David Vann - Legend of a Suicide

Jim slept again and in the morning Roy definitely had been picked at. The seagulls were still milling nearby and Jim went after them with rocks, chasing them so far along the beach that by the time he returned the others were back at Roy again, stealing away little pieces of him.

Jim put him back in the sleeping bag and tied it up again and reloaded the boat. This time, Jim said. This time we find someone.

Under way, he was hungry and cold and had trouble staying awake. He saw no cabins or boats of any kind, but he kept going into the waves and trying to look around and trying not to think but thinking anyway of what he was going to say. I don’t know why he did it, he imagined saying to Elizabeth. I just came back from a hike one afternoon and there he was. There was no sign, no indication. I hadn’t imagined he could do this kind of thing. But then he lost it again because there really hadn’t been any sign and he really hadn’t imagined Roy could do this. Roy had always been stable, and sure they had argued a little, but things hadn’t been bad, and there was no reason to do this. Damn you, he said out loud. It doesn’t make any fucking sense.

As he rounded another point, he saw a boat far away, heading into the next channel. He stopped the engine and fumbled with one of the flares, finally got it lit and then held it high over his head smoking orange and burning and stinking of sulfur, but the boat, something big, some kind of huge yacht with a hundred fucking passengers, one of whom must be looking this way, just passed on and disappeared behind another coastline.

So Jim continued along the island at a slow five knots maybe and against the current again and wondered how well he knew this area. He wondered if he could just keep going along this and other islands and run out of gas and never find anyone. It seemed possible. It wasn’t exactly everyone living out here. But then late afternoon, after he’d poured in the spare gas and was sure he was just going to run out and have to drift around forever, he saw a cabin cruiser crossing on the other side, back toward the island he and Roy lived on, where they’d come from. They could have hailed it from there. Jim got out another flare and struck the end with the cap and nothing happened, so he struck again and looked up at the boat going fast and passing away from them now. He grabbed the last flare and struck it and it ignited and he held it high and the boat swerved slightly toward him and he was sure it must have seen him. But then it swerved back the other way, just avoiding a log or something in the water, and the flare went out and the boat was only a speck receding into the gray.

Jim yelled, over and over, growling at the shoreline and the water and air and sky and everything and hurled the burned-out torch and just sat there looking at the sleeping bag that held Roy and then at his hands on his knees. The boat was rocking and drifting and cold water was lapping onto his lower back and down his seat.

Jim continued on and, coming around a small point, happened to look over just in time to see a small cabin disappearing back into the trees. He turned the boat around and motored back and saw it was bigger, actually, than that, a home it looked like, a summer house, and he landed the boat on the small gravel beach before it and left Roy to go up and investigate.

It was hidden behind a stand of spruce and he’d been lucky to see it at all, though it wasn’t far from shore. There was a path leading to it and when he got up close he saw it was a log cabin but big enough to be someone’s house, with several rooms and storm boards on all the windows, locked up for the winter.

Hello, he said. Then he walked up onto the porch, which had debris all over it from the storm, and he knew no one would be around. Hey, he yelled, I happen to have my dead son with me. Maybe we could come in and chat and have dinner and spend the night, what do you say?

There was no answer. He went back to the boat and Roy and tried to think. It was late in the day and he hadn’t seen anything else. He was on his reserve gasoline already. It wouldn’t last long, and he was still shivering and starving and dizzy and they might have left something in their house for him to eat. And maybe a radio. They would certainly have some kind of blanket, and a fireplace and some wood. He had seen the chimney. And he had been lucky to warm up enough last night. He hadn’t been sure he would in a wet sleeping bag, and it might not work out as well a second time, because he was much weaker now. He had to deliver Roy, he knew, but the truth was, the kid didn’t look all that great anyway. Jim laughed grimly. You’re a card, he said out loud. You’re a hell of a father and you’re a comic, too.

Wait right here, he said to Roy, and he went back up to the cabin again and this time continued around back. He was looking for a way in. The windows all had storm boards fitted and probably locked from inside. The front door had a big padlock and, as it turned out, so did the back door. He looked all around and there was nothing left open, no glass to break, even.

Okay, he said. It was quiet, only a few drips from the trees. And it was getting on toward sunset. He had no flashlight, no food. He continued farther and found the wood shed. The door was padlocked but looked weak enough, so he found a good-sized rock and threw it at the door and it made a crunching sound, then bounced back at him so he had to jump out of the way. Goddamnit, he said. He ran to the door and slammed himself against it, fell down and got up and did it again. He was breathing hard now. He kicked with his boot at the center of it and could feel it bend each time, but it wouldn’t give, so he walked back down to the boat.

He saw the sleeping bag propped up there with Roy in it and realized he had forgotten about Roy for a few minutes. The thought that he could do that seemed terribly sad, but he didn’t stop and indulge himself. He had work to do before dark. He loosened the engine from its mount and carried it stiffly up to the cabin, set it down on the porch. The thing weighed at least fifty pounds, all metal.

Jim went to the shed again for the rock and came back to the cabin. He had hoped to find an ax or a saw or something in the shed, but he decided now to just work on the cabin directly. He pounded at each door and storm board with the rock in his hand until he found one over the kitchen window that seemed to give a little more. It was because the window was bigger, he thought. So he carried the outboard around and then he grabbed the housing with both hands and rammed the prop end into the board and it only scraped a little on the prop and knocked him off balance so that he almost fell with the engine on top of him.

He was beyond swearing or yelling. He felt only a cold, murderous hatred and wanted to destroy this cabin. He picked up the outboard, this time by the lighter, skinnier shaft end, and could get the other, heavier end to lift only by turning like a shot-putter, so he turned a couple of circles like that and hurled the motor at the storm board and jumped back.

The crash was monstrously loud and the engine fell back onto the porch with a smashed housing.

Of course, Jim said. The housing was only plastic. He un-latched it and lifted it off twisted and crushed and now he had steel motor sticking out, the engine head, and he swung the motor around again and hurled it, screaming, and it bounced back again and almost got him but this time it had crushed part of the storm board. He picked it up and hurled it two more times and by then had destroyed his engine but also had shattered the storm board and the glass behind it and had a way in.

The cabin was dark inside and there was no electricity, no light to switch on. Fumbling around in the kitchen in the dark, he finally found matches and then a paraffin lamp that cast weird shadows everywhere as he hunted around from room to room. He found a wood stove in the kitchen and then another for heat in the living room. Beside this one there was still a stack of dry wood. There was a bedroom off this and it had been stripped, the mattress bare, without blankets. The whole place had been stripped, winterized. But he kept looking in every closet and shelf and drawer and under the bed and couch, and finally in a dresser drawer he found two sets of sheets and a blanket.