by David Vann
Roy covered it in a small cairn of rocks to keep it from the eagle and then he threw his line out again. Within a few hours he had six pinks and a Dolly. He strung them on a piece of nylon rope he had brought, tied up handles so that he could carry them, and hiked back slowly to the cabin, stopping periodically to rest.
Lookin’ good, his father said when he saw him coming. Lookin’ good.
I went to the next inlet. The fishing’s a lot better over there.
I believe it, his father said and took the string of fish to look at them. Fresh pinks, he said. And the smoker’s coming along, so why don’t you go ahead and cut these into strips after you’re done cleaning them.
By the time Roy was done cleaning and cutting into strips for smoking, it was getting late. He washed all the pieces well, took them inside in a bucket and made the brine with salt and some white sugar. They were supposed to use brown sugar for brine, but the bear had eaten or scattered all of that. Then he went around back to his father.
How’s it looking? Roy asked.
It’s pretty much together.
Roy couldn’t see well, but it looked like it had four walls and a top and a gap below to put the wood chips in. Does it have racks? he asked.
I brought racks, his father said. And a pan for the bottom that has two levels to it, one for hot coals and one above that for the smoker chips. Without those things, I don’t know how I would have done it exactly.
Are we gonna smoke them now?
We’ll let ’em brine overnight and start early in the morning. It’s just too much work keeping an eye on the chips and all, especially since we don’t even know if the thing works. Why don’t you cook up the pieces you left out and I’ll finish up here.
So Roy cooked up the two large filets in a skillet with oil since they didn’t have butter anymore, and by the time his father came in, he was tired and didn’t say much and just ate the fish looking down at his plate. Roy didn’t feel any closer to his father than he had on their occasional vacations, and he wondered if this would change at all.
Good fish, his father finally said. You can’t beat salmon. And then they did the dishes together and went to bed.
Late that night, after Roy had fallen asleep and awakened again, cold, his father was talking to him.
Roy? he was saying. Can you hear me?
Yeah. I’m awake now.
I don’t know how I got this way. I just feel so bad. I feel okay during the day, but it hits at night. And then I don’t know what to do, his father said, and this last part made him whine again. I’m sorry, Roy. I’m really trying. I just don’t know if I can hold on.
Roy was starting to feel now like he would cry, and he really didn’t want this.
Roy?
Yeah, I’m here. I’m sorry, Dad. I hope you feel better.
His father let out an awful swallowed sound and said, Thanks. And then they just lay there like that listening to each other’s rough breathing until finally it was morning again and Roy lay there remembering and smelling the stove, feeling the heat coming off it.
His father was already around back putting the fish in the smoker. Hey, son, he said. This is looking like it’s gonna be pretty good. He wiggled his eyebrows up and down and smiled at Roy. Then he opened up the door and Roy looked in.
The strips of fish were all laid out in there, and Roy could see the pink meat already had a glaze on it from the brine, which was good.
Just have to get the pan now, his father said. I have the coals ready in the stove.
They went inside and he pulled out coals with tongs he had brought for that purpose and laid them in the pan, then set a small grate over them that fitted down into the pan and poured a large handful of alder chips on top. Gonna be tasty, he said.
They went back outside and he slid the pan in the small door at the bottom and checked all the seams once the smoke got going inside. It leaked some smoke here and there, but his father said it would be fine and really it looked pretty good to Roy. It looked like they might be eating some smoked salmon and have some jerky to put away.
Now we need some drying racks, his father said. And it wouldn’t hurt to have a cache somehow to keep everything away from the bears.
A cache? Roy asked.
Yeah, to keep food away from bears and everything else.
Would it be a lot of work?
Yeah, I’m not saying we’re building one right now, I’m just thinking. What we need to do now are the racks and the wood shed.
So they worked on the frame for the wood shed coming off the back wall of the cabin but a few large drops came down on them and as they looked up into the dark clouds the rain came down more so then they were running around front with the tools to avoid getting soaked as it dumped on them.
They built up the fire in the stove and tried to dry off some with a towel.
Not much dry wood left, his father said. Not much at all. We should have just stored a few pieces in here for now to slowly dry out. If this rain keeps up, we won’t be happy.
They lit the paraffin lamp and got out the cards and sat on the floor playing gin rummy for the rest of the afternoon, waiting for the rain to stop. His father didn’t seem very interested in the game and looked just as glum when he won as when he lost. The rain and wind beat on the roof and outside the window, and they couldn’t see more than a hundred yards, the visibility was so poor.
After three hours or so, his father stood up. I can’t just sit here anymore, he said. I think I’ll work on my rain gear, then check the smoker. The truth is, we’re going to have a lot of rain and we just have to get used to going out and working in it.
His rain gear had some long rips in it from the bear. He laid it flat on the floor and duct-taped both sides of each tear, then went out, Roy following in his own boots and gear.
Roy stopped in front of their cabin and looked out at the water in a pale U before him that seemed connected to the sky. There was no line at all between them, no horizon. It was impossible to tell where exactly the rain and mist touched down except very close in, at the water’s edge. The trees on either side seemed hung in shreds. He walked down to the water, stepping carefully on the wet rounded stones, and heard the rain everywhere, an even sheet of sound erasing all others. It was the only smell, too. Even when it smelled of land or sea, even when Roy caught the scents of what he imagined were ferns and nettles and rotten wood, they seemed only a part of the way the rain smelled. And he was realizing that this was what it would be like, mostly. The clear days they’d had were the oddity. This dense rain, and the world enclosed by it, was what they would know. This would be their home.
Come back here, his father yelled, the yell muffled.
So he went back and helped on the wood shed. They nailed together the poles and then realized they should put the roof together first, then raise it, since they didn’t have a ladder, so they brought the poles down again. His father worked grimly at the wood, his mouth and eyes tight. He kept telling Roy exactly what to do, and Roy felt he was more in the way and more work directing than he was worth, as if his father had him out here only so that both of them would have to stand in the shitty rain.
His father nailed together the shingles overlapping, and when he had finished the roof, they put up the poles again, Roy holding while his father reached up and nailed. When the roof was finally up, they stepped back and looked at it. It was wobbly-looking, most of all, the supports knobby and smooth and rain-slicked dark brown, the shingles above not all the same size and at slightly different angles and jutting out jaggedly at the edge, some with their bark still on and some not. It looked like the frontier, like the real thing, except not as sturdy. It looked like it might keep a little rain off, but when they stood under it, it wasn’t great. It kept most the drips off their heads, and they were able to take their hoods off, but when the wind gusted they caught some rain, on their legs especially.
Well, maybe we can put some plastic over the wood, too, his father said.
That sounds good, Roy said. And it’s okay if just the bottom of the pile gets wet, right?
No. His father looked up at the roof, his jaw tight and dark from five days of stubble. But this is as good as it’s going to get for now. I should have made the shingles longer. Maybe when we take our little vacation and get our next load of supplies, I’ll bring some lumber back.
When are we going?
Don’t get too excited about it. It’s not happening for another month or two at least, and that’s if I get the radio working, although I suppose Tom’ll just drop in and check if we don’t call for too long. That’s what he’s supposed to do, anyway.
A month or two seemed impossibly long to Roy, a lifetime in a miserable place that was not home.
They checked the salmon before coming in, and it was ready. They left one tray to smoke harder into jerky, but the rest they brought inside. They put the rack on top of the stove and started eating. The outside had hardened and was sweet and salty but the pink meat inside was still moist and only delicately smoky. It wasn’t as good as with brown sugar but it was still delicious. Roy ate it with his eyes closed.
Stop humming, his father said.
Huh?
You’re humming when you eat. You always do that, and it drives me crazy. Just eat.
So Roy tried not to hum, though he hadn’t even known he’d been doing this. He wished he could just take his pieces off somewhere else and eat them alone and not worry about it.
By the time they were full, they had finished at least a third. The rest his father left out to cool, then put in freezer bags just before they went to bed.
That night, his father spoke to him again. Roy repeated, Only a month or two and then I’m out of here and I’m not coming back, over and over in his head like a mantra while his father whined and wept and confessed. I cheated on your mother, he told Roy. It was in Ketchikan, when she was pregnant with your sister. I just felt something was ending for me, I think, all my chances, and Gloria was always staying late and coming into my office and looking at me like that, and I just couldn’t help myself. God, I felt bad. I felt sick all the time. But I kept doing it. And the thing is, even after seeing all that that did, and all it destroyed, I don’t know for sure that I’d act any differently if I had the chance again. The thing is, something about me is not right. I can’t just do the right thing and be who I’m supposed to be. Something about me won’t let me do that.
He didn’t ask Roy any questions and Roy didn’t say anything back. His father just talked and Roy had to listen and he hated to listen to this and he thought of his mother and how she and his father had fought in Ketchikan and he didn’t know how to make sense of this new accounting of things. When they had told him they were getting divorced, they had told a different story, as if it were something neither of them could do anything about, and when Roy had asked if he could help, they had told him that he couldn’t, it was just a kind of thing that happened to people.
The rain was constant outside, and their room small and dark. His father whispering to him and sniffling and making odd, frightening sounds in his despair was only a few feet away and there was nowhere else to go.
In the morning, they ate cold cereal and powdered milk and didn’t start a fire in the stove because they needed to conserve wood. The rain continued on, the same as the day before. The windowsills turned dark as they soaked through, and there were a few drips in various places down the walls. His father stood looking at each of them with his flashlight and didn’t say anything but just felt above them where the wall met the ceiling and then looked higher up into the ceiling, moving the beam of light slowly up each slat and along every timber.
Roy read a book, one in the Executioner series. What he read for especially was the woman the Executioner always got, and he tried to imagine having sex with her himself.
Okay, his father said. Time for the drying rack, and you can check the bottom lines, too.
Roy checked the lines first, relieved to get out of the cabin and away from his father. It was still raining fairly hard. He was dry in his rain gear but it was so damp and cold he felt wet, as if everything were soaking through. The lines out front had nothing, but the line at the point had a dead Dolly at the end of it that was already turning pale. Roy wondered if it would be any good still. He gutted it at arm’s length, not wanting to get too close in case the guts were rotten and exploded or something, but it looked all right. It smelled a little more, but not too much more, and the meat looked okay. It was a male, with two long sacks of sperm instead of eggs, so he went back to the cabin for some eggs he had salted and tied those onto the hook with cheesecloth and put the line back in. Then he looked to the forest and thought it would be nice to jack off since he hadn’t in so long, but he didn’t feel the energy somehow and it was all wet and cold and he had a million layers on, so he just walked back to the cabin.
His father wasn’t around, so Roy hiked back into the hemlocks and found his father finally up higher in the cedars.
Hi, he said.
Looking for poles for the racks, his father said. Try to find them about six feet long at least. Any fish?
One small Dolly that was already dead. The meat looked all right, though.
Yeah. It’s fine. But we need more. Maybe you should just keep fishing while I build this. Although we really need wood, is what we need.
He stopped then and just stood in place looking down at the moss. Hell, I don’t know. Do you feel like chopping some wood?
Sure, Roy said. And he went back for the ax. He had only chopped wood once before, for fun. He had a feeling this was going to be different.
He started with the leftover pieces from the shed project, stood them up and brought the ax down, but they just whumped and bounced against the ground and the blade jumped back and he nearly got whacked with it before he remembered that he needed a stump or something solid beneath.
He looked around for a while until his father came back and asked him what he was doing. Roy hung back resentful as his father set one of the pieces on end and put another piece on top and chopped and it fell in half in one swing. He looked at Roy and handed him the ax.
All right.
You’re going to have to show some more initiative.
Okay, Roy said, but as his father was turning away he added, I’m already doing stuff.
His father looked at him. Don’t pout, he said. This isn’t a place for babies.
His father left then, back into the trees, and Roy took up the ax and chopped and hated his father. He hated this place, too, and listening to his father crying every night. What was he talking about, babies? He felt bad then, though, because he knew the crying at night was something else, something he was afraid to belittle.
When he had finished the leftover pieces, he went into the woods with the ax looking for dead wood. He found a few pieces, but they were too rotten. Should’ve known that, he said out loud to himself. When are you going to figure out how to do things right? So he went out to the point again and chopped down another tree and stripped it and sawed it into sections and dragged them back to the cabin.
His father was there working on the racks. Good job, his father said. It looks like you’re getting the wood together.
Yeah.
You’ll get the hang of all this. Me, too.
But his father cried again that night, and it seemed then to Roy that nothing at all was going to work. He tried to ignore what his father was blubbering to him and tried to have his own conversations in his head, but he couldn’t block his father out.
There were two prostitutes in Fairbanks mainly that I went to see. One who had really soft skin and no pubic hair. She was just like a little girl, real small, and she would never look at me.
Roy stuck his fingers in his ears and tried to hum just loudly enough to block his father out and not be heard, but the confessions went on and he had to hear everything.
I kept seeing them, all of them, even when I knew that Rhoda
knew.
Rhoda was Roy’s stepmother, his father’s second marriage and divorce, only recently ended.
I got crabs from one of these prostitutes, and I passed them on to Rhoda. You remember when we were supposed to go skiing that time in California, and we didn’t?
This was rare and caught Roy by surprise. He wasn’t usually asked questions.
Yeah, he answered. He remembered waking up and it was already midmorning, much too late and something wrong. And he didn’t want to hear now that it was all because his father had been with a whore. His father had told him that he had caught the bugs from the bench in the locker room at the YMCA, and Roy had believed him, along with everything else.
That time she got unbelievably angry. She never would give me any room to explain. It was like I was just some kind of monster. Like I’d shafted her. What do you think? Do you think I’m a monster? The question came with the odd whining and gulping.
No, Dad.
Roy’s dreams started repeating themselves. In one, he was in a cramped bathroom folding red towels while more red towels kept stacking up and coming in on him, pressing from every side. In another, he was on a bus that was trapped in sand and being swept down a hillside. In another, he was hung up on hooks and he had to choose between getting shot once, which would be quick but could kill him, or being dipped in a large vat of red ants, which wouldn’t kill him but would take a very long time.
In the mornings, his father was always in a good mood, and Roy never understood this.