David Vann - Caribou Island

You’re a good girl, Rhoda said as she set up an IV drip. We’re going to fix you right up. A bit of struggle, frightened at the prick of the needle, but Rhoda stayed close and calmed her. You’re beautiful, Rhoda said. We’ll make you strong again. But she knew the dog might be dead by morning. She hated this part of her job.

So she went on lunch break. She had to get out of here, and it was almost two o’clock anyway. Full raingear just to get to the car. Coming down in buckets, the wind insane. Cold, too. She wondered about the wisdom of driving anywhere in this, idled in the parking lot and tried again to call her mother, but couldn’t get through. She’d given her mom a cell phone, but there was no cell phone service on the island, maybe. They should have tried it before, not waited until a storm. What if something went wrong out there? No way off the island, no way to call anyone.

Damn it, Rhoda said. She tried a couple more times, then backed out and drove slowly onto the spur highway. She wanted a chicken pot pie. Comfort food. Fattening, but she needed something.

Another run through a parking lot with puddles, then she was settled in a booth drinking hot tea and waiting for her pie. She felt lost, alone. Rainy days did that to her, but there was also the abused dog dying, her parents unreachable on that island, and Jim not wanting to marry her. And her best friends had all left over the years, moving to places like New York and San Diego and Seattle, better places. No one stayed unless they were stuck. So there was no one to talk to. Her mother, but she couldn’t reach her mother.

Rhoda put her forehead down on the table and just stayed like that until the pot pie arrived.

Tired, darling? the waitress asked.

No, just unmarried and unloved.

Ah, darling, the waitress said, and gave Rhoda’s shoulder a squeeze. The way I look at it, men are like that pot pie, but God forgot to put in the filling.

Ha, Rhoda said. Thanks.

No problem, darling. Just let me know if you need anything else.

Rhoda lifted the top carefully, set it aside on the plate, portioned crust with filling, not wanting to run out at the end. The pie was good. Gravy for the soul. She felt like crying, but held back. Was it too much to ask for, to get married? She was willing to give everything, her whole life, so was it really too much to ask in return?

Jim was the one who’d asked her to move in. Easy access to sex. Maybe that’s all she was to him. The drive across town an annoyance, and her apartment small and dark, with old carpet. Maybe asking her to move in was just a way to not have to see that apartment again. She was only providing a service. Sex and food and house cleaning, a few errands and help with secretarial crap. She should be getting paid.

She took a bigger piece of crust, because she wanted it, even though the ratio would be off at the end. Everything was supposed to be different. He was supposed to love her and want to take care of her. The care should follow the love. It should be obvious.

Rhoda closed her eyes and stopped chewing, stared into the empty dark space behind her eyes for a while. She could feel her mouth pulled down in a frown, and she didn’t care if anyone saw. Her face heavy, her cheeks old. She finished chewing and swallowed. Nothing inside her except longing. For a home and a husband and the end of worry about money, the end of worry about her mother. She would give up her time to get to the other side. Not live these weeks or months if she could fast-forward to when things would be better.

Darling, the waitress said, and Rhoda opened her eyes. Only dessert is going to fix that one.

Rhoda smiled. A sundae, with everything.

You got it.

Rhoda already felt a little full, but she finished the last bites of her pie to clear the decks for the sundae. Expensive lunch, and she ran out of crust, but oh well.

Her waitress was right. What she didn’t understand about Jim was where his filling was. Nice golden crust on the outside. A dentist, with money and respect. When she first told people she was dating him, they were all impressed. His house fit the dream, too. A buttery life.

And he could be funny. He made up little songs, even, songs about her, though it had been a while now. And he didn’t watch sports or any TV at all, so that was good. He didn’t have disgusting guy friends or really any friends, so that was maybe more a negative than a positive. He didn’t hunt or fish, so she was spared that. He wasn’t building some ridiculous car in the garage. He wasn’t sneaking porn on the side or addicted to computer games. But what was he living for? What did he care about? She used to think it was her, and their future together, a family. He used to talk about kids, but maybe she had been the one talking about kids. She had no idea what he wanted, and if she didn’t know that, maybe she didn’t know who he was at all.

This thought stopped her for a moment. She stared down at the stained restaurant carpet and wondered what it was she loved. Was it only an idea? Did the love she felt have anything to do with him?

The cheap carpet had fleur-de-lis patterns, mock royalty. The divider wall trimmed with a strip of light brown plastic where it met carpet, the heads of the nails showing. She hated cheap, and depressing, and cold, and lonely. That’s all she was. Just someone who hated these things and was running from them. She didn’t have any filling either.

Here you go, the waitress said, and Rhoda couldn’t even respond. She felt like none of it mattered. She stared at the sundae, half a banana on each side, though she hadn’t ordered a banana split, and the three flavors of ice cream that had been served for fifty years or longer, with the four sauces, and three cherries on top. A formula for happiness, no different from a husband and house and kids, the three mounds, and somehow it was supposed to fill you up or make you sick trying.

The Coleman stove had a back to it, a windbreak, but when Irene tried to put it up, the stove blew over, spilling fuel, the wind too strong. Plenty of propane stoves available now, and they were still using one with wet fuel. She’d be bringing fumes into the tent. The wind was something you could learn to hate. Pressurized and vindictive.

Irene’s hood blew off, her head exposed now to the rain, but she jammed the lighter right against the burner, flicked again, and it caught. A quick flash of warmth on her hand. She adjusted the knob and the flame held, though it was blown so much it was never a full ring, one side or another snuffed.

Irene pulled the hood of her raingear back on, turned away from the wind, and shivered. It should be visible. You should be able to see the wind. It had weight and heft, an intent born purely into the world, unforgiving. It would blow until all the world was smooth and nothing left in its path.

The six-gallon water jug was heavy, so Irene only tipped it, filled a pot, placed the pot on the stove and put a lid on. The water should come to a boil in about two hours. That was her guess. Another impossible part of their stupid plan. Why don’t you make some pasta, Irene? Sure thing, big daddy, coming right up. Wouldn’t want to slow down your pile of sticks.

Irene hunched over as low as she could, her face close to a patch of horsetail, thin spindles, segmented. Only a foot high now, she said to the plants, but you used to be higher, didn’t you. They looked frail now, on their way out, but once they had grown as tall as redwoods, in a time when other plants hadn’t yet figured out how to grow above two inches. First with a vascular system. The lives of plants like humans, full of struggle and domination, loss and dreams that never happened or happened only briefly. And that was the worst, to have something and then not have it, that was certainly the worst by far.