by David Vann
What kind of trouble you in? Chuck asked.
Jim didn’t answer but only waited. Finally Chuck said, All right. I suppose you’ll be wanting to leave right away.
That’s right.
We need to provision, get diesel, get some spare filters and such. The engine has a few problems. It’s not going to be a fast or a glamorous ride. But the price is twenty-five.
I don’t have twenty-five. I’m not trying to bargain or save up. I just don’t have it.
All right, Chuck said. We’ll need about three or four hours, and ten up front. And I want to see the other ten, too, just to see that you have it.
So Jim went aboard, handed over ten thousand and showed the other ten. And he stayed right there while they went out and provisioned. He wasn’t going to let them slip out without him. Nine hours later, in the evening, they were on their way.
The wind was up and cold, the chop enough to put a little spray over the bow. It was clear out, though. Standing on the stern, Jim could see all the lights in Haines and a few scattered lights along the shoreline beyond and fishing boats out on the water rafted together, waiting. Beyond them, abandoned land and waters among the land, the boundary between them dark and changing. Boating in a strange place at night you could believe almost anything, he knew, any direction, any depth, so sure of innate fears you could distrust your compass and depth finder right up until you hit the rocks. He hoped Chuck and Ned were competent.
They motored through the rest of the night toward Juneau, slipping past darkened land barely perceptible against the darkened sky. He felt a stranger. He had lived in this land much of his life, but the land had not softened or become familiar in that time. It felt as hostile as when he had first entered it. He felt that if he were to let himself sleep, he would be destroyed. Chuck would be drunk at the wheel, currents would carry them, slip them sideways until the bottom rose to meet the hull and they would tip and fill with seawater and drown. It was just a fact that this was always waiting in close. They would be much safer far from land. He was thinking of this as a way of thinking about Roy. Roy had been hostile to him also. They had never known one another, never softened. He had not been wary enough of Roy. He had lost himself in his own problems and not seen Roy for the threat he was. He had let himself sleep.
The next day came slowly. A thin line of gray, or perhaps a blue less dark, and then the peaks outlined as if by their own emanation, and then a faster lightening above them until their edges curled in fire and suddenly everywhere was white and the orange sun ticked upward in thin, segmented lines between two peaks to grow heavy and yellow and merge into the world too hot to look at. All became blind. The water and mountains and air all the same brightness, glaring. Jim couldn’t make out boats or waves or land, could not see a thing for nearly half an hour until the day filled out and land became land again, waves had distance, and he could see boats upon them everywhere. The surface still opaque, gray-white, a solid membrane. The boat wallowing slowly through at eight or nine knots, Haines in the distance now or gone, too far to see.
By eight o’clock, as Ned relieved Chuck and dug into an entire box of jelly doughnuts, they passed what Jim at first had thought was Juneau but was only Point Bridget State Park, he saw on the chart, connected to Juneau by a small highway.
If you know how to read a chart, you can take a turn at the helm, Ned said.
Fair enough, Jim said. I’ll be next.
Soon after, Jim had his best chance of seeing Juneau down Favorite Channel. Then, a little later, down Saginaw Channel, but he really didn’t see anything. They weren’t very close and it didn’t look like much. By noon Jim was at the wheel, exhausted, and they were around Couverden Island, heading west out Icy Strait.
He grinned when he hit Icy Strait because it was indeed suddenly a lot colder. It was a kind of joke. You could tell even from inside the pilot house, through the small cracks and vents.
The channel was huge—at least five miles across—but there was a lot of traffic. A few cabin cruisers and two sailboats but many other commercial salmon and halibut boats and some tugs with loads far behind them. Those were the ones he had to anticipate. He wasn’t used to being so slow. He just couldn’t get out of the way quickly in this thing. And he didn’t turn on the VHF, because he didn’t want attention.
They passed Pleasant Island around three o’clock, then Point Gustavus, and the wind howled down from Glacier Bay to the north, down through the Sitakaday Narrows.
As they passed the next small bay, Dundas Bay, a bit later, he saw a Coast Guard cruiser, one of the big ones, passing on the other side of the Inian Islands, and he felt panicked. If they came over to board him, to inspect for safety equipment and drugs, as they routinely did, he would be caught. He had no faith in Chuck or Ned to stand by him. He was afraid even to sleep, although he could hardly keep awake at this point. But the cutter passed far on the other side of the northernmost island and went into the next bay. Jim stayed as far out of the way as possible, ducking slightly into Taylor Bay as he passed. Brady Glacier looked enormous, a thing from another time, on a different scale that denied anything now, as if Jim could not possibly be Jim because the thought was too small, instantaneous as the glare. The glacier dwarfed mountains.
The wind tore down off the glacier in gusts that set the boat rocking, but this was good because it kept him alert.
And then he was out. He passed Cape Spencer by eight o’clock and was heading out to sea, free of the coast, free of the islands and southeast Alaska. On the chart, he was out of U.S. waters in less than an hour. He would cross them again because of the way the lines were drawn, but only briefly. Within another night and day, he’d be far enough offshore that no one would know to find him or care. He would be entering another life.
Again he thought of Roy. He couldn’t seem not to. He would be thinking along and not expecting the shift, and then he’d see the pistol, handing it to Roy, or he’d come in after and find him there on the floor, or what was left of him. And then he was thinking of the sleeping bag and wondered what had happened to it. They had taken it away in the clear plastic bag with Roy’s body, and they had not wanted to try to pour him out. It was too much to think of him that way, but then what could they have done? They must have done that at some point before they had buried him. But who? Who had poured him out? And what had Elizabeth seen? What had his daughter Tracy seen? He might not see her again. He had lost her, too.
The Gulf of Alaska was very cold. The wind blew hard and the waves were large now and confused, wind waves and swells, breaking around him and soaking the foredeck, occasionally coming over the side. Chuck came up to relieve him at four. Get some sleep, he said.
How far out are we going? Jim asked. I’d like to be at least a hundred out all the way down.
We can do that, Chuck said. Though we’re gonna have to stop for fuel somewhere. Oregon, probably.
Jim went below and sacked out in a tiny bunk that smelled terribly of Chuck’s old sweat and alcohol. He was hungry, but he was too tired, so he tried just to sleep.
A boat under way is a noisy thing. He had known that. But this boat’s walls creaked and popped in a way that couldn’t be good. And her diesel was extremely uneven, dropping low in revs and then racing, not only because of the swells and cavitation. Jim lay curled up in fear and exhaustion and waited for it to pass, waited for sleep, but waiting and fearing like that he thought too much about everything. He thought about the IRS, the sheriff, the Coast Guard, his brother, Elizabeth, Tracy, Rhoda, Roy. He imagined a long conversation with Rhoda trying to convince her he hadn’t killed Roy. He pointed out that Roy was thirteen, that he had a mind of his own, that he could do things that were his own choice.
His own choice? Rhoda asked.
It wasn’t my doing, Jim said. It was never my idea that he kill himself.
Never your idea, Jim?
No, he’d tell Rhoda. But then he confessed one more detail. He told about the time shooting up into the cei
ling.
And what was that about?
I don’t know. I was just shooting.
Just shooting?
Shut up, Jim said aloud in the dark, but he could hardly hear himself, it was so damn loud. And then he worried about what course they were on. How would he know if the boat swung around, if Chuck decided to head back? And what about islands? It was an old, irrational fear of his when under way. He was always afraid of hitting islands that weren’t on the chart, even in mid-ocean.
He couldn’t keep his head still. That was why he wasn’t sleeping. No matter how he wedged it in between a few shirts and the lee cloth, he couldn’t get it not to rock when the boat rocked. He couldn’t relax his neck. And the whiskers along his jaw scraped against the shirts every time his head moved. Roy hadn’t gotten to the point where he’d had whiskers. He was starting to get peach fuzz. They talked about shaving one day, Roy worried about cutting himself, not realizing the blade head swiveled. Jim grinned. Then he was crying again and hating how weak he was. He saw himself in Mexico and maybe someday in the South Pacific, down there in all the nice weather with warm, beautiful blue water and the green mountains, and he saw that he would still be alone. Roy would never catch up to him. And he wondered what Roy’s grave looked like. He realized he’d never get to see it now.
Jim looked across to the other side to see if Ned was awake, too, but apparently he wasn’t.
Jim lay there against the lee cloth with his eyes closed and couldn’t find anything. It was just windblown space inside him, a vacuum. He didn’t care about anything, and it would have been better just to kill himself, but Roy had done that, and now he couldn’t. Roy had killed himself instead, in a clear trade, and this was why Jim was responsible for killing Roy. It was not the way things were supposed to have been, but because Jim had been cowardly, because he hadn’t had the courage just to kill himself before Roy returned, he had missed that moment, the one moment he had to make things right, and he forfeited that moment forever and handed over the pistol to Roy and asked that he fix things in the way that he could, even though it was not the right way.
And Roy had done it. Roy wasn’t cowardly and didn’t flinch, and he put the barrel up and pulled the trigger and blew off half his head. And Jim did not recognize what had happened when he heard the shot. He didn’t know enough to recognize the sacrifice at the time it was made.
Jim still hadn’t believed what had happened even after he saw Roy’s body lying there in the doorway with his blood and brain and bone everywhere. He still had not believed or seen anything, even as the proof lay before him. And now here he was escaping, thinking he could run off and evade the law and his punishment and have his perfect life somewhere eating mangoes and coconuts like Robinson Crusoe, as if nothing had happened, as if his son had done nothing and he had played no part in it. But that was not the way things could be, he knew now, and he knew also what he had to do.
Jim got up out of his lee cloth and went into the pilot house. Chuck was tilted back in his captain’s chair, looking at a porno magazine. He raised his eyes from the page for a minute and said, What do you want?
We have to go back, Jim said. I can’t run from this. I’m turning myself in.
Chuck looked at him steadily, and Jim had no idea what he was thinking. You’re gonna turn yourself in, Chuck finally said.
Yeah.
And where does that leave us? We helped you get out of town, remember?
Jim wasn’t sure what to do. Okay, you’re right, he said. You’ll get your full payment and I’ll wait a few days until you’re gone before I do anything.
Chuck went back to his porno. All right, he said. Go ahead and wake Ned up for the next watch before you sack out again.
Jim woke Ned, who complained that it was early. Jim lay down again and tried to sleep. He was practicing his confession as he drifted off. I, Jim Fenn, murdered my son, Roy Fenn, back in the fall, probably nine months ago. I killed him by shooting him in the head at close range with my pistol, a Ruger .44 Magnum, which was recovered, I think, by the sheriff. I was suicidal and had been talking on the radio with my ex-wife Rhoda, who said she didn’t want to get back together with me and was planning to marry another man, and I couldn’t stand it any more and I was too cowardly to kill myself so I killed my son.
That wasn’t quite right. He went back to his motivations, because they would ask about those, he knew. He went over each incriminating detail, over and over, the pistol, the radios, using everything. He was so exhausted he couldn’t keep it straight. His mind had stopped and his body felt tiny, as if he were an infant. He was a tiny golden infant shrunken inside himself with strings reaching out to each part of this larger body, pulling in. He was vanishing.
Jim woke with a rope around his neck yanking him from his bunk. He tried to scream but he couldn’t. He was on the floor, hit a bulkhead, was struggling, then saw Ned with a wooden bat hitting him across the legs. He fell, was dragged along, got a glimpse of Chuck at the other end of the rope and knew he should have seen this coming. It should have been so obvious. Then he blacked out.
When he hit the water, it was so cold he woke and wanted them to find him and rescue him. Wanted Chuck and Ned to come get him. He struggled with the rope at his neck, freed it easily, but he was in his clothes, sinking, weighted down, and he didn’t have a life jacket. He felt enormously sorry for himself. The open ocean was an awesome sight. Peaks forming everywhere, tossing and disappearing, hillsides rolling past. It was impossible to believe it was just water, impossible to believe, also, how far it extended beneath him. He struggled for what seemed forever and might have been ten minutes before he numbed and tired and began swallowing water. He thought of Roy, who had had no chance to feel this terror, whose death had been instant. He threw up water involuntarily and swallowed and breathed it in again like the end it was, cold and hard and unnecessary, and he knew then that Roy had loved him and that that should have been enough. He just hadn’t understood anything in time.
PRAISE
FOR LEGEND OF A SUICIDE
“The reportorial relentlessness of Vann’s imagination often makes his fiction seem less written than chiseled. A small, lovely book has been written out of his large and evident pain. ‘A father, after all,’ Vann writes, ‘is a lot for a thing to be.’ A son is also a lot for a thing to be; so is an artist. With Legend of a Suicide, David Vann proves himself a fine example of both.”
—Tom Bissell, New York Times Book Review
“As the title suggests, the stories in Legend of a Suicide approach a private mythos, revisiting, reinvestigating, and reinventing one family’s broken past. They also transport us to wild, un-charted places on the Alaskan coast and in the American soul. Throughout, David Vann is a generous, sure-handed guide in some very dangerous territory.”
—Stewart O’Nan, author of Songs for the Missing
“Headlong narrative pacing, a memorable train-wreck father who gives Richard Russo’s characters a run for their money, and a sure, sharp, inviting voice. So hard to put down that I am thinking of suing David Vann for several hours of lost sleep.”
—Lionel Shriver, author of So Much for That
“His legend is at once the truest memoir and the purest fiction…. Nothing quite like this book has been written before.”
—Alexander Linklater, Observer (London)
“Brilliant…. Vann’s prose follows the sinews of Cormac McCarthy and Hemingway, yet has its own nimble flex.”
—The Times (London)
“Vengeful yet sorrowing and empathetic, plausible yet dreamlike, and completely absorbing.”
—Christopher Tayler, The Guardian (London)
“As primal and unforgiving as the Alaskan wilds where it’s set.”
—Bret Anthony Johnston, Men’s Journal
“David Vann’s extraordinary and inventive set of fictional variations on his father’s death will surely become an American classic.”
—The Times Literary Supplement (Lon
don)
“A reckoning…. A very difficult book for the very best reasons: it is written with great honesty and journeys unflinchingly into darkness…. A message of profound sympathy and sadness, anger and regret, Legend of a Suicide is the melting away of one man’s past and the reshaping of tragedy into art.”
—Greg Schutz, Fiction Writers Review
“A powerful new voice has emerged in fiction.”
—The Sunday Times (London)
“A piece of relentless, heartbreaking brilliance that bears comparison with Cormac McCarthy’s Road.”
—The Weekend Australian Magazine
“In his portrayal of a young son’s love for his lost father, David Vann has created a stunning work of fiction: surprising, beautiful, and intensely moving.”
—Nadeem Aslam, author of Maps for Lost Lovers and The Wasted Vigil
“The most powerful, and pure, piece of writing I have read for a very long time. This book squeezes more life out of the first 100 pages than most books could manage in 1000, which is pretty impressive, considering it’s a book about death.”
—Ross Raisin, author of Out Backward
“This is my ‘One to watch.’…It’s stunning, beautifully written, with genuine surprises and a complexity that makes you retrace your steps, wonder what really happened, and ponder over the whole scenario for days. I loved it. It’s Richard Yates, Annie Proulx territory, and highly recommended.”
—Sarah Broadhurst, Bookseller (London)
“David Vann’s dark and strange book twists through natural forces and compressed emotions toward an extraordinary and dreamlike conclusion. One of the most gripping debuts I’ve ever read.”
—Philip Hoare, author of Leviathan; or, The Whale
“A truly great writer.”
—The Irish Sunday Independent (Ireland)
“For the imagery alone and for the sentences, the book would be a treasure.”
—Colm Tóibín
“Extraordinary…. Reminiscent of Tobias Wolff, Vann’s prose is as pure as a gulp of water from an Alaskan stream.”