David Vann - Legend of a Suicide

Again he thought of Roy. He couldn’t seem not to. He would be thinking along and not expecting the shift, and then he’d see the pistol, handing it to Roy, or he’d come in after and find him there on the floor, or what was left of him. And then he was thinking of the sleeping bag and wondered what had happened to it. They had taken it away in the clear plastic bag with Roy’s body, and they had not wanted to try to pour him out. It was too much to think of him that way, but then what could they have done? They must have done that at some point before they had buried him. But who? Who had poured him out? And what had Elizabeth seen? What had his daughter Tracy seen? He might not see her again. He had lost her, too.

The Gulf of Alaska was very cold. The wind blew hard and the waves were large now and confused, wind waves and swells, breaking around him and soaking the foredeck, occasionally coming over the side. Chuck came up to relieve him at four. Get some sleep, he said.

How far out are we going? Jim asked. I’d like to be at least a hundred out all the way down.

We can do that, Chuck said. Though we’re gonna have to stop for fuel somewhere. Oregon, probably.

Jim went below and sacked out in a tiny bunk that smelled terribly of Chuck’s old sweat and alcohol. He was hungry, but he was too tired, so he tried just to sleep.

A boat under way is a noisy thing. He had known that. But this boat’s walls creaked and popped in a way that couldn’t be good. And her diesel was extremely uneven, dropping low in revs and then racing, not only because of the swells and cavitation. Jim lay curled up in fear and exhaustion and waited for it to pass, waited for sleep, but waiting and fearing like that he thought too much about everything. He thought about the IRS, the sheriff, the Coast Guard, his brother, Elizabeth, Tracy, Rhoda, Roy. He imagined a long conversation with Rhoda trying to convince her he hadn’t killed Roy. He pointed out that Roy was thirteen, that he had a mind of his own, that he could do things that were his own choice.

His own choice? Rhoda asked.

It wasn’t my doing, Jim said. It was never my idea that he kill himself.

Never your idea, Jim?

No, he’d tell Rhoda. But then he confessed one more detail. He told about the time shooting up into the ceiling.

And what was that about?

I don’t know. I was just shooting.

Just shooting?

Shut up, Jim said aloud in the dark, but he could hardly hear himself, it was so damn loud. And then he worried about what course they were on. How would he know if the boat swung around, if Chuck decided to head back? And what about islands? It was an old, irrational fear of his when under way. He was always afraid of hitting islands that weren’t on the chart, even in mid-ocean.

He couldn’t keep his head still. That was why he wasn’t sleeping. No matter how he wedged it in between a few shirts and the lee cloth, he couldn’t get it not to rock when the boat rocked. He couldn’t relax his neck. And the whiskers along his jaw scraped against the shirts every time his head moved. Roy hadn’t gotten to the point where he’d had whiskers. He was starting to get peach fuzz. They talked about shaving one day, Roy worried about cutting himself, not realizing the blade head swiveled. Jim grinned. Then he was crying again and hating how weak he was. He saw himself in Mexico and maybe someday in the South Pacific, down there in all the nice weather with warm, beautiful blue water and the green mountains, and he saw that he would still be alone. Roy would never catch up to him. And he wondered what Roy’s grave looked like. He realized he’d never get to see it now.

Jim looked across to the other side to see if Ned was awake, too, but apparently he wasn’t.

Jim lay there against the lee cloth with his eyes closed and couldn’t find anything. It was just windblown space inside him, a vacuum. He didn’t care about anything, and it would have been better just to kill himself, but Roy had done that, and now he couldn’t. Roy had killed himself instead, in a clear trade, and this was why Jim was responsible for killing Roy. It was not the way things were supposed to have been, but because Jim had been cowardly, because he hadn’t had the courage just to kill himself before Roy returned, he had missed that moment, the one moment he had to make things right, and he forfeited that moment forever and handed over the pistol to Roy and asked that he fix things in the way that he could, even though it was not the right way.

And Roy had done it. Roy wasn’t cowardly and didn’t flinch, and he put the barrel up and pulled the trigger and blew off half his head. And Jim did not recognize what had happened when he heard the shot. He didn’t know enough to recognize the sacrifice at the time it was made.

Jim still hadn’t believed what had happened even after he saw Roy’s body lying there in the doorway with his blood and brain and bone everywhere. He still had not believed or seen anything, even as the proof lay before him. And now here he was escaping, thinking he could run off and evade the law and his punishment and have his perfect life somewhere eating mangoes and coconuts like Robinson Crusoe, as if nothing had happened, as if his son had done nothing and he had played no part in it. But that was not the way things could be, he knew now, and he knew also what he had to do.

Jim got up out of his lee cloth and went into the pilot house. Chuck was tilted back in his captain’s chair, looking at a porno magazine. He raised his eyes from the page for a minute and said, What do you want?

We have to go back, Jim said. I can’t run from this. I’m turning myself in.

Chuck looked at him steadily, and Jim had no idea what he was thinking. You’re gonna turn yourself in, Chuck finally said.

Yeah.

And where does that leave us? We helped you get out of town, remember?

Jim wasn’t sure what to do. Okay, you’re right, he said. You’ll get your full payment and I’ll wait a few days until you’re gone before I do anything.

Chuck went back to his porno. All right, he said. Go ahead and wake Ned up for the next watch before you sack out again.

Jim woke Ned, who complained that it was early. Jim lay down again and tried to sleep. He was practicing his confession as he drifted off. I, Jim Fenn, murdered my son, Roy Fenn, back in the fall, probably nine months ago. I killed him by shooting him in the head at close range with my pistol, a Ruger.44 Magnum, which was recovered, I think, by the sheriff. I was suicidal and had been talking on the radio with my ex-wife Rhoda, who said she didn’t want to get back together with me and was planning to marry another man, and I couldn’t stand it any more and I was too cowardly to kill myself so I killed my son.

That wasn’t quite right. He went back to his motivations, because they would ask about those, he knew. He went over each incriminating detail, over and over, the pistol, the radios, using everything. He was so exhausted he couldn’t keep it straight. His mind had stopped and his body felt tiny, as if he were an infant. He was a tiny golden infant shrunken inside himself with strings reaching out to each part of this larger body, pulling in. He was vanishing.

Jim woke with a rope around his neck yanking him from his bunk. He tried to scream but he couldn’t. He was on the floor, hit a bulkhead, was struggling, then saw Ned with a wooden bat hitting him across the legs. He fell, was dragged along, got a glimpse of Chuck at the other end of the rope and knew he should have seen this coming. It should have been so obvious. Then he blacked out.

When he hit the water, it was so cold he woke and wanted them to find him and rescue him. Wanted Chuck and Ned to come get him. He struggled with the rope at his neck, freed it easily, but he was in his clothes, sinking, weighted down, and he didn’t have a life jacket. He felt enormously sorry for himself. The open ocean was an awesome sight. Peaks forming everywhere, tossing and disappearing, hillsides rolling past. It was impossible to believe it was just water, impossible to believe, also, how far it extended beneath him. He struggled for what seemed forever and might have been ten minutes before he numbed and tired and began swallowing water. He thought of Roy, who had had no chance to feel this terror, whose death had been instant. He threw up water involuntarily and swallowed and breathed it in again like the end it was, cold and hard and unnecessary, and he knew then that Roy had loved him and that that should have been enough. He just hadn’t understood anything in time.