The Blue (The Complete Novel) by Joseph Turkot Page A

a word about moving anymore.
     
    I wish Russell had his guitar. Or just that he’d sing. Or anything. Even touch me. Hold me. But he just curls up into a ball, holding onto anger—about the weather or the seal, I can’t tell—and falls asleep after telling me it’s my watch first. I want to curse at him, and tell him he’s the one who’s giving up. That it’s his idea to stay hopeful, and that I can’t do it without him. And when I look at Voley, knowing he’s always hopeful, no matter what the situation is, he just whines. The long, high whine that means he’s hungry. And I can read his mind. He’s been walking all day, and his muscles are sore, and we’ve used up everything we have, and he needs to eat something. But there’s nothing to eat. I tell him this softly. Sorry boy, we don’t have anything right now. He doesn’t seem to understand, and keeps on whining, so I just pet him. I wonder if Russell will come to life and get angry if I start the stove up. I remember he told me that we only had a night’s worth left. If that. But I want to use the last of it now. It’s the only thing I can give Voley. I start to work my way toward the bag, trying to sneak the stove out, but then Voley whines louder, like he wants to give me away, even though I’m trying to help him. I decide we’ll just freeze and return to him empty-handed. I’m sorry, I tell him again. And then, I just pet him. For the longest time, I don’t even go out to stand my watch. I just sit by him and pet him until he stops whining. And I tell him that I know, I feel it too. What I would give for another pebble of dog food. And finally, soaked along his chest, Voley lies down in the cold slush. And the rain starts up again, nearly to medium, and the patter begins on the tarp. But the tarp barely shields us. Voley slides along Russell, the only warmth left to him in the world, and I escape into the darkness.
     
    The wind hits my face. I walk away from the tent and the ridge and invite the weather to come. Bring it on. I feel the cold steel in my pocket and my aching joints and make my way over to one of the small cracks of open ocean. I don’t even know where I’m going. I take the gun out and raise it toward the sky. Like I can shoot the blue open again. But I know there’s a monster out there. Brewing behind the gray clouds. A storm that’s coming to swallow us up. Ice and spray and metal salt death. Me and the last friends to ever know.
     
    I get so far away without realizing it that when I look back, the tent is almost gone from my view, cut off by part of the rise of the ice cliff. And for some reason that I can’t explain, I burst out at the rain. Right up into it. I scream. At first it’s nothing but primal sounds, dark emotions that could never have words. I express my darkest remorse at having lived, at having had to come through this all. All of it pointless. A dream before I die. Some memory that I lived a life, and all those things in it, the people that I shared it with, will all just be a flash of remembrance, and then it will be gone. I scream because I want it all to mean more than what it means. The love I’ve felt. It should mean more than this. And finally, from my guttural moanings come words. I shout the names of the people I miss. Every single one that ever touched me—I call out for Jennifer and Delly. I tell them that this is where we are now. This is what happened to your old friends. Washed out by the rain finally. I holler up to them, and ask if they’ve already been taken by it. I ask the rain too. And then I tell them goodbye. I call for the Cap’n, who always knew how to keep us alive. For the longest time, and why couldn’t you get us through one storm? You fought storms your whole life. I tell him it was just a storm. And that I loved it on the Sea Queen. Then I come to Ernest, and I tell him that he’s got to do something. He’s got to get us through this. Just one more time. Get us through it.