David Vann - Caribou Island

How expensive are they?

Fifteen hundred, or maybe a little less. Plus seven-fifty for minutes.

Ouch.

I need it.

Okay.

The chicken was browned, cooked most the way through, red onions translucent. She poured in the tomato sauce, olives and some of their juice, let it come to a boil then turned down to simmer. Added pepper, couldn’t think of what other spices went with Greek chicken. Poured in some balsamic, then added Madeira. Probably not right for this dish, but what the hell. Drunken chicken. She poured herself a glass of cabernet.

I’ll take some in a minute, Jim said. I’m hitting the showers.

Rhoda drank her wine and stared down at the chicken, the olives dark in the sauce. Something had changed. Somehow the air a little cooler, maybe, thinner, more isolating. Just the two of them here in this house. Maybe because there had been a goal before. The proposal. Rhoda could see how marriage might feel lonely. A new feeling she couldn’t quite describe or even reach. Something at the edges, something she didn’t like. She could imagine long periods of time in which they wouldn’t say much to each other, just moving individually around the house. And she wondered whether this was where kids fit in. Having a child would provide a new focus, a new center of attention, a place for the two of them to meet. Maybe that was how it was supposed to be. You focused on each other until you decided to marry, then you focused together on someone else. And then what happened when your kids grew up and left? Where were you supposed to focus then? There was something terrifying about not having a focus. Your life could never be just what it was. That was frightening. No one wanted that.

In the morning, Rhoda drove to Skilak. Heavy skies, cold, twenty-eight degrees, but very little wind, only occasional light snow, a few flakes and then it would be clear again. The trees white, with black shadows. No green. She knew they were still green, but she couldn’t see it. The winter color palette of white, black, brown, and gray, arrived earlier than usual.

She wanted to call Mark to confirm, but he would consider that nagging. She turned off the loop road toward the lower campground and coming over a rise could see water, gray and very small waves. Pulled into an empty lot, no one around, looked at her watch, a few minutes before ten.

Rhoda bundled in her snow jacket and hat, winter gloves. Wearing long underwear, also, and boots. It would be cold out on the lake in the boat. If the boat and Mark ever arrived, of course. She walked down to the ramp, to the water’s edge. A fine layer of snow, undisturbed. No one had used this ramp today. Her parents most likely the only people out there.

The lake already freezing at its edges. Clear thin panes of ice among the rocks. Delicate and translucent, most of it broken already into small triangular shards. Rhoda tapped at them with the toe of her boot.

Okay, Mark, she said, and pulled out her cell phone. Let’s hear the story. But when she called, he said he was only a few minutes away, so she decided to be nice. Thank you, she said. See you soon.

Rhoda had grown up on this lake. This was supposed to be home, this shoreline. These trees. The mountains, the way the heavy clouds moved in and made the summits an act of memory. But it didn’t feel like home. It felt as cold and impersonal as a place she had never been. She didn’t understand why her parents had settled here, and she wondered why she hadn’t moved away, like her friends, to a better place.

Mark came down the gravel road in his old truck, pulling a trailer. He gave her the shaka sign and a grin, pulled a wide half-circle in front of her, then backed the boat to the water. An open aluminum boat, something less than twenty feet, with an outboard. Exposed to the cold, but big enough to be safe.

Mark hopped out and Rhoda gave him a hug. Thanks, Mark.

Whoa, Mark said. It’s just a boat.

I know, but I’m worried about them. And I’m thinking, also, that they’d use the upper campground if they came in today. We may miss them if we launch here.

Well we’re here now, Mark said. We’ll just zip over to the upper campground if we don’t find them.

Okay, Rhoda said. She didn’t want to argue, but she wished they could drive around to the other ramp. It wouldn’t be that hard to do.

Mark was already unbuckling straps. Then he grabbed a small cooler out of the back of his truck, and fishing poles.

What’s that for? Rhoda asked.

A few brewskis. And a fishing pole in case I’m waiting. Never know when Nessie might be hungry. Six hundred feet deep. We have to have some sort of Sasquatch motherfucker down there.

Rhoda wanted to laugh or smile or something, but she felt tense. This trip a kind of opportunity, perhaps, but she just didn’t have it in her. She needed to see her parents safe first, and then she could do the chitchat.

Right, then, Mark said, and he grabbed life jackets. Here’s yours. Not that it’ll do much. We’d freeze before anyone got to us.

Thanks, she said. Thanks, Mark. I appreciate this.

He backed the boat into the water, left her with the bow line while he parked. Then they climbed aboard and were off, Rhoda in the bow, the wind sharp. Waves very small, no more than a foot, but the boat felt loose and wobbly at speed. Occasional spray over the side.

Rhoda searched off the port bow for any sign of a boat crossing to the upper campground, but she didn’t see a thing. No one else out here. The lake always larger than she expected. Rimmed by low shoreline and trees all along this end, impossible to tell distance. If you stood on one shore, you could think the other shore wasn’t far. It was only when you came out to the middle that you could judge size, but even then the perspective kept changing. Caribou and the other islands hardly visible at first, and then slowly they grew. Frying Pan Island first, with its long handle, Caribou behind it. Past them, a shoreline rockier, she knew, with boulders and cliffs, much prettier. Each of the bays over there was large enough to feel like its own lake, and yet from here they looked like nothing. Then the headwaters up to the glacier and the river that linked to other lakes beyond. It had been years since she’d been up there.

When they were kids, their parents took them camping on the far shores. Steep pebble beaches backed by forest and mountain. She and Mark hiked a rocky headland, with views of bays on both sides, and looked for wolverines. A nearly mythical creature. She didn’t know a single person who had seen one, and so as children, they were constantly hunting the wolverine, and they scared each other with tales of what would happen when they’d find it. The wolverine would sometimes play dead, or offer up its neck, but if a bear went for that, the wolverine would attach to the bear’s underside, bite its neck and rip its razor claws all along the bear’s belly. This was what she imagined as a kid, reaching down for a dead wolverine and having it rise up and rip out her stomach. She wasn’t scared of bears, because she had seen those, and she loved animals, but she had never seen a wolverine.

Remember the wolverine stories? she yelled to Mark over the engine.

What?

She repeated.

Oh yeah, Mark smiled. You used to scare the crap out of me with those.

Rhoda smiled too, then looked ahead again at the islands approaching. White now with snow, and she couldn’t remember how many years it had been since she’d last visited.

Calmer on the back side of the islands as they curved around Frying Pan. Flat water, no spray. Small waves again around the other side, and several cabins tucked into the trees. She had expected to see her parents’ boat by now.

The chop a little rougher, and Mark slowed. The island steeper, rising to a hill. No boat along the shore. Rhoda couldn’t find her parents.