David Vann - Legend of a Suicide

The ground was uneven and occasionally he fell through where the dead wood and undergrowth had built up and he was scraped from the sides and above. He had his arms out and head turned away and was walking sideways hoping just to find his way somehow and listening but hearing only himself and starting to feel very afraid of the woods, as if all he had done wrong had somehow gathered here and was out to get him. He knew that didn’t make any sense and that scared him more, because it felt so real anyway. He seemed impossibly small and about to be broken.

He stopped periodically and tried to stand still and be quiet and listen. He was trying to hear what way to go, or because that didn’t make any sense, maybe trying to hear what was after him. Up through the trees, he could see a few faint stars much later, after the sky had cleared some. He was cold and shivering and his heart still going, and the fear had sunk deeper into a sense that he was doomed, that he would never find his way back to safety or be able to run fast enough to escape. The forest was impossibly loud, even over his pulse. There were branches breaking, and twigs and every leaf moving in the breeze and things everywhere running through the undergrowth and larger crashings beyond that he couldn’t be sure whether or not he had simply imagined. The air in the forest had bulk and weight and was part of the darkness, as if they were the same thing, and rushed toward him from every side.

I’ve been afraid like this all my life, he thought. This is who I am. But then he told himself to shut up. You’re only thinking this stuff because you’re lost out here, he said.

It was impossible that it was taking him this long to find the cabin. He’d never been lost in the forest in his life, and he had been in forests all the time, hunting and fishing. But once you take that first wrong step, he told himself, because he knew that after that it was possible to never find your way again, because you couldn’t know where you were coming from and so wouldn’t have any firm basis for any direction. And that seemed appropriate for more in his life, too, especially with women. Things had become so twisted early on that it had been impossible to know what was good, and now, with Roy dead, there was absolutely nothing left to go on. It wouldn’t matter if he perished out in the forest tonight, if he just gave up and lay down and froze.

But he continued on anyway, until the sky lightened finally and then it was dawn and he had found the shore by going consistently downhill. It wasn’t the shore in front of the cabin, and he didn’t know in which direction to follow it, but it was a shore, and he went the way that seemed right, hiking along it and waiting for the cabin.

It was a sunny day, cold and bright, the first clear day they’d had in a long time. He was very hungry and tired and sore but grateful for the sun. He didn’t find the cabin after several hours, so he turned and walked back the other way, but even this seemed all right. At what must have been about noon, the sun overhead, he passed the point where he’d started and continued on for another hour or so before he arrived at the beach in front of the cabin. He stopped and stood there and just looked at it for a while, then he went in.

Everything was where he had left it, and Roy still in the back room. Jim ate a can of soup straight out of the can, without heating it, and then he lay down on the floor wrapped in the blanket and slept.

When he woke, he was very cold and it was night. He found the lamp and then got a fire going in the stove. I’m going to be more careful now, he told himself as he was pushing more wood in. And I’m going to take care of things. I’m going to find someone on this island and let Roy’s mother know and give Roy a decent burial. I’ll go today.

He ate another can of soup and then some instant mashed potatoes and went back to sleep for a few hours and woke in the morning. Okay, he said as soon as he’d opened his eyes, I’m going.

He restoked the stove and fixed some breakfast. As he was eating, he realized he’d have to leave a note. If anyone came here and found this, found the broken cabin and Roy in the back room and saw he’d been living in here, they’d think the wrong things. And he’d have to close up the kitchen window, too, so nothing got in to eat his food or get at Roy.

Jim looked in drawers until he found a pen and an envelope that he could write on. I’ve gone for help, he wrote. My son killed himself and is in the back room. I didn’t have any way of contacting anyone. I couldn’t go farther in the boat. I’m hiking around the island now trying to find some help and I will be back. He reread it several times and couldn’t think of anything better, so he signed it and then got some food together and packed the blanket in a garbage bag in case he had to sleep out there.

The window was a problem. He didn’t have a hammer or nails or even good boards. So he carried the busted outboard to the shed and used it to bash in the shed door, the same as he’d done to the kitchen window. When he had broken through, he rested until his breath calmed and then he pulled away the pieces of splintered wood and went back for the lamp to search the shed.

All the tools were here: ax, shovel, saws, hammer, nails, even a sander and chain saw and chains and a ratchet and screwdrivers, wrenches, all just sitting in here rusting away. Jim chopped off a big piece of the door with the ax and then brought it over to the kitchen window to hammer it up. Before he did this, though, he went in to say good-bye to Roy and let him know what he was doing. I’m taking care of things now, he said, standing in the bedroom doorway. I’m sorry things have gone so badly so far, but I’m getting it together now. Then he brought out his bag of food and the blanket and the note and nailed up the board and nailed the note to it and started hiking.

It was already very late morning. He should have had an earlier start. But at least I’m going, he told himself. He hiked up the shoreline past where he had been the day before. He kept going, moving at a fast pace, keeping an eye out for boats or cabins or any sign of a trail that people might be using. The visibility was good enough he might be able to signal a boat. The air wasn’t too cold, either, and the only clouds were thin and high up.

This coastline of banded rock and deadfall and dark sand seemed ancient to Jim, prehistoric. As he hiked along it quietly for hours, hearing only the sound of his boots and an occasional bird and the wind and small waves coming in, it seemed as if he might be the only man, come out to see what was in the world. He mused on this and walked more cat-like, hopping from stone to stone, and he longed for this simplicity, this innocence. He wanted not to have been who he was and not to find anyone. If he found someone, he would have to tell his story, which, he admitted to himself now, could only sound terrible.

He hiked on around point after point and so imagined he must be curving around the island, though he could not know for sure until the sun set slightly behind where it had before. It was a long island, apparently, and there was no way to know beforehand whether or where anyone might be living. It could be that his was the only cabin.

The late sunset was still red in the sky as the rocks at his feet became difficult to distinguish. The sky above the red was green and then faded into blue. He continued until it was no longer safe, until he nearly ran face first into a dark snag without having seen it at all, and then he stopped. He went up into the woods, wrapped himself in his blanket, and cut open a pack of smoked salmon for dinner. The salmon was tangy and good, a recipe with spices other than just salt and brown sugar. He sat chewing and looking at the pale light on the water and listened to the forest around him, which seemed more quiet than usual, no sound except light wind and an occasional settling, no movement of a living thing that he could detect.