So I tried to act like I had not screamed for help and instead had just been yelling triumphant things like “I got it!” Dad told me not to tell barefaced lies, but he said it in a low voice because Jennifer was there watching, and Dad was a compassionate man.

Chapter 11

AS I CAME UP THE BEACH JENNIFER SCREAMED and ran away from me. The octopus was a writhing mass of legs firmly attached to my arm and shoulder. I tried to act as if I were enjoying the situation and had in fact done this on purpose, that this was how I always caught octopus. The octopus began to crawl up on my face and head. I threw down the spear gun, tripped over my flippers, and yelled, “Help me, Dad!” But Dad looked as horrified as everyone else.

The Banini squatted down next to me, then did something that made my sisters scream and turn away and start running up the beach, saying things like “I cant believe he did that” and “I’m going to be sick.” Some mothers pulled their children away though a couple of men kept watching to prove they were braver than the women, but you could tell they were getting sort of queasy themselves.

What the Banini did that made them all sick was to lean over and bite the bump between the octopus’s eyes right off and spit it out. When he did this the octopus convulsed, then went slimy and limp on me—all flaccid, heavy, and spent. It was paralyzed, dead, lifeless. Its color changed from a florid red brown to a light, blotchy pale sandy color. The Banini picked it up from where it had flopped off me. He unscrewed the head off my spear gun, the trident part, and worked the barb out of the tentacle it was stuck in. After that he held the octopus in his hands and, with one quick motion, turned it inside out. It made a squashing sound when he did this, a sucking gurgle. Its insides hung out all yellow and blue, sort of like a sheep’s stomach I had seen that spring when the farmer on our road killed and gutted a lamb that had had its hind leg chewed almost all the way through by a dog.

The Banini took out his big Opinel clasp knife and made a few deft cuts after which all the guts fell out into the shallow water by the beach. They floated there all afternoon. Little girls would dare each other to see who would go up to them and touch them, then they’d scream and run away while their mothers yelled at them and said if they did it again they’d slap them.