David Vann - Legend of a Suicide

There were two prostitutes in Fairbanks mainly that I went to see. One who had really soft skin and no pubic hair. She was just like a little girl, real small, and she would never look at me.

Roy stuck his fingers in his ears and tried to hum just loudly enough to block his father out and not be heard, but the confessions went on and he had to hear everything.

I kept seeing them, all of them, even when I knew that Rhoda knew.

Rhoda was Roy’s stepmother, his father’s second marriage and divorce, only recently ended.

I got crabs from one of these prostitutes, and I passed them on to Rhoda. You remember when we were supposed to go skiing that time in California, and we didn’t?

This was rare and caught Roy by surprise. He wasn’t usually asked questions.

Yeah, he answered. He remembered waking up and it was already midmorning, much too late and something wrong. And he didn’t want to hear now that it was all because his father had been with a whore. His father had told him that he had caught the bugs from the bench in the locker room at the YMCA, and Roy had believed him, along with everything else.

That time she got unbelievably angry. She never would give me any room to explain. It was like I was just some kind of monster. Like I’d shafted her. What do you think? Do you think I’m a monster? The question came with the odd whining and gulping.

No, Dad.

Roy’s dreams started repeating themselves. In one, he was in a cramped bathroom folding red towels while more red towels kept stacking up and coming in on him, pressing from every side. In another, he was on a bus that was trapped in sand and being swept down a hillside. In another, he was hung up on hooks and he had to choose between getting shot once, which would be quick but could kill him, or being dipped in a large vat of red ants, which wouldn’t kill him but would take a very long time.

In the mornings, his father was always in a good mood, and Roy never understood this.

We’re doing all right, his father said. We have some smoked fish put away, and some wood, and it’s still early in the summer.

Then one day when it was raining hard and Roy came in from the outhouse, he found his father standing in the cabin with his pistol out. He was holding it in one hand, aimed toward the roof, and he was staring up into the darkness of the timbers, moving around like he was trying to get a bead on some big spider up there or something.

What are you doing?

Better just stay out of my way.

What?

Stay out of my way. Get in the other room or something.

What is it?

But his father wouldn’t answer again; he just squinted up and sighted the pistol at something that seemed to be moving at the top of the ceiling.

Roy stepped back into the other room and watched his father from the doorway.

His father fired then, the blast deafening. Roy put his hands to his ears but they hurt and wouldn’t stop roaring. His father fired again up into the roof, the.44 Magnum a huge pistol and ridiculous and spitting fire in the dim cabin, filling the air with sulfur.

What are you shooting at? Roy yelled but his father only fired again, and again, and again, and then he tossed the pistol down onto a pile of clothes by the door and walked outside into the rain, saying, It’s so goddamn tight in here.

Roy went to the door and watched his father standing out there looking up into the rain and getting soaked without his rain gear or hat. His hair matted flat to his scalp and his red mouth open. His eyes closing and opening and closing. Steam coming from his breath and rising off his shirt. His arms limp at his sides as if there were nothing left to do but stand and let the sky come down.

Roy waited so long for his father that finally he sat down against the stove and stared out through the doorway at the slice of gray air and water and his father soaked and making no sense. When his father started walking finally, Roy got up to see but his father kept walking on into the woods and didn’t return until after dark.

There was no light in the cabin when his father returned, and no heat. Roy was in his sleeping bag against the stove and had put cans out for the various drips and streams that came from the new holes in the ceiling. His father came over and lifted him into the other room and told him over and over how sorry he was, but Roy pretended to be asleep and wouldn’t listen and only hated and feared him.

When Roy woke in the morning, he was quiet. He grabbed some smoked salmon and crackers, walked out, and sat on the other end of the porch without a word or a look. He just stared down at his plate, though he knew his father was feeling bad about himself and wanted to talk.

His father stood up and leaned against the wall of the cabin. When Roy looked up, his father had his eyes closed and was feeling the sun.

Roy finished his breakfast and waited.

A nice day, his father finally said. Maybe we should go for a hike.

Roy considered.

Well, what do you think of that?

All right.

All right, then, let’s go hunting for a buck. We could use something other than salmon, right?

Roy was slow to get his gear together, but finally they were on the trail, his father leading. Roy didn’t want any kind of resolution. He wanted things to get bad enough that they would have to leave the island. He could make things terrible for his father, he knew, if he just didn’t say anything or respond in any way.

They cleared the low forests and climbed higher and bushwhacked their way over to a rock outcropping from which they could scan two mountainsides and the shoreline and their cabin. Roy wondered whether many deer would come on this side, this close to their cabin, but now they were here, so it looked as if they were going to just try it.

What do you think of this? his father asked.

What do I think of what?

All this. The view. Being out here. Being with your dad.

It’s nice.

His father looked out over the channel then and stared at the sun off the water. It was nowhere to look into, just glare. Roy moved around several times to different places to sit on the rock and in the brush, unable to keep still. He wasn’t looking for deer. He wondered if his father was looking for deer.

His father put his rifle down and stood and walked too close to the edge of the small cliff and fell off. It looked almost like he stepped off. And then he bounced and sprang out and hit branches, ripping through them and tumbling, and then he was out of sight but Roy could hear him and the top of his own head was rising in hot wavering streaks as he panicked.

Roy grabbed his gun and stood but there was nothing to do. His father was already down through the trees and brush, already loud whumps and it was over and there was no sound from down there. His blood was in his ears and he was afraid he would fall over too, as if his father were pulling him, but then he shouted to his father and set his gun down and ran back into the brush to where they had come through. He tried to work his way down fast but the brush was so thick and cutting at him, and he was scared he would never find his father, that he would just disappear in there and be dying.

He kept screaming as he went but there was no response. He slid down through a patch of nettles, his hands on fire from them, and then fell down through some hemlock and hit a flat spot and got up and worked his way across to find his father. He got to about where he thought he’d find him, but saw nothing. He looked up to try to see the cliff for reference, but it was too thick in here and he couldn’t see anything. He whined and turned in a circle and then got hold of himself and stopped and listened.

It was only wind and the leaves, but then he heard a moan close by and parted the growth a few feet in front of him but there was nothing. He pushed through farther, then backtracked and checked all around. He couldn’t hear the moaning anymore, and he wondered whether he had only imagined it in the first place. He started whining again and he couldn’t help it and he just kept looking. Then he had the idea to trample everything down so he’d know where he’d already looked, so he stomped all around in bigger and bigger circles, crushing the smaller stuff, and still he couldn’t find anything.