by David Vann
What if it collapses? Roy asked.
Let’s hope it doesn’t. I’ve never dug one of these before, but I know people do use them from time to time.
They dug until they hit ground and then they continued enlarging from inside, but the angles were all wrong.
We’ll never be able to sleep in here, his father said.
So they moved over a bit and dug a smaller entrance down lower and his father went in on his stomach to dig out from the inside until the roof collapsed on him and only his feet stuck out. Roy threw himself on the pile and dug wildly at it to un-bury his father until his father finally backed out and stood up and said, Damnit.
They stood there like that, breathing hard, listening to the wind and feeling it get colder.
Got any ideas? his father asked.
You don’t know how to make one?
That’s why I’m asking.
Maybe we need deeper snow, Roy said. Maybe we can’t dig a snow cave with what we have here.
His father thought about that for a while. You know, he finally said, you might be right. I guess we’re hiking back to the cabin. As much as that’s a stupid idea, I can’t think of anything else. Can you?
No.
So they set off up the ridge, exposed again to the wind. Roy fought to keep up, to not lose his father. He knew that if he lost sight of him even for a minute, his father would never hear him yell and he’d be lost and never find his way back. Watching the dark shadow moving before him, it seemed as if this were what he had felt for a long time, that his father was something insubstantial before him and that if he were to look away for an instant or forget or not follow fast enough and will him to be there, he might vanish, as if it were only Roy’s will that kept him there. Roy became more and more afraid, and tired, with a sense that he could not continue on, and he began to feel sorry for himself, telling himself, It’s too much for me to have to do.
When his father stopped, finally, Roy bumped into his back.
We’re over the ridge now. I think we go along this and have one more before the cabin. I wish I knew what time it was. It seems like it’s still daylight, but it’s impossible to tell how much of it is left.
They stood and rested a moment and then his father asked, Are you doing all right?
I’m tired, Roy said, and I’m starting to shiver.
His father unwrapped his scarf and Roy thought he was going to give it to him, but he only tied it around Roy’s arm and then to his own. That’s hypothermia, his father said. We have to keep moving. You can’t give in to the tiredness and you can’t sleep. We have to keep moving.
So they hiked on, and Roy’s footsteps became softer and it seemed a longer time between them. He remembered riding in the back of his father’s Suburban from Fairbanks to Anchorage, the sleeping bags piled in there and the road lolling him back and forth. His sister had been back there in a sleeping bag, too, and they had stopped at a log cabin that had giant hamburgers and pancakes bigger than any Roy had seen.
Roy was dimly aware of darkness and later of day and hitting hard and waking and then the rocking again and then, when he awoke, he was in their cabin in a sleeping bag in the dark and his father was behind him and he could tell they were both naked, could feel the hair from his father’s chest and legs on the back of him. He was afraid to move but he got up and found a flashlight and shone it on his father, who lay curled on his side in the bag, the end of his nose dark, something wrong with the skin. Roy put on some dry clothes fast because it was so cold. He put more wood in the stove, got it going, and pushed the sleeping bag closer around his father, then found his own bag and got into it and rubbed his hands and feet together until he was warm enough and fell asleep again.
When he woke next it was light and it was warm from the stove and his father was sitting up in a chair watching him.
How do you feel? he asked.
I’m thirsty and really hungry, Roy said.
It’s been two days, his father said.
What?
Two days. We didn’t get back here until the next day, and then we slept through last night, too. I have food hot for you on the stove.
It was soup, split pea, and Roy could eat only a small bowl of it with a few crackers before he felt full, though he knew he was still hungry.
Your appetite will come back, his father said. Just wait a little while.
What happened to your face?
Just a little frostbite, I guess. It got a little burned. The end of my nose doesn’t feel much.
Roy thought that over for a while, wondering whether his father’s face would get completely better but afraid to ask, and finally he said, We came close to not making it, huh?
That’s right, his father said. I cut it way too close. I almost got us both killed.
Roy didn’t say anything more and neither did his father. They went through the day eating and stoking the stove and reading. They both went to bed early, and as Roy waited for sleep, he felt none of the elation he had always imagined people felt when they came close to death and narrowly escaped. He felt only very tired and a little sad, as if they had lost something out there.
In the morning, his father spent over an hour at the radio before he was finally able to place a telephone call to Rhoda, but what he got was only an answering machine.
Oh, he said into the mike. I was hoping I would get to talk with you. This is going to sound stupid into a machine, but I’m just thinking that maybe I’ve changed some out here and maybe I could be better now. That’s all. I wanted to talk with you. I’ll try again some other time.
When he turned the radio off, Roy asked, If you talked with her and she wanted you to, would you leave here right away to go be with her?
His father shook his head. I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m just missing her.
They spent another day in the cabin reading and eating and staying warm and not talking much. Finally they played hearts with a dummy hand, which didn’t work well.
I’ve been thinking about Rhoda, his father said. You may find some woman someday who isn’t exactly nice to you but somehow reminds you of who you are. She just isn’t fooled, you know?
Roy, of course, didn’t know at all. He’d never even had a girlfriend except for Paige Cummings, maybe, whom he had liked for three years, and Charlotte, whom he had kissed once, but it seemed like he knew girls in porno magazines better than he knew any real girls.
His father tried the radio again that evening when they were done playing cards, as Roy was washing the dishes. He got through this time.
What are you thinking, Jim? Rhoda said. You’ve been away from everyone now for a few months and you think you can be different, but what’s it going to be like when you’re back in the same situations, with the same people?
Roy was getting embarrassed. There was no privacy to the radio. So he dried off his hands, put on his boots, his father stalling for time, saying, I, uh, waiting for Roy to get out of there.
And then Roy was out of the cabin for the first time in four days, sinking past his boots into the snow and heading for the shoreline. There was no ice or snow down close to the water. It wasn’t cold enough there, Roy supposed, or else the salt melted everything away. He picked rocks out of the snow and hurled them at thin panes of ice farther up along the creek, cracking and shattering them like car windows. He didn’t know how long he needed to stall out here, but he imagined it would be a while. He walked past the creek mouth and out to the low point, staying close along the edge, out of the deep snow, and wondered whether there were any fish in the cove now. He supposed there had to be, since there was nowhere else for them to go, but he had no idea how they survived. He wondered what he and his father were doing here in the winter. It seemed pretty dumb.
When his father had asked his mother whether Roy could come here, his mother had not answered or let Roy take the phone. She hung up and told him his father’s request and asked him to think about it. Then she waited for sev
eral days and asked him at dinner whether he wanted to go. Roy remembered how she had looked then, with her hair pulled back and apron still on. It had felt like a kind of ceremony, attended with a greater seriousness than he was used to. Even his younger sister Tracy had been silent, watching them. He cherished this part of it, even now. He had felt he was deciding his future, even though he knew that she wanted him to say no and knew also that he would say no.
And that was the answer he gave that night.
Why? she asked.
I don’t want to leave here and my friends.
She continued spooning her soup. She nodded slightly but that was it.
What do you think? Roy asked.
I think you’re answering the way you think I want you to answer. I’d like you to think about it again, and if the answer again is no, that’s fine and of course you know I want you here and Tracy and I will miss you if you go. I want you to make the best decision, though, and I don’t think you’ve thought about it enough yet. Whatever you decide, know that it was the best you could have decided now, no matter what happens later.
She didn’t look at him as she said this. She spoke as if she knew of events coming later, as if she could see the future, and the future Roy saw then was his father killing himself, alone in Fairbanks, and Roy having abandoned him.
Don’t go, Tracy said. I don’t want you to go. And then she ran back to her room and cried until their mother went to her.
Roy thought for the next several days. He saw himself helping his father, making him smile, the two of them hiking and fishing and wandering over glaciers in brilliant sunlight. He already missed his mother and sister and friends, but he felt there was an inevitability to all of this, that in fact there was no choice at all.
When his mother asked him again at dinner several nights later, he said yes, he would like to go.
His mother didn’t answer. She put down her fork and then breathed deeply several times. He could see that her hand was trembling. His sister ran back to her room again and his mother had to follow. It was as if there had been some kind of death, he felt then. Certainly if he had known as much then as he knew now he would not have come. But he blamed his mother for this, not his father. She had arranged it. He had originally wanted to say no.
The clouds were high and thin and there were huge white circles around the moon. The air was white and seemed almost smoky even out over the channel. There was no wind and almost no sound, so Roy stepped hard into the rocks and snow to hear his boots. Then he was getting cold and hiked slowly back.
When he reentered, his father was sitting on the floor by the radio, though it wasn’t on anymore and he was just staring down at the floor.
Well? Roy asked, then regretted it.
She’s with a guy named Steve, his father said. They’re moving in together.
I’m sorry.
That’s all right. It’s my fault anyway.
How is it your fault?
I cheated and lied and was selfish and blind and stupid and took her for granted and, let’s see, there must be some other things, just general disappointment, I suppose, and now I’m going to get shafted and it’s my fault. The big thing, though, I think, is that I wasn’t there for her when she went through all the stuff with her parents. It just seemed like too much, I guess. And I suppose I left her alone to deal with all that. I mean, I thought she had her family to help, you know.
Rhoda had lost her parents to a murder-suicide ten months earlier. Roy had not heard much about it except that her mother used a shotgun on her husband and then a pistol on herself, and afterward Rhoda found out that her mother had cut her out of the will. Roy didn’t really understand how this last part worked, but it was all part of something too awful to think about.
She felt I abandoned her then, his father said.
Maybe things will change, Roy said, just to be saying something.
That’s what I’m hoping, his father said.
A big storm set in the next day. It sounded as if water were hitting the roof and walls in sheets, a great river rather than just windblown, it hit so heavily. They couldn’t see anything through the windows except the rain and hail and occasionally snow hitting them from angles that kept shifting. They kept the stove going constantly and his father ran out for a few minutes to bring in more wood. He returned three times cold and swearing and piled the wood with the food in the extra room, then stood by the stove to dry off and get warm again.
Blowing like there’s no tomorrow, his father said. As if it could wipe time clear off the calendar.
The whole cabin shook occasionally and the walls seemed to move.
It couldn’t actually blow off the roof or something, could it? Roy said.
No, his father said. Your dad wouldn’t buy a cabin with a detachable roof.
Good, Roy said.
His father tried the radio again, saying, I’ll make it quick. I just have a few things to say to her. You won’t have to go outside or anything, of course.
But he couldn’t get any kind of signal in the storm and finally he gave up.
This is one of those things she’s not going to believe, he said. I tried to call her but the storm kept me from doing it. But when the tally is made, I didn’t get through to her, and the storm doesn’t count.
Maybe it’s not like that, Roy said.
What do you mean?
I don’t know.
Listen, his father said. Man is only an appendage to woman. Woman is whole by herself and doesn’t need man. But man needs her. So she gets to call the shots. That’s why the rules don’t make any sense, and why they keep changing. They’re not being decided on by both sides.
I don’t know if that’s true, Roy said.
This is because you’re growing up with your mother and sister, without me around. You’re so used to women’s rules you think they make sense. That will make it easy for you in some ways, but it also means maybe you won’t see some things as clearly.
It’s not like I got to choose.
See? That’s one of them. I was trying to make a point, and you turned it around to make me feel bad, to make me feel like I haven’t done my duty according to the rules and haven’t been a good father.
Well, maybe you haven’t. Roy was starting to cry now, and wishing he weren’t.
See? his father said. You only know a woman’s way to argue. Cry your fucking eyes out.
Jesus, Roy said.
Never mind, his father said. I have to get out of here. Even if it is a fucking hurricane. I’m going for a hike.
As he pulled on his gear, Roy was facing the wall trying to make himself stop crying, but it all seemed so enormously unfair and from out of nowhere that he couldn’t stop. He was still crying after his father had gone, and then he started talking out loud. Fuck him, he said. Goddamn it, fuck you, Dad. Fuck you. And then he cried harder and made a weird squealing sound from trying to hold it back. Quit fucking crying, he said.
Finally he did stop, and he washed off his face and stoked the stove and got in his sleeping bag and read. When his father came back, it was several hours later. He stomped his boots out on the porch, then came inside and took off his gear and went to the stove and cooked dinner.
Roy listened to the kitchen sounds and to the howling outside and the rain thrown against the walls in gusts. It seemed to him they could just go on like this, not speaking, and it seemed even that this might be easier.
Here, his father said when he put the plates on the card table in the middle of the room. Roy got up and they ate without looking at one another or saying anything. Just chewing away at the Tuna Helper with sculpin in it and listening to the walls. Then his father said, You can do the dishes.
Okay.
And I’m not going to apologize, his father said. I do that too much.
Okay.
The storm continued for another five days, days of waiting and not talking much and feeling cooped up. Occasionally Roy or his father went for a short hike or br
ought in wood, but the rest of the time was just reading and eating and waiting and his father trying to reach Rhoda on the shortwave or the VHF but this never worked.
You’d think I could get through for just a few minutes, his father said. What good is all this shit if we can’t use it in bad weather? Are we supposed to have emergencies just on good days?
Roy considered saying, Good thing we haven’t needed it, as a way of getting talking again, but he was afraid this would be interpreted as some kind of comment about his father’s need for Rhoda, so he kept quiet.
When his father did finally get through again, the storm had mostly died. Roy went out into light drizzle and ground so soaked it was like walking on sponges. The trees were dripping everywhere, big drops on the hood and shoulders of his rain gear. He wondered who Rhoda really was. He had spent a lot of time with her, of course, when she and his father had been married. But his memories were all a kid’s memories, of how she threatened to stab their elbows with her fork if they left them on the table at dinner, for instance, and a peek of her once in the bathroom through the crack in the door. A few arguments between her and his father, but nothing distinct. They had divorced only one year ago, when he’d been twelve, but somehow everything was different now, all his perceptions. As if thirteen were a different life than twelve. He couldn’t remember how he’d thought then, how his brain had worked, because back then he hadn’t thought about his brain working, so he couldn’t now make sense of anything from that time, as if he had someone else’s memories. So Rhoda could have been anyone. All she meant to him now was this thing his father had to have, a craving as if for pornography, a need that made his father sick, though Roy knew it was wrong, incorrect, to think she actually made him sick. He knew it was his father doing it to himself.
Around the point, Roy sat on a large piece of driftwood that was soaked through and cold. He watched his breath fogging out and looked at the water and actually saw a small boat pass, about a mile away. An extremely rare event. A small cabin cruiser out fishing or camping, with extra jerry cans of gasoline tied along the bow rails. Roy stood up and waved but he was too far even to see if there was a response. He could see the dark patch inside where there was a person or several people but could not make out anything more distinct.