David Vann - Legend of a Suicide

Roy hadn’t thought about fishing. There’s a little bit left, he said. I’ll heat something up for you.

That’d be great.

Roy went to work then on heating up a can of cream-of-chicken soup, their last can of it, with a can of corn and a can of string beans. His father had his flashlight out and was working on their lamp. He must have smelled the paraffin and given it a bat, he said.

By the time the food was warm, the lamp was operational again and they could see inside the cabin.

What did it look like? Roy asked as he set their food down on the floor.

What?

What did it look like, the bear?

Just a black bear, not very big, a small male. I saw him down below me late this morning, rooting around the bushes. I hit him in the back with the first shot, and it knocked him down but then he was thrashing around a lot and screaming. My second shot hit him high in the neck, and that killed him.

Jesus, Roy said.

It was something, his father said. Next time, we’ll have to skin one and salt and dry the meat. Any salt left, by the way?

Yeah, we have a bag of it still.

Good. We can also just leave some saltwater out in a pan and let it evaporate on a sunny day, which should come about twice every million years.

Ha, Roy said, but his father didn’t look up from his food. He seemed very tired. Roy was, too. That night he fell asleep almost immediately.

He dreamed he was chopping up bits of fish and every piece had a small pair of eyes and as he chopped, there was a moaning sound that was getting louder. It wasn’t coming from the pieces of fish or their eyes exactly, but they were watching him and waiting to see what he would do.

Roy woke to his father moving stuff around their cabin, cleaning up and sorting things out. He yawned and stretched and put his boots on.

That bear cleaned us out pretty good, his father said.

I’ll have to fix my sleeping bag, Roy said. He had slept in the bottom half of it with all his clothes on, including his jacket and hat and a small blanket his father had thrown over him.

Yeah, that and the radio and the door and my rain gear and most of our food. We’ll have to fix it right up.

Roy didn’t answer.

I’m sorry, his father said. I’m just a bit discouraged by this. He spoiled a lot of our food, and some of it could have been saved yesterday but now the bugs are all in it, so we’re going to have to just throw it out. We have freezer bags, you know, that you could have put some of this stuff into.

Sorry.

That’s all right. Just help me sort through it now.

They continued sorting, and what they had to throw out, they carried in a garbage bag a hundred yards away and buried in a pit.

If another bear comes along, maybe it will smell this first and come over here and dig and we’ll be able to shoot it before it gets over to the cabin.

Roy wasn’t real excited about shooting more bears. The last one already seemed like a waste. Do you think that bear you got was the bear that did this? he asked.

His father stopped shoveling for a moment. Yeah. I tracked it. But it could have been a different bear possibly. I lost the trail a few times and had to pick it up again, and it is pretty odd that that bear was so far from home. So we should keep a lookout just in case.

Roy decided he wasn’t going to shoot unless the bear was attacking one of them, especially if they weren’t going to skin it and eat it. How much did it scream when you shot it?

That’s not the kind of question you ask.

When they had finished burying the wrecked food, his father walked back to the cabin and put the shovel inside. They stood on the porch then and looked out at the water, which was still and gray.

We need to get our food situation together, he said. You can start fishing and I’ll work on the smoker. We need the wood shelter, too, and we need to cut some wood, but I can’t do everything at once, and first we need to eat. If you catch anything, gut it for eggs and put out another couple of lines on the bottom with the eggs. Just tie the lines off to something and we’ll leave them there around the clock.

So Roy went to the point again and cast across the mouth. It was a long time of catching nothing. He started by staring at the water as he fished, feeling like a fish would be there any moment, as if he could wish one onto the end of his line, but then he started looking off across the channel at the islands. There were a few whitecaps farther out, and in the distance, at the edge of the horizon, a fishing boat passed. It was far away, but Roy could see how it was humped up in front and he imagined even that he could see the spreaders, but that was just imagination. And then he was daydreaming about how he’d have to shoot their flares off this beach and try to get the boat’s attention because his father had been gored by a bear and half eaten, and then a fish finally hit and he pulled it in, surfing it fast across the water, its head wagging, because it was only a small Dolly. He got it on the rocks and would normally have thrown it back, it was so small, but they needed anything they could get at this point, so he smashed its head and slit it from its asshole to its gullet to see if it had eggs. It did, which was lucky, though they were very small and not many of them. He cut them out, left the fish and his pole, and walked toward the cabin to set the bottom lines, but then he could hear the wings coming down and turned and ran but wasn’t fast enough. The eagle already had his fish in its talons and was lifting off with its huge brown wings before Roy could get there. He picked up a rock and chucked it at the eagle to make it drop the fish but he missed by too far and the eagle lumbered off across the inlet to a tree on the point and landed and sat there watching Roy while it ate the fish.

Roy considered the shotgun, but even maddened and feeling they were desperate for food and fearing what his father would say about losing the fish he didn’t want to think about shooting a bald eagle.

He got an extra spool and hooks from the cabin to set the bottom lines.

Get something? his father called from the back.

Yeah, I got the eggs to set the lines, but it was only a small fish and when I turned away the eagle grabbed it.

Shit.

Yeah.

Well, go catch another one.

I’m planning on it.

He put big sinkers on the bottom lines and hurled them out by hand. He hoped the water was deep enough. He set two right out in front of the cabin and tied them to roots, then walked out to the point again and threw a line into the mouth where he’d been fishing and trailed it clear back to tie off to a tree. The eagle was still sitting high up, watching him.

Then Roy picked up his gear and walked farther down the shoreline, more than half a mile of slow going over the rocks and in some cases up into the woods to get to the next small inlet. Here when he cast over the mouth and trundled in, he got something bigger right away. It pulled sideways at the line heading out to sea, the reel singing, until Roy realized his drag was just set too loose and he tightened it up and then the fish still pulled but Roy had no trouble horsing it in. It jumped twice just as it was pulled in close to the beach, two twists into the air, the head ripping back and forth trying to free itself. It was an early pink salmon, very silvery and fresh. Roy walked backward with his rod tip high to pull it up smoothly and quickly onto the rocky beach. It flopped wildly and threw the hook, but by then it was too far inland and Roy ran over to scoop it quick by the gills and throw it farther up the beach, where it lay gasping and wild-eyed and he smashed its head three times with a rock until its body arched quivering and bloody and then lay flat. Its muscles still spasmed every few seconds but it was dead.