The Line Between

Like every sea creature, the octopus knew that any human being holding any sharp object is a danger to everyone within reach, never to be trusted with body or soul. Nevertheless, he was helpless before his own curiosity; and the next time the fisherman came prowling out with the dawn tide, the octopus could not keep from climbing warily from the ship's keel … to the rudder … then to the broken, dangling taffrail, and clinging there to watch the old man prying and scraping under the hull, filling the rough–sewn waterproof bag at his belt with muddy mussels and the occasional long–necked clam. He was muddy to the waist himself, and smelled bad, but he hummed and grunted cheerfully as he toiled, and the octopus stared at him in great awe.

At last it became impossible for the octopus to hold his yearning at bay any longer. Taking his courage in all eight arms, he crawled all the way up onto the deck, fully exposed to the astonished gaze of the old fisherman. Haltingly, but clearly, he asked aloud, «Are you God?»

The fisherman's expression changed very slowly, passing from hard, patient resignation through dawning disbelief on the way to a kind of worn radiance. «No, my friend," he responded finally. «I am not God, no more than you. But I think you and I are equally part of God as we stand here," and he swept his arm wide to take in all the slow, dark shiver of the sea as it breathed under the blue and silver morning. «Surely we two are not merely surrounded by this divine splendor — we both belong to it, we are of it, now and for always. How else should it be?»

«The sea," the octopus said slowly. «The sea…»

«And the land," said the fisherman. «And the sky. And the firelights glittering beyond the sky. All things taken together form the whole, including things like an octopus and an old man, who play their tiny parts and wonder.»

«My thoughts and questions were too small … I have lived in God all my life, and never known. Is this truly what you tell me?»

«Just so," the old man beamed. «Just so.»

The octopus was speechless with joy. He stretched forth a tentative tentacle, and the fisherman took firm hold of it in his own rough hand. As they stood together, both of them equally enraptured by their newfound accord, the octopus asked shyly, «Do you suppose that God is aware that we are here, within It — part of It?»

«I have no idea," the fisherman replied placidly. «What matters is that we know.»

There was a rough thump as the boat tilted suddenly starboard and nose down, its gentle rocking halted. The sea lowered, falling away from the boat in a great rush, exposing faded paint and barnacles to the air. Shifting gravel and rock clawed at the hull and rudder. The octopus, automatically exerting his suckers against the deck, was unmoved, but the fisherman went tumbling, and above and below and around them the world itself seemed to open a great mouth and draw breath ever more steadily toward the west.

«And that?» the octopus inquired. He pointed with a second tentacle toward the naked expanse of ocean floor over which the tide had with – drawn almost to the horizon — surest sign of an approaching tsunami. «Is that also part of God, like us?»

«I am afraid so," replied the old fisherman, braced now against the slanting rail. «Along with typhoons, stinging jellyfish, my wife's parents and really bad oysters. In such a case, I regard it as no sin to head for the high ground. The shore is far, true, but I was fast on my feet as a young man and this life has kept me fit. I will live, and buy another boat, and fish again.»

«I wish you well," said the octopus, «but I am afraid my own options are somewhat more constrained. For escape I require the freedom of the deep sea, which is now entirely out of reach. No. God's great shrug will be here soon enough. I will watch it come, and when it arrives I will give it both our greetings.»

«You'll be killed," said the fisherman.

The octopus was hardly equipped to smile, but the fisherman could hear one in his voice all the same. «I shall still be with God.»

«That particular form of deep metaphysical appreciation will come to you soon enough without the help of fatalism or fifty–foot waves," said the fisherman, pulling the half–filled canvas bag from his belt. «Besides, our conversation has just begun.»

Quick as the eels he was so good at catching, the fisherman slid over the rail and dropped to the exposed seabed. Once there he knelt down and pulled the open canvas bag back and forth through the silty, cross–cut shallows, losing his catch, but harvesting a full crop of seawater.

«Well? Are you coming?» the fisherman shouted up to the octopus. He held out the brimming bag exactly like the promise it was. «Time and tide, my many–armed friend. Time and tide!»