Read Online The Blue (The Complete Novel) by Joseph Turkot - Free Book Online Page A

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