by David Vann
The car heating in the sun, and Galen’s mother took her time. Walked slowly out, got in without a word, and drove them away down the hedge lane.
They make the most wonderful pumpkin pies, Galen mumbled as they passed Bel-Air.
No one responded. They really are the most wonderful pies, he said. The pumpkin especially.
Galen’s grandmother was not ready for the trip. That was one thing about losing your memory. You could never be ready for anything.
Today? she asked. She looked frightened.
Yes, Mom.
But I haven’t packed.
We packed your things last week. We have a suitcase set aside.
I need to go home, she said. I need to go home to gather my things.
We’re going to the cabin, Mom.
I need to go home.
You love the cabin, Mom. We always have a wonderful time there. We go every summer. We use the old cast-iron stove, and you fix chicken and dumplings.
Why won’t you take me home?
Galen’s mother turned around, her back to her mother. I can’t do this today, she said quietly. One of you will need to bring her to the car. Her suitcase is in the closet.
What are you doing? Galen’s grandmother asked.
Galen’s mother left the room then, and Galen looked at his aunt.
You come back here, Suzie-Q, Galen’s grandmother said.
I don’t even exist, Galen’s aunt said. Ask her if I’m here, and you’ll find out. Jennifer doesn’t exist either. We’re invisible. So it’s all on you.
Grandma, Galen said. We get to go to the cabin. We’ll have hot chocolate.
Where is your mother?
Galen walked over to her closet and took out the small suitcase. Looks like you’re ready to go, he said. Mom’s in the car.
She’s in the car?
Yeah, we’re going to the cabin.
Okay, she said, and just like that they walked out.
Galen’s grandmother sat in front. Galen and the mafia in the back, Jennifer jammed in the middle. The feel of her thigh, plump and firm against his bony leg. He wanted her to be wearing shorts, but she wore sweatpants. If only the others could just disappear.
The day hot now, the air from the open windows getting hotter as they passed fields of dry yellow grass. Galen could feel a bead of sweat trickle down his chest, and Jennifer was in a panic suddenly to get rid of her sweatshirt. All elbows, Galen’s aunt complaining, but Galen had a chance to see Jennifer’s bare arm and armpit, the curve to her breast in only a tank top, so close to his mouth. He turned away, looked out the side window so his aunt wouldn’t catch him.
The open windows at highway speed made it impossible to speak, and this was a relief to everyone, it seemed. Even his mother and aunt might get along if they could just live in a blast furnace. Words could only cause trouble. Galen enjoyed the peace, watched the landscape slip past, yellow grass dotted with oaks, the hills beginning to take shape, long curves of road climbing into pine trees, the gold rush country, the place of nostalgia for his grandmother who loved Hallmark cards and watched Bonanza on TV. Her perfect world was a small western town in which all words were sweet and empty.
Galen didn’t know how his grandmother was possible. He had brought her into this existence to help him learn something, but how was her real life convincing? Could she really care about that TV ranch, with Hoss and all the other folk?
The smell of pines, the road wide, and the Buick floating and dipping. They rose higher into mountains, taller trees, more shade, and his mother pulled onto the shoulder. I’m just going to let it cool down a bit, she said. So we don’t boil over.
They all piled out. Steep rock rising thirty feet from the side of the road. A mountainside dug and blasted. The air still hot despite the elevation and the shade. Galen walked over to the rock and scrabbled up a few feet to where he could lean against it, cool on his face and hands.
Rock brother, Jennifer said.
I’m touching another time, Galen said. When they cut into this mountain, they opened up another time. I wonder when it was.
The Freakazoic, Jennifer said. All the animals were skinny then and ran around doing random shit.
Helen laughed. Good one, Jennifer, she said.
You’re not quiet enough to be at peace, Galen said. He closed his eyes and breathed in the rock, old smell. If all the world were illusion, only an old soul could have dreamed something so solid into existence. But what if the world were real, and only the people illusions, and the surface of things? The surface mutable, but not the core. Nothing Galen had read made any of this clear. It could be that this rock was real, and in that case it should be treated with a different kind of reverence. Galen breathed out a low note, deep in his throat, an ancient guttural song for the rock.
Oh please, his aunt said, but he ignored her. He repeated the low note, again and again, and then sang something up high, and then low again, and the song began to surge in him. His arms and face flat against the cool rock, and the rock was giving back an echo, very faint, but enough for him to hear up close. He was singing with the rock now.
So talented, he heard his grandmother say. My talented grandson. And this was disrupting his focus. Why wouldn’t they all just vanish?
I can’t stand it, his mother said. We’re going. I don’t care if the car overheats. Galen, get in the car.
Galen tried to hold on to the song and to the rock, tried to feel its spirit, but once his mother had decided, she wouldn’t stop. There’d be no way to focus, so he gave up. Let his arms down and sighed and stepped carefully through scree to the road.
I was just getting somewhere, he said.
What a shame to lose that, his aunt said.
You have a lot of incarnations left, Galen said. You’ve only just started.
His aunt laughed, and kept laughing as they got in the car again. Jennifer had a few chuckles too, the laughter contagious.
Stop that, Galen’s grandmother said, but they kept laughing, and his mother pulled onto the road again and there was the rushing of the air and their laughter that was entirely mean, not real laughter, no joy in it, and Galen looked out his side window and tried to ignore.
Chapter 8
Exposed granite everywhere, the scale immense. Horsetail Falls up a tremendous gorge. The sheer face of Lover’s Leap, granite pyramids and ridges scattered with pine, fir, and aspen, and the air cooler now. They rounded a bend, followed the river, turned off the highway onto a small bridge over a wide shallow pool where Galen had hunted trout from his earliest memories.
A forest service tract with small cabins on dirt roads bedded with pine needles. Dark and shady, the trees thick in here. Galen felt the excitement he’d always felt on arriving. Their cabin a small two-story with a steeply pitched roof. The walls in vertical slats of thick wood painted pale green, the storm shutters over the windows a dull burgundy. The wide deck and its thick wooden railing this same color, covered now with pine cones and needles.
We made it, Mom, Galen’s mother said. We’re at the cabin.
We need to turn on the water, Galen’s grandmother said. She was already opening her door and stepping out.
That’s right, Mom. You remember.
Of course I remember.
They all got out and stretched, and Galen set the picnic basket on top of the car, leaned his lance against a pine tree. His grandmother already heading up the hill.
Go with her, Galen, his mother said. So he hoofed it after her, trying to catch up. Around the deck and past the small toolshed. She was wearing pale green pants the color of the cabin, a brown blouse, stepping smartly. She stopped and bent down at exactly the right spot, reached into the bushes, removed a loose piece of bark, and turned the faucet that was hidden there.
You knew right where that was, Galen said.
Of course I did. Go around front and open the spigot. Let the water run until it’s clear.
Aye, aye, he said, and walked back down.
> Where’s Mom? his mother asked.
She asked me to turn on the spigot.
Don’t leave her alone.
I’m turning on the spigot. He stepped past the car to the pine tree he’d leaned his lance against. A tall spigot hiding behind it, and he turned it all the way open and water rushed out, a bit dark at first but then clearing. He grabbed some with his palm, icy cold, and had a drink. Nice, he said. Then he turned the spigot off.
His mother unlocking the storm door, his grandmother giving directions. The mafia standing by on the deck, watching with their arms folded. Galen felt almost bad for them for a moment, always on the sidelines. But that was just the order of things. Galen and his mother were first, and they were second, and that was just the way it was. It couldn’t be changed.
Galen grabbed his duffel from the trunk. The cabin open now, and his mother unhooking storm shutters over the windows, but his grandmother had wandered inside. He followed her into darkness.
A closed-in smell, an entire winter. Smoke more than anything else, from the cast-iron stove in the kitchen. But other smells, also, of old wood and blankets, newspapers and kindling, mothballs. He loved this place, loved it more than any other.
His grandmother always went to the kitchen first. Galen followed, just in time to see the light come in as his mother opened the storm shutters from outside. His grandmother standing at the stove with her hands resting on it, looking down, remembering? He watched her being made in the pale light, created for the first time.
Her face older than he had realized, lines in arcs down her cheeks. Her eyes hooded. She was leaning over the stove as if she might collapse upon it, but then she straightened up and ran her palms over the round iron plates. She turned her face away.
Galen felt he was intruding, so he ducked up the narrow staircase, dragging his duffel. Darkness again, and he put his hand out to find one slim bed and then the other, stepped into the small aisle between and swung his duffel onto the bed on the left. Then he lay down, the bumpy old mattress. This was where he could think. He’d lain right here for hours each summer, throughout his life, dreaming of what might be. It was here that everything could be reviewed and here that who he was could be known. Only this place right here.
The bad thing, of course, was that it had to be shared with his mother. Galen could hear his mother and aunt arguing below about the sleeping arrangements, so he felt in the duffel for his tape recorder and earphones and listened to Kitaro’s Silk Road.
He could feel his breathing calm and all the stress leave his body. So much stress, always more than he was aware of until he washed up on Kitaro’s shore. Here he could spread his arms wide and he could fly.
But then the light turned on. His mother, wrecking everything.
I’m listening to Kitaro, he hissed.
I can’t fight everybody, she said. I don’t have the energy.
Galen reached over and turned off the lamp, but she turned it on again. She had a small suitcase on the floor and was moving her clothing into the drawers of the narrow dresser between their beds. We’re having our picnic now, she said. Up at the big rock.
I’m not hungry.
Then you’ll just watch us eat.
Galen hit rewind, the old recorder squealing. He needed a Walkman. But of course there was no money for a Walkman. He hit play and was back on the Silk Road, his eyes closed.
Galen relaxed again, waited for the light to turn off and his mother to leave, and lying here in the cabin on this old mattress in the dark he had the sense that he was destined for something. The shape of his life might include greatness of some sort, though it was too early to tell what that might be. He could feel the expansiveness of his spirit, the way it emanated from his chest and filled the entire room. But he couldn’t really focus, because they were all walking up to the big rock now, and that was a nagging that pulled at him. He should just not go, but somehow it was not possible to not go. His mother a constant disruption, a tearing in the fabric of space and time. There could be no peace when she was near.
Galen slammed the stop button on the recorder and took off the earphones. Then down the steep stairs.
The big metal stew pot on the stove, and that was one thing Galen was looking forward to, the chicken and dumplings. That was a meal he would eat, a break each year from being a vegetarian.
He stood at the stove like his grandmother had, placed his hands where hers had been, wondered what she’d been thinking or remembering. Her own psychic space, where all the different times came together. Her children young, her husband still alive, her mind still intact. Could she remember that? Can a broken mind remember when it was well?
Galen turned his head away, as his grandmother had done, and ran his hands over the round cast-iron burners that could be lifted to poke at the coals. Black iron with chrome along the edges. The chrome tarnished but still beautiful, ornate curls and leaf patterns. A high back around a black stovepipe. The heft and solidity of the thing. Its presence in this small room and in their lives. Manifested by us, Galen said, his voice low. Brought into this incarnation as a signpost, a gathering point. I honor you, old stove. He closed his eyes and, ducking his head slightly, bowing, breathed out a long exhale.
The big rock another gathering point. He didn’t want to see his family, but he did want to see the rock again, so he stepped out the back door, across the deck and into pine needles, then up the path to the meadow. Only a sprinkle of grass, bright green shoots in an open clearing, sunny. A break from the shade of the trees. And partway up the meadow, tucked into the left side, a large boulder taller than a person, very wide and set into the ground. A kind of lumpy pancake in layers of granite. Moss-covered in the lower shaded parts, the alcoves and overhangs. A few small ferns. Spotted with yellow blooms of lichen on top. Old skin of the rock. Jennifer perched in the place he liked to sit. She knew that was his place.
His aunt and mother and grandmother all sitting on the ground, leaning back against the rock. Mother and grandmother on one side of the picnic basket, aunt on the other. Red-checked cloth set out with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, deviled eggs, pickles, potato chips.
My handsome grandson.
Galen tried to smile but found his face unresponsive.
Have a deviled egg, she said, as if she’d made them herself.
Thank you, Grandma, he said, and picked up a deviled egg, then climbed the rock to sit beside Jennifer. She’d taken the one smooth saddle in the top, the natural seat. She was staring ahead into space, crunching potato chips.
Galen closed his eyes and tried to calm, but he could hear everyone chewing. His mother biting into a dill pickle, unbelievably loud, his aunt chugging some orange soda, his grandmother gumming away at her sandwich making little smacking sounds. Jennifer with her potato chips that sounded like trees splitting. He hated human chewing and swallowing. He tried to focus on bees circling around in the wildflowers, and the sound of the creek not far away, a light breeze in the treetops farther up the hill, or even the cars passing on the highway, muffled by the forest. But all he could really hear were the wet sounds of tongues and gums and throats.
Listen to all of you, he said. All the chewing and swallowing.
None of the sounds stopped or even paused. We’re eating, his mother finally said.
Jennifer took a bite of her sandwich and then gummed and smacked it as loudly as she could. She was smiling, watching him. She opened her mouth to show him the chewed-up mush.
Galen looked down at his deviled egg. The white a kind of cup for a bright yellow whip of goo, sprinkled with paprika. He sniffed it, and his stomach lurched. It had the smell of barnyard, and he was having to listen to the animals all around him.
Animals, he said. You sound like a bunch of animals.
Galen, his grandmother said.
Sorry. Galen climbed down and walked into the center of the clearing. He found a stick and dug a small hole, nestled the deviled egg inside, and covered it with earth. Grow, he sai
d. Grow more deviled eggs.
He stretched his arms and tried to feel this open meadow and cool air, this familiar space. He gave a little yelp to see if there’d be an echo, but nothing came back. He could still hear their chewing, even from thirty feet away.
I’m going to the creek, he said. He tromped down through the small trees at the side of the cabin, grabbed his lance from the tree at the spigot, and soon stood at the bank where he had stood every year. Slim shadows flitting away under rocks and overhangs. The trout.
Hard to tell how the trout knew his intentions, but they knew. Whenever he appeared, they were in the wide, shallow section, in less than a foot of clear water over a mottled bed of stones orange, green, dark blue, and brown. A kind of camouflage, but the trout knew. They knew the camouflage wasn’t good enough and they instantly disappeared into the faster water, narrow chutes of white between larger stones and deadfall. Hidden pockets, caves and ledges. Places Galen couldn’t see or reach.
For years, Galen had tried with various temptations: salmon eggs, bacon, corn, lures, and flies. He’d never caught a single fish. But this year was going to be different. This year he had brought the lance. He didn’t have a spear point, so he’d duct-taped a ring of nails on the end, a dozen small stabbers. And he was going to sneak up on them from downstream, so they wouldn’t smell him.
Through the trees, a larger pool that was a little deeper, almost two feet. This would be his entry point. He approached the pool carefully, but as soon as he was at the bank, the little shadows took off.
Run for your lives, he said. Papa’s coming in this time.
He stripped at the bank and stepped in with one foot, then stepped quickly out. Holy shit, he said. The water was unbelievably cold. But he stepped in again, both feet, his ankles already in a dull ache, and went down on his hands and knees.
Oh, he said. Oh this is cold. But he eased forward, slipping his belly and chest in, and went under. His arms waving frantically underwater, the lance dropped. Trying to warm up, kicking his thighs in place, treading with his arms, banging his knees and feet and elbows on the stones as he thrashed. Nowhere to go in this small pool, but he had to warm up, had to move. He opened his eyes and they stung in the cold. He could feel the exact shape of his eyeballs, hard little lumps freezing in their sockets. He needed a mask and snorkel. He had to come up for air, and then he submerged again, smooth stones a few inches from his face, dappled light making a confusion of color. Everything suddenly larger, magnified.