The Blue (The Complete Novel) (7 page)

A cold stabbing wash of foam stings my eyes as I try to open my lids. Darkness tumbles in on me, concealing strange light and the sound of yelling. I throw out my arms against the tangling mass of the tarp, trying desperately to escape suffocation. But the tent doesn’t want me to come back up—it clings to me, a magnet to my skin, and wraps around me tighter. I sink, and then, the next wave of water rushes in and I hold my breath. The weight of the sea and the shock of its temperature strip me of thought. The world goes quiet and the calls from above disappear, and I think that maybe the ice didn’t break out from underneath the tent, like I thought—it was the seal—he came in the night, nabbed me by the arm, and pulled me all the way to the edge, driving me back into the icy sea. Playing for keeps this time, knowing I don’t have another jacket to lose. But then the darkness lifts, a momentary vanishing, and there’s gray light, and the hollering again, soft and muffled. I kick and thrash and try to rise up, fighting death with all the fury I have left in me, and at last, from numbness, I am above the water and there’s Russell. He’s pulling the canvas tent away from my head. Uncoiling it where it tried to mummify me. And then, he’s down on the ice, lying on his belly, his arm extended over the lip of the floe. Tanner! Grab on! he shouts. I extend my frozen fingers and he grabs onto them. And in a wash of white burning I’m pulled against the ice, hard over the edge of the berg, grinding through my sweater, and then I spill onto the hard surface of ground again. Solid floe and air to breathe. I open everything wide, mouth and nose, and draw in torrents of air, over and over, until my lungs feel like fire. The sky is above me, light and gray and empty. Becoming less and less fuzzy. I wait for a single flake of snow to hit my cheeks, but there are none left to fall. And when I hear a splash, I spin my head where I lie, and that quickly, as fast as it had disappeared, my horror returns.

I see that the ice really did split apart right beneath our tent, but Voley didn’t make it out of the water. And Russell’s in now, chasing after him. I throw my two fists into the top snow and push up—every bit of energy I have to get to my feet—and by the time I stand up, I can only watch helplessly. Russell paddles through the six foot lead of brown toward Voley. But Voley’s already slipping under because it’s too cold. Each time he surfaces, his head darts around, like he’s desperately hoping for something to bite onto. But there’s nothing.

            Frantically I look around for a spot to jump across the new crack, somewhere the ice didn’t get too far apart, so that I can get around closer to Voley. But the gaps are all too far, as if the split wanted to separate us from each other. I run farther, searching for some way across, and with each pounding beat in my chest I hear another mad splash, Russell’s or Voley’s, I can’t tell. I keep my eyes on the white near my feet where the flow shelves off and turns into the sea. Six feet wide gap. Seven. Six again. Five. But then the slit narrows and there’s a spot to jump across where there are only three feet of water. I run as hard as I can and leap, more than enough to clear the gap, and land smoothly. The wind drives against my dripping body and stings, trying to force me to stop running, but I can’t. From the corner of my eye, I think I catch the seal—watching us, calmly taking in our life-and-death struggle. But he’s far away, two floes off, far enough that I just ignore him. I cut my path back toward the floe’s edge closest to Voley. When I make it there, Russell dips underneath the ocean. At first I think he’s drowning too, but then I realize: he’s trying to get under Voley’s body and shove him up, high enough to spill over the raised floe shelf. Then, in his powerful burst, Voley softly clears the ocean surface, but barely goes any higher. And I realize. Russell can’t do it. He’s not strong enough anymore.

            I reach the ridge and kneel down, hanging over the sea and yelling at him to shove up harder. Again! I tell him, and I send my arms out like life rafts, curled up to grab Voley’s chest as he catches the small bit of air Russell can give him. I yell again when Russell doesn’t respond. Finally, Russell goes under the water again, and then, right when I think he’s not coming back up, that he’s down there too long, he blasts up so hard that Voley gets airborne. I push out as far as I can without toppling in, and I snatch him—a perfect grab—my one hand under his chest, and the other grabbing a paw, but the weight is too much, with his soaked fur and wildly thrashing body, and he slips right out from under my arms. His paws beat outward in each direction, frantically trying to latch onto anything at all, anything solid, to drag himself back onto firm ice again. It’s useless though, because his paws strike the air and foam, and his body splashes back into the sea, right on top of Russell, and tangled together, they both go under. I watch helplessly as their bodies twist underneath the brown—Voley kicking, anything to escape, hitting right into Russell, and Russell strikes out his arms and legs for his own life now. They claw at each other for another breath.  

            I freeze, like time has stopped, and look around—paralyzed, unfeeling, unable to recognize that this is really happening. I push all the fears aside, everything but the fact that I have to do something immediately. I look for anything that can help us. And my eyes trace the blank ice in a stupor, as if there’ll be a life raft right by us, or a pole to lay out into the water, but there’s nothing. Just the plain ice, white and blue and merciless forever. I see our only bag, but it’s on the other side of the floe, and I know that even if I had it, there’d be nothing in it that could help. And then, when my head twists past where I’m certain I saw the seal before, he’s gone. And there he is—on a different floe now, much closer. As if he’s finally stalking us again—like he’s been waiting calmly for chaos to appear. He bobs his head up and down, like he knows we’re panicking—no longer a solid unit, but separated from each other, vulnerable, and it’s giving him the energy to hunt. And by his eyes I know it’s me he wants. To carry me off with his frail, starving body. But I hear the gasping breaths and dying splashes of the ones I love, and I look back down into the water, and ignore the seal.

Voley is up again, dog paddling, strangely calm, and it looks like it’s Russell this time who’s losing it, barely staying afloat. And I am hit with a wall of fear that he’s going to die down there, and it will just be me to save Voley. Come on, boy! I yell. I get down again and reach out with my arms. Voley paddles close enough to me that I can pull on his paws when they rise from the splashing, but he’s too heavy. I let go and he struggles to dig into the ice again, but his nails can’t penetrate the rock-like sidewall of the floe. Each time he seems to catch a notch, and partly pull himself up, the claws slide right out and he falls back, his head disappearing. And then, I hear a new noise, something besides the splashing and Russell’s gasps and Voley’s helpless scraping—it’s the beating of the seal’s body against the ice. The unmistakable sound of a charge.

            I glance behind, over my shoulder, to be sure, and to my terror, he’s coming—I see the glistening ribs bounce, his long body barreling right at me. My eyes instinctively dart around on the ice floe for signs of the guns, but I don’t see them. Sucked in already, down into the brown rain sea. Or maybe they’re in the bag on the other side. But I have nothing.

I extend my hands one more time for Voley, and hope that he’ll catch on to me this time, and I’ll have the strength to hold onto him, long enough to hoist him so he can get enough traction to pull himself up out of the abyss. He lunges forward and rises, and I grab his paws and tug, and together we vault up and out, just for a moment, but then it’s all too wet, and nothing grips, and his fur slides right through my fingers. He splashes right down next to Russell. And when I look to Russell, he seems to have gained his breath again, and he’s no longer gasping, like he’s somehow adjusted to the freezing water. His face rises to mine and he yells something at me. I don’t make out the words, but I know by the sound—he can hear the seal coming too. I stand up and turn to face it.

The seal’s mouth slowly opens, displaying the jagged razors inside. His eyes hold the same look of hope and desperation that I know too well, that I’ve seen on most of the people I’ve met since the Midwest. The hunger for survival. His dog-faced body undulates, up and down, in thumping rhythm rushing forward, straight for my body like it’s the one single thing left in the world that can keep him alive. But there’s a noise against my feet, and there, wet, useless, is a gun. From the sea behind, from Russell’s waterlogged pocket. He knows what’s coming, and as trapped as he is, he has given me my only fighting chance. With only ten feet between us, I reach down, ignoring the slow deaths behind me, and lift the pistol. My brittle fingers lock on hard and I take aim, pointing right at the wide chest, praying that the gun fires.

The thumping body, still many times the size of my own despite its starvation, makes its final lunge over the last stretch of ice. The seal’s eyes fix their gaze on me, calculating the fatal jaw snap, and then I take my last shot. And as it raises its torso high, and I see the pink of its tongue tucked between the white fangs, its head bending down to rip my neck this time, and not a jacket, I pull the trigger.

The sound of the click seems distant, like it didn’t really come from the gun in my hand. And then, in the momentary shock, knowing there is nothing I can do to avoid my fate, and that the gun misfired, and I’ll be eaten alive, after all these days of failing to hunt the seal, I fall backward, the only thing I can do—back into the freezing cold sea of rain.

I feel the kicks of someone—Russell or Voley, I can’t tell who’s digging into me. My arms flail and thrust to push up through the water, and when my head erupts again, I see nothing but the ice shelf in front of me. The taste of metal salt rolls through my mouth and I spit, waiting for noises and sounds and a visual on the hunter. There’s nothing, and then, from the numb silence comes Russell’s voice. He’s in some kind of struggle behind me, pounding down into the foaming brown. I turn and see: he’s fighting the monster. And Voley’s back on the ice somehow—when I hear the whine, I look up from Russell and see Voley looking down, miraculously switching positions with me. He barks and lowers his nose and then raises it, beckoning me to come up. He scrapes his paws and then leans over, barks, and then retreats.

I spin around to see Russell fighting in the darkness beneath, the sea monster, and then, like the seal’s body is a springboard, he launches himself up, using its back, and he’s up safely on the floe too. And it’s all reversed, because I’m in the ocean and they’re out—but I’m in the same danger as before—it’s still just me and the seal. Russell hollers and he has his arm out for me to grab while Voley whines. I swim with everything I’ve got, reaching out with my right hand, knowing that at any moment I’ll feel the bite. And then I do—the jaw clamps onto me, just as I imagined it would. The pain bursts through my body, more intense than the pain of the stabbing sea, and the sharp teeth slide along my calf and then stop, the jaw locked in place on my leg. The seal starts to pull me down. But Russell grabs my arm, and he pulls too, and Voley barks like mad, and I feel like I’m going to be split in two. And then, I feel a great tearing. Like a piece of my leg has just been ripped free. And the next thing I know, I’m rising out of the water. Into Russell’s arms. And when I look down, in shock and worrying about what I’ll see, I find that the bottom of my pants on the right side are gone, and it’s my bare leg I’m looking at, and there is a stream of red. A pulse of blood courses down and blends into the ice. The ice melts around my foot where I try to walk, and the blood keeps coming. Spurts of a bright river, so stark against the clean white, forming pockets of red in fits and starts. I try to twist my leg to see the gash, but I can’t. It must be right on the back of my leg. And then, Russell lets me go and I drop to the ice. He stands by the edge of the water, panting from exhaustion, watching and waiting for the seal to come back up. My mind replays the gun jam, how I fell with it, right down into the water. Voley walks up to me, shaking, and starts to lick at my wound but I pull away, startled. And then, in what feels like an eternity, Russell comes back to me, satisfied we’re going to be left alone, if only for a moment. He’s bare-chested, his sweater in his hands, and then he’s wrapping the sweater around my leg. Squeezing tightly. You’re going to be okay, he tells me. It’s not bad. But when I try to prove that he’s right, and stand up on it, I stumble down. I try again, but as soon as I plant weight on the right side I drop. So I do the only thing I can, and collapse on the ice. I lie, forgetting we’re under attack, keeping Voley away from my bleeding leg so that he’s licking my arms and my face, but not my cut. And then, when I can see them both in the corner of my eyes, Russell and Voley, quiet and alive, out of the water, I close my eyes and let the gray light fade to black.

Chapter 9

When I wake up, Russell fills me in. He stands over me, naked chest, eyes sunken, face gaunt. Tent’s gone, he says. Rifle too. When the ice broke it made a landslide and everything went in.

            No more pistol either. Lost when I fell in the water after it jammed. The thermometer too. Gone. But he saves the worst for last. The fuel for the stove is lost. Down with everything else. What about the stove itself? I ask. He tells me that he saved it, but it’s got hardly anything left in it. And then, I ask about seal. He tells me he hasn’t seen it again since the attack. Voley walks off to investigate the edges of the new, tiny floe we’re trapped on now. I hear his feet hit slush as he walks, like everything is turning to liquid now, and we’re losing the last remnants of any firm surface.

            At last, when Russell helps me test my leg, raising me up on his arm, he says there’s one good bit of news. What’s that? I ask, hardly able to believe anything good could have come from this. Then he tells me to feel the wind, and I tell him I don’t. Because there is none, he says. And he points off to the blue, reborn, hanging in the sky just where it used to be. Weather passed us, he tells me. No storm.