by David Vann
They were new to the place and to the way of living and to each other. Roy was thirteen, the summer after seventh grade, and had come from his mother in Santa Rosa, California, where he’d had trombone lessons and soccer and movies and gone to school downtown. His father had been a dentist in Fairbanks. The place they were moving into was a small cedar A-frame, steeply pitched. It was tucked inside a fjord, a small finger inlet in southeastern Alaska off Tlevak Strait, northwest of the South Prince of Wales Wilderness and about fifty miles from Ketchikan. The only access was from the water, by seaplane or boat. There were no neighbors. A two-thousand-foot mountain rose directly behind them in a great mound and was connected by low saddles to others at the mouth of the inlet and beyond. The island they were on, Sukkwan Island, stretched several miles behind them, but they were miles of thick rain forest and no road or trail, a rich growth of fern, hemlock, spruce, cedar, fungus, and wild-flower, moss and rotting wood, home of bear, moose, deer, Dall sheep, mountain goat, and wolverine. A place like Ketchikan, where Roy had lived until age five, but wilder, and fearsome now that he was unaccustomed.
As they flew in, Roy watched the yellow plane’s reflection darting across larger reflections of green-black mountain and blue sky. He saw the trees coming closer on either side, and then they hit and the spray flew up. Roy’s father stuck his head out the side window, grinning, excited. Roy felt for a moment as if he were coming into an enchanted land, a place that couldn’t be real.
And then the work began. They had as much gear as the plane could carry. His father inflated the Zodiac with the foot pump down on one pontoon, and Roy helped the pilot lower the Johnson six-horse outboard over the transom, where it dangled, waiting, until the boat was fully inflated. Then they attached it, lowered the gas can and the extra jerry cans, and that was the first trip. His father went in alone, Roy waiting anxiously inside the plane while the pilot couldn’t stop talking.
Up near Haines, that was where I tried.
I haven’t been there, Roy said.
Well, like I was saying, you got your salmon and your fresh bear and a lot of things other people will never have, but then that’s all you got, including no other people.
Roy didn’t answer.
It’s peculiar, is all. Most don’t bring their kids with them. And most bring some food.
They had brought food, at least for the first week or two, and then the staples they wouldn’t want to do without: flour and beans, salt and sugar, brown sugar for smoking. Some canned fruit. But mostly they were going to eat off the land. That was the plan. They would have fresh salmon, Dolly Varden, clams, crab, and whatever they hunted: deer, bear, sheep, goat, moose. They had brought two rifles and a shotgun and a pistol.
You’ll be all right, the pilot said.
Yeah, Roy said.
And I’ll come and check on you now and again.
When Roy’s father returned, he was grinning and trying not to grin, not looking directly at Roy as they loaded the radio equipment in a watertight box, then the guns in waterproof cases and the fishing gear and tools, the first of the canned goods in cases. Then it was listening to the pilot again as his father curved away, leaving a small wake behind him that was white just behind the transom but smoothed out into dark ridges, as if they could disrupt only this small part and at the edge this place would swallow itself again in moments. The water was very clear but deep enough even just this far out that Roy couldn’t see bottom. In close along shore, though, at the edges of reflection, he could make out the glassy shapes beneath of wood and rock.
His father wore a red flannel hunting shirt and gray pants. He wasn’t wearing a hat, though the air was cooler than Roy had imagined. The sun was bright on his father’s head, shining in his thin hair even from a distance. His father squinted against the morning glare, but still one side of his mouth was turned up in his grin. Roy wanted to join him, to get to land and their new home, but there were two more trips before he could go. They had packs filled with clothing in garbage bags and rain gear and boots, blankets, two lamps, more food, and books. Roy had a box of books just for school. It would be a year of home schooling: math, English, geography, social studies, history, grammar, and eighth grade science, which he didn’t know how they’d do since it had experiments and they didn’t have any of the equipment. His mother had asked his father about this, and his father had not given a clear answer. Roy missed his mother and sister suddenly and his eyes teared up, but then he saw his father pushing off the gravel beach and returning again and he made himself stop.
When he finally crawled into the boat and let go of the pontoon, the starkness hit him. It was nothing they had now, and as he watched the plane behind them taxi in a tight circle, then grind up loud and take off spraying over the water, he felt how long time might be, as if it could be made of air and could press in and stop itself.
Welcome to your new home, his father said, and put his hand on top of Roy’s head, then his shoulder.
By the time the plane was out of earshot, they had bumped the dark, rocky beach and Roy’s father was out in his hip boots pulling at the bow. Roy got out and reached back for a box.
Leave that for now, his father said. Let’s just tie off and take a look around.
Nothing will get into the boxes?
No. Come here.
They walked through shin-high grass, bright green in the sun, and up a path through a small stand of cedars to the cabin. It was weathered and gray but not very old. Its roof was steeply peaked to keep off the snow and the entire cabin and its front porch were raised six feet off the ground. It had only a narrow door and two small windows. Roy looked at the stovepipe jutting out and hoped that it was a fireplace, too.
His father didn’t take him into the cabin but skirted it on a small trail that continued farther up the hill.
The outhouse, his father said.
It was the size of a closet and raised up, with steps. It was less than a hundred feet from the cabin, but they would be using it in the cold, in winter snow. His father continued on.
There’s a nice view up here, he said.
They came to a rise through nettles and berry, the earth breaking beneath their feet, grown over since it had last been traveled. His father had come here four months earlier to see it once before buying it. Then he’d convinced Roy and Roy’s mother and the school. He’d sold his practice and his house, made his plans, and bought their gear.
The top of the hillock was overgrown to the point that Roy wasn’t tall enough for a clear view on all sides, but he could see the inlet like a shiny tooth sprung out of the rougher water outside and the extension beyond to another distant island or shore and the horizon, the air very clear and bright and the distances impossible to know. He could see the top of their roof close below him, and around the inlet the grass and lowland extending no more than a hundred feet at any point, the steepness of the mountain behind them disappearing at its very top in cloud.
No one else for miles around, his father said. Our closest neighbor as far as I know is about twenty miles from here, a small group of three cabins on a similar inlet. But they’re on a different island, and I can’t remember right now which one it is.
Roy didn’t know what to say so he didn’t say anything. He didn’t know how anything would be.
They hiked back down to the cabin then, through a sweet and bitter smell coming from one of the plants, a smell that reminded Roy of his childhood in Ketchikan. In California he had thought all the time of Ketchikan and rain forest and had formed an image in his imaginings and in his boastings to his friends of a wild and mysterious place. But put back into it, the air was colder and the plants were lush but still only plants and he wondered how they would pass the time. Everything was sharply itself and nothing else.
They clunked up onto the porch in their boots. His father opened the lock on the door, swung it wide for Roy to step in first. Roy when he went in smelled cedar and wetness and dirt and smoke and it took a few minutes for his
eyes to adjust properly to see more than the windows and begin to see the beams above and how high the ceiling went and the rough look of the planks for the walls and floor with their sawed-through knot-holes but the smooth feel of them nonetheless.
It all seems new, Roy said.
It’s a well-built cabin, his father said. The wind won’t come through these walls. We’ll be comfortable enough as long as we keep wood for the stove. We have all summer to prepare things like that. We’ll put away dried and smoked salmon, too, and make some jam and salt deer. You’re not going to believe all the things we’re going to do.
They started that day by cleaning the cabin. They swept and dusted, then his father took Roy down a path with a bucket to where a small stream fed into the inlet. It ran deep through the short meadow, making three or four S-cuts in the grass before feeding out through the gravel and dumping a small fan of lighter stuff, sand and dirt and debris, into the saltwater. There were waterbugs on its surface, and mosquitoes.
Time for the bug dope, his father said.
They’re all over the place, Roy said.
All the fresh water we could ever want, his father said proudly, as if he had put the stream there himself. We’ll be drinking well.
They put repellent on their faces, wrists, and the backs of their necks, then set to wiping down everything in the cabin with bleach and water to kill all the mildew. Then they dried it with rags and began bringing in their gear.
The cabin had a front room with the windows and the stove, and it had a back or really side room with no windows and a large closet.
We’ll be sleeping out here, his father said, in the main room by the fire. We’ll put our stuff back there.
So they carried in the equipment and put it in the closet, the stuff that was most precious and most needed to stay dry. They packed in the supplies, the canned goods along the wall, the dry goods in plastic in the middle, their clothes and bedding near the door. Then they went to gather wood.
We need dead stuff, Roy’s father said. And none of it will be dry, so maybe actually we should just gather a little to take inside and then we should start building something off the back wall of the cabin.
They had brought tools, but it sounded to Roy as if his father were discovering some of this as he went along. The idea that dry wood was not something his father had thought of ahead of time frightened Roy.
They brought in a twisted pile of odd branches, stacked it near the stove, then went around back and discovered a piece of the wall that jutted out into a kind of box and was in fact for firewood.
Well, Roy’s father said, I didn’t know about that. But that’s good. We’ll need more, though. This is just for a little summer trip or a weekend of hunting. We’ll need something all along this wall. And Roy wondered then about boards, about lumber, about nails. He hadn’t seen any lumber.
We’ll need shingles, his father said. They stood side by side, both with their arms folded, and stared at the wall. Mosquitoes buzzed around them. It was cold here in the shade even though the sun was high. They might have been having a discussion about some kind of trouble Roy was in, they were so removed from what they were looking at.
We can use poles or saplings or something for the supports, his father said. But we need some kind of roof, and it has to come out a ways for when the rain or snow is blowing sideways.
It seemed impossible. All of it seemed impossible to Roy, and they seemed terribly unprepared. Any old boards lying around? he asked.
I don’t know, his father said. Why don’t you take a look up around the outhouse and I’ll poke around here.
Roy felt there was a kind of leveling. Neither knew what to do and both would have to learn. He hiked the short distance to the outhouse and could see the plants already ground down by their passing. They would wear paths in everything, everywhere they went. He circled the outhouse and stepped on one small board that had been overgrown. He pulled it out, scraped the dirt and grass and bugs off it and saw that it was rotten. He tore it apart in his hands. Inside the outhouse was a roll of toilet paper with water stains at the edges and a seat nailed onto the wooden bench and a smell different than a portable toilet because it didn’t smell like chemicals or hot plastic. It smelled like old shit and old wood and mildew and old urine and smoke. It was grimy and damp and there were cobwebs in the corners. He saw two pieces of board about two or three feet long, stacked behind the toilet, but he didn’t want to pick them up because he couldn’t see well in the shadows and he didn’t know what they had been used for or whether they had black widows on them. One of the daughters of his father’s neighbors in Fairbanks had been bitten by a whole family of black widows when she’d put her foot into an old shoe in the attic. They had all bitten her, six or seven of them, but she hadn’t died. She’d been sick for over a month. Or maybe this was just a story. But Roy had to leave suddenly. He jumped back fast, let the door on its spring slam itself shut, and wiped his hands on the thighs of his jeans as he backed away.
Find anything up there? his father called.
No, he shouted, turning back down toward the cabin. Just two small boards maybe, but I’m not sure what they’re being used for.
How’s the outhouse? His father was grinning when Roy got to him. Is it going to be something to look forward to? The big event?
No way. It gives me the creeps in there.
Wait till you have your butt hanging out over the void.
God, Roy said.
I found a few boards under the cabin, his father said. Not in great shape, but usable. It still looks like we’re going to have to make a few boards. Ever made boards before?
No.
I’ve heard it can be done.
Great. He could see his father grinning.
The first bit of home schooling, his father said. Board-Making 101.
So they cut up what they had and looked out in the forest for support poles and a log or tree big enough and fresh enough for boards. The forest was dimly lit and very quiet except for dripping and the sounds of their own boots and breath. Some wind in the leaves above, but not steady. Moss grew thickly at the bases of the trees and over their roots, and strange flowers that Roy remembered now from Ketchikan appeared suddenly in odd places, behind trees and under ferns and then right in the middle of a small game path, red and deep purple in stalks thick as roots, waxy-looking. And fallen wood everywhere but all of it rotten, coming apart in dark reds and browns as they touched it. He remembered nettles in time not to touch the hair that looked like silk and he remembered what they had called conks on the trees, though that word seemed strange now. He remembered knocking them off with rocks and taking them home to engrave on their smooth white faces. What he remembered most was the constant sense of being watched.
He stayed close by his father on this initial trip. He was alarmed that neither of them was carrying a gun. He was looking for bear sign, half hoping for it. He had to remind himself constantly that he was supposed to be looking for wood.
We’re going to have to cut fresh, his father said. Nothing here will be new enough. The wood rot sets in too fast. Is any of this coming back to you? Are you remembering Ketchikan?
Yeah.
It’s not like Fairbanks here. Everything has a different feel. I think maybe I’ve been in the wrong place for too long. I’d forgotten how much I like being by the water, and how much I like the mountains coming right up like this and the smell of the forest. Fairbanks is all dry, and the mountains are only hills and every tree is the same as every other tree. It’s all paper birch and spruce, pretty much, endless. I used to look out my window and wish I could see some other kind of tree. I don’t know what it is, but I haven’t felt at home for years, haven’t felt a part of any place I’ve been. Something’s been missing, but I have a feeling that being here, with you, is going to fix all that. Do you know what I mean?
His father looked at him and Roy didn’t know how to talk with his father like this. Yeah, he said, but he didn’t. He
didn’t know at all what his father was really saying or why he was going on like that. And what if things didn’t work out the way his father was saying they were going to work out? What then?
Are you all right? his father asked, and he put his arm around his boy’s shoulders. We’ll be all right here. Okay? I’m just talking. Okay?
Roy nodded and stepped out of his father’s grasp to continue looking for wood.
They brought what little they had found back to the cabin, and it was clearly not much of anything, so his father took out the ax, but then looked up at the sky and changed his mind. You know, it’s getting a little late in the afternoon here, and we need food and we need to set up our bunks and stuff, so maybe this should wait.
So they got at the dry wood that was in the small box behind the cabin, which they found had an access door from the inside, and they used some of this wood to get a fire going in the stove.
It will be our heat, too, his father said. It’ll keep us toasty, and we can get it to slow-burn all night if we close off the vents.
We’ll need that, Roy said. Though he knew it wouldn’t be like Fairbanks here. Single digits and below zero would be rare. His father had promised everyone that. He had sat in their living room with his elbows on his knees and stressed how safe and easy it all would be. Roy’s mother had pointed out that his father’s predictions had rarely come true. When he had protested, she’d brought up commercial fishing, the hardware store investment, and several of his dental practices. She hadn’t mentioned either marriage, but that had been clear, also. His father had ignored all this and told them that mostly it would be above freezing.
Once they had the fire going, Roy went for cans of chili in the other room and his father asked for bread, too, to toast on top. It was dim in the cabin, even though it was still afternoon outside and the real darkness wouldn’t come until very late. He did remember this, all the evenings as a little kid he’d had to go to bed while it was still light. He wasn’t sure what the rules were now, but it seemed like all the normal ones about homework and bedtime were off. He’d never be busy and never have to get up for school. And he’d never see anyone else other than his father.