aware, his body starving to death but oddly full of agility and speed. And when he turns to come back, it’s only a trot, and then a walk. Like he spent everything getting to the edge, and it depleted him. And I know why. The ocean is too wide. We’re stuck again.

  The rest of the day passes in depressed hunger and silence. We hardly talk, except to mention the wind changing, or the signs that the pack might be coming back together. Russell’s speculations about the plane are all but gone. Voley whines off and on, only getting up occasionally to pee. Spots keeps a vigilant watch over us, keeping track of all our movements on our new base aboard the ever-shrinking floe. And then, at last, after the maddening pangs and defeating quiet feel like they’ll never end today, only interrupted by the brief gusts of wind, the blue starts to fade into night. All three of us huddle tightly again, watching the stars come into view. And everything else has been so distracting that I’ve barely noticed just how big the open patch of sky is now—I try to formulate a guess, then I lay it on Russell. You think it’s tripled, since we first saw it? I ask. He needs no further explanation, as if he was looking at the stars and wondering the same thing. And for the first time today, he lets out some of yesterday’s optimism—It’s at least five times as big, he says, Since we first saw it? At least five times as big.

  Neither of us bring up a watch. We’re too weak. Just the small knife on the snow by our heads. Grab it if you hear something, Russell says. And we have Voley to warn us if Spots tries to come onto our floe. It hits me that there’s a very real possibility, with each time that we drift off to sleep now, that one of us will not wake up the next day. From the cold, or from the seal, or from the pack opening up right under us and taking us down. I let the thought pass through me, almost preparing me for what has to come. What might come in the morning. And then, Russell starts to hum to me. It’s Silent Night. And all of the sudden, despite the intensity of my thoughts about death, they melt away like nothing.

  He traces his hand along my head, running frozen fingers back and forth through my hair. The sensation and the sound is all that I know. And then I reach out, to share this, and I use my own hand to caress Voley. When Russell’s done humming, and I’m almost asleep, I ask him how long it takes to starve to death. I don’t know, he says, Fatter the better, I guess. What’s that mean? I ask. And he says if you’ve got enough fat, it probably takes a few weeks, maybe even a month. He says it like starvation is the last of our worries. And I know he’s right, because of all the scenarios I’ve played through in my head, the different ways that one of us, or all of us, will die tonight, none of them have been from starving. But then I picture Russell’s body,
and Voley’s, and the exposed ribs, and the corded ribbons of muscle that even themselves seem to be trading out for bone. What if you’re not fat? I ask him. Well, I don’t know, he says. Still a few weeks, he finally says, unwilling to change his estimate. And then, his hand stops stroking through my hair. I want to beg him to keep doing it, to not stop, because it’s the only thing keeping me sane. I wrestle for ten minutes, working up the courage to ask him to keep going. But when I whisper his name, finally, he doesn’t answer. And he’ll never know how much I need his touch right now. I press into him and give it up. It’s like he’s found himself a slice of sleep after all, and he’s riding it away from me, and I have to let him. After a couple minutes, I say his name again. Very softly. He doesn’t move one bit.

  My head fills with Russell’s ribcage again. His body. The mirror image of Spots. Thin ridges of muscle and bone. And it’s all I can think about—that he must not have an ounce of fat left on him to use up. And I wonder what his body’s living off of now, if it’s not the fat anymore. And then I run my hands down my sides, up and over the scar along my own ribs where I was shot, and notice just how skinny I’ve become too. And it dawns on me that I need to ask Russell something this very instant, need to ask him where the body goes once it’s done with fat. If it starts to use the heart and lungs for energy. Something too important to lose. But I can’t bear to wake him up. Instead, I crane my neck, holding it up into the windless night to see if I can find Spots’s silhouette. Voley lifts his own head too, following mine, wondering what I’m up to. Sure enough, just as my gut told me, Spots is watching. I see his dark form against the lighter darkness. Back and forth, crawling along the edge of his ice floe, as if he’s contemplating jumping in. Taking the plunge so that he can come up on our side of the lead. I try to stay awake as long as I can, keep my eye on him in case he does try it, but I can’t. It’s too easy once the cold has you to go to sleep. My body draws what heat it can from Russell and Voley’s bodies, and then I say to Voley, in just a whisper: Keep an eye on him, boy, okay? I shake his ear. You hear him come onto our ice, you wake us up, okay? And then, placing all my trust in him, I doze off.

  Chapter 12

  The first thing I notice is the wind—it whips from overhead, kicking up whatever soft powder is left on the floes, blowing it around in tiny swirls and eddies. But mostly it’s just cold, dead air that bites, and I lift myself to witness Russell at the far edge of the floe, and Voley walking around near him. I kick my feet a few times, waiting for some feeling to come into them, but after a minute they’re still frozen. I loosen my hands inside my gloves, and they feel like dead weight—as if they’re not even my own hands. When I rise, I forget about my bad calf, but at first the weight doesn’t hurt. I realize my entire leg has gone numb, and I should be feeling the pain. Even still, without the pain, my leg buckles and I almost fall. It scares me so bad that I call out to Russell, but he’s distracted by something. He waves his hand to let me know he’ll be right back to me. And then I twist around to take in the pack. All I see is Spots.

  He’s pulling himself slowly up onto our floe, as if he waited all night until the morning to do it. To give us a fighting chance. I see the head first, rising out of the abyss, and then the flippers, smoothly following in one motion. And all of the sudden, he jerks forward a few feet, on solid ice again, like a short burst missile. Russell! I yell, and then I am choked of my voice. I try to walk backwards, but immediately my leg caves in again. Even with the numbness blocking the pain, the muscle is useless. I land on my butt and the wind-carried powder slaps right into my cheeks and nose and eyes and stings me. I know the pain is a good sign, but I am going to die anyway now. Russell’s too far. But Spots doesn’t come any closer. He stays near the water and watches me patiently from thirty feet away, staring at me in some calculation, weighing his opportunity. I search the ice around my body, hoping the knife is still there, but it’s gone. Russell must have grabbed it this morning. And then I hear the barking, and the pounding of feet, and they’re back. Right behind me, Voley and Russell, standing, watching Spots. All of us in our last stalemate.

  Spots opens his mouth, but it’s only a yawn. A slow, long yawn. And then, he hangs his head down, like he’s submitting himself. Like he wants to be slaughtered. I see the shine of the knife in Russell’s hand when I turn my head. And then, just like that, Russell walks forward, like he wants to take on the seal by himself. I tell Russell no, not to go toward it. That it’s still too powerful for him. Even with the skeletal frame, the seal is enormous, and much heavier than Russell. But Russell walks forward, very slowly, and Spots watches, waiting, ready to die. Both of them ready to die. And I no longer have any say in it. Voley continues to bark, but his barks turn to snarls, and he cautiously trots forward on his three legs, still staying behind Russell, just enough so that he’s not out in front. And then, when I’m about to call to Russell one more time, to yell for him to stop and come back, because I think Spots is holding out on us, and that he’s really much stronger than his starved body looks, Russell freezes. Stops dead still without a word from me, knife raised, and he waits. Waits for Spots to make the first move.

  I try to get to my feet to help but I stumble back down. With a second attempt, I manage to stand up by leaning everything on my left side and balancing. I take only one hop-step forward, hoping I can be of use, but Russell tells me to stay back. As if he heard the softest press of snow and movement of the slush when I jumped. And I do—I don’t move another inch forward, and even Voley stops, his fur up and all, but he stops. It’s just the two of them, waiting for the other one to crack.

  Spots finally tests Russell. Just one flipper, a wave through the air. Like he’s flapping away the wind that’s beating at him from behind. And Russell’s wild hair blows back toward me, the gust increasing instead of dying down. And then the other flipper—Spots waves the other one, just the same as the first. But nothing more. Not one sign that he’s going to come any farther onto our floe. He doesn’t want to leave the edge, the safety of a sea retreat. And after another minute of motionless standoff, my mind settles to another strange observation—the floe isn’t riding swells. I wait for it, any sign of the movement under my feet, the same rolling we’ve felt for the past two days, but there’s nothing. And I know it can only mean one thing—that the pack is closed tight again. Finally, when I can’t stand it anymore, I tell Russell to back up. And as if on my command, he takes the step back. But as soon as he does, almost at the same time, the seal lurches forward, sliding along with his belly another couple feet onto the floe. Sudden and jerky, but extremely quick. Almost like he was going to bolt, but changed his mind when Russell froze again. When he figured out that Russell wasn’t going to run away.

  “He wants it now,” Russell says, “There’s no putting this off for him.”

  Voley moves forward with his limp, so that he’s side by side with Russell. And then, Russell takes a step forward again, just the same step he lost, reclaiming it, testing the seal. But Spots doesn’t move. He’s not giving up any ground, I tell him, but Russell already knows it. And I curse myself that I lost the pistol in the ocean.

  Part of me wants to dive quickly for the fishing pole, so that I can use it as a weapon, and jab out its eyes, but when I slowly turn my head, just for a minute, to double-check how close it is, I see that it’s too far. And then, I hear a bark. It takes me a startling moment to realize that it wasn’t Voley, but the seal that barked. It barks again, a dog bark, and I yell, Go away Spots! I don’t know why I do it, or what I think I’m doing, but I yell it over again—Go Spots! Get back in the water! Russell shushes me and I shut up, but my cries don’t seem to do a thing anyway. Spots doesn’t move, but then he hangs his head, almost all the way down to the snow, and then, from lowered eyes, he stares. Patiently waiting for us to take our turn.

  I’m going to test him—I’m going to back up again, Russell says calmly, Just one step, be ready. And I stand as sturdily as I can, a crazy balancing act, st
ill unable to feel anything in my feet and hardly anything in my hands. And I brace myself, waiting for Russell to do it. The wind blasts us again and doesn’t die off this time, an unending gust. And then, at last, like slow motion, Russell pulls back his left leg and retreats one step.

  Just like that, as if timed to Russell’s movement, the seal jerks forward. Another couple feet, all in one quick burst. But the same as before, he stops himself and arcs up, his back raising his chest off the ice, towering, so that he looks as tall as Russell. And I know now—Spots isn’t going to take back any of his own steps, but with each one Russell gives up in retreat, he’s going to come closer, eating up the distance between us. I tell Russell but he already knows what’s happening, and he tells me there’s only thing to do now, and I need to help him the best I can. Use your thumbs—aim for the eyes, he tells me. I know that the moment I try to do anything I’ll lose my balance and fall to the ice, but I ask if I should try to get the fishing pole for him. Without turning his head around to see where I am, he asks me how far it is from me. I tell him it’s about six feet behind me. No, is all he says, If we go back, the seal charges, it’s not worth it. Then Russell doesn’t say anything more, and the stalemate continues and the only thing that moves is the wind. Right when I think Russell must be changing his mind, and that he’s decided to wait the seal out, and let it retreat to the water on its own, he says it: You ready?

  I tell him I think I am. And then, before he can do anything, in the last moments of the stalemate, I ask what his plan is. And he tells me: I’m going to tackle the son of a bitch to the ground. And with that, I just wait, ready to spring forward, imagining my thumbs sinking into the soft eyes of Spots, blinding him, keeping him from killing Russell and Voley. But it’s not Russell who starts the charge, it’s Voley—all of the sudden, in a three-legged rampage, he stops snarling and darts ahead of Russell. No! I shout, and before the words get out of my mouth and into the icy wind, Voley stops, just a few feet in front of the seal. But the seal doesn’t move, back or forward, and Voley growls with everything he’s got, warning the seal to leave. Spots doesn’t move. And I see why now—his eyes aren’t even on Voley—he’s watching Russell. He’s sized Russell up as our alpha, and Russell’s the only one he’s after. I tell Russell the seal’s looking at him, but Russell doesn’t respond. And then I yell for Voley to come back, but Russell cuts me off. Let him bark, Russell says. If he backs up, the seal will charge. And then he orders me forward, into the gusts: Walk forward with me.