by David Vann
“Sorry,” he whimpers.
“This is too weird,” she says, prying his hands away.
“Please. Please just five more minutes. Let me hold you.”
She relaxes then and he no longer has to hide. He holds her and his body is shaking and face drowning. The crying comes in heaves that he feels from far away, like watching waves crash on some other shore.
She does something unexpected then. Turns toward him and takes him in her arms, holds his head against her breast, mothering him, a bit of generosity. “It’s okay,” she says. “It’s okay.” She doesn’t get up to leave but stays a long time just like that, her hand stroking the back of his head and neck, his face wet and buried in her breasts. He’s been surprised so many times now by generosity, by all that everyone is doing for him, even this stranger.
But he wrecks it, of course. “What if I offered to marry you,” he says. “Right now. I’d sign something that says you get everything, my house and business, all my cash, if we ever separate or if I die. I’m a dentist. You’d be safe financially, and if you held me like this, I’d be safe also. I can tell you’re a good person, generous. It’s all I need to know.”
“I just wanted to help you,” she says, letting go of him and sitting up. “Because you seemed sad.”
“Yes, and I appreciate that.”
“I don’t want to marry you. Jesus. I have a life.”
“Sorry.”
“You don’t just offer to marry someone, like buying a sandwich.”
“Sorry.”
She’s pulling on her shorts, and there’s no shirt to put on, so she’s out the door quickly. He knows she won’t talk to him again when he gets downstairs. A bouncer will intervene or something. She’ll be giving everyone warning right now.
He lies back down and closes his eyes. Desperation is truth. He would in fact be lucky to marry her, and she would be better off having the security. He’s going to kill himself now, and she’s going to struggle through shitty relationships with younger men and not have enough money. She should have taken his offer.
All that’s left now is to go home. It will be his last drive. He gets up and walks downstairs knowing these are the last people he will ever see, all strangers. The girl hidden away somewhere, of course, and the other girls and bouncers looking at him, just as he thought. The customers oblivious. Old men at the bar, far older than he is, worse lives no doubt, and yet they are managing to carry on, even though they’re probably drunks. Fat or too skinny, with destroyed noses.
A young guy at one of the round tables, a woman on each side of him. He’s chomping on peanuts and tossing the shells. Dark mop of hair and face too round, young enough to still have zits, and where did he get his money?
But no one’s story matters now. Jim pulls on his parka, steps back into the cold and dark and crunches across the snow, the music muted. He climbs in his truck and drives out of town on a road that hasn’t been plowed. He locks in the four-wheel drive. No streetlights out here, almost no neighbors. The place he chose.
The front tires carving snow, veering on a narrow path, close to an edge that falls not far but far enough to get stuck, about ten feet down to a meadow and stream. The truck would roll and he’d be trapped and it would be only an accident. But the problem is time. It would take hours to freeze or suffocate, longer if the truck was still running with its heater, and he might be rescued.
He climbs along the hill, knowing the road more from memory than sight. Trees still without leaves, white trunks and arms so thin. He reaches his own driveway, finally, up another slight hill, and his house is there, two story and empty, with a basketball hoop mounted, some dream of playing here with his son, but his son isn’t coming, and most the year there’s snow anyway.
He hits the garage door opener and it dutifully rises and he’s inside, bare space brightly lit. Workbenches with only a few tools, a few boxes of his stuff not unpacked yet. Three sets of cross-country skis leaning in the corner, Tracy’s pair so small. Fishing rods and nets. The zodiac parked on its trailer, tubes deflated, waiting for summer.
The concrete so clean, unstained. He lets himself in the kitchen door and puts his valise down on the folding card table. The place where the magnum will eventually be, so it might as well be there now. Economy of movement. Some efficiency at the end.
He’s hungry, should have ordered food in the saloon. So it will be canned goods now, soup or chili. He opens the cabinets and stares at the choices, unable to decide. Bright labels and all unwanted. He decides finally on the chili, gets out a small pot and opens the can, so much like dog food, and waits for it to heat.
There’s no stereo, no TV. No couch, no comfortable chairs. Nothing hanging on any wall. No one living here. Only a kitchen that extends to the wide-open living room with a fireplace at the other end, made of green stone he brought from the ranch in California, a reminder of home. Upstairs three bedrooms, all empty, and their bathrooms and a hallway. A place that can make sense only if it’s filled.
He doesn’t want to wash a bowl, so he brings the pot to the table and puts it on an oven glove and eats directly. A bit spicy, and hunks of meat, steaming in the cold, not bad. Pulls the magnum out of the valise and sets the valise on the floor, reaches down for the box of shells. He slides this open on the table in front of the pot, the fat copper casings lodged in Styrofoam, .44 rem mag stamped on each ring outside the firing pin. Beautiful in their arrangement, and he pulls one out to look at it. The impossible weight of something so small. He can never get over how blunt the end, not coming to a point as rifle slugs do. This one is meant to tear and tumble and not go through easily at all. The plate of his skull will be smashed, not drilled.
He gets up to bring the phone over from the counter. A long enough cord to reach the table. Lifts the handset and starts to dial, then puts it back. He’s not sure what to say.
He finishes the chili quickly, wonders if he should have another can. But that seems like too much work. So late and completely silent here, and the house freezing. He’s still wearing his parka and gloves, waiting for the heating to do its job.
He’s too tired to do it tonight. That’s the truth. And it’s not like there’s any rush. Who cares whether he does it today or tomorrow? She might be asleep already anyway. He doesn’t want to hear Rich in the background. He’ll catch her tomorrow.
He finds a bag of chips and some peanuts and finishes his dinner with those. The brown vinyl of the card table, thin but slightly puffy, some sort of padding beneath. He sets the magnum perfectly in the center, as if mounted on display. Long barrel, and the grip looks stubby because everything else is so large, the enormous cylinder.
His head hurts so much in the cold. Unbearable to just sit here. So he walks upstairs to his bedroom and grabs codeine from behind the bathroom mirror and has two. Not something he can do all year or even all month, but he no longer has to worry about long-term effects. He should have tried all the recreational drugs. So many things he should have done.
He takes off his boots and parka, lies down in a big army surplus sleeping bag on the floor with an old pillow from hunting. Wears a beanie and also pulls the sleeping bag over his head, smelling his sour breath in close. All he can do is moan, the painkillers not kicking in yet.
He sees his thoughts begin, just setting out on another night of insomnia, one of thousands of nights like this, his body so exhausted and as soon as he rests his mind starts up. It’s a small building, concrete, with a low ceiling, and the long line of thoughts that have been waiting outside patiently begin shuffling in. There’s no room for them but they keep coming. That line is endless, and there are no rules about pressure, no limits. A thousand can pack into a space that should hold ten, and then a thousand more.
No clear connections, only crowding. Rhoda, mostly, desperate plans and regrets that still sting. Moments of decision. This last day not his first time seeing prostitutes. In such denial he could almost believe the ones in San Francisco were the first, but
there were several here in Fairbanks, including the one that gave him crabs right before he visited Rhoda. Trying to lie to her, making up some story about the locker room bench, and of course she wasn’t fooled. Only his kids were fooled. But the moments when he took steps forward, calling the prostitute for instance. Why there was nothing to hold him back.
And the best moments with Rhoda, why there was nothing to make that remain. The summer in Gold Beach when they were building the boat, renovating a small house and working hard, always tired, but happy, too, dreaming of something together, fixing deviled ham sandwiches at the crappy little kitchen counter and playing grab ass. Sleeping on the floor then, too, in the same sleeping bag but too hot for summer, always throwing it off and sleeping naked wrapped around each other, the closest he’s ever been to anyone. Her daughter, Cinamon, down in California with the grandparents, so he had Rhoda all to himself.
His kids visited later, but only part of the summer, David making coffee at the yard and getting hooked on caffeine, which Elizabeth was not happy about. Ten years old and a caffeine junkie, with about ten spoons of sugar in every cup. Tracy only five then and stayed for only a week, but he took walks with her, held her hand, and she was always saying she loved him, so easy and full.
A summer he only wanted to get through at the time, the construction late and fishing season passing, but if he could go back he would make it last longer, extend that summer a few extra months, because maybe that was the last time he felt hope.
After the launch, it was all struggle at sea, the boat sabotaged with small holes drilled through the fish holds, so the fish never froze and earned only half price. Then the drum crumpling in the Aleutians and having to sell and go back to dentistry. It wasn’t all the struggle and disasters at sea but the return to dentistry, the return to the life he didn’t want. That was when the end began, and all the moments between now and then might as well be erased.
His former lives: a kid in the water, in the lake, then old enough to hunt, the ranch and bucks and birds, then high school and dating, college and meeting Elizabeth, dental school and the navy in Alaska and having a son, being a dentist in Ketchikan and cheating when Elizabeth was pregnant with Tracy, living in California separate from his kids, then the commercial fishing and Alaska again, Fairbanks this time, and how does one map onto the other? So different, each life. They can’t speak to each other. Even the times living in Alaska, each so different.
He doesn’t want this set of lives. He wants a new set. So tired of going over everything. Regret is finally boredom as much as anything else. If he could erase his memories, he would. And maybe that’s what he’s doing, maybe that’s the point of suicide.
He still doesn’t believe he’ll do it. That’s a fact. No matter how many times he holds that pistol, he doesn’t believe he’ll actually pull the trigger.
The sound of the heating, the air getting warmer, and the refrigerator coming on. No other sounds. No neighbors, no cars that would pass here, no animals at this time of year, everything hidden away. No wind even. All still. The only movement is the pain in his head, spiral after spiral, deadened a bit by the codeine and accompanied now by that pukey, sweaty feeling of the drugs. Some hollow disbelief at the lack of sleep, even after so many nights. And he’s too tired to get up and do anything. So he lies here a kind of waking mummy wrapped in despair. He weeps and weeps and his whole body hurts and the crying just will never end.
27
Sleep never does come. He has to rise several times to pee and drink, he blows his nose a hundred times, and he eats a bowl of cereal twice. The light finally comes in white and dark from clouds, just light without direction. Hard to know when sunrise is, but by the time the clock says six fifteen it must be there somewhere behind the cloud cover. He takes more codeine and has more cereal and lies down again to weep until seven thirty, which is eight thirty in California. He rises still dressed in Gary’s clothes from the day before yesterday, too tired to change or maybe wanting to be in his brother’s clothes, and he sits at the card table, at the one place possible, and picks up the phone receiver.
He dials information, asks for a flower shop in Lakeport, California, orders a dozen roses for Rhoda, for her birthday three days from now, to be delivered.
He picks up the magnum and puts it in his lap, just holds it for a while, feels his life moving, opens the cylinder and reaches for each slug in the Styrofoam and loads until the cylinder is full then snaps it shut. He places the pistol on the table by the phone, and he pulls back the hammer, makes sure the safety is off. Hair trigger, only one light touch now. He keeps his hands away.
He rises to get paper and pen, wants to write a note. He can’t do this without a note, without some statement.
No paper in the kitchen but he goes upstairs and rummages through boxes in one of the spare bedrooms. Goose calls and his navy dress uniform. He still has the sword, ceremonial but also real, in its gold braid. All strange, from someone else’s life. He never believed he was in the navy even when he was there. Their unit a joke anyway. The dentist leading them, marching backward, tripped and fell into a sandbox during one of the ceremonies. No one expected anything more from dentists.
That must have been one of the only days on Adak when the wind was low enough for them to be outside. Most of their time spent indoors and in tunnels. Hunting with the .300 magnum whenever the weather did clear. Shooting seals and sea lions and then trying to recover the bodies with a halibut gaff. Risking his life on the rocks, so slippery. Waves and thick green kelp. The water so cold and the hide rough.
Elizabeth almost blew away once. Went outside stupidly when the winds were over a hundred. So easy to die there, and yet no one did. Their friend run over by a bull sea lion, a thousand pounds, but mashed into the mud and nothing broken. David with jaundice at 105 degrees, almost dying right after birth but lived. Only the heart attacks died. The place didn’t kill anyone, as dangerous as it was.
He finds a pen set given to him and has no memory when or from whom. Finds a large white pad of notepaper in a box of books, mostly westerns, and some old letters, including one he wrote to his uncle Frank in 1951, when he was ten.
Dear Uncle Frank: I have found the best place in the world to trap skunks. It is very high, and you have to crawl through a hole to get to it. There are many acorns, and it is very dark. I caught two civet cats there, and is very dangerous. I bet you wouldn’t guess where it is.
I have had good luck in fishing this year. I have caught lots of catfish, and there are many worms. I caught about the biggest mudcat you ever saw in freshwater lakes, except in Lake Michigan, Superior, Erie, and Ontario. We gave two catfish to Mr. Lewis. The lake is up very high but it is going down.
I hope you can come up this summer. It is a lot of fun to ride on our launch. I will send you a funny story about some eager beavers. Ho yes do you know what a skunk is? A skunk is a pussycat with a fluid drive.
I forgot to tell you the danger about trapping skunks. The skunk might squirt you.
I forgot to tell you where I caught the skunks. Guess again.
Love, Jimmy
Jim reads the letter again, a way to touch that time, that different mind, not yet broken. Or were there signs even then? The dark place, the threat, the fascination with the fluid drive? Are we ever innocent? He should read these other letters, all of them, but he feels exhausted. He takes only the pad of paper and pen and returns downstairs.
Right now staying alive is only concern, he writes, as if it might be something to remember. Somehow he imagined a kind of letter might spring forth, but now he can tell this isn’t going to happen. Nothing as simple as hunting or fishing to report. You shafted me, he writes. A note for Rhoda. What else does a suicide note contain? Who gets what, as in a will? There won’t be anything after the IRS.
He writes his brother’s name and phone number, Elizabeth also, and his father. Please cremate my body in Fairbanks and scatter ashes at White Ranch.
He gets his chec
kbook and writes checks to Gary, emptying most of that account.
Checks belong to Gary Vann. Choker belongs to Rhoda Vann. He’s been carrying the choker around for a while now, a small gold chain, a piece of her, pulls it from his pocket and leaves it on the card table.
Gary—would like you to have White Ranch and hold one half in trust for David and Tracy.
Gary, you and all the relatives did everything you could possibly do. It’s just that I need something that you can’t give me.
Most scary thing is not being able to love again and not being able to maintain a relationship that would provide a fulfilling life for me.
He sets the pen down, holds his head in his hands, wishes the pain would just stop. But it’s not enough. He can see that now. Nothing will ever be enough to make him do it. He’s only going to play at suicide and write stupid notes that mean nothing. There will never be a time bad enough that it becomes inevitable. He picks up the pistol and holds the barrel to the side of his head. It should be like this, but accompanied by some crisis of spirit and memory and physical pain, something irresistible, something no one would be able to endure. And that is never going to happen. What he will be offered is much thinner than that.
He puts the pistol down, keeps it pointed carefully to the side in case it goes off, that hammer still pulled back, and reaches for the phone, dials Rhoda.
Waiting as the connections are found, a line snaking down to the doctor’s office in Lakeport where she works now. This is how he could have found her in Lakeport. So stupid and easy and somehow he didn’t think of it.
Someone else answers, so he has to ask for Rhoda, then wait again. They sound busy.
“Hello Jim,” she finally says.
“I love you but I can’t live without you,” he says, a line he remembers now, already planned, and he picks up the pistol and places the barrel to the side of his head to make this more real. Phone receiver on the left, barrel on the right, like some kind of operator.