by David Vann
He should feel freedom now, but the IRS after him is probably what kills that most. Knowing they will never stop, never forgive, never even understand that what he was doing was not supposed to be illegal. A scam for doctors and dentists in Alaska, a slick guy coming around and telling them all the tax benefits of a corporation in South America. And it was legal at first, but then it changed, and no one bothered to tell Jim. Or maybe he kind of suspected, if he’s to be completely honest, but why hand over all that money to the IRS? When was that ever something he’d agreed to? What right do they have?
If he could put the entire government on a fireworks barge and push them out into the lake and light the fuse, he would. Every rocket pointed downward so it would explode in place. He wants all of them to just die. A rage so complete there’s no way to express it. Even the magnum not enough.
Jim lies down on the bed. Thick layer of dust, terrible for his sinuses, but the pain is already complete, so how can it be worse? He’s moaning, because when it hits this stage there’s only moaning, and thoughts no longer form or follow, and all that’s left is time.
The bare light bulb humming, another torture, moth wings fusing to its surface. Too many things. Rhoda, the IRS, his divorces, the sinus pain, his job, the empty new house, winter, this trip that has not made things better at all. He was making it through the weeks until this trip, a kind of finish line, but now he can see all the weeks waiting after it, and no change, no improvement. The doctor was supposed to help. And Rhoda, and his family, seeing his kids, getting away from winter and loneliness and insomnia and work, but it’s no easier here. He’s no closer to seeing a way through. How to stay alive long enough to where life becomes something wanted again.
What’s clear is that he can’t stay another day with his parents. Two nights impossibly long. He can’t get through even this one.
So Jim lies there for the next hours waiting, his back slumping, all his body getting sore in the mysterious way a bed hurts us only if we’re not sleeping, and finally, long after it should have arrived, the sky through thin curtains becomes dark blue and then a lighter blue and Jim rises insubstantial, a ghost from lack of sleep, feeling the outlines of his body and outlines only. Careful down the stairs and into the house. His father already there in the bay window, sitting in his usual spot, lights off, watching the lake for signs of day.
Jim sits beside him. The water out there absolutely calm, undisturbed by any ripple or wake, blue glass. “Beautiful,” he says, but of course his father doesn’t say anything.
The mountains on the other side brightening at their tips and fusing. The sun a soldering gun to weld earth and sky, all turning yellow white and too hot to look at. The surface of the lake a mirror to reflect this burn, water disappearing and become only light.
His father still staring straight ahead, face lit and eyes narrowed, some scientist looking into a nuclear blast and not wanting any shielding, waiting for the shock wave and the superheated wind.
“I tried, Dad,” Jim says. “I guess that’s what I want you to know. I didn’t just cave in. I fought for hundreds or maybe thousands of hours.”
“It’s not a fight,” his dad says. “It’s just life. You just do it.”
“That’s not enough reason.”
“We never needed a reason.”
Ripples in the light now, bright mirror become liquid again, the heat raising a wind. And a boat passing far out, dark line of its hull and wake, a fisherman out for bass.
“I don’t know when a reason became needed,” Jim says. “I guess that’s the problem, the moment that I needed one. Who knows why that moment happened.”
“The whole thing’s a sack of shit. All of life. Nothing is what it was supposed to be. But you still don’t end it.”
Jim can’t believe his father is talking. “How is it a sack of shit? Your life.”
“I stab myself with insulin every day. I eat diabetic ice cream. I have no good friend left. I sit here staring out at the lake, fat as a toad. I haven’t had sex in decades. I don’t believe, but still I have to go to church. I know too many people in this town, and if I run into anyone at the supermarket or gas station, I have to remember the names of their kids. I was supposed to be a better father, a better husband, a better Christian, a better dentist, a better man. I grew up running traplines, and the truth is I would have liked to spend my entire life out in the woods away from people, but I had to talk with them every day and I still have to talk. I’m supposed to smile, too, but I don’t think that has happened in a decade or two. Every year is only time to pass, nothing to look forward to. Heard enough?”
“Wow. Yeah.”
“And I’m not talking about putting a gun to my head. I’ll be here until I stop breathing, because what you’re talking about is not an option.”
Jim puts a hand on his father’s arm. “Thank you, Dad.”
“I hate everyone here,” his father says. “That’s the truth. I never told anyone that. I never even really thought it in a sentence in my head. But I hate all of America and everything it is. I served in the navy and so did you, but my father was Cherokee, and we come from leaders who accommodated, who tried to make peace, and they lost everything. All was taken. They signed the treaty that led to the Trail of Tears. I spent decades here fixing everyone’s teeth and talking pleasantly with them, and I could never say who I was. So everyone can burn. The whole place. The entire country.”
“I had no idea.”
“Yeah. That was the point. No one could have any idea what I was thinking. They still can’t. I’m only telling you so you wake up. It doesn’t matter if you’re suffering or if your life didn’t turn out the way you wanted. You continue on anyway.”
“But why?”
“You don’t ask that.”
“And why can’t we ask?”
“Look where it’s gotten you. Real great, the asking.”
“But the question is still there.”
“No it’s not.”
“I have to admit I’m stunned. I’ve never heard you say so much.”
“Well that’s enough I think.”
“Okay.”
The lake on fire, far too bright to look at, but his father is staring anyway, his desire for immolation. A terrible choice, the worst choice, to hate every day but continue on for decades. Jim will not do that. He will spare himself that.
Jim tries to stare at the lake but it’s so bright it might as well be made of aluminum. Jim remembers the fresh plates of it stacked in Oregon for the boat, oiled mirrors blinding, hot even through gloves.
Heat radiating through the window, and his father still wears that hunting jacket. He’s refusing the world, refusing to blink or turn away or take off his jacket or do anything at all but suffer and stare.
“I’m not sure it matters,” Jim says. “I came here to be helped, to see my family, and you just helped me. You told me the truth. You weren’t absent as you’ve always been before, and what you said does relate directly to what I’ve been experiencing, the same anger, the same desire to see it all burn, the same sense of not belonging and of time as something to get through. And yet it doesn’t help. It doesn’t help me at all. I can see now that the trip was pointless. Even if you give me exactly what I need, it doesn’t do anything.”
“You don’t need help. You just do your life. That’s it.”
“Yeah. That’s the part where we’re not the same. I do need a good reason. I’m not going to suffer each day just to keep on suffering.”
“What did you think life was going to be? Where did you get this idea that you’d be happy?”
“Well from everyone, from everything. We’ve always been told that.”
“No we weren’t. You weren’t. Not by me, at least.”
“That’s true.”
“Stop being a baby. And stop talking about it. Just do what you need to do.”
“Thanks. That’s real helpful.”
“It’s the most helpful thing I’ve said. Im
agine we’re hunting. You’re down at the bottom of The Burn or below Bear Wallow, and you decide to just not hike anymore. You don’t feel like going uphill. Where does that leave you?”
“I don’t think it’s the same.”
“How is it not the same?”
“Well if I hike I know I can get to camp, where I have a bed and food and everything else, but in real life there’s no camp. We just hike uphill and the hill keeps rolling back and you find out there’s more hill.”
“You think too much. You forget that if you don’t hike you’re stuck in the brush with the sun out and no real shade and your water gone and no one there except maybe a rattlesnake or two.”
“That’s a better situation than what I have now.”
“Self-pity. You have to stop that.”
“I know. It’s more dangerous than anything else. But how do you stop self-pity?”
“Like everything else, you just do.”
“That’s the part I’m missing.”
“Then stop missing it.”
“That’s the same thing.”
His father sighs then and takes off his baseball cap. He closes his eyes, rubs at them, and then scratches his bald head. “I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t know what else to say.”
“Thank you for trying. I mean it. I appreciate that you tried.”
“Yeah.” He puts the cap back and raises his eyes to the burn, and Jim knows this is as much as he’ll get, the conversation over now. Is there some way he could just stop? Is there some switch inside, something activated by will? Can he listen to what his father has said and let it work?
A jet boat goes by with a skier attached, a huge curve of spray lofted every time he carves a turn. Jim always loved skiing. What if he did that every day? He could buy a boat and keep it at the green pier. Wake in the morning, talk with his dad, then go out on the water.
His father clears his throat. “I know I never say this, and that I should have said it, but I love you, son, and I don’t want you to go. That’s the last thing I’ll say.”
Jim is stunned. He’s never heard this before, not once in his life. He stares into the blaze of the lake along with his father and has no idea what to say. He’s been offered everything now. His father loves him, his kids love him, Gary is trying hard. Rhoda was kind to him. If he can let all of this sink in, maybe it will do something. “Thank you, Dad,” he finally says. “I love you too.”
22
That morning Jim feels a bit better. It lasts a few hours. When his mother comes into the kitchen, he’s able to say hello and ask how she is.
“Oh I’m fine,” she says, hugging herself in her bathrobe because the bedroom is cold. His parents have slept in separate beds since he can remember, narrow single mattresses and blackout blinds never opened during the day, the room a cave, unheated and unlit. Her bathrobe is baby blue and ancient.
She lights the stove and sets the kettle. Spoons Pero into a mug while she’s waiting. Some chicory coffee substitute. The water steams and boils almost immediately, reheated twice already by his father, and she pours then adds sugar and milk. Stirs with a spoon from her station, standing at the sink and staring at the pomegranate tree and petunias and fence.
“You can come over here, Mom,” Jim says. “Look at the lake.”
“Oh I’m fine,” she says.
“Really, how come you never get to look at the lake? How many thousands of hours have you stared at that fence?”
“Jim,” she says. “You always make our lives sound so small. I’m happy looking at my garden in the morning.”
“Sorry,” he says. “I guess the lake is still kind of bright anyway.”
“Yes. And I see it plenty every day.”
“Okay, sorry.”
“That’s okay.”
“But what are you thinking when you’re standing there?”
“Oh nothing important.”
“There must be some repeated things. What is it that you’ve thought of many times while standing there?”
“Well, I don’t think anyone wants to hear that.”
“I do.”
His mother sighs and stares at the fence or petunias or whatever. She raises her mug to take a sip.
“I’m leaving today,” Jim says.
“Today?” she asks.
“This morning. I’m going to see John Lampson and then have my appointment with the therapist in Santa Rosa at the end of the day and change my ticket to fly back to Alaska earlier.”
“You don’t need to do that. You can stay here.”
“I can’t. I didn’t sleep all last night. I laid out on the pier and then in the apartment over the garage and I just can’t have another night of doing that. It’s too long.”
“It was because you saw Rhoda. Don’t see her and you’ll be fine.”
“Do you actually believe that?”
His mother doesn’t answer, and she still hasn’t looked at him.
“So last chance,” he says. “What are your thoughts? What happens when you’re standing there?”
“I think of a lot of things. The ladies in the church and where we’ll go for lunch.”
“No daily scheduling stuff. I mean other thoughts or memories.”
She sighs, and her head is shaking. She obviously doesn’t enjoy this at all, but he doesn’t feel like stopping. He wants to know. “This is your last chance,” he says. “I’ll be up there in Alaska and I may not come back.”
“You better come back,” she says in a low voice, staring down at the sink now, or maybe at her hands.
“Tell me.”
“I don’t like this. But okay. I remember when the flood was up over the driveway, all water out there, and I worry sometimes. I think about my history degree. One unit short. Only one unit. Would my life be different? And I worry about you kids, all three of you. Ginny with the problems she’s had in her marriage, whether Gary ever will get married, and all that’s happening with you, so bright and nothing went like it should and I don’t understand why. All you had to do was not destroy it. If you had just let your life happen, it would have been good. That’s all you had to do, just nothing, just not get in the way.”
“Thank you, Mom. It’s good to know what you’re thinking.”
“Is that enough?”
“Yes. That’s enough. Thank you.”
“Because I could trot out a thousand other things if you want, memories and thoughts, all that’s supposed to be mine. We’re supposed to be able to have our thoughts. We’re supposed to be allowed that, without being picked at.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Your family’s not here for your entertainment. All of this is real.”
“I’m sorry, Mom. It’s true I just feel like prodding, since nothing matters. And it doesn’t matter what you say. Dad said a lot this morning. You wouldn’t have believed it. But that didn’t matter either. I’ve hit some new stage, where everything’s too late. I’ll be interviewing myself now as I raise the pistol to my head. So what are your thoughts now, Jim?”
“Stop it!” she yells. She’s hunched over the sink, her fists clenched at her breast, and then she leaves quickly, back to the cave of her bedroom.
“I don’t know what to say to that,” his father says. “You know what you’re doing. And then you do it anyway.”
Gary comes in. “What happened?”
“I’m just a shit,” Jim says. “I upset Mom. I pushed too much. It’s time to leave. We’re going now to John’s place, then to Santa Rosa and I’m going to see the therapist today. Then fly tomorrow. I can’t stay any longer.”
“We’re not going today.”
“Well I am, with or without you. I’m making three phone calls and then I’m splitting.”
Jim goes into the dining room and grabs the green phone. He hates that it’s green. He dials for the therapist and it just rings. Lazy piece of shit arriving late to work. So he asks the operator for the number of Alaska Airlines, then he’s on hold and s
tanding in the middle of this house that seems like a raft right now, something that could tilt and become unmoored. He has to get out of here.
Someone finally answers, and he’s able to change his ticket to fly out tomorrow morning, connecting through Seattle and Anchorage.
Then he calls John. “I’m coming over right now,” he says. “Leaving Lakeport in about ten minutes.”
“You don’t sound good,” John says.
“I’ll seem worse in person.”
“Well then I look forward to seeing you soon.”
“You betcha,” Jim says, and he hangs up because what more is he supposed to say? Just making the last rounds. He calls the therapist again and this time gets his secretary. “Tell that miserable fuck he’s seeing me this afternoon. I don’t give a shit if he already has other appointments. I’m leaving for Alaska tomorrow morning and I need to see him one last time before I blow my head off.”
“It’s okay, Jim,” she says. “Everything’s okay.” It’s clear she’s been given training for exactly this situation. He doesn’t really care. He gets the appointment, which is what he wanted, and then he hangs up the green phone for the last time. He won’t ever have to use it again.
He walks into the kitchen to say goodbye to his father, puts a hand on his shoulder. “Thank you, Dad. That was the best gift you could have given.”
“Not too late,” his father says. “You can pull it together. Don’t ever think it’s too late.”
Gary comes in carrying his duffel bag. “Okay,” he says. “I don’t like this, but when has that ever mattered?”
“That’s right,” Jim says, and he pushes past and out the metal door and down the narrow steps a last time. All the world burning away just behind him now, vanishing. This house will be gone when he leaves, and then this road and town and lake and these mountains, all gone.
John has a nice place in Kelseyville. Big house set back from the road, old trees and plenty of shade. He owns a pharmacy and has done well. And he hasn’t detonated his life at any point. His wife, Carol, comes out on the porch to join in the greeting. She’s wearing a white dress with blue polka dots and a blue sash and could fit into their high school photos.