by David Vann
They set about stocking up for winter more seriously now. When his father was strong enough to work again, they dug a huge pit a hundred yards from the cabin, back in a small stand of hemlock. They dug with shovels until his father was shoulder deep and Roy in over his head. Then they widened it until it was over ten feet on every side, a huge square cut into the hillside, and after that they deepened it some more and used their homemade ladder to get in and out. When they hit a large stone, they dug around and beneath until it was free and then hauled it out by rope. They stopped when they hit solid rock and there was nowhere left to go.
The hole was to be their cache, but once the hole was dug, his father had second thoughts. I don’t know, he said. I don’t know how it doesn’t mold, or how bugs don’t get to it. And I don’t know how to make it easy for us to get to stuff inside without it being easy for bears to get inside. And this whole place is going to be covered in snow, too.
Roy listened and looked down into the huge pit they had dug for a week. He didn’t know, either. He had just assumed his father knew more about this.
They stood there some more until his father said, Well, let’s think this thing out. We can put the food in plastic bags. It may mold, but it can’t get wet or get bugs in it.
Are we supposed to build some kind of shed or something in there? Roy asked. Or do we just bury it all?
The pictures I’ve seen, they’re made out of logs, whether they’re in the ground or up in the air.
Okay, Roy said.
Let’s sleep on it, his father said.
So they fished out on the point as the day drizzled and faded and then cooked salmon again for dinner and turned in.
Roy had trouble sleeping and lay awake for a long time. Hours later, he heard his father begin to cry.
In the morning, Roy remembered and stayed in his sleeping bag and did not get up until late. His father was already gone, and when Roy walked up to the pit, his father was standing down inside it with his arms folded, staring at the walls.
Let’s think this thing out, his father said. We’ve dug a pit. We have a big pit here now. And we need to store our food in it. We need a low cabin-like thing, I think, and a door that we can get into but a bear can’t. The door could be on the top or it could be on a side with an entrance that slants down to it. I’m thinking the door should be on top and nailed shut and buried. What do you think?
His father looked up at him then. Roy was thinking, you’re not any better. Nothing has gotten better. You could decide just to bury yourself in there or something. But what he said was, How do we get to the food?
Good question, his father said. I’ve been thinking about this, and I think that a cache is what you save for late in the winter. You stock up in the cabin and just don’t leave it. You keep your rifles ready and you shoot any bears that come by. And then when you finally run out, you still have something left. You come up here and dig and take it all and you’re ready to go again. Or maybe you come up twice, but not more than that. So we don’t have to have any easy access. And the reason the food keeps is that it’s all frozen in addition to being smoked or dried and salted.
That sounds right, Roy said.
Voilà, his father said, raising his arms. I’m good for something, huh?
Maybe.
His father laughed. Maybe, huh? My boy’s getting a sense of humor. Starting to feel at home out here, are you?
Roy smiled. A little bit, I guess.
All right.
They celebrated then by cutting down a bunch of trees and cutting them into posts for the walls of the cache. That took all day. By nightfall, they had the posts hauled to the edge of the pit.
We’ll put them in tomorrow, his father said. Happen to have about a mile of twine on you?
No.
Well, we’ll think of something. We don’t have enough nails, either. But we’ll think of something.
That night, Roy stayed awake again waiting for the crying, needing to know if it was every night, but then he woke in the morning and wondered whether it had not happened or he had simply not stayed awake long enough. It was hard to know. His father was hiding from him now, and Roy had to pretend he didn’t know this.
They shoveled enough dirt back in to bury the posts side by side. They weren’t attached in any other way, just buried next to one another.
I think they’ll stay like that, his father said. Just the pressure of everything on the inside against everything on the outside.
What about when we take the food out, Roy asked, or when a bear digs down and tries to take it apart?
His father looked at him, considering. He looked at him more plainly than Roy was used to, so that Roy avoided his eyes and looked at the light beard his father had now and the hair longer on the sides and flattened against his skull from not being washed. He didn’t look anything like a dentist anymore, or really even like his father. He looked like some other man who maybe didn’t have much.
You’re thinking, his father said. This is good. We can talk about what we’re doing. I’ve been thinking about the same things, and it seems to me that we have to bury it deep enough and put enough stuff on top that a bear can’t dig down, because if he does get down there, no way of putting the cache together will keep him out.
Roy nodded. He didn’t know if it would work, but it made sense at least.
And when we take stuff out, finally, late in February maybe, the ground will be so frozen that nothing will move. It won’t be able to cave in even if we take the wood away completely, which we may need to do for our stove.
Roy smiled. That sounds good.
All right.
They placed the rest of the posts, like the walls of a small fort town only a few feet high, and then sat back to look at it.
It needs a roof, Roy said.
And a door. We’ll cut long poles that go clear across, and we’ll figure out the door in the roof. Probably just a big hole with a second roof over it.
We don’t have the food to go into it yet, Roy said.
Right you are. And we won’t put it in until it snows. Until then, we have to keep it from caving.
We should have waited to dig it until a few months from now, huh?
Yeah. We dug it too early. But that’s okay. We didn’t know.
Over the next two days, in the rain, they cut the poles for a roof and a smaller second roof. They sawed the lengths and stripped off the branches with a hatchet, Roy watching this father with his grim unshaven face when he worked, the cold rain dripping off the end of his nose. He seemed as solid then as a figure carved from stone, and all his thoughts as immutable, and Roy could not reconcile this father with the other, the one who wept and despaired and had nothing about him that could last. Though Roy had memory, it seemed nonetheless that whatever father he was with at the time was the only father that could be, as if each in its time could burn away the others completely.
When they had finished cutting the poles for both roofs, they placed them all carefully and stood back to see. The sides were already washing in around the posts and caving the roof, rivulets of mud everywhere in the unceasing rain.
Some of the posts are soft, his father said. They’re getting washed out. Oh well.
How can we stop it from caving in?
I don’t know. We don’t have enough tarp. Maybe I screwed up. Maybe it was too early. We should just be storing up now, I guess.
That night, Roy did not have to wait long to hear his father weep. It came within only a few minutes, and his father wasn’t trying to hide it anymore.
Sorry, his father said. It’s not the cache or anything like that.
It’s other things.
What is it?
Well, my head hurts all the time, but that’s not it.
Your head hurts?
Yeah. It has for years. You didn’t know that?
No.
Well.
Why does it hurt?
It’s just sinuses, and I’m supposed to have t
hem cleared out, but I haven’t bothered. It doesn’t always work anyway, and it’s an awful operation. But that’s not the problem. That’s just what makes me feel weak and makes it easy to cry and keeps me tired. The bigger thing is that I just can’t seem to be alone.
And his father started crying again. I know I’m not alone, he whimpered. I know you’re here. But I’m still too alone. I can’t explain it.
Roy waited for more, but his father only cried then and it went on for a long time, Roy not knowing how it was that he could be right here and still, for his father, it was as if he wasn’t here at all.
The rain continued and the cache washed in further. Roy and his father stood at the edge looking down at the fallen posts and thinking and not saying anything until finally his father said, Well, let’s pull all the wood out and we’ll try it again when it first snows.
Roy didn’t believe they’d still be here when it first snowed, but he nodded as his father climbed down in and then he took the pieces his father handed him and carried them back to the cabin. Roy knew that somehow this disappointment was worse for his father than the other disappointments had been. If Roy spoke now, he doubted he’d be heard. And he understood this about his father, that he was often gone into his own thoughts and couldn’t be reached, and that none of this time spent alone thinking was good for him, that he always sank lower when he went in there.
They stacked the wood against a side wall, and when they were done, they looked again at the pit, at the mud deepening and the walls caving, and both looked into the sky, into the grayness that had no depth or end, and then they went inside.
When the plane came a few days later, Roy was fishing several miles up the coast. He thought he heard it, then thought he must have made it up, but stopped and listened and heard it again. He pulled in his line, grabbed the two salmon he had caught, and started running. He was far enough off, though, and blocked by so many small points along the way, that he couldn’t see it fly into the mouth of their cove. He ran over the rocky beach and, when he had to, up into the trees and down again, becoming more and more afraid that he would miss it. He assumed his father was there cutting wood, but what if he had hiked back over the ridge for some reason and no one was there? The pilot might not come back again for a long time, might just leave a note saying, Call me on the radio if you need anything. And there was another thing, too, that Roy didn’t like to admit. Even if his father was there, what would he say? Was there a chance he would just say everything was fine and send the pilot away and not have him come back? It didn’t seem impossible, and Roy needed to leave here, he needed to get away. Roy dropped the fish and his pole and ran faster.
He was only a few hundred yards from the final point when he heard the drone of it again and stopped to see it rush out of the mouth, tilt free of its own spray, and lift precariously over the channel. He stood there then, looking at where it had finally disappeared and breathing hard and feeling that something terrible had happened.
He left, he said out loud. I missed him.
He went back then for his pole and the salmon and walked on to the cabin.
His father was back at the woodpile. Tom came by, he said when Roy walked up.
I heard.
Oh. Well he was just here a minute but I ordered the supplies we need and he’ll be back with them next week on his way to Juneau. Though not really on his way exactly, I suppose. And his father grinned then, pleased at how in the middle of nowhere they were.
Roy took his salmon down to the water and gutted them. He scaled them quickly and cut off their heads and fins and tails. He wanted out of here. He didn’t care what his father thought about it; he was just going to go.
You want to leave? his father asked when he told him at dinner.
Roy didn’t say it again but just ate. He felt terrible, as if he were killing his father.
We’re not doing so bad, are we? his father asked.
Roy refused to cave in. He didn’t say anything.
I don’t understand, his father said. We’re finally getting somewhere. We’re getting ready for winter.
Why? Roy thought to himself. Just so we can survive winter? But he didn’t say anything.
Look, his father said. You’re gonna have to talk to me about this, otherwise you’re just staying and that’s that.
Okay, Roy said.
Why do you have to go?
I want my friends again, and my real life. I don’t want to just try to survive winter.
Fair enough. But what about me? You told me you’d stay out here a year, and I made my plans. I quit my job and bought this place. What am I supposed to do if you just leave?
I don’t know.
You haven’t thought about that, have you?
No. Roy felt awful. I’m sorry, he said.
That’s all right, his father said. If you need to go, then you need to go. I won’t stop you.
Roy wanted to say right then that he’d stay, but he couldn’t. He knew terrible things were going to happen to him out here if he stayed. He did the dishes and then they went to bed.
You know, his father said that night as they lay not sleeping, it’s too out of control here. You’re right. It takes a man to get through this. I shouldn’t have brought a boy.
Roy couldn’t believe his father was saying these things to him. He didn’t sleep that night. He wanted to leave. He wanted to get out of here. But as the night went on, he knew that he’d be staying. He kept imagining his father out here alone, and he knew his father needed him. By the morning, Roy felt so bad he fixed pancakes and told his father, I’ve thought more about it and I don’t think I really want to go.
Really? his father said, and he came up and put an arm around his boy’s shoulders. Now we’re talking, he said, beaming. We can lick this thing. We’ll have fresh supplies and we’ll put away enough fish and meat and I have a new idea for the roof of the cache. I was thinking…
And his father went on and on, excited, but Roy stopped hearing him. He didn’t believe anymore in exciting plans. He felt he had just put himself in a kind of prison, and it was too late to back out.
That day they began picking blueberries. They had been out here over a month, late July now, and though it was still a bit early for berry season, the berries would be fine for making jam. They picked into freezer bags, Roy remembering Ketchikan and his red coat with the hood and all the times they had hiked onto the hill behind the house to pick blueberries. They had churned homemade ice cream, soupy and rich, and stirred the berries in. He remembered the smoky smell of the air, too, and all the fall colors. It wasn’t only the trees that turned in Alaska, it was everything, all the growth, and it began turning in early August. Still too early here, but it was coming soon. In more northern parts, in Fairbanks, where his father had lived, it would begin turning very soon, perhaps even now, and by September fifteenth, nearly all the tiny leaves on the blueberry bushes would have fallen and most of the leaves on the trees, also, the end of fall and beginning of the snows. Here it would be later, but not much later. One summer in Ketchikan, he remembered, it had snowed in August. He had ridden his tricycle out into it and tried to catch the flakes on his tongue.
Later in the day, they stood on the point and caught salmon every few casts. The schools were coming in finally, not just a few isolated salmon anymore. They could see them in thick beneath the clear water, dark shapes in rows undulating slowly and in time, another thing Roy remembered. They had pulled into small coves like this one in the cabin cruiser and Roy had stood on the bow with his father and looked at all of them gathered below him and he had come to believe that all waters were like this, that all waters were so populated. The Pixies bright in among them now, just as before, Roy dragging his across their noses until one rushed forward and took it, then flashed silver as Roy yanked to set the hook. He whooped like his father did whenever he caught one, and it seemed then not so bad that they would stay out here. Roy gutted his fish when he had caught five, then ran rope th
rough the gills.
When we really get going, his father said, we’ll be dragging twenty or thirty salmon a day back to the cabin. We’ll be so busy we’ll wish we had a second smoker.
The plane returned the next week with their supplies: more baggies, plywood, seeds, canned goods and staples, huge bags of brown sugar and salt, a new radio and batteries, Louis L’Amour Westerns for his father, a new sleeping bag and surprise tub of chocolate ice cream for Roy. The arrival of the plane made it seem they weren’t really that far away, as if a town and other people like Tom were maybe just around the point. Roy felt relaxed and happy and safe and didn’t realize until the plane started up again and was taxiing out that that feeling wasn’t going to stay. As he watched it go, he realized he was starting over, that now it would again be a month or two, or maybe longer, and he remembered, too, that they had planned to get away for at least a week at the end of summer, which was now. That had been the plan, and somehow it had not happened.
But he didn’t have much time to dwell on this. He and his father grew busier and busier in their preparations. They were up early and still working often past dusk. The mountains changing quickly then, turning purple and yellow and red, seeming to soften more in the late light, the air colder and cleaner and thinning each day, Roy and his father bundled now in their jackets and hats as they pulled in the salmon, as they cut more wood and stacked it behind the plywood walls. The time easy between them, busy and unthinking, working together to store up. Roy slept. If his father cried, he didn’t know, and for a while, at least, he didn’t care as much, perhaps because he knew now that he couldn’t get away, that he had committed himself and would stay here with his father whether his father were sick or well.
They began the home schooling in the evenings, just two or three evenings that first week. Roy read Moby Dick and his father read Louis L’Amour. Roy wrote down answers to detailed and picky and seemingly insignificant questions about plot and theme and his father said, Now that was a real Western. After a week of this, they realized they just didn’t have time for it with all the other preparations, so they put it off and went back to cutting wood and smoking fish and hunting full time.