The Blue (The Complete Novel) (24 page)

            She’s been out here too long, one of them says to another. I move my eyes off of them, back down to the red floor of the raft, waiting for more information, something to guide my decision. But then, everything happens so fast, I can’t do a thing to prepare for it.

Voley starts to bark, like something terrible has come into him, and his fur flies up in a ridge, and he’s almost over  the edge of the raft. I have to look. And when I do, and I see what’s happening, the man is almost right on top of us. Coming down a ladder as the boat engine roars up alongside the raft, throwing us up and down quick waves. I squeeze the knife handle tight and cock the blade against my chest, keeping it concealed by turning my body so that my back is to the man.

            “Easy, doggy,” says a gruff  voice. And then before Voley can even do a thing to defend me, I hear the yelp. Voley flops right in front of me, the long, high-pitched whine of pain, and I turn to see the leg of the man withdrawing and finding the top of the gunwale so that he can step down and invade the raft. His friends appear like black silhouettes above, hanging over the rim of the bow, watching everything unfold. Before I even have time to consider the black machine guns pointed at me from above, I jump up and slash out with the knife. The blade makes contact with something, and the man yells in pain, and then there’s a splash. I look up for only a moment, waiting for the sound of a gun to go off, for them to shoot up the raft and send us down into the sea. But I can’t keep my eyes on the man I’ve sliced or the boat and the men on the bow because I have to see if Voley’s okay. He’s licking his belly, no longer whimpering, but tending to the spot where he’s been kicked. It’s when I lean in to move his head away, to see if there’s any bruise or blood, that the man rises out of the sea behind me, somehow hanging on to the raft still after my attack. I twist around in time to see a dark, wrinkled grimace and angry eyes, and nothing else but the shocking pain that blinds me and stops me dead. And then a kick is directed at me, and I feel the same pain as Voley, lighting up my side. There are words that I can’t make out from above, and even though I hear the tone, and they’re cheering the man on to subdue me, I fight back through the shocking pain with everything I have, clawing and scratching and pumping my fists and twisting, trying to jab out with my hands and dig in wherever I can and bite. The only thought I have is finding the man’s neck and biting right through it like I’ve seen Voley do so many times. I hear a bark and then the rat-tat-tat of the machine gun, and then everything becomes a nerve-cinching pain around my neck that travels all the way up to my head until everything fades to darkness.  

   Part 5

Chapter 25

Fresh pain and darkness and the slamming jostle of the ship tell me I’m their prisoner. My hands stretch out into the black, hoping to touch something, maybe Voley, if they’ve put him in the same compartment as me. But then I hear the whine, somewhere in the same space, but just barely audible. It’s him. Trapped somewhere else on the ship. Separate from me but alive. My first instinct is to holler, call to him and tell him to come to me, but before I can do it my mind wakes up enough to caution me, keep me silent.

    Through the sharp pain where I was kicked, and the bruise across my face I feel each time I twist my head around in search of light, I find the floor. Smooth wood and my hands trace the grooves of the planks and follow them all the way to cold metal. Thin bars that rise into the low ceiling above me. I stand up slowly and just barely I reach full height. And all at once the rest of the ship’s noises flood into me—the beating sea thrashing the hull, which must be the far walls of my cell and sounds like it’s only a few inches thick; the slow and long whines of Voley from somewhere distant and isolated on the ship, rising now that he’s heard my movement; the raucous and unmistakable scream of wind ripping through the lines above deck; and then, last to penetrate my consciousness and form into a knowable rustling—the sound of chatter. Men talking. I return to my knees and crawl through the darkness and then rise in the direction I think I hear it coming from. I press my ear against the cold wood and lean into it, rising up like my head’s a sonar machine, hoping the sounds will become clearer, that I’ll be able to make out just what they’re saying. But everything dims when my ear presses in and slides across the wood. And as much as I stand and wait and try to discern the words from the hiss of the sea and Voley’s soft moans, I can’t understand a single word. So I focus instead on the tone.

    The men are arguing about something. Everything in my body tells me it’s about which one of them gets to rape me first. It’s clear from what they said before, and the words register again, popping through my head. They had said I was young and pretty. They’d said it like they had been sailing a thousand miles for someone that was just that. And it runs through me to check my pockets and my clothes for the knife. Maybe they were that dumb. But there’s nothing on me—just empty, turned out pockets. Not a single thing from Plane Floe. After all the work we did there, there’s nothing now. And I think of Voley, and how he wants to know I’m okay so bad but he can’t get to me. He scrapes the floor and I realize he’s trapped too. But I can’t make a sound yet to tell him I’m here. Someone could be listening in the dark.  

I trace everything in my cage with my fingers, and try to see anything in the blackness. Sometimes I catch a flash of light, but it’s all behind my own eyes. A mind trick and nothing more comes. My eyes adjust to the dark enough to see the bars in front of my face, but nothing else is visible. And before long, without sight, I make something else out. Through the pain and throbbing ache of body I smell a faint odor coming through the still air. It’s quick and strong and then it disappears. Something rotten down here in the dark. At first I think it might be coming from my own cell, but it’s too small and my hands have covered every bit of the rocking coffin. Nothing at all but me in here with the wood and the metal and the sounds.

    I sit down, trying to sort through my feelings to assess just how bad the situation is. At first, I tell myself we’ve been in worse and have come through it each time. But like a dark foreboding wave, the thought keeps overtaking me: These are the worst kind of people. The thought rolls loud and clear through my head. I haven’t seen evidence yet, and it’s all just a gut feeling, but somehow I know. Just from the tone, from the few words I heard before they attacked. My mind rocks back and forth, reliving the encounter and the machine guns and the sound of the growing weather. All of it swells so big in me that only the pain in my side and my head stops it. And then, when the fear drops away and I have a moment of calmness, I turn back to Voley. Toward the dark space out there where he’s talking to me. Because he won’t shut up and I’m afraid of what they’ll do to make him stop. If he doesn’t get quiet fast. And it’s as I come to this thought for the tenth time in the maddening darkness that I hear the swing of a door and the sound of feet coming down steps. At once I know my fears are about to come true. Someone’s coming down to shut him up. The open door lets in a long whoosh of violent wind and the sound of beating rain on the deck, making it hard to hear what’s happening. I try to follow the footsteps, imagining what the ship must look like below deck and where he’s walking. Toward me or Voley. I imagine a position for each footfall in relation to Voley’s whines. He’ll shoot him, I tell myself.
You’ve got to do something now! Just scream, distract him. Yell at Voley to shut up.
But no words come out of my mouth, because as much as I am convinced he came down to stop Voley, the footsteps aren’t heading in the direction where the whining is coming from. And it makes sense now. The storm above is too loud. They wouldn’t have heard anything. The steps are heading toward me.

The first thing I see is the dumbing brightness of a light, and then, it’s a shape. A steady beam. Something so bright against the black that when it points upon me directly I have to close my eyes and turn my face away. After what seems like forever, I open them again, and squinting, I take it in. The white disc of burning brightness held on me like a gun. No change in direction or motion and no sound but the beating swells against the rocking cell and the hell above. I wait for the man with the light to say something, and for a moment, I think that maybe all of my assumptions are wrong. He has a flashlight—he’s pointing a flashlight at me with battery power. Maybe these people have it together, a real connection to a civilized place somewhere. Maybe all the talk of Waterspout Alley is wrong. Maybe…

“You’re not going to like this,” his voice breaks through Voley’s whines. My head runs through all the types of people I’ve seen in my life—every sick kind of pervert and face eater and awful and evil kind of person. And I try to take everything I know and use it to make some kind of assessment of the guy just from his tone, his six words. His voice sounds dry and lifeless, resolved and complete. Like he knows what he’s going to do and there’s no point in me saying anything in response. Adrenaline lights my mind and shreds away the pain I feel in my body. Preparing for some final fight-or-flight struggle in the dark. I wait, watching the light for some clue, hoping his next words will disprove my fear. But he doesn’t say anything and Voley starts to bark.  

    The light finally drops down for just a moment, and in the black relief I can’t see anything but the echo of it—bright and blinking behind my eyelids. I hear another few footsteps as he approaches the bars. My body jerks back instinctively, all the way to the wall, and feeling the wood against me I wait for the noise of the metal, the opening of the bars. But nothing comes. Finally I get something out, trying to summon all the courage in the world so I won’t sound scared. To confirm what he’s after. What? I ask him. But he stands and doesn’t answer me and then in the next moment, another noise comes from the steps. Someone else steps down into the darkness.

“Get the hell above deck. You heard John—
after
the storm,” a new voice that sounds younger says. And then, the tone of the new voice changes drastically after Voley’s barks intensify. He curses loudly at him, snapping that he’ll kill him if he doesn’t shut up. And for the first time I can remember, I am completely powerless. No way to help Voley or myself. No sea to dive into. No way to even kill myself if I wanted to. And I can’t help it, I blurt out that the storm won’t go away.

“What?” says the younger one from the light of the steps. I tell him they’re being sucked into Waterspout Alley and the storm is only going to get worse until it sinks us. And then, as if Poseidon had timed a rogue swell to my prophecy, the ship rolls hard and I slam back into the wall and groan. When I look up as the ship rights herself, I see the man with the flashlight on the floor, all the way against the bars of my cell, his face revealed by the grounded glow of the flashlight. Close enough to me that I can reach out and grab his shirt.

“Let’s go,” growls the man from the steps. And then I hear footsteps and watch the flashlight rise. Voley barks but the man acts like he doesn’t even notice. He just stares in, real close now, right through the bars, and puts the light back on me. I push myself back, afraid he’ll come inside, ignoring his shipmate’s orders. But he doesn’t. He just stares, waiting for something. Then he tells me I’m lucky, because he can’t stop himself. And I’m lucky, he repeats, Because John needs him. And then, he says he’ll see me soon, and the flashlight moves off of my face. I watch his wide body move away and toward the steps leading to the deck. I hear him walking up through the hatch, and for a moment, the sharp wind increases its wailing, and then, there’s the sound of a slam. Everything becomes muted and dark again except for the clear cutting sound of Voley’s cries and the wind and sea beating against the hull. Trying to tear it apart.

    I crawl my way up to the bars to investigate the metal. It’s too solid. And I can’t find any kind of keyhole within reach. I have no idea how the bars are even holding me in. I dig around at the base, thinking that maybe they slide up, or to the side, but nothing budges. Then I see it—a hanging silver lock, just beyond my reach. My fingers poke and twist and I angle every way I can, trying to see if I can even tug on the latch, but I can’t get close enough. And knowing that the men have gone back up to keep the ship afloat, and that no one else is down here but Voley and me, I talk to him.

“Hey boy,” I say. And I want to tell him that it’s going to be okay. Just like I always do when I have to calm him down. But the reality of the situation chokes me up and I can hardly get out the words. “It’ll be okay. Hang in there, okay?” And right away I can tell that my words have a big effect on him. Just to know I’m still here with him. His strong whines die down to soft whimpers, and I imagine his nose poking through the cold metal, wondering where I am, and why I’m not coming over to him. Why we’re not together.