Sarah
stood and ran to the next pool in the rocks with her yellow bucket
and red net looking for minnows. She was annoyed. Her Dad had told
her it was going to be exactly the same here in Massachusetts but
there were fewer minnows.
She could tell.
Her Dad lay on the beach, lounging on
a towel. He wore sunglasses and his nose pointed up towards the
afternoon sun. His face was dry and wrinkled and he had a beard and
wavy hair that was partially covered by a baseball hat. Beside him
was a glass with some whiskey in it. He had been drinking more since
they got there. That was something else that had changed. The minnows
and the drinking.
She found a hole
in the rocky pier she was standing on and she looked down into the
hole in search of anything interesting but she could not see. She
tried to fit the net inside but it would not fit so she turned it
around and prodded at the hole with its the handle. A crab climbed
out and, scurrying sideways towards the edge of the pier, plunged
upside down into the ocean. She watched the crab go but did not chase
it. She was not interested in crabs, she wanted to find the minnows.
She skipped over a couple of other rocks to another hole following
the pier as it led out to deeper and deeper water. It was high tide
and the water had almost reached the top of the final rock in the
pier. She knew it was not the ideal time to find minnows, low tide
was much better, but her Dad had not woken up in time to take her.
She hopped over a
small gap in the pier and looked back through the crack to see if
there was anything interesting but there was only smooth red rock and
some barnacles and a Smarties wrapper. She continued down the pier,
peering into holes as she went but finding nothing of substance. When
she reached the end of the pier she swiped at the surface of the
water with her net in frustration and crouching, set her bucket down
and looked at her reflection in the water.
She
had recently become very interested in her own reflection. It was
odd, she did not really remember noticing, or even seeing it before.
But now, every time she saw a mirror or a window she would stop and
look at herself, trying to memorize the texture of her face and the
color of her eyes and the shapes in the knots of her long blonde
hair. As she looked in the water she examined her nostrils. One was a
little bigger than the other, she thought, one was shaped like a
perfect oval and the other had a weird sort of curved egg shape to
it. Like the end of a finger with a protruding finger nail.
As she stared she noticed some
movement from behind her nostrils. It was small and it shimmered
slightly in the sunlight and she thought excitedly that it might be a
minnow. She reached down gently towards her reflection with the net
and then took a quick shallow scoop. The end of her net dipped into
the water smoothly and stayed there. She pulled on it but it didn't
budge. She couldn't grasp it well enough from her crouched position
so she stood up and, with all her might, yanked up on the handle and
it came free. On the other end was a tangled mass that she first
thought was a coil of rope, but then, when it began to move, she saw
was an octopus clinging for dear life onto the end of her net. Its
tentacles squirmed endlessly and its unusually large head hung down
towards the ocean and with its big black eyes it stared back at her
curiously. There was a brief moment in which the two of them stared
at each other, both with their abnormally large dark eyes and then
suddenly she heard her name being called. She turned around and saw
her dad standing on the beach, his hairy gut and beard and the brim
of his hat all sticking out trying to escape to the ocean.
He was holding his empty glass and was yelling her name over the
heads of two young women playing with a little boy. Sarah crouched
back down and put the end of the net into the water again.
“Sorry Mr. Tentacles I have to go.”
The octopus let go of the red ring of the net and slid down under the
shadow of the rocks. Giving an eight legged wave goodbye.
From the edge of the rocky pier Sarah
ran back with her yellow bucket and her red net towards her father
who was now walking away from her up to the road back to their house
which was easy walking distance from the beach but just far enough
that you couldn't see it.
Her father walked with his shoulders
hunched forward. They too had been burned to a dark leather. She
didn't remember him walking like that before the move. She figured it
had something to do with the liquor and the smell. A lot of things
changed about her father when his smell began to change. He used to
smell good. Like a closet filled with stuffed animals mixed with the
smell of sweat and bread. But now everything was covered by this one
smell. It smelled like vinegar and cat pee. She had to hold her
breath when he bent over her to kiss her on the cheek when she went
to bed at night. She hoped that her mother would be coming soon. Her
father had told her about the move to Massachusetts last minute. He
said her mother could not go yet, she had to work, but she would meet
up with them in October. Sarah's mother was a powerful and
energetic woman. She was opinionated and angry and happy and she wore
no makeup but she wore strong smelling oils that she bought at health
food stores. Her dad was better when they were together. Alone, her
dad was different. He was lonely, she supposed. He missed her and
Sarah missed her too.
She ran up to her dad who was now
several paces in front of her walking up the hill, staring forward in
a bit of a trance. She took his hand.
“I miss mom.” She said, “Do
you?” She thought she saw his face twitch slightly at the edge of
his eyes and he looked down at her and smiled through his beard but
he looked more strained than happy.
“Of course my little mermaid.” He
said and then he looked away and his hand went slack but she hung on
anyway and they walked the rest of the way back in silence.
The house was quiet and dark and when
they went in Sarah's father strode to the cabinet, pulled out a
bottle, poured it and then he sat on an uncomfortable looking pink
upholstered chair in the living room. The house was a vacation
rental. Furnished by the old owner and her husband in the eighties.
Everything was old fashioned and foreign and dusty smelling. The
television had rabbit ears and there was a rotary phone and History
Channel VHS tapes and frills on everything. The house was very dark
compared to the brightness of the beach and it was also very cool and
Sarah shivered a little in her bathing suit and knelt down on the
carpeted floor of the living room and picked out a colored pencil
from a clear and incredibly well organized plastic box.
“I found an octopus today.” She
said. But her father had fallen asleep so she started to draw it.
The
next day they were back at the beach. She ran back out to the pier
with her bucket and her net. This time they were a little earlier and
the high tide was a bit later and so the water was a bit more shallow
around the rocks and she thought that surely some minnows would be
caught among the holes and crags this time. But as she walked down
the pier she did not get much better luck than she had had the day
before. Soon she had reached the end of the pier seeing nothing more
exciting than a discarded and rusted penny. She meandered along the
stones at the edge, peering out into the brightness of the water
which was lapping gently on the rocks and wondered if she would see
the octopus again. She couldn't see anything but some seaweed
sticking out from behind the rocks and she bent down to look under
the water but still she could not see anything below the blue
reflection of the sky and the steady rippling. The wind was blowing
hard that day and it was quite cool and pleasant. Her father was back
in the same position on the beach, with his baseball cap tucked down
to shield the only hairless part of his face from the sun and his big
gut hanging out from the end of his graying T shirt. He did not have
a drink this time and this seemed to make him a bit uneasy as he kept
scratching himself and swatting at imaginary flies. There were many
people on the beach today which was partly why he wasn't drinking and
also it was before ten O'clock and he had made a solemn vow not to
drink before ten.
Sarah looked out ahead of her at the
small island that sat in the bay far out beyond the channel that
weaved its way ahead of her and the rocky pier. Every so often a boat
would motor by and she could smell meat grilling in the air and she
could smell suntan lotion and salt and plastic and the usual beach
smells. She reached her hand into the ocean and stroked one of the
leaves of seaweed. It felt smooth and when she pulled her hand out of
the water she found that it was covered in some gooey, clear slime.
She wiped it off on the rocks and rinsed her hands in the water. The
goo on the rock instantly dried into a white streak. She frowned and
put her hand back into the seaweed this time reaching deep into it as
far as she could, hoping to scoop up all the slime. Plunging as far
as she could into the depths something grabbed her hand. Not firmly
or abruptly but calmly like interlacing hands and she pulled back not
so much in panic but in curiosity and at the other end of her hand
was the octopus. She watched the octopus as it watched her and she
felt a strange connection to it as it sat there again, just waiting
and staring and content like a dog getting its head scratched.
Sarah had never had a pet before and
she had never been much of a doll person but she felt an odd
attachment to the octopus then that she could not quite explain. And
the calmness of the thing seemed to rub off on her a bit as they sat
there at the end of the pier and relaxed together.
“You know” Sarah said. “You are
a very odd creature. And you do not look so nice either if you don't
mind me saying.” The Octopus stared back in reply.
“I would like to take you home but I
suppose you might not want that and plus, Dad would make me bring you
back.” The Octopus lifted its head a little and pulled itself up
her arm.
“Dad's not been so good recently.”
She continued. “He's been a lot more angry and tired. I think he
misses mom. She's back home you know. She had to stay for work. She's
coming in October. October 15th. I can't wait. October is
my favorite month, not just cause of that, also cause it smells so
good and everything is orange(my favorite color) and I get to eat
apple pie! I bet October must be your favorite month too!” The
octopus continued to stare and climb up her arm now at her shoulder,
half of its limbs were wrapped around her arm and the other half were
stretched out towards her head and her long blonde hair. She kept
talking.
“People guess that my favorite month
is May. That's cause my birthday's in May and cause flowers bloom
then and cause it's almost summer so I must like May but I actually
don't. I like October and I'm not just saying that because you're
here.” The octopus was now hanging a bit off her face, enveloping
her left ear and her head was bent over a bit with the weight of him
and she giggled a little because she was very ticklish. When the
octopus was finally seated and comfortable on the top of her head she
stood up and it let some of her hair down that had bunched up in the
move and now in her reflection she looked a bit more natural, except,
perhaps, for the octopus on her head.
“I suppose this means you want to
come visit.” She said. “But don't be angry when we have to come
back. I told you my Dad wont let you stay.”
Sarah walked back down the pier, the
tide had come in a bit while she was busy with the octopus. She bent
down instinctively to inspect the crack in the rocks again as she
passed and the octopus wrapped its tentacles around her ears to keep
itself from slipping off. There were no minnows in the crack and
Sarah, discouraged, retreated back to the beach to her dad who, it
looked like, had finally drifted off into a fitful sleep. When Sarah
reached him she plopped down and started to dig a hole in the sand
and the octopus blinked slowly into the mid-afternoon sun.
Her father woke from what might have
been a bad dream with a sputter and sat up suddenly with his baseball
cap still pulled over his face, the brim pushed into his beard. He
pulled the hat back onto his head and looked around panicked until he
saw Sarah standing next to him waist deep in sand and pointing to her
head.
“Hey Dad look, I found an octopus!”
He breathed a sigh of relief.
“That's nice honey. Let's get lunch
'kay?” He pushed himself up with a grunt and Sarah started digging
herself out of the hole and the octopus, shaken by the sudden
movement, was woken from its nap.
Walking up to the house she didn't
mention the octopus again. She knew how her dad got when she repeated
herself and she didn't want to push her luck now that at seemed he
didn't mind the guest. But it seemed odd to her that he did not even
notice the thing. She walked a little ahead of him as they headed up
the hill and the octopus bounced up and down with her stride, under
the nose of her father but still he did not say anything. She figured
that he was still a bit bleary eyed from the nap. She wondered how
long the octopus would stay but she was not too worried about it.
She liked the company. When they got home her dad made turkey
sandwiches for them. She did not like her dad's sandwiches. They were
“dad” sandwiches, made with a lot of mayonnaise and a lot of cold
and unappetizing pieces of slimy lunch meat and no vegetables or
anything else and on thick brown bread that was hard to swallow. She
tried to feed some of it to the octopus but it did not take it. She
did not blame him.
While they ate the phone rang
suddenly. They had been sitting in silence at the dining room table
in the small kitchen of their home. It was very dark again and quiet
and she could hear the neighbor mowing his lawn across the street and
she could feel the octopus stretching a little and getting more
comfortable on her head and her dad sighed and began to take a sip of
his first drink of the day and just as the rim touched his lips the
phone rang and he jumped and spilled it on the front of his shirt.
Cursing he slammed the glass down on the table and stood up.
“What!” He yelled into the
receiver. He waited a beat and then his body seemed to deflate and he
glanced back at Sarah quickly and spoke again much softer.
“Hi, um... I've been...” he
coughed, “. . .we've been
waiting for your call.” There was a long pause as he drew a line in
the grout of the kitchen tile. “What do you mean. . .but. . .I. .
.I thought you said you'd be coming in. . .you told Sarah. . .you
told your daughter you'd be coming in October.” Another beat and
her father picked up the gray rotary land line and walked into the
next room but the cord would not let him go far so he could only
stand awkwardly in the doorway holding the phone with his back to the
dining room and to Sarah and the octopus.
“I thought you said you just needed
some time. . .I know. . .I know but. . .we've been just
waiting here and I—. He turned around and looked at Sarah who
was still trying to choke down her sandwich and was looking at him
intently.
“Hold on.” He said into the phone.
“Sarah, go to your room please.”
Sarah stood up without a word and she and the octopus headed back to
her room.
After the phone call they had stopped
visiting the beach. Her father, at first had been possessed by a
kind of dark energy and he would tear off into the night leaving
Sarah and the octopus by themselves and then would return home early
the next morning drunken and stumbling and would start some project
like putting screens in the windows or cleaning out the gutters and
then by the afternoon he would pass out in a chair and Sarah would
make PB&Js and watch TV or color or read. Every so often she
would take a quick shower so the octopus wouldn't get dried out.
Mostly they stayed inside because she didn't want to leave her father
alone but she could tell the octopus was getting antsy so she would
go outside and sit in the lawn and the Octopus would stretch out its
tendrils under the beating sun and vibrate softly in pleasure on
Sarah's head as she sat still with her legs crossed. Her father soon
lost his energy, and his will, and eventually he would spend whole
days sitting on the couch watching TV
and drinking.
Sarah
missed her mother too, though she knew better than to show it in
front of her father. Some nights she would lie awake at night
staring out at the ceiling, tears streaming down her face but soon a
soft, slightly moist tendril would curl around her cheek and brush
them away and then she would feel better. The days passed into weeks
and then months. She knew her father would have to go back to work
soon and she knew he knew it too. He had reached a third stage, the
stage of crankiness, which would quickly devolve into rage and he
would fly around the house yelling about how she always left her
colored pencils lying around. Sarah tried to bear it as best she
could with her head held high. The octopus was growing too. Its
tendrils now reached past her waist and its body was having an
increasingly hard time getting comfortable on top of her small head.
She found herself being more careful as she walked. She tried not to
lean in to any turn too hard or quickly and the action made her seem
very calculated and mature. To her dismay, her father, far from
questioning why she had such a ridiculous creature on her head all
the time had become furious with the way that she walked as a result
of the octopus. “Stuck-up” he had called her once, “just like
your mother.”
Sarah was not yet ten and the octopus
was a big responsibility. She had long since given up on the idea
that it would leave on its own. Sometime in the night when she was
asleep she felt sure that she would wake up and it would be gone but
it never left. No, it was there to stay, and she took care of it as
best she could. She made a bath for it(and for herself since they
were now almost never apart). She let it out for some fresh air at
least once a day and made it breakfast lunch and dinner. This last
part had become recently difficult since her father no longer cared
enough to buy food and they were down to the very last bit of peanut
butter and bread from the freezer.
Sarah's father was hardly ever home
now. Some days he would tell her that he had been out looking for a
job. Other days he wouldn't bother and instead tell her it was none
of her damn business. Regardless, Sarah made sure to make three
sandwiches every night and leave the third one on the kitchen table
before going to bed. The octopus was growing at such a rapid rate
(Sarah thought perhaps from the new sandwich diet) that it could no
longer wrap its large legs around Sarah's head so instead its legs
hung down and brushed the floors as she walked, one tendril wrapped
around her forehead for stability, like the brim of a giant baseball
cap. September was approaching and Sarah often wondered where she
would be going to school this year or if she would ever be getting
back to Maine to see her friends. But the days went by largely
uneventful and she lived her life and often went to the beach on her
own now and felt happy to have a friend to talk to. Which she often
did. She talked to the octopus about everything, about how much she
missed her mom and how she missed her dad too. And that she wished
they would get back together and she wondered if she was part of the
reason why they had broken up. The octopus reassured her that it was
not her fault.
And then one day her father came home
angry. It was late afternoon. Only about 5:00 O'clock and she heard
the door slam from her bedroom. It was very early for her father to
come home, he spent most days out past midnight if he came home at
all, and she went to the door to ask what was the matter. She walked
down the beige carpeted hallway towards the living room. It was only
5:00 but the light was very dark. There were storm clouds overhead
and everything was blue and gray and the air had that moist tense
feel to it of a coming exhalation. Her father stood by the window
holding an empty glass. He had untied the curtains, they had never
been used before, but he stood in between them awkwardly letting the
furls lean against his head. Very quietly Sarah said “Dad?”
across the living room from the hallway and he spun around in panic
but looked more relieved when he saw who it was.
“Oh. Sarah.” He said lamely.
“What's going on?” She asked. Her
father looked back over his shoulder at the curtains and closed them
carefully. A useless gesture given the fact that all the other
windows in the room still stood uncovered. From the dull light of
these other windows Sarah could see that her father's face looked
very different. It was dark blue and black and red, more sunken and
he hunched over a bit more than usual. Sarah noticed a red stain on
the lip of his glass.
“Look Sarah,” he said. “I'm in a
bit of trouble here I-” Suddenly he straightened up and adjusted
his jacket and set his glass down on the seat of the chair next to
him with the faded pink upholstery and, fiddling with the curtain
frills behind his back, began to search for his fatherly voice.
“Um.... Sarah, look. . .I know that.
. . Well, we have both been going through some...stuff...anyway. Your
mother left us, as you know, and I. . . well, I've made a few
mistakes (who hasn't?) and. . .Sarah, I need you to get your stuff.”
The octopus, which had been taking a
brief nap stirred. It had grown so big that Sarah's knees buckled a
bit from the movement and her father, misunderstanding, took a step
forward.
“Sarah don't give me that drama. I
need you to hurry!.” He rushed past her and into the hallway. Sarah
noticed a piece of a muddy foot print stained the collar of his
jacket as she watched him head to her room. She stood there in the
hall and the octopus, now very awake, was moving its tendrils across
the carpet, fidgeting out of late afternoon hunger. Sarah strode into
the kitchen and, opening the refrigerator, pulled out a jar of Jelly.
The last one. It was empty. She opened it and passed it up to the
octopus who peaked inside and threw it on to the floor in
frustration.
“I'm sorry but we don't have
anything else.” Sarah said. “We're all out.” The octopus began
to swing its tendrils in annoyance. Slowly at first and then with
more fervor. Sarah could barely keep her balance with the weight of
the thing.
“Don't!” She cried as she grabbed
for the counter to hold herself upright. “I'm sorry but I don't
know what you want! I can't feed you anymore!” The octopus began to
take swings at the chairs in the room knocking them over, tossing old
Tupperware and dirty glasses onto the floor. Sarah heard her father
yell something from the next room but the octopus was swinging itself
around so violently that she could only focus on keeping a firm grip
on the counter top. Her father appeared in the doorway of the
kitchen.
“Sarah! What in hell are
you-” But he was cut off by the sound of a car door slamming. His
face immediately went white and he put his finger to his lips.
“Sarah don't say. . .just don't move
okay?” He moved out of the doorway towards the front of the house.
As soon as he left the octopus made one last mighty swing and Sarah,
momentarily distracted by her father, lost her grip and sat down hard
on the kitchen floor. The octopus, finally able to reach the ground
began to pull itself along the floor with Sarah being dragged
underneath. It made its way to the backdoor and preceded out onto the
lawn and down the hill towards the water. Sarah tried to stand up but
the thing had grown too heavy. She was still stuck underneath it.
“Wait!” She cried and, looking
back, she caught a brief glimpse of her father talking animatedly to
three large men carrying baseball bats. She yelled again for the
octopus to stop but it would not listen. The octopus was hungry. It
had gone too long without a snack. It had been gone too long from the
sea. Sarah wondered what it would eat.
″Minnows,″ She thought. ″Of
Course! Maybe we'll be able to find some minnows.″
The End.
By Sam Patwell
