David Vann - Caribou Island

Whoa, Irene. Slow down there. You’re hitching up a hissy eighteen-wheeler.

You’ve destroyed my life, you fuck.

Fine, he said. I’ve destroyed your life. Gary left his uneaten sandwich, stalked off to hammer at his own ill-shapen temple.

And what was the point? Irene asked. Why did everything have to be taken? Retired from work, her children grown, friends and family fallen away, everything that her marriage had once been, who she had been. All gone. What was left?

She finished her sandwich then stood in the rain and wind that had no power to purify, empty water, and walked to the cabin, climbed over the back wall, stood beside her husband to push so he could fit a clumsy brace, a couple pieces of two-by-four tacked together. She didn’t speak and he didn’t speak. They only worked, first one side of the window and then the next, Gary down on his knees, driving his shoulder into the lower wall, pushing the logs back to the edge of the ply, driving nails.

Irene knew she should feel sorry, but she felt nothing. She left Gary to carve out the window, a void in the wall that would become their only view, something that seemed an obvious symbol of the narrowing of their lives, and returned to the tent to lie down.

The tent so loud above her over every other sound, she finally slept, faded away into the only real shelter.

When she awoke, it was night and Gary was in his sleeping bag beside her. Are you awake? she asked.

Yes.

What are you thinking about?

The Seafarer. Calde gethrungen , he recited to her, waeron mine fet, forste gebunden, caldum clommum, thaer tha ceare seofedun hat ymb heortan.

And what’s that mean? she asked. You want me to ask.

Pinched by cold were my feet, fettered by frost, by cold chains, caldum clommum , there the anxieties sighed hot around my heart.

Yeah, you have it tough, she said.

Who are you to know?

The storm came from a colder place, an early fall promising an early winter. The Bering Sea weighing down on them, the Arctic close enough to be felt. Already the leaves had turned, and it was still September. Aspen become yellow and gold. Rhoda hadn’t noticed the transition. It seemed that overnight the leaves had changed, the motor homes disappeared. The streets felt empty, thick bands of rain sweeping across, no one on the river walk as she crossed the bridge. River swollen and fast, salmon already rotted away, their desperate run finished. Darker in the mornings now, the light disappearing quickly.

For more than a week Rhoda hadn’t been able to reach her mother, and this was all she could think about now, her mother and father out there on that island in the storm. Cold now, near freezing, and they were living in a tent, building a cabin. They couldn’t be building in this weather, though. All day and night lying in a tent, waiting. They’d go crazy. Or one of them could be hurt, and it was too rough to take the boat for help. Rhoda didn’t know whether anyone else was still out there. Only summer cabins now. In the past, half a dozen families had lived year-round on Caribou, but now her parents would be the only ones.

Rhoda found it difficult to go to work. She couldn’t focus. She arrived almost fifteen minutes late, said hello to Dr. Turin and Sandy, the front office manager, and took off her raincoat. Walked into the back room and said hello to Chippy, an arctic ground squirrel some nut had raised as a pet. His tail too small, like a chipmunk’s. Bear burrito. Tundra rat. But he had gotten lucky somehow, transcended his fate. He’d have heating all winter, skip hibernation, feast on cat food and watch TV. How would his little brain make any sense of that?

Rhoda looked through the day’s schedule. Mostly flea baths. Light now that drop-ins had gone south. She had a lunch date with Jim. He was taking her somewhere nice — a surprise, he’d said — though there were only a couple nice restaurants in town, so the surprise would be somewhat limited.

A buzz from Sandy, and Rhoda went out front to collect a pug named Corker, brought him back and set him in the tub. He was looking for a limb to grab, she could tell, but she stayed behind him, kept him dominated.

She’d been dominating Jim, too, for the past week. An accident. She’d given up hope, realized it wasn’t going to work, and somehow that put her in the stronger position. She felt like the walking dead, sleepless and worried about her mom and dad, feeling unattractive and doomed to spinsterhood, and somehow that was setting Jim on fire. It was too stupid to even try to understand, because in the end, he would still take her for granted, same as he’d been doing all along. The only reason she wasn’t leaving was that she had nowhere else to live.

Corker hunched down, trembling, and Rhoda hoped this was fear as well as cold. He’d had his share of getting his way. Time for him to feel something new.

The flea shampoo always irritated Rhoda’s eyes, made her red and puffy, so at the restaurant, she’d look like she’d been crying. She gave Corker his final rinse, he shook and didn’t do a very good job of it, she toweled him off, and she could see her father having a heart attack out there, gone to build in the rain, pushing himself, picking up some big log and then just keeling over. Her mother trying to help him, calling out for anyone, but her voice lost in the storm, no help nearby, no phone. Her mother would have to drag him down to the shore, try to get him into that boat with waves pounding at it, waves over her head maybe, and she’d be knocked down, her leg broken, maybe unconscious, and Rhoda wouldn’t even know. The storm would blow for another week, her parents lying facedown in water, dead, or thrown on the beach, waves breaking over, their bodies white and bloated, blue lips.

Damn it, she said. How could you do this to me? Then she realized she could buy a satellite phone for her parents. That would work. She’d be able to reach them. She didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of this before.

She left Corker in the heat lamp area to dry and thumbed through the yellow pages. Half a dozen calls later, she was told no one would have a sat phone in stock but she could order one online. So she checked and found it was almost $1,500, plus air time at $1.49 per minute if you bought 500 minutes, so another $750.

Yikes, she said. She would have to ask Jim. That was the only way. She needed the phone, and she deserved to be paid for all the domestic service she had provided. Though maybe she was being a little hard on him.

At noon, Jim called and asked her to meet at Kenai Landing. He was running late. So she drove out, almost fifteen minutes away. An old converted cannery. Mark had worked on boats here when it was in full operation. Now only one of the two large warehouses still processed fish. The other had been converted to boutique shops, the machinist’s shop and hen house converted to hotel rooms, a smaller warehouse become a restaurant.

The wind sharper here off the Cook Inlet. Colder. Heavier rain. She parked as close as she could but had to run a hundred yards. In this rain, it all looked like a cannery still, an industrial camp, cold gray warehouses and grim work. A hell of a place to meet for lunch.

But when she swung open the door, Jim was waiting there and had a big grin, obviously happy to see her, so that was nice. Sorry about the rain, he said.

They shed their raingear and sat at a booth. Jim ordered king crab legs for both of them, a treat. How’s work? he asked.

Jim never asked about her work, but she decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth. Someone brought in an arctic ground squirrel, she said.

As a pet?

Yeah. He claims Chippy is real smart. Has plans for teaching him various card games this winter, I think.