David Vann - Legend of a Suicide

I don’t know if that’s true, Roy said.

This is because you’re growing up with your mother and sister, without me around. You’re so used to women’s rules you think they make sense. That will make it easy for you in some ways, but it also means maybe you won’t see some things as clearly.

It’s not like I got to choose.

See? That’s one of them. I was trying to make a point, and you turned it around to make me feel bad, to make me feel like I haven’t done my duty according to the rules and haven’t been a good father.

Well, maybe you haven’t. Roy was starting to cry now, and wishing he weren’t.

See? his father said. You only know a woman’s way to argue. Cry your fucking eyes out.

Jesus, Roy said.

Never mind, his father said. I have to get out of here. Even if it is a fucking hurricane. I’m going for a hike.

As he pulled on his gear, Roy was facing the wall trying to make himself stop crying, but it all seemed so enormously unfair and from out of nowhere that he couldn’t stop. He was still crying after his father had gone, and then he started talking out loud. Fuck him, he said. Goddamn it, fuck you, Dad. Fuck you. And then he cried harder and made a weird squealing sound from trying to hold it back. Quit fucking crying, he said.

Finally he did stop, and he washed off his face and stoked the stove and got in his sleeping bag and read. When his father came back, it was several hours later. He stomped his boots out on the porch, then came inside and took off his gear and went to the stove and cooked dinner.

Roy listened to the kitchen sounds and to the howling outside and the rain thrown against the walls in gusts. It seemed to him they could just go on like this, not speaking, and it seemed even that this might be easier.

Here, his father said when he put the plates on the card table in the middle of the room. Roy got up and they ate without looking at one another or saying anything. Just chewing away at the Tuna Helper with sculpin in it and listening to the walls. Then his father said, You can do the dishes.

Okay.

And I’m not going to apologize, his father said. I do that too much.

Okay.

The storm continued for another five days, days of waiting and not talking much and feeling cooped up. Occasionally Roy or his father went for a short hike or brought in wood, but the rest of the time was just reading and eating and waiting and his father trying to reach Rhoda on the shortwave or the VHF but this never worked.

You’d think I could get through for just a few minutes, his father said. What good is all this shit if we can’t use it in bad weather? Are we supposed to have emergencies just on good days?

Roy considered saying, Good thing we haven’t needed it, as a way of getting talking again, but he was afraid this would be interpreted as some kind of comment about his father’s need for Rhoda, so he kept quiet.

When his father did finally get through again, the storm had mostly died. Roy went out into light drizzle and ground so soaked it was like walking on sponges. The trees were dripping everywhere, big drops on the hood and shoulders of his rain gear. He wondered who Rhoda really was. He had spent a lot of time with her, of course, when she and his father had been married. But his memories were all a kid’s memories, of how she threatened to stab their elbows with her fork if they left them on the table at dinner, for instance, and a peek of her once in the bathroom through the crack in the door. A few arguments between her and his father, but nothing distinct. They had divorced only one year ago, when he’d been twelve, but somehow everything was different now, all his perceptions. As if thirteen were a different life than twelve. He couldn’t remember how he’d thought then, how his brain had worked, because back then he hadn’t thought about his brain working, so he couldn’t now make sense of anything from that time, as if he had someone else’s memories. So Rhoda could have been anyone. All she meant to him now was this thing his father had to have, a craving as if for pornography, a need that made his father sick, though Roy knew it was wrong, incorrect, to think she actually made him sick. He knew it was his father doing it to himself.

Around the point, Roy sat on a large piece of driftwood that was soaked through and cold. He watched his breath fogging out and looked at the water and actually saw a small boat pass, about a mile away. An extremely rare event. A small cabin cruiser out fishing or camping, with extra jerry cans of gasoline tied along the bow rails. Roy stood up and waved but he was too far even to see if there was a response. He could see the dark patch inside where there was a person or several people but could not make out anything more distinct.

He wondered whether this thing his dad had with Rhoda would ever happen to him. Though he hoped not, he knew somehow ahead of time that it probably would. But by now he was just thinking to be doing something and wished he were back in the cabin where it was warm. It was just too cold out here. It was a miserable place.

When he returned, he was still too early, but he didn’t go back outside. He figured he had stayed out long enough.

I know that, his father said. That’s not what I’m saying. Roy’s here now, by the way. He was outside.

Rhoda’s voice came in unclear, warped by the radio. Jim, Roy’s not the only one hearing this. Anyone with a ham radio is getting to hear everything.

You’re right, his father said. But I don’t care. This is too important.

What’s important, Jim?

That we talk, that we work things out.

And how are things going to work out?

I want us to be together.

They listened to the static then for at least half a minute before Rhoda came back on.

I’m sorry I’m having to say this in front of Roy and everyone else, Jim, but we’re never going to be together again. We’ve already tried that, many times. You have to listen to me, to what I’ve been saying. I’ve found someone else, Jim, and I’m going to marry him, I hope. And anyway, it doesn’t matter about him. We still wouldn’t be together. Sometimes things just end, and we have to let them end.

Roy pretended to be reading while his father sat bowed before the radio.

Fucking radio, his father said to Rhoda. If we could be together now, in person, face to face, this would be different. And then he turned the radio off.

Roy looked up. His father was hunched over with his forearms on his knees and his head down. He began rubbing his forehead. He just sat there like that for a long time. There was nothing Roy could think of to say, so he didn’t say anything. But he wondered why they were here at all, when everything important to his father was somewhere else. It didn’t make sense to Roy that his father had come out here. It was beginning to seem that maybe he just hadn’t been able to think of any other way of living that might be better. So this was just a big fallback plan, and Roy, too, was part of a large despair that lived everywhere his father went.

There were no good times after this. His father sank into himself and Roy felt alone. His father read when the weather was miserable and went for hikes alone when it was only bad. They talked only to say things like, Maybe we should fix dinner soon, or Have you seen my gloves? Roy watched his father all the time and could discover no crack in the shell of his despair. His father had become impervious. And then Roy came in one day from a hike alone and found his father sitting at the radio set with his pistol in his hand. It was oddly quiet, with only a few small humming and chirping sounds from the radio.

Jim? Rhoda said over the radio. Don’t do this to me, you asshole.

His father turned off the radio and stood. He stood looking at Roy in the doorway and then looked around the room as if he were embarrassed by some small thing and searching for something to say. But he didn’t say anything. He walked over to Roy and handed him the pistol, then put on his coat and boots and went out.