David Vann - Legend of a Suicide

Not much of a view, his father said, and he turned and they descended the way they had come and they did not speak again until they were out of the clouds.

His father looked across the low saddle extending to the next ridge and then at what they could see behind this saddle, more mountains beyond and uncertain in the gray. Maybe we should just head back down, he said. It’s not very warm or clear, and there don’t seem to be many trails.

Roy nodded and they continued down through the low growth to the small forests at the mountain’s base and along the game trail to their cabin.

When they got there, it didn’t look right. The front door was hanging slantwise on one hinge and there was trash on the porch.

What the hell, his father said, and they both jogged over and then slowed when they got up to the cabin.

Looks like bears, his father said. That’s our food on the porch.

Roy could see ripped garbage bags of dry goods and the canned goods spilling out the door over the porch and onto the grass below.

They might still be in there, his father said. Put a shell in the chamber and take the safety off, but don’t get jumpy on me, and keep the barrel down. Okay?

Okay.

So they levered in shells and walked slowly toward the cabin until his father went up and banged on the wall and yelled and then waited and nothing moved or made a sound.

Doesn’t seem like they’re here, he said, but you never know. He went up on the porch then and pushed the broken door aside with his barrel and tried to peek in. It’s dark in there, he said. And bears are dark. I hate this. But he finally just stepped in and stepped back out again quickly and then slowly stepped in again. Roy couldn’t hear a thing, his blood was going so crazy. He imagined his father thrown out the front door with the bear after him, his gun knocked away, and Roy would shoot the bear in the eye and then in the open mouth, perfect shots the way his father had told him he would have to aim to kill a bear with a.30-.30.

His father came out again, though, unharmed, and said the bear was gone. He tore up everything, he said.

Roy looked inside and it took a few minutes for his eyes to adjust but then he saw their bedding all torn up and food everywhere and the radio in pieces and parts of the stove taken apart. Everything wrecked. He didn’t see anything that was still whole, and it did not escape him that this was all they had to live on for a very long time. They had no way of calling anyone else now, either, and they had no place to sleep.

I’m going after him, his father said.

What?

There’s no sense in putting everything back together if he’s still out there and can just do this again. And it might not be safe for us, either. He might come back again at night looking for more food.

But it’s late and he could be anywhere, and we have to eat and figure out what to sleep in and…Roy didn’t know how to continue. His father wasn’t making any sense.

You can stay here and put things together, his father said. And I’ll be back after I kill the bear.

I have to stay here by myself?

You’ll be all right. You have your rifle and I’m going to be following the bear, anyway.

I don’t like this, Roy said.

Neither do I. And his father took off. Roy stood on the porch watching him disappear up the path and couldn’t believe what was happening. He felt afraid and started talking out loud: How could you just leave me here? I don’t have anything to eat and I don’t know when you’re coming back.

He was terrified. He walked around the cabin like this and wanted his mother and sister and his friends and everything he had left behind, until finally he was getting cold and hungry enough that he stopped, went in, and started inspecting the sleeping bags to see if anything was usable.

His father’s bag was still almost in one piece. It had only a few small tears in it. But his own bag had been used as some kind of toy. The upper half of it had been shredded and the stuffing strewn all over the room. He could use the bottom half still, he thought, but there would be no way to repair the rest.

The food was almost all wrecked. Some of the bags of flour and white sugar and salt were still intact, but only some of them, and the brown sugar for smoking had been eaten completely. There were still some cans of food that had only been dented, but most had been punctured.

Roy put the pieces of the stove back on that had been knocked off. He started a fire in there, put the only two cans of unopened chili in a pot that wasn’t too badly dinged up, heated the chili, and sat out on the porch waiting for his father.

When it got dark and still his father wasn’t back, Roy reheated and ate the chili, both cans because he couldn’t stop. I ate your chili, he apologized out loud, as if his father could hear.

Roy stayed up that night, in his father’s sleeping bag on the porch with his rifle across his knees, and still his father didn’t return. When morning came he hadn’t slept and he was hungry and felt sick and very cold from being out on the porch, so he went inside.

The radio wasn’t hurt too badly. It had just been sat on or something, it looked like. But still it might not work anymore. Roy couldn’t tell. He wanted to be able to do something, something useful, but he just didn’t know anything about the radio. So he went back outside in his boots and his warm jacket and hat and gloves, all of which were still okay, and he started sawing shingles. He kept his rifle near him with a shell already in the chamber and the safety off and he sawed and thought about shooting his gun into the air a few times. His father would come then, but he’d also be angry, because the shots would be about nothing. He wanted his father just to return. He didn’t like this at all. He had no idea what to do.

When it was afternoon, he had made only a few shingles and had a blister on his thumb. The shingles were impossibly difficult. Something wasn’t right about how they were doing it. His father hadn’t come back and he hadn’t heard any gunshot, so he got up to write a note saying, I’ve gone looking for you. I’ll be back in a couple hours. I’m leaving in the afternoon.

He set off the way his father had gone, but he realized quickly that he had no idea which way to go. He looked at the ground and could see faintly the signs that they had walked here yesterday. Occasionally a bootprint but mostly just torn-up dirt and flattened grass. He followed this trail, though, to where the mountain started and there was no way of seeing any track in that spongy stuff and he hadn’t seen any trail heading off the main one, so he sat down against the mountain and tried to think.

His father hadn’t left him anything to go on. He hadn’t said where he’d be going or for how long. So Roy just sat there and cried, then walked back down to the cabin. He tore up the note and sat on the porch looking out at the water, and he ate some bread and peanut butter and scooped up a little of the jam from where the jar had been smashed on the rocks below the porch. Ants and other bugs had gotten to most of it, but he saved almost a spoonful of stuff that looked okay. He got back on the porch, ate it, looked out toward the setting sun, and waited.

His father returned just after dark. Roy could hear him coming down the path and he yelled out, Dad?

Yeah, his father answered quietly and came up to the porch and stamped his boots and looked down at Roy with the rifle across his knees.

I got him, he said.

What?

I got the bear, up in a draw about two mountains over. Got him this morning. Did you hear the shots?

No.

Well, it was a ways.

Where is he? Roy asked.

Still over there. I couldn’t carry him back. And I didn’t have my knife. Just the gun. I’m sure hungry now, though. Do we have any food left? Did you catch any fish?