Halibut on the Moon

by David Vann

  All the surface loose. He can kick and send it spraying. Nothing solid. Sound of his descent, made small in the trees. The air colder and colder, coming closer to Satan and his maw frozen in the ice, so maybe purgatory is only where you think you’ve gone when you’re descending to hell, the mind still playing tricks, still refusing.

  No limit to the darkness inside us, no limit at all. Vast and unrecognized, unvisited. But he will visit now, or at least try. He holds his arms out and turns in place, slipping downward, and tries to ingest all of it.

  “Satan,” he says, calling to himself. “Come out come out wherever you are.”

  The air heavier, thick with chill, and everything wet, the trees and ground and air, all waiting to freeze, sinking toward where the beast is frozen to his belly. He was lunging from the water, exploding upward, so the ice is jagged all around him, spikes and arches and curved thin mountains that would be impossible anywhere else, all on a scale enormous. We could climb Satan and stand on an eyelash and still he would be too small for what waits inside.

  Jim decides he will no longer follow the rules. He runs downhill but does not lean back to adjust for gravity. A kind of fall, weightless, and running his legs to keep up but he soars and doesn’t know when the impact will come, all the world falling around Satan all the time, infinite collapse, and this is where Jim might meet himself face-to-face, fall into the mirror self, the one he can feel pulling at him day and night, keeping him from joy.

  The hit softened too much by the leavings of the trees above, his face cushioned and body somersaulting, flipping into the darkness beyond but too brief and he’s curled on his stomach and panting and wills the scorpions to come. A sting to wake.

  But nothing happens, and this is always the problem. He will not recognize himself in this darkness, find his mirror self, the source of that tug, or the larger frozen form. Hell is unreachable. That is what is most cruel about it. If we could go there, we could finish and be reassured.

  12

  In the morning all his body aches from rolling sleepless in bed and perhaps also from the fall and being punched by Gary. Surprisingly his face doesn’t look bad in the mirror. Perhaps he was made for a harder life.

  His mind sore from wandering the same fruitless tracks over and over, thinking of Rhoda and all that happened. Tired thinking that goes nowhere. He will need to face his parents today, his mother’s worry, judging him and saying “well” as she comes up against the wall of him. His father’s silence in the other room.

  Gary wakes early, so the two of them sit in the mead hall in dazzling morning light with a view over forested ridgelines all insanely clear after the rain.

  “Ridiculous how beautiful that is,” Jim says.

  “You look tired.”

  “I’m always tired. I don’t sleep.”

  “You should sleep.”

  “Yeah, I’ll work on that. How was it sleeping with the guns?”

  “Cozy.”

  They’re eating cereal in large artsy bowls that must have come from Mary. Handmade ceramic with little nubbins that the spoon catches on. Pain in the ass. “Fuck these bowls,” Jim says.

  “You seem much better adjusted today. All fixed.”

  “Yeah. Mom and Dad will be pleased.”

  “They’re afraid to see you. We’re all afraid to see you. Nothing makes any sense. You have a good job and a lot of money, you’re smart, you had a good wife and kids.”

  “Kind of a selective list, not really capturing all of a life.”

  “Only a few things are important.”

  “Nothing and everything.”

  “For one day try to be simple.”

  “The weather again. Snap my fingers and the sun blows out.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Yeah.”

  They go back to crunching. The redwoods shaggy and straight and with some agreement to share space, not extending their branches too far. A few birds visiting, long fall if they forget how to fly.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t see them,” Jim says. “Save everyone the discomfort.”

  “You have to see Mom and Dad.”

  “But why? Why do we put up with obligation? Has anyone ever enjoyed it or received any benefit?”

  “We’re family.”

  “That’s what I mean. Why torture ourselves?”

  “Family isn’t torture.”

  Jim laughs, real laughter, a feeling of joy sprung suddenly from deep inside him, coming up past the cereal all along his chest and throat.

  “Stop,” Gary says, but Jim loves this feeling, soaring inside.

  “This is the manic part,” Gary says. “You have to say no to this.”

  The idea of saying no only increases the joy. Jim can hardly breathe.

  “It’s just as important to stop the euphoria as it is to stop the depression,” Gary says. “You have to even off.”

  Jim imagines himself some rough blob getting both ends sawn off. He feels so much better, lighter, insane the relief and how complete it can be. He can imagine never being in pain again. “You’re killing me,” he says, and this makes him laugh harder. Words the strangest of all.

  “Please,” Gary says, and Jim feels instantly guilty, even in his joy, and then rage, so quickly.

  “Fuck you,” Jim says. “That’s exactly what I mean. I can’t even laugh without it being something bad I’ve done to my family, and I have to feel guilty. For two fucking seconds of laughter. Because we’re not allowed that, not even that. That’s what family is.”

  “Jesus.”

  “We’ve had enough of Jesus. Mary sucking his dick all day long and you letting her.”

  Gary swings from across the table but this time Jim raises his arm and blocks it, throws his cereal bowl in Gary’s face, impact and milk and cereal everywhere, the two of them rising in what has happened in every mead hall since there were mead halls, locked in battle, Gary tackling him hard but he somehow gets free, sees the enormous plate of glass looking over the valley and runs straight for it to break through and soar thirty feet to the ground but everything will be denied him, the glass so damn strong he only folds against it, painful, something happening to his shoulder and knee, and he bounces off and is back on the carpet and doesn’t want to move again. Closes his eyes and refuses to be here, too many indignities all at once.

  “Fucking psycho,” Gary says.

  13

  It’s a long drive to Lakeport, more than two hours. Wine country, vineyards sprung up along the highway north of Santa Rosa. Small redneck towns transforming into boutiques. Not complete yet, old shacks and beaters remaining next to the mansions and Porsches, but all Jim knew is being erased, the pear orchards and apples, old pickup trucks and gun racks and bowling and diners.

  Cloverdale is a holdout, though. Same crappy shops and houses interrupting the highway, all traffic forced to crawl through. The reassuring feeling of nothing happening, meaningless lives still plodding along small and predictable, the sawmill still here and all the industrial supplies and no sign of progress.

  They stop at Fosters Freeze, as they always have. This is where Elizabeth handed off the kids to him every weekend when he was still living in Lakeport. The halfway point. He’s had the chocolate chip shake a million times, just that chocolate coating blended with vanilla ice cream and a bit of milk, big clumps of chocolate always left in the bottom. And corn dogs, two each.

  “Their bounty was unmeasured,” Jim says. “Foods from many lands, the most exotic spices.”

  “Yeah, that’s the way I think of a corn dog.”

  “We have the same thoughts these days, brother. We’ve never been closer.”

  “Yeah. How’s your shoulder after running into the window?”

  “The crease mark will be there for a while.”

  “I can’t even think of the dumb shit you might do. Running into the window. What the fuck was that?”

  “I was going to fly.”

  “Well that’s not going to work.”

/>   “Good to know.”

  “We shouldn’t be eating here. Mom’s fixing venison for lunch.”

  “I wanted to see this place one last time. Where I picked up my kids every weekend, one of the signs of how my life went.”

  “It’s not gone. It’s still here.”

  “I feel like I’m looking back on it already. Maybe that’s the afterlife, just pure nostalgia, neither good nor bad. No heaven or hell, just some tug from what was.”

  “Enough.”

  “You’re not curious?”

  “No.”

  Jim examines his corn dog, the layers in the pressed meat. It could be peeled like an onion or calve like a glacier. And somehow this dog has become loose in its shell, a gap developed all around and the shiny smooth walls of the corn exposed, subterranean. “Look what the corn does to the light,” he says. “Cave adventure. We could sell tickets.”

  “Fuck,” Gary says.

  “What?”

  But Gary just shakes his head and stares into the parking lot.

  Each part was intolerable. The marriage or the divorce, having a family or being separated from his kids, working or not working, his parents and brother close or far. And every decision limited to the options available. When was there ever a choice?

  His shake is close to the end and his gut overfull with that sick feeling of sugar overdose. The promised chunks of chocolate at the bottom, like scabs with their odd rough shapes formed when lava hit cold. Scalloped edges broken by the beaters. “I really am looking back already. I know I will never see this shake again. Last time. It’s not a what if. I’m already gone.”

  “Just hold it together for a quick visit with the parents. Two nights in Lakeport and then we’ll be back down to see the therapist again.”

  “You don’t know how long two nights are.”

  “Yeah, because I’ve never lived a day and night. Only you have done that.”

  “That’s right. A night without being immersed. A night not in your life. You haven’t had that yet.”

  “Neither have you. No one can have that.”

  “Mysteries of despair. Whole new lands opening up, just like the cavern in this corn dog. You may visit these lands someday yourself.”

  “I won’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Same as knowing things fall down not up. Or knowing the ground is made of dirt.”

  “I’m jealous.”

  “No you’re not. You’ve always looked down on me. Not an A student like you.”

  “I mean it. I’m jealous in every way possible.”

  “Well let’s hit the road,” Gary says, and with that they rise and dump their trash and climb aboard. As they pull onto the road Jim is still thinking of the trash can with all its smears of ice cream and chocolate, everyone ordering exactly what he ordered, the cream gone thick and yellow in previous sun.

  They’re out of town quickly, passing the sawmill with its piles of pulp and angled conveyors and rising into hills so green at this time of year, all the sugar pines settled on new grass and even the oaks budding new leaves, springtime already and only March. Winter just finding its depth in Fairbanks.

  Old railroad tracks rarely used now, the highway cut along the river, Jim craning for a look at the water to see the level but the gorge is fairly deep in most places and he gets only glimpses. Lover’s leap, one of many in California, a common thing among earlier natives to go soaring off a cliff whenever love went wrong.

  “They had something there,” Jim says.

  “What?”

  “Jumping off the cliff. Does make a statement about how the whole thing feels.”

  “That’s just a legend. Probably no one’s ever done it.”

  “I bet a hundred have done it, right there. So high above the water, exposed rock, really beautiful. You’d want it to be there.”

  “So you can see the past now.”

  “Yeah. Our Cherokee blood. Allows me to have visions of the ancestors. And just think how far they go back. Maybe ten thousand years.”

  “Please none of this horseshit with Mom and Dad. They’re worried. They might believe you actually have visions. For some reason they’ve always just believed anything you say.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, and nothing I say. I hate it.”

  “Wow. I had no idea.”

  “Yeah. The world outside your head. Surprise.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jim says. “I really am sorry for being oblivious to so much. But of course no one can ever do anything about not noticing. They didn’t notice.”

  “It’s okay. I really don’t mind. I just want you to get well now.”

  “Thank you.”

  They take the turnoff for going over Hopland, just before the bridge. Narrow road and the feeling of lift on the dips. Small vineyards and then a town of maybe fifty people where they’ve always had a speed trap. Crawling along at twenty-five and still it takes only a minute to get through town.

  “Small towns,” Jim says. “Not one of us has ever tried a city. I wonder what that would have been like.”

  “Awful. Too many people. Can’t even park your car.”

  “But think about who we became. We supported Nixon. Without a thought but just because everyone else from our town did too. And you actually put down ‘uprisings’ as you called them, beating up Indians at school before finding out we’re part Cherokee, and Dad said nothing about that at the time.”

  “That has nothing to do with city or small town.”

  “But it does. We own guns, and the only vacation we ever took as a family was to hunt or fish. All our spare time spent killing. The people who live in cities don’t do that.”

  “Who cares?”

  “This all matters. All this is part of my suicide.”

  “There is no suicide.”

  “But there is, coming soon, and I just want to understand it first. I want to know why when I pull the trigger.”

  “Goddammit.”

  “Yeah. Why let me talk. And why think. Better just to drive fast for a while.”

  They’re winding now into hills, tight switchbacks and Gary going too fast, accelerating so much he has to brake at each curve even though they’re climbing. Throaty sound of the engine.

  “Punch it,” Jim says. “Hard as you can. See if we can fly off one of these drops. Easier for the parents that way, even though they lose two sons instead of one. Too much shame in suicide.”

  Gary gone silent again, clutching the wheel and not slowing down. Some of the drops are fairly sheer and onto rocks and would do the trick. Others they’d just get caught in the trees.

  “I guess our best chance is from a head-on,” Jim says. “Someone coming fast down the hill. Otherwise the chances actually seem pretty slim.”

  It feels like they’re crossing over to something more, not just over the mountain to Lakeport. Gary a ferryman taking him across the river to hell, but even that’s too simple. Gary wanting him well and thinking these visits and crossing miles will help, that the gaps in Jim’s mind can be traversed externally. But for Jim it’s all more like sitting in a waiting room.

  “There’s no rush,” he says to Gary. “We’re not getting anywhere, and we’re no further away from my future.”

  Thin canyons forested but the wider, drier hillsides are covered in short brush that looks bluish in overcast light. Scanning for bucks out of habit. The road widens toward the top and Gary goes even faster until they summit and see the other side, Clearlake stretched out with hills all around. Largest natural lake in California.

  “Stop for the view?” Jim asks, but Gary is concentrated, having to brake hard now on the downhill hairpins and still stomping the accelerator anyway.

  “It’s nice I won’t have to kill myself,” Jim says. “Thanks for being willing to go with me. It won’t be bad on the other side. I promise. Just nothing and more of nothing, which is better than the minus we have now.”

  The lake always looks like it�
�s sitting too low, the mountains on the far shore higher and bending toward the water making a sort of crease that pushes everything down, the whole valley under pressure. But the view doesn’t last long, especially at this speed. They descend into the prettiest small vales, all pale green ghost pines in here, sparse and plenty of open space between. Idyllic hillsides that make you want to hold a rifle or shotgun low in one hand and just hike for hours, crossing the easiest terrain. The ground scabbed with small outcrops of black rock crumbling or the smoother gray stone. Flecks of red and green everywhere and the occasional Lake County diamond or arrowhead but all of it so easy your boots leave almost no mark and you don’t have to scrape through brush. Small streams you can hop across. Gray squirrels taking flight, their tails in arcs, and the rough call of jays. Jim could hike here forever.

  Then the flats and Gary accelerates, lofting over rises, the truck feeling like something too heavy being dragged along by an asthmatic engine.

  “Your truck isn’t going to make it,” Jim says. “We’ll be walking the last part.”

  But Gary of course says nothing. “Buddha Gary,” Jim says. “What worlds inside his head.”

  A long straightaway before the highway, a few houses widely spaced, and Gary opens it up, the needle pushing past a hundred. Jim feels a thrill, rolls down his window to get the blast of cold air. Sticks his arm out and bangs on the side of his door, like when they see a buck, hoots and hollers at the hills and random folk hidden away in their cozy homes.

  But Gary has to slow around the bend and stop at the light for the highway, speed and thrill so quickly gone, and then they cross and crawl through town, new businesses at this end but then everything familiar.

  “So small,” Jim says. “So fucking small. Seriously a one-street town, called Main Street in a burst of imagination. The other side streets are only for houses and go nowhere.”

  Through the center and glimpses of the lake, the park, a left hook and on to the most familiar stretch with his former dental practice right across the street from Safeway, where he worked all through high school. A kind of joke to make him work his whole life within a few hundred yards. Prisons we don’t even see. God’s plan, each with our own invisible thumb pressing us down. “Sky thumbs,” Jim says. “I’ve had a vision. Let me tell you what god is, little brother.”