David Vann: Caribou Island

Just let me sleep.

So he kissed her forehead, which didn’t feel hot, and went out, closing the door. Then he opened the door again. Do you want some lunch?

No. Just sleep.

Okay, and he closed it again.

Gary walked into the small kitchen, crammed with too much stuff, and grabbed smoked salmon from the fridge, capers and cornichons, crackers, sat at their dark wooden table. Like a mead hall, the dark table and benches near the hearth. A big stone fireplace, something he’d always wanted. But the space was too small, too cramped, the ceilings too low. It felt cheap, not real. Carpet on the floor, not wood. He’d always hated carpet. Irene wanted the carpet, said it was warmer. He wanted wood or even stone. Slabs of slate. He didn’t know yet what the cabin would have. Maybe just dirt. Dirt or wood.

They usually played two-handed pinochle together at lunch, so Gary didn’t know what to do. He leaned over to the bookshelf and grabbed his copy of Beowulf , set it on the table but didn’t open it.

Hwaet. We Gar-Dena , he recited, and he went through the opening lines. A circus trick. He still knew the opening lines to Beowulf and “The Seafarer” in Old English, and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in Middle English, and the Aeneid in Latin, but he couldn’t actually read the languages anymore. He could translate a few lines, struggling through with a dictionary and his notes from thirty years ago, but he couldn’t just read. He had lost that, and though he kept trying to get it back, every few years, his attempts never lasted more than a week or two, and then something always happened, something else needed his attention.

The salmon so good he closed his eyes. White king, the meat richer, a bit more fat, rare but he had caught one last summer, soft-smoked it and still had a couple vacuum-sealed bags left. He’d need to get out fishing again before the season ended, get a smoker going at the cabin.

Gary looked out the window at the lake through the trees, ate the salmon, knew he should feel lucky, but felt nothing except a mild, background terror of how he’d get through the day, how he’d fill the hours. He’d felt this all his adult life, especially in the evenings, especially when he was single. After the sun went down, the stretch of time until when he could sleep seemed an impossible expanse, something looming, a void that couldn’t be crossed. He’d never told anyone about it, not even Irene. It would sound like he was defective in some way. He doubted anyone would really understand.

Well, Gary said, and stood up. He needed to get moving. Irene wasn’t going to help him today, but he needed to be doing something. He’d have to get Mark or Rhoda to help him. So he washed his plate and fork, stepped outside, and walked the path to Mark’s house.

Well traveled by now, a winding route around alder thickets into spruce forest. He should have come in years ago with a machete, cleared a more direct path. But there was something he liked about the character of the twistings and turnings, saplings he’d seen grow into trees, the changing look of seasons, green now, lush, closed in, the trail ahead blocked from sight.

Hey bear, he called out. Hey bear, hey bear, as he came around a bend. Mosquitoes buzzing at his ears, going for his neck. The forest damp and rotting, smell of wood. Wind in the treetops, a reassuring sound, the rise of it, the way it always seemed far away, even in close.

New deadfall from the storm. He cleared branches as he went, tossed them aside. Twigs snapping underfoot.

He was curious to see the creek, and when he came upon it, finally, the water was high on the banks, but not discolored. The boards he’d set in for the footbridge remained above water, moss-covered edges a bright green. He stood there, the water rushing at him. Ferns all through here, devil’s club rising in horizontal planes, wide flat leaves.

He moved on, up a rise through spruce and cottonwood, onto Mark’s land, and could already see Mark’s house below in the trees, at the edge of the lake. A large garden to the side, and marijuana plants in the weeds farther back, in plastic tubs. Nearly everyone in town knew about them. Mark had bought the house and land two years before for $18,000, all of which came from cash advances on credit cards. That first winter, he struggled to meet the minimum payments and waited for summer, when he, along with the rest of Alaska, made his entire yearly income. And he did get lucky. The price for salmon was unusually high, the run good, and he made nearly $35,000 in less than two months, a new record for him, because he was getting an unheard-of 30 percent cut on a drift-netter. The woman who owned this boat had acquired it from a divorce settlement and had very little experience, so she needed someone good and was willing to pay. He was known by everyone, had been fishing out of Kenai since thirteen, with only a four-year break when he went to Brown.

After he paid off the cards, Mark made a mobile out of them that he called Floating Credit and hung from the light over the kitchen table. The house was unfinished, though, lacking much of its drywall and insulation, cold in winter, and still without a toilet or running water. The bed of his pickup always filled now with large plastic barrels to haul water. The yard littered with several other vehicles as well. A Dodge van, rusted out, a dead VW bug, and a multicolored VW van that ran marginally.

Gary couldn’t say he approved of Mark’s life, but he also knew it didn’t matter whether he approved or not. And he could see Mark wasn’t home at the moment. Neither was his partner, Karen. Mark out fishing, no doubt, and Karen at the Coffee Bus. Gary had figured this would be the case, but he liked the walk, and he could use the phone here, too, to call Rhoda. He opened the front door, which was always unlocked, and went to the phone in the kitchen. A plate of chocolate-chip cookies on the counter, so he had one of those.

I’m working today, Dad, Rhoda said when he called. She was at Dr. Turin’s office, helping to sew up a black Lab. I can’t talk on my cell phone.

Sorry, honey. Lost track of the days. Come out and see us when you get a chance. Your mother’s sick.

What’s wrong? Rhoda sounded worried.

Her head hurts. A bad cold.

I’ll get someone to come out, Rhoda said, and I’ll bring some meds. That’s awful she’s feeling so bad.

No need to come out. I think she just needs to sleep.

I’m coming out anyway, Dad, for dinner tonight, remember?

Oh yeah. Sorry.

So that left Gary on his own for now, and he had a limited amount of time before dinner to get everything done. He returned on the path, backed his pickup to the pile of logs, and started loading. Not as easy with one person, but not all that difficult, either. Just drag a log to the tailgate, prop one end up, then grab the other end to walk it forward.

He drove the logs down to the boat, and this time he knew to push the boat out farther first. Everything went much more smoothly. Irene had seen the worst of it. Hardly any wind today, the waves very small, so unloading at the island wouldn’t be a problem, either.

It did occur to Gary that he could have waited. Instead of going out in that storm, both of them getting sick, they could have just waited, as Irene had wanted. That would have been better. But somehow it had not been possible.

Irene woke disoriented. She raised her head to see the time, after 2:00 p.m., and this movement somehow put pressure on her forehead, the pain a pulse.

Gary, she called, her throat raw. She was hungry, and thirsty, and wanted Gary to help her, to take care of her. This was not a time to be alone. The pain behind her eye so intense she had to get away from it, starting to feel panicked.