David Vann - Legend of a Suicide

They harvested salmon as his father had promised, in long strings that they dragged back to the cabin, the open mouths still gasping, the bodies reddish late in the season and trembling on land. They caught as many as they had time to clean and cut up and smoke, the pink and red and white meat of chinook, sockeye, humpies, and chum.

They shot a mountain goat that had come down to the shoreline, Roy wondering at how red the blood looked at first against the white hair, and then how black. By this time it was cold enough that the animal steamed as they gutted it. The mountains the next morning had snow all along their tops, as if the spirit of the white animal had somehow fled into them, and within the week, the snow had lowered halfway down toward the cabin and sat still and windless and bright throughout the afternoon.

They set to work again on the cache. It had become rounded in all its corners and the earth around it had slumped. They dug it out shovelful by shovelful and sharpened its edges and deepened it again to the base rock and then Roy handed down the posts to his father, the posts lashed this time with twine and the corners nailed. Then they set the poles across the top and lashed them as well and nailed them along their edges with ten-inch nails deep into the posts and then they lashed together a small second roof and placed it over the uneven hole in the top and stood back and admired their work.

It looks right, Roy said.

It’s ready for the goods.

The spare room in the cabin by this time was full with dried and smoked fish and meat carefully packaged in freezer bags then larger garbage bags. They began early one morning so that they’d be finished burying by dark and not have to keep watch over it during the night. His father placed all of the bags inside along with a large pile of canned goods that had been flown in, in case all the smoked fish and meat spoiled for some reason, and then he nailed down the second roof.

Hope it stays good, he said.

It better, Roy said, and his father grinned.

Let’s bury it and forget about it.

So they threw in a deep layer of cold ash they had saved from the stove to mask the smell, and then a layer of rocks, then the dirt and they heaped it up high so that when it settled it would be level, and then they put more rocks on top of that and another layer of ash.

I don’t know if any of this is right, his father said, but it seems like it should work.

They continued to catch the last of the salmon and also a few Dolly Varden and some small bottom fish. The original plan had been to go out in the inflatable for halibut, too, but his father had decided to save the boat and all of its gasoline for any kind of emergency that might come up. They shot another mountain goat. The smoker was going around the clock still, even as the first snows came down to the cabin, and the inside of the cabin seemed a smokehouse also with strips of salmon and Dolly Varden and sculpin and lingcod and deer and goat everywhere cooling and waiting to be bagged, the baggies and garbage bags that had already been filled piling up in the spare room.

They went to bed each night exhausted, and there was no time left awake to listen for his father, and so Roy managed on some nights even to forget that his father was not well. He began, even, to assume that his father was fine, in that he didn’t think about his father one way or the other. He was simply living each day filled with activity and then sleeping and then rising again, and since he was working alongside his father, he assumed his father was feeling all the same things. If he had been asked how his father was feeling, he would have been annoyed at the question and considered the matter too far away to pay attention to.

Most of the snows were light and did not stick for long down close to the water or even for a ways up behind the cabin. They did not cover the cache consistently. Roy asked his father if the weather would stay like this, because it seemed like it might be the case. His father had to tip his head back to remember.

They didn’t stick long, most of the snows in Ketchikan. But then I remember skiing around, and snowbanks, and shoveling snow and all the slush I had to drive through, so I guess the snow did stick and build up sometimes. Isn’t that funny, though, that I can’t really remember?

They went up to the cache several times a day and looked for bear tracks or any other tracks, but nothing ever came. The constant checking began to seem odd to both of them, as if they had developed some inexplicable fear of this one small piece of ground, so they decided to check less often and just trust that it would be all right, especially since it was growing colder and the days shorter. They came in earlier each evening from their work at the woodpile and the smoker and began reading again and sometimes played cards. They played two-handed pinochle, which technically could not be played, and his father rambled.

Remember what I told you about the world originally being a great field, and the earth flat?

Yeah, Roy said. How everything went to hell after you met Mom.

Whoa, his father said. That’s not exactly what I said. But anyway, I’ve been thinking about that again, and it’s got me thinking about what I’m missing and why I don’t have religion but need it anyway.

What? Roy asked.

I’m screwed, basically. I need the world animated, and I need it to refer to me. I need to know that when a glacier shifts or a bear farts, it has something to do with me. But I also can’t believe any of that crap, even though I need to.

What does that have to do with Mom?

I don’t know. You’re getting me sidetracked.

So they finished the hand and went to bed. But Roy kept thinking of his father’s ramblings, and it seemed to him a strange father out here. It was his tone of voice more than anything, as if the creation of the world had amounted to the Big Screw. But Roy didn’t think too much about it. He really wanted only to sleep.

The snow stuck lower and they quit fishing and smoking and chopping wood.

We have enough anyway, his father said. It’s time now to settle in and relax. That should last about two weeks before I go insane.

What?

I’m just kidding, his father said. That was a joke.

They read by the light of the paraffin lamps and kept the stove stoked. Roy had as much trouble concentrating on his homework here as he had anywhere else, so he spent most of his long hours studying the wavering shadows on the plank walls and waiting for the next meal. It was the most delicious and anticipated food he had ever eaten, all the smoked fish and meat with rice and canned vegetables. His father read and sighed and sacked out for long naps.

They took hikes still, and brought their rifles, but as the snow built up thicker this became too difficult, so as Roy studied, his father began making snowshoes. He used fresh branches and strips of the moose hide they had salted and let dry. As it snowed and blew outside and occasionally rained, he bent over the shoes like the dentist he was, sewing them up carefully and inspecting them with prodding fingers. Red-eye, he finally said, his way of saying ready. They’re finished. We’re going into the snow, my son.

But it just rained, Roy reminded him.

Yeah, that’s right. Okay, we’ll wait until there’s snow again, and then we go. But in the meantime, I have to go for a hike before I decay into some kind of marshmallow in here.

Me, too, Roy said, so they went for a hike along the water. It was overcast and drizzling, the waves indistinct, the waters shifting, surging. They walked along the steeper coast that they rarely hiked along, around the opposite point and on farther to the next in silence until his father said, I don’t think I can live without women. I’m not saying it isn’t great being out here with you, but I just miss women all the time. I can’t stop thinking about them. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know how it is that something is so thoroughly missing when they’re not around. It’s like we have the ocean here and a mountain and trees, but actually the trees aren’t here unless I’m fucking some woman.