David Vann - Caribou Island

Cold and overcast as Irene emerged from the tent. She walked over to the cabin, looked out the open space for the front window, shivering in the wind. She needed to get working to warm up.

So she stepped over to Gary’s tent. Get up, she called out. Gary. It’s time to work. I’m cold. I need to start working.

Okay, he answered finally. She envied him his sleep. Waking into a new day separated from the last. For Irene, her entire life was becoming one long day. She wondered how long she could survive. At some point, if you never sleep, do you die? Or does just lying there for hours, resting with your eyes closed, count somehow as partial sleep, something you can do for years on end?

Gary came out of the tent with his boots unlaced, jacket unzipped, head bare. Mostly gray now. Stumbled off a few feet and took a piss, faced away from her. Which reminded her of the outhouse. They still had an outhouse to build. No more squatting behind bushes in the snow.

Gary shook and zipped, stepped away, laced his boots, grabbed his hat from the tent. Cold, he said. Wind coming up.

Yeah, she said. I get to saw the ends of the joists. I need to get moving to warm up.

Okay, he said. What about breakfast?

We can have that later.

Okay.

They walked to the pile of two-by-eights and brought one into the cabin through the back door, stood on stepstools. Gary along the high back wall, holding the joist over his head, marked a pencil line for the cut.

Then Irene worked at the saw, feeling her upper body warm. Under different circumstances, she might enjoy building a cabin. A good distraction, a sense of accomplishment. The angled piece came off and they walked back to test the fit.

Pretty good, Gary said finally. Good enough. We can cut the others at the same angle.

Irene tried to just work and not think about anything else. The ripping of the saw through wood, the way the wood grabbed at it, clenched it, stops and starts, and she was thinking of winter again, wondering at what she had seen. Did it mean anything? Saying his name, standing there on the ice looking all around. Or brushing away the snow, seeing the black of the ice, or running into devil’s club, all the spines. It hadn’t been a dream. It was a waking vision, and yet she’d felt the sting of the spines, seen the twisted club heads all around her. Carrying her bow. And had she been out hunting? How can we not know our own visions, our own daydreams?

Gary saying something. Irene tried to come back, focus. What? she asked.

I said we won’t be able to fit both ends. Or maybe we can. Let me think.

Irene stopped sawing. Waited. Looked down at sawdust in the snow. Her toes cold, her knees cold against the ground. She got up in a squat, but that felt unstable for sawing, so she kneeled again.

I’m not thinking well, he said. I need some breakfast. We should have breakfast before we start.

Irene at fault for his inability to think. Nothing new there. She went to the Coleman stove and put the teakettle on a burner. Hot water for oatmeal and chocolate or tea. Neither of them drank coffee. In many ways, their strange lifestyle had been good. No TV. No Internet. No phone. Just the lake, the woods, their home, their kids, going into town to work and buy supplies. It hadn’t been a bad life, on the surface. Something elemental about it. Something that could have been true if it hadn’t all been just a distraction for Gary, a kind of lie. If he had been true, their lives could have been true.

Gary in his tent, resting or warming up while Irene waited for the water to boil. She wondered whether she could be softer, forgive him for everything, let it pass. Accept what her life had been. Something reassuring about that. But in the end, you feel what you feel. You don’t get a choice. You don’t get to remake yourself from the beginning. You can’t put a life back together a different way.

The water boiled, finally, and Gary emerged for his oatmeal and hot chocolate, sat down in the doorway, a space for one. So Irene ate her oatmeal kneeling at the stove, thinking you really can’t put a life back together a different way. That was the problem. Knowledge came too late, and by then, there was no use for it. The choices had already been made.

I see now how to do it, Gary said. I just needed a little food in my stomach. We’ll angle one end of the extension pieces, then hold them in place and mark a line for where to join. That’ll work.

Sounds good, Irene said. She hadn’t been listening, and she didn’t care. She began sawing again, her shoulder getting sore.

Gary taking a break, making plans while she worked, or maybe only daydreaming. So she stopped. You can finish these, she said, and walked to the tent to lie down, her head spinning. The pain as sharp as it had ever been, like someone sawing through her skull, but she didn’t care much about that. It just was. The pain had become like breathing. Nothing convenient about breathing, but we keep doing it.

She could hear Gary moving faster but also jamming the blade more often. Impatient. Wanting to get the roof on. But Irene could see now that the tent was more comfortable than the cabin ever would be, so she was in no rush.

Okay Irene, Gary called out. I’m ready to measure the extensions.

Irene didn’t move at first. Just seemed too difficult to get up.

Let’s go, Gary said. We can put up all these joists today and maybe even get the roof on.

Okay, Irene said. She crawled out of her bag, put on her boots, and stepped outside. A perfect workday, really. Cold and overcast, but not coming down on them, not too windy. She walked over to the pile of joists and looked at her husband. A stranger’s face. No friendliness.

I’ll go in first, he said. You’ll be on the back wall.

Okay, she said, and followed with her end. Stepped onto a stool, held her end high.

Make sure you’re level with the top, he said.

It’s there, she said. Just mark it.

I’m doing that, he said.

They set the joist down and he nailed the two pieces together. Hard hammer blows, loud.

They raised it again, and Gary nailed his end into the log wall. Damn it, he said. I don’t know how I’m supposed to do this.

Irene could see a nail at the base going in crooked, another angled from the side. Maybe you need brackets, she said.

Yeah. I realize that now. But I don’t have brackets, and there doesn’t happen to be a store out here. Damn it.

So she kept holding her end while he drove in four crooked nails.

A long morning and afternoon with the joists, Gary growing steadily more frustrated and angry. His hat off and jacket unzipped from the exertion, his hair in ruffs that stood at odd angles and bent in the breeze. Jammed his thumb, cracked one of the ends, threw his hammer at the ground, got through the day in small fits and rages. Told her to hold her damn end still.

But finally the joists were in place, slanting down from the back wall to the front. Gary stood on a stool in the middle of the platform and pulled himself up on one, testing the strength. That’ll hold, he said. Let’s get the roof on before dark.

Irene hadn’t said a word in hours. They grabbed a piece of aluminum sheeting and leaned it against the front of the cabin. Brought out stepstools and hoisted the sheet into place.

It’s not quite long enough, Gary said. That’s why I got the smaller pieces. So we can let this overhang a bit. That’ll help keep the rain off the walls.

Irene did as she was told, held the sheet while he went inside to nail. I’ll have to get some goop for the nail holes, he said. So Irene knew it would drip on them, probably all winter. No bed, just their sleeping bags with large wet spots from the drips. Or maybe they’d sleep under a plastic tarp, the edges of the plywood wet and muddy, her pillow on the floor. That’s what she had to look forward to, she knew.