| |
Arne Hjorth scrambled down the rocky bank to the shore below, his fingers seeking out the familiar indentations, his toes reaching blindly for the ledges and outcroppings that would support him. He had climbed up and down this bank so often he could do it with his eyes closed.
He didn’t know if the dog was still swimming, or even if it was still alive, but before he had lost sight of it in the darkness its head had still been above water. He didn’t think he would have been able to see it at all if he hadn’t been up so high, looking down on the surface of the water with the moon at his back. The dog’s head had a strange shape, long and narrow, and while the face itself was so pale it seemed to almost glow in the dim light, it had long dark hair hanging down from just above its eyes. The hair floated out on the waves and distorted what small part of the head was above the water, making it all but invisible, but the moon reflected off the eyes as the animal drifted towards him. They seemed to be pleading with him, begging him for help.
Arne had never had a dog. He hadn’t even thought about it. Dogs weren’t something that fit into a fisherman’s life. Even now when he no longer fished—except for himself when the goddamn fish police weren’t looking—he had no place in his life for a dog. How would he feed it? Hell, he could barely feed himself. No, it wasn’t any desire for a dog that drove him down to the shore and into the cold water. It was something else entirely.
He felt an odd kind of kinship with this animal. An animal that those people on that fancy boat had simply discarded for some reason he could even not begin to understand. If he hadn’t seen them do it he wouldn’t have believed it. Surely you didn’t discard a living thing, something you had taken into your life—although now that he thought about it, society had done a pretty good job of discarding him.
The dog didn’t appear to do anything wrong. It was sniffing at one of the totes of fish food Arne had seen delivered earlier in the day. Maybe the tote had been damaged because they hadn’t emptied it into the hopper the way they usually did and Arne thought the dog might have had its nose stuck into an opening in the plastic. That made sense because he knew the food the farms used had a strong smell. It was mostly made from fishmeal and fish oil and Arne had read somewhere it was dangerous for dogs to eat it because of the high protein level.
In any case, he heard one of the men yell something and then watched him walk over and kick the dog so hard its yelp of pain carried clearly across the water. The man then turned and gestured to his partner who went over, grabbed the dog by the collar, and heaved it over the railing.
Arne heard a sharp noise right afterwards and he thought at first it might have been a gunshot, but it was too dark to see if either of the men had a gun, and it didn’t seem likely anyway. Why would someone shoot at a dog in the water? In fact why would anyone on a boat or a fish farm have a gun in the first place? It didn’t make any sense. He was just letting his imagination run away with him. Probably the noise had come from some equipment banging on the fish farm.
He waded into the dark water, clinging to the jagged line of rocks that ran out into the ocean from the west side of the cove. The dog hadn’t looked like it could swim well and the current here was strong. It would push the animal in towards the shore and then suck it around the outer end of the point. If Arne could reach it there, he might be able to pull it in.
He had to put his face right down near the water in order to see it, but the dog was still there, maybe twenty feet out, only visible as a dark distortion on the surface. Every now and then it moved its head and there was a tiny splash as a paw came out of the water in an apparent attempt either to stay afloat or to swim towards the safety of land.
Arne moved out as far as he could, feeling the bottom slope away under his feet, shuddering as the cold water crept up his legs and wincing as the barnacles tore his fingertips where they gripped the rocks. When he reached the furthest tip of the rocks he stretched out his free arm and grabbed a handful of floating hair.
It took all his strength to pull the dog in. It was bigger than it had looked and it had the same long hair he had seen on its head all over its body. Soaking wet, Arne figured the damn thing must weigh nearly a hundred pounds, maybe more, and it was too weak to help itself. Even when he managed to pull it in far enough that it should have been able to stand, its legs kept collapsing and he had to hold it up with one arm under its belly and the other hand clutching a bunch of the hair on its shoulder. By the time he made it to the shore Arne was as exhausted as the dog and probably almost as cold.
The two of them lay sprawled on the gravel until Arne had caught his breath. He was shivering, but he knew that was a good thing. It meant that while he was cold and uncomfortable, he wasn’t suffering from hypothermia—at least not yet, although he needed to change into something dry before his wet clothes sapped what little heat he had left. He reached out a hand to pat the dog. It hadn’t moved from where he had deposited it and it looked dead except for the eyes. The eyes followed Arne’s every move.
Arne pushed himself to his feet and went over to the dinghy that was tied to a piece of driftwood further along the beach. He had dry clothes onboard Silver Lady, and he kept some old towels and blankets stowed under his bunk. He could use those to dry the dog off and make it a bed. He would have liked to take the animal over to the boat but there was no way he could get it up onto the deck. It would have to stay where it was. As he pushed his oars into the water he heard the dog give a low whimper.
“It’s okay,” he heard himself say, the sound of his own voice surprising him after so much time alone. “I’ll be back.”