David Vann - Caribou Island

They pulled all the tools and supplies out of the second tent, found another spot farther back, put it up and loaded again. The afternoon passing, Gary looking at his watch.

It’s getting late, he said, and we haven’t even started the outhouse yet. Punishment, indirect. Letting her know the consequences.

Yeah, Irene said. Bummer it’s not June.

Gary tight-lipped after that. Grabbing the shovel to chop a pathway through the growth, a narrow aisle to a larger square for the outhouse, about four feet by four feet. His T-shirt darkening from sweat.

Irene finally pulled the cooler from their tent, sat down on it to watch him work. Digging to China, tearing a hole in the earth to let her know how he felt. No different from a little boy. She should grab him and make him take the tit, rock him until he fell asleep.

It aggravated Irene that she’d had to take care of this man for thirty years. The weight of his complaints and impatience, his failures, and in return, his vacancy. Why had any of that seemed okay?

Irene couldn’t watch him anymore. She got up and walked into the trees. All shaded here, cooler, the trunks close, every tree with rakes of slim dead branches, thin curved fingers, leftovers, perhaps, from when they were much younger. Snapping against her as she broke through, all the green and new growth much higher. Spruce and birch, trees you could tire of after enough years in Alaska. The occasional cottonwood with its rougher bark, a few aspen.

Narrow pathways like alleys opened up, and she followed these, game trails. Small patches of moss and fern, the forest quiet. Irene a hunter or hunted, either way the same feeling, the same awareness of the forest, the same waiting for sound or movement, the same awareness of breath. It was time to hunt again, to bring her bow out here. But she was accompanied now by this new thing, this new betrayal of body, something she couldn’t fight, couldn’t track, could never see because it didn’t exist. Irene climbed higher, hitting plateaus and slopes all hidden by forest, until she had reached a hump with no higher to go, still surrounded, still no view, a panorama that was there but blocked on every side.

Sunday, and Rhoda and Jim both had the day off, so they slept late, had sex, napped again, then just lay there. Jim with his eyes closed, Rhoda with her head propped on his chest, looking at the view. Slow rollers coming up the inlet, a clear and sunny day. Slim black spruce in the flats before the beach, standing individually. They’d always seemed like people to Rhoda, vagabonds heading toward the sea, each walking alone. She could imagine a lower branch as a hand, holding a small suitcase.

The trees look like people, Rhoda said.

What? Jim asked.

The spruce out there, like people, a little bit shaggy, like the Whos of Whoville.

Huh, he said.

You’re not looking.

Okay, he said, and propped his head with a pillow. Rhoda readjusted lower on his chest. The trees out there? he asked.

Yeah.

I guess I can see that. Small ones for the kids, bigger ones for the adults. They’re about the right height.

And where are they going? she asked.

Sounds like a loaded question.

Hm, Rhoda said. It wasn’t. I wasn’t thinking of that.

Sorry, he said.

My parents are so weird. Promise me we’ll never be like them.

That’s easy.

Rhoda laughed. They are freaks.

You’re the one who said it.

When do I meet your parents?

I don’t know, Jim said. They moved to Arizona.

That’s all you ever say about them.

Well I don’t go down there, and they don’t come up here.

That’s sad.

No it’s not. It’s an accidental relationship, unchosen. I never would have chosen them as friends. I don’t even like them.

That’s really sad.

Not for me. I don’t care at all.

Hm, Rhoda said. She didn’t like this side of Jim, cold and unconnected to anyone. It didn’t sound true, and it certainly didn’t fit her vision of having kids and cozy family scenes. Accidental and unchosen.

Am I accidental and unchosen? she finally asked.

Rhoda, he said.

Really. Is it just because I’m here, and available?

No. I love you. You know that.

Rhoda propped up and looked into his eyes. Really? she asked. Can you promise me that?

Absolutely, he said, and pulled her close for a kiss.

Okay, she said, and settled back against his chest. Some of his chest hair was turning gray. A change just in the last year since they’d been living together. And his stomach going soft, a little mound. A thickening at his sides. Eleven years older than her.

I’m worried about my mom, she said.

Yeah. I thought Romano would find something.

I don’t know what’s wrong with her. I don’t know how to help her.

Hm.

Rhoda could tell Jim wasn’t really interested in this subject. Too messy and complicated. You don’t want to talk about this.

I’m fine, Jim said. Really.

I try to understand her, and I just can’t. Maybe it’s retirement. I know she misses her work and feels pointless now. And they don’t have as much money as they wanted for retirement, so she probably worries about that. But there’s something else, too, something more important going on. It’s like she’s making her own secret deals with the gods.

Whoa, Jim said. That sounds a little grand.

I’m serious, though. She’s decided the world is against her, and it’s like she’s getting ready for battle. She’s all paranoid. And then I try to say something, and she knows I’m not in there with the gods. I don’t get to decide anything. I only get to watch it all happen, so I don’t matter.

That’s not true. You matter to her.

I used to. But I don’t now. I think the pain in her head is from getting ready to go to war. And I know the war is with my dad, but I can’t figure out what it’s really about, because I’m not in it.

Rhoda, Jim said. I’m sorry, but I think you’re going off the deep end yourself. You’re making too much of this. She has some kind of pain, probably from being a stress case. Or she needs to get used to retirement, like you said. But that’s it. She’ll get over it.

I don’t think she will. And Rhoda realized this was true. She felt very sad suddenly. She didn’t believe her mother would recover from this. Because whatever was wrong was pulling in every part of her life. That was the key. It was reaching across time. I don’t think she’ll get better, she said to Jim. I really don’t.

Jim held her then, both arms wrapped around her, and she closed her eyes and wanted to find some way to stop everything, but it was all darkness, a void, nothing to grab onto. When are you going to marry me, Jim? she asked. I need something solid. She couldn’t believe she had just said that, said those words aloud. But she had.

There was a long and ugly pause, and she could feel his breath and heart quickening. I love you, Rhoda, he finally said.

Not enough. When are you going to marry me?

The wash table was a cold aluminum trough, a wading pool of blood and saltwater. Carl’s hands aching from the cold, fingers sore. The salmon came to him gutted and beheaded, but he needed to grip thin, clear membranes with his triple-gloved hands and pull them out, then flick onto the floor. Four or five tries for every membrane before he could find it, and sometimes it wasn’t there.

The chu-chunk of the beheading machine a steady rhythm, every few seconds, another fish coming his way, and he was starting to panic. Too many fish, a backup at the wash table. Metallica blasting on speakers above.

Three others were working the same job, all faster, but the fish were piling up, filling the blood bath. The woman across from him, another college student, wasn’t actually grabbing any membranes, so that was stressing him out. She’d give the fish a light caress on each side, to wash off the blood, then give a peek inside the gutted area of the body, where the membranes were hiding, and throw the fish onto a white plastic chute in the middle of the table, sending it on to the inspectors. Each time she threw, she managed to splat the tail against the chute, flicking slime and water onto Carl’s face. She had it perfected. And she’d throw three fish for every one of his.