The Blue (The Complete Novel) (15 page)

    “When you reach the plane,” he says, still calm and business-like, “find the fuel line on the wing. Cut into it. Find a lighter in the cockpit. Get the stove going. Use the knife. Eat the seal.” And I watch speechlessly as he wads his shirt into a ball and puts it down on the ice next to himself, and then he starts to slide off his layers of pants. All of the things I want to say to him—all of the sharp protests—slide away from my consciousness. All I can muster is his name. Russell, I say. I say it so softly that he can’t hear it over the wind and the rain. And as he takes off everything, hidden from my view, and begins to tangle it all together into one heavy ball of all his protection left in the world, I say his name again, and keep repeating it, louder and louder, until I’m yelling it. But then I stop, as suddenly as I start, just when he grabs the ball into his throwing arm, and bare-chested, glares at me. And then, just before he launches it, the last of his possessions on Earth—a bloody mess of sweater, pants, socks, and underwear—he smiles again. The business is gone. It’s his face again—the one I love. It’s like the lines of his ribs and the shallow depressions of his cheeks are gone. And there is only his beautiful eyes and his handsome smile and his long hair, and his laughter. He smiles and laughs. You might not want to try to catch this one, he tells me. And he laughs again. And then, just for a moment, he turns back to his business voice. He tells me to put every goddamn piece of clothing on myself, no matter how bloody it is or how much it smells. And I know why he has to tell me as I look at myself, and realize that nothing could be more gross than my own bloody mess of clothing, smeared with sweat and grime and dirt and pus and crud. And for the first time, just as he’s about to throw, I tell him okay. “I will,” I promise. And all the tears stop, and I watch the mass of tangled clothes sail through the sky, just heavy enough to barely catch the edge of my floe. As they come down everything flies apart, and I see a sock go into the ocean. And in another moment a large wave crashes in, spitting up a heavy mist, and the sock is gone.

    “Should have played football,” he yells. I want to yell back that he never taught me about football. And that’s the reason he can’t go. He has to stay so I can learn about it. But I can’t even say anything at all because my throat’s completely closed up as I pick up his clothes and gather them together.

    “You two will do all right,” he says. “Don’t forget what I told you—bleed the fuel out of that plane. Scrape the metal until you get a spark if you have to. And you eat that damned seal. Eat him for me.”

    And just like that, Russell starts to slide back, away from the edge of the floe. Retreating from my view. I yell for him not to go, but I know. He showed me why twice already. Even if the pack did close up, it might reopen on the side leading to the plane. And then we might all starve to death. But he wouldn’t make it to the plane. Because he’ll never walk again. And I can’t carry him that far or lift him by myself from the waves.

            He slides, really slowly, until with each rise over a new crest, he disappears from my view for just a moment. And as the waves roll through, catching underneath our floe each time, and raising us up, I catch another glimpse of him, crawling back to the far edge. I choke out I love you, over and over, but not a single note leaves from my throat. And Voley sniffs Russell’s clothes and barks, and then he runs back with the other sock in his mouth, taking it to the center of the floe by the bag.

Up and down we go, over a new wave, and for just a moment, he’s still there. His back and his butt, sliding away, naked and cold and brave, the last time I’ll ever see him. And the words finally come out, despite the cinch that’s tied my throat shut, and the tears that have swollen my face and started to freeze my cheeks into crusts. “I love you!”

My heart leaps up into my chest and then my throat, as I wait for his reply. For the words to come back, so that I can save his voice in my head, like I’ve already forgotten it—forgotten that he loves me too, no matter how it ends. But there’s not a sound more, and only bare ice, when his floe reappears. And just like that, I know he’s gone.

            I turn around before the convulsions start, because part of me thinks this is all a trick of my mind, a hallucination, and his leg is fine, and he’s just swimming around to our floe after all, and I have to check to make sure Spots isn’t diving in after him, to intercept him underwater. But Spots is dead and bloating on the ice. And when I turn back, looking out at the slanting rain, Russell’s floe is still empty.

Chapter 16

It’s Voley that finally gets me going, but it isn’t his whines that do it, or even his bark.

It’s like I’ve become extra sensitive to every wave, to every blast of rain, and I can’t peel myself from the bundle of clothes. My finger runs up and down the sweater. I breathe in and smell him. And my mind can’t steer away from what it must have been like in the water. To go down into the freezing knives and stop your breath and know that it’s all over. I play through the feelings, wanting to feel the same feelings he felt, only stopping just in time before I throw up again. And then, just like that, I throw the clothes a couple feet away, dig through the bag and find the knife, and take it into my hand. Then I flop like Spots right onto my back. Face up and soaking wet and being driven right down into the slush itself, too numb to shiver anymore, too useless to care. I look at the steel and ignore Voley’s constant barking. I watch the dull gray blade, waiting for some light to catch it. Come on, I tell it. Catch the light. Show me something. The call goes out—from the deepest part of me, directly to the stars behind the clouds. To whatever it could be that would ever know I’m here. Show me something, I say. And I wait, looking at the sliding drops of water, carrying just a flicker of shine as they roll down the knife and split in every direction upon my hand. Voley keeps barking, almost like something’s wrong, but I can’t stop the daze. I know I could go to the final sleep. That it wouldn’t take long now. Not with my body this cold. This wet and useless and alone. It would just be an hour. Go to sleep, and keep sleeping, and that would be it. Almost as easy as sliding right off the floe and into the ocean. And then, the point of the knife talks to me. The feeling it could bring, life and pain and sharpness from all of this numbness. The last thing in the world I have any control over. And I could do it. Part of my brain tells me it would be the last great feeling I would ever know, to push it down and go away. But it’s Voley that gets me up—not from his barks or his whines, or any of his nervousness about the dwindling safety of our floe—he does it through a different kind of sound. It’s the scraping of his paws.

            When I screw my head around just enough to catch him from the corner of my eye, I see what he’s done—the floes have nearly joined, and he hopped across all on his own, gone to investigate the seal. And he’s right on top of the thing. Dead Spots.

And that quickly, every thought of suicide vanishes. I know now. Nothing’s coming to show me anything. I’ve got to do it myself. For Russell, I haul myself to my feet, and say Fuck You to everything around me—the pack and the sky and the rain and all of it. I say it loud and I don’t know to what thing or person I’m talking. But it all makes sense as I take each slow and painful step toward the gap between Spots floe and mine—I’m cursing everything that wants to take me now. All of it. For stubbornness I’ll go on as long as I can, until my body quits. And that’s it. Just what everyone’s wanted, so I’m going to give it to them. And I move around the pockets that the rain gnaws into the ice and approach the three feet gap that Voley jumped over to reach Spots’s floe. I’m coming boy, I tell him. And I pause, looking for a runway.

            I take three steps back, get ready to run, and freeze—something locks me up. A memory. Just a few days ago. A joke. Something about crossing the floes with Russell. I push it away. Empty myself of all feelings. Thank my leg that it still hurts. And I run and jump.

I slide and ride my butt along a layer of slush, and when I come to a halt, the first thing I realize is that I’m pain free. And when the pain comes in finally, I tell myself that at least I didn’t make anything worse. My legs raise me up, giving me a wide view of the horizon. In front of me, Voley is already testing the seal—licking its face and neck. Wondering if he will be able to sink his teeth into its muscle. It snaps into my head—Russell’s instructions—to cut up the seal, to find fuel in the plane, and then my head swings up. I take it all in—the last high-ridged floe that separates us from the monster floe of the plane. And the plane itself.

            It glistens darkly, and even from here, I trick myself into thinking I can hear the metallic patter, different from the ice patter. The rain pelting off the wing. My eyes rake over the surrounding floes, but they all seem too scattered to trust. Just the high-ridged one—the only path to the plane. And for how long—Russell said the wind had changed. And as I hear his words, I feel the wind push into me, just as I face directly the plane. It wants to drive us away. Put the pack in pieces again. As soon as it can.

We’ll come back for it, I tell Voley. But he doesn’t listen to me. Come on, boy, I say again, trying to drive him off with my words. But Voley knows better, and that somehow he can feed on the corpse. And he’s much too interested to leave this floe, even with all the slush pockets forming and the rain beating down in every crevice, working to tear us apart from each other all over again.

            “Now!” I yell. I yell it like we don’t have a second to waste—like Russell’s words about the wind weren’t just to help me to accept what he had to do. They were the truth. We
have
to get to the plane, I tell him. And when Voley still won’t listen to me, taking his first nibbling bites on Spots, I limp over to him and loop my fingers under his collar. Without a word I tug him. He digs his paws in, like there’s no way he’ll leave food. I see his starving face, his desperate eyes that don’t seem to understand my insanity. It’s like he’s asking me why I’d starve him further. I try to explain: We’re coming right back, boy. And in my head, I don’t even know if it’s true—if the ice will still be close, or if we’ll lose our last chance to eat.

            It runs through my mind that I could eat the seal raw. We could do it now, together. Let Voley start into it, and once the flesh is exposed, the loose and bloody insides, start to tear away my own pieces. To sit and keep an eye on the lead between us and the high-ridge floe, making sure it doesn’t widen too quickly, and eat the seal. For a moment I keep pulling on Voley’s collar as he tries to dig in and back away from me, shaking his head from side to side as if he can wiggle right out of it. For a moment I think he will—it slips up and snags again just under his jaw. And right then, he yelps. I know I’m hurting him. I let go. He backs up, and before I can scold him again, he’s back on the seal. I tell him he has a few minutes. And with that, I gather up all the clothes and stuff them in the bag. Once I have everything, with the knife still in my hand, I go back to Voley. He’s barely breaking the seal’s rubbery skin. And seeing that the whole process has become useless, or maybe because I look so pathetic, Voley comes this time when I call him. I don’t even touch his collar. And together we walk to the edge to see if it’s even possible to reach the high-ridged floe.

When we reach the rim, the waves bounce between the bergs, pushing them close and then far away with more speed than I’ve seen yet. It’s like we’re riding the end of the waves, and each descent into the trough is giving us just a brief window of a four foot jump. My nerves slip through me as I realize I can do nothing for Voley’s jumps anymore. I have to hope he makes it. Times it right. Or that he comes after me at all. I’ve gotten him to the edge of the ice, but there’s nothing else I can do but get myself across.

            I toss the bag and it slides along the slippery melting ice of the next floe. And then, pulling back again, blank minded, I race up and push off with my left leg. And in the air I know I’ve made it. I remind myself which foot to land on, and without more than a small stumble, I’m down and safe. When I look back, Voley’s gone. But then, I hear the plunking of his paws and butt, and I look to my side—he’s already across, right behind me, no hesitation at all. And he cleared it by more than I did. I can’t help but grab his ears and shake his face and lean into him and drive my lips into him. I squeeze his head and tell him I love him and that he’s doing great, and that we’ll be back to eat the seal soon. He just licks me and looks away, like he wonders where we’re going. So I release him and grab the pack, and then we start. The slow, slippery trek up the ridge at the heart of the floe, directly toward Plane Floe.

As we begin, and before the curve of the ridge takes my view away from Plane Floe, I look at the plane. And the ice it’s on. The shelf is high and the entire berg looks as big and sturdy as Resilience floe was. I ignore the thought and concentrate on my left leg. Each step has to be planned perfectly, and even as I struggle up the ridge, trying to stick to what looks like the firmest parts of the slush, I slip down along the rivulets of rain. The first slip I manage to catch myself, but the second one sends me reeling. My left foot goes out from under me, just when I thought I had my limp matched perfectly to the incline. It rides right off to the side, as if it caught a lead of melt, and I start to tumble. Just like that the bag flies off my shoulder, all the way back down the ridge. I slide fast, watching helplessly as Voley scrambles back down after me. I dig in to slow down but it’s all too loose. It comes into my head that with the speed I’m sliding, I might go all the way down and over the flat lip and right into the ocean. Each time I try to dig harder, pressing with my gloves and my heels, but I can’t catch anything but running slush. Finally, my own body weight stops me dead all on its own. But Voley charges right past me. And when I shake off enough to sit upright, rubbing the ice and water out of my eyes, he’s coming up from the bottom of the slope. The bag’s in his mouth.