by David Vann
He wondered whether this thing his dad had with Rhoda would ever happen to him. Though he hoped not, he knew somehow ahead of time that it probably would. But by now he was just thinking to be doing something and wished he were back in the cabin where it was warm. It was just too cold out here. It was a miserable place.
When he returned, he was still too early, but he didn’t go back outside. He figured he had stayed out long enough.
I know that, his father said. That’s not what I’m saying. Roy’s here now, by the way. He was outside.
Rhoda’s voice came in unclear, warped by the radio. Jim, Roy’s not the only one hearing this. Anyone with a ham radio is getting to hear everything.
You’re right, his father said. But I don’t care. This is too important.
What’s important, Jim?
That we talk, that we work things out.
And how are things going to work out?
I want us to be together.
They listened to the static then for at least half a minute before Rhoda came back on.
I’m sorry I’m having to say this in front of Roy and everyone else, Jim, but we’re never going to be together again. We’ve already tried that, many times. You have to listen to me, to what I’ve been saying. I’ve found someone else, Jim, and I’m going to marry him, I hope. And anyway, it doesn’t matter about him. We still wouldn’t be together. Sometimes things just end, and we have to let them end.
Roy pretended to be reading while his father sat bowed before the radio.
Fucking radio, his father said to Rhoda. If we could be together now, in person, face to face, this would be different. And then he turned the radio off.
Roy looked up. His father was hunched over with his forearms on his knees and his head down. He began rubbing his forehead. He just sat there like that for a long time. There was nothing Roy could think of to say, so he didn’t say anything. But he wondered why they were here at all, when everything important to his father was somewhere else. It didn’t make sense to Roy that his father had come out here. It was beginning to seem that maybe he just hadn’t been able to think of any other way of living that might be better. So this was just a big fallback plan, and Roy, too, was part of a large despair that lived everywhere his father went.
There were no good times after this. His father sank into himself and Roy felt alone. His father read when the weather was miserable and went for hikes alone when it was only bad. They talked only to say things like, Maybe we should fix dinner soon, or Have you seen my gloves? Roy watched his father all the time and could discover no crack in the shell of his despair. His father had become impervious. And then Roy came in one day from a hike alone and found his father sitting at the radio set with his pistol in his hand. It was oddly quiet, with only a few small humming and chirping sounds from the radio.
Jim? Rhoda said over the radio. Don’t do this to me, you asshole.
His father turned off the radio and stood. He stood looking at Roy in the doorway and then looked around the room as if he were embarrassed by some small thing and searching for something to say. But he didn’t say anything. He walked over to Roy and handed him the pistol, then put on his coat and boots and went out.
Roy watched him go until he’d disappeared into the trees, then he looked at the pistol in his hand. The hammer was back and he could see the copper shell in there. He eased the hammer down with the pistol pointed away from him and then he pulled the hammer back again, raised the barrel to his head, and fired.
PART TWO
Jim in the trees heard the shot and didn’t know what it was about. He wondered for a moment whether he had really heard it, but then he figured he had. Roy was making some kind of scene. He was going to shoot up their cabin because he needed to be taken care of now. Jim hiked on. He hoped Roy would hit the radio.
It was drizzling and the fog was in close. The trees had become ghosted and the entire island seemed uninhabitable. Jim hiked on, hearing his breathing the only rhythm, the only moving thing. He couldn’t think about Rhoda. She had become a sense now, a part of him that he couldn’t differentiate enough to think about. She was a longing and regret in him like a growth. And she was really doing it, really leaving him. Jim could feel himself on the edge of crying again, so he hiked on faster and counted his steps in rhythm, onetwothreefour in a group, fivesixseveneight, over and over. He hiked on until he stopped because he was tired and then he turned around and hiked back, but he didn’t like the thought of arriving, of having to find the next thing to do to fill his time. The days were so long.
When he neared the cabin, he saw the door was still partway open, which pissed him off. It was like Roy to storm off on his own little hike and not close the door but just let them freeze.
And then he got to the door and looked down and saw his son. His son’s body and not really his son because the head was missing. Torn and rough, red, with dark slicked hair along the edge and blood splattered everywhere. He stepped back because looking straight down he saw that he was stepping on a piece that had come free, a piece of his son’s head. A piece of bone.
He stood there rocking and looking and breathing. He glanced around the rest of the room but there was nothing else to see, and then he had to sit down and he sat down in the doorway, a few feet from Roy, and as soon as he heard this name in his head, he started to shake and it seemed that he was crying but he wasn’t crying or letting out any sound. What’s happening here? he asked out loud.
He touched Roy’s jacket then, and shook Roy’s shoulder gently. Then he looked at the blood on his hand and back at the stump for a head that was all Roy had now and then from inside him he began to howl.
And howling did nothing but fill itself and he was like an actor in his own pain, not knowing who he was or what part now to play. He shook his hands oddly in the air and slapped them against his thighs. He pushed himself back farther away from Roy but this was phony, another act, and still he didn’t know what to do. No one was watching. And though it couldn’t be his son there, it kept being his son there.
Some of the inside was white. He kept waiting for it all to turn red, but it wouldn’t. And soon there were small flies, gnats and no-see-ums, landing there inside his son’s head and crawling and hopping around. He swished them away, but he didn’t want to actually touch the head and they kept landing again. He leaned in close and blew on them and could smell the stink of blood and then he grabbed Roy’s jacket and pulled him onto his lap, the stump with part of a face showing now, a jaw and cheek and one eye that had been hidden against the floor. He looked at this and kept looking and shook him there and looked when he could see and wasn’t blinded by the heaving and all he could think was why? Because there was no sense to it at all. He was the one who’d been afraid he might do this. Roy had been fine, had always been fine.
No, he kept saying out loud, even though he knew this was a stupid thing to say. He kept trying to think because whenever he stopped thinking for a moment he was crying terribly. And yet even this he was aware of. It was as if he couldn’t reenter the world to act unconsciously. As if every thought and feeling and word and everything he saw were artificial, even his mutilated son. As if even his son dead before him weren’t real enough.
He put Roy back down on the floor and looked at all the blood on his hands and jacket and jeans, blood everywhere so he got up and went down to the water and waded in. He gasped from the cold and already his legs were numb. They were stumps, and then the terror ripped through him again from that word, stumps, and he was sobbing hideously. He walked around and around in the shallows and slipped and went under and came back up and walked out, shaking now from the cold also, and went back to Roy, who still lay there dead, who hadn’t moved. He had just seen Roy alive. It hadn’t been more than an hour ago, and Roy had been fine.
And then Jim felt an unaccountable rage. He went into the cabin looking for something and he went to the radio and picked it up and smashed it down onto the floor and then kicked it
again and again and grabbed the lantern and hurled it against the wall where it shattered and then he grabbed the VHF and hurled that, too, and threw a bag of smoked salmon that lay open on the table, then kicked over the table, but then he stopped, standing in the middle of the room, because only a few more minutes had gone by, if even that, and all this destruction had not helped. He wasn’t even interested in it. It had seemed like living but now it seemed like nothing.
Jim sat beside Roy again and watched him. He was still the same, still exactly the same. He picked up the .44 Magnum from where it had bounced a few feet away. He put the barrel to his own head but then put it down and laughed savagely. You can’t even kill yourself, he said to himself out loud. You can only play at killing yourself. You get to be awake and thinking about this every minute for the next fifty years. That’s what you get.
And then he cried, as much from self-pity as for Roy. He knew this and despised himself for it, but he stripped out of his wet clothing, put on his warmest clothes, and cried this time for hours and there was no break, no end to it, and he wondered only whether it would ever stop.
But it did stop, of course, in the evening and Roy still there on the floor and Jim didn’t know what to do with him. He realized now that he would have to do something with him, that he couldn’t just leave him there on the floor. So he went around back and found a shovel. It was past sunset already, getting dark, but he went off a hundred feet or so behind the cabin and started digging, then realized this was too close to the latrine and he didn’t like that, so he went farther into the trees, toward the point, and then he started digging again, but there were roots, so he went back for the ax and chopped and dug his way through until he had a pit about four feet deep and longer than Roy’s body, and then this idea, Roy’s body, sent him crying again and when he finally stopped and returned to the cabin it was the middle of the night.
Roy was in the doorway, blocking it. He still hadn’t moved. Jim knelt down to pick him up but what was left of his head lolled wet and cold against Jim’s face and Jim threw up and dropped him and then walked around in circles outside saying Jesus.
He went back in and picked up Roy again and carried him this time fast out to the grave, and he tried to set Roy carefully into it but ended up dropping him and then howled and hit himself and jumped up and down at the edge of the grave because he had dropped his son.
And then it occurred to him that he couldn’t do this, that he couldn’t just bury Roy out here. His mother would want to see him. And the thought of having to tell her twisted him up again and he was off in the woods stumbling around again and feeling sorry for himself and by the time he got back it was already getting lighter, even through the trees.
I fucked up, he said. He was squatting beside the pit and rocking. I really fucked up this time. And then he remembered Roy’s mother again, Elizabeth. He would have to tell her. He would have to tell her and everyone else, but he wouldn’t be able to tell them everything, he knew. He wouldn’t tell about handing Roy the pistol. And then he was sobbing uncontrollably again, like some other force ripping through his body, and he wanted it to end but also didn’t want it to end since it at least filled time, but after a while, after it was fully light out, the crying did stop abruptly and he was left there again by the pit looking down at Roy and wondering what to do. Roy’s mother would have to see him. He couldn’t just bury him out here. She would want to have a funeral and she’d have to know what had happened. He’d have to tell her. And Tracy.
Oh God, he said. He would have to tell Tracy that her big brother was dead. She would have to see him too. He wondered for a moment if there’d be some way of putting Roy’s face back together a little, but then he saw right away that that was crazy.
He reached down into the pit and pulled Roy out, then hefted him up again and carried him back to the cabin. He was heavy and cold and stiff, bent up weirdly now from being in the pit, and he was covered with dirt. There was dirt all in the head part. He didn’t want to look at it, but he kept glancing over and worrying. None of this would look good.
Jim laid his son back down in the cabin, in the main room, then sat against the far wall and watched him. He didn’t know what to do. He knew he had to do something soon, but he had no idea what.
Okay, he finally said. I have to tell them. I have to let his mother know. And he went to the radio but then saw that he had destroyed it and remembered that he had destroyed the VHF as well. Goddamnit, he yelled at the top of his voice and kicked the set again. And then he started crying again, mid-yell. It could start any time, had a will of its own, and it didn’t make him feel any better, as crying is supposed to. It was a terrible kind of crying that only hurt and made everything seem increasingly unbearable and though it filled time it seemed each time that it might not end. It was to be avoided, so when he could get his eyes clear enough to see he went out to the boat, which they had tied behind the cabin, and went back in for the pump and the outboard and life jackets, flares, oars, horn, bilge pump, spare gas can, everything, and carried it all out onto the beach and carried the boat out too and pumped it up there and mounted the engine and put all the stuff in. Then he went back for Roy.
Roy was still propped oddly against the wall, still stiff. The side that had his face was showing, but the skin was all yellow and bluish like a bloated fish and Jim threw up again and had to walk around outside, wishing he could just never go back into the cabin, saying, That’s my son in there.
When he returned, he looked again at Roy and looked away and wondered how he’d carry him. He couldn’t just dump him in the boat like that. He thought of garbage bags but then was weeping and shouting again, He’s not fucking garbage. So when he calmed again he laid out a sleeping bag and rolled Roy onto it and zipped it up and drew the drawstring at the top. He picked Roy up over his shoulder and carried him out to the boat.
Okay, he said. This is going to work. We’re going to find someone, and they’re going to help us. He went back to the cabin for some food and water but when he got there he couldn’t remember what he had come for, so he just closed the door and returned to the boat.
He had inflated the boat too far away from the water, so he unloaded Roy and the gas cans and then dragged the boat to the edge of the water, then reloaded the cans and Roy. When he finally pushed off, it was afternoon, not very smart, he realized now, but he pulled the starter cord and pushed the choke back in when it coughed to life and then he put it in gear and they were heading out. The water was very calm in their inlet and the sky gray, the air heavy and wet. He tried to get up on a plane, but they were too loaded down, so he throttled back to a slow five or six knots as they cleared the point, Jim shivering a bit in the wind and his son wrapped up in the sleeping bag.
They were exposed beyond the point to a cold breeze up the channel and small wind waves that splashed a little into the boat.
This isn’t real good, Jim said to his son. We’re not doing the smartest thing here. But he kept going and then began to wonder where he was going. I don’t know, he said aloud. Maybe to wherever those houses are. But that’s twenty miles or something. That’s not close. We need a boat to find us.
And then he was thinking again of Roy’s mother, of her face when she would hear about this and her face when she’d heard about all the other things, when he told her he was sleeping with Gloria, for instance. After they moved and tried to make things work and he had been what she’d wanted for a whole month, thirty days exactly of being considerate and affectionate and trying not to think of other women, she came to him in bed smiling and happy and he wanted only for her never to touch him again. He told her he’d just been acting the past month, that it wasn’t him, and her face then and her face when they told their children they were getting divorced, and now this. This couldn’t even be compared to the other things. This isn’t just a thing, he said out loud, sobbing, and then he couldn’t see to steer and they curved all over the channel and lurched and took on water until he could get hi
mself under control again.
And Tracy. She would hate him. All her life. Along with her mother. Everyone. And they’d be right. And what would Rhoda say? She would know exactly whose fault this all was.
The boat steered badly and the current was pushing them sideways. Jim tried again to get on a plane, but the nose only pushed into the air and wouldn’t come down, so he throttled back again. Everything was gray and cold and completely empty. There were no other boats, no houses, anywhere. By the time he was halfway across the channel to the next island, it was late in the afternoon and he was shivering uncontrollably and worrying about running out of gas and worrying what Roy would look like when he finally got there and whom he’d have to talk with first.
He stopped twice to pump out the water and continued on toward the shore, wanting finally only to make that and not worrying if they went farther today. He was so cold he was numb and had trouble thinking. He’d think, I wonder how far, and then his brain would stop for a while and then he’d wonder again how far to the shore and finally he realized this was hypothermia setting in, that if he didn’t get to shore and get warm he would be in trouble. And he wondered why he hadn’t brought more clothing and something to sleep in and some food. He was hungry.
When he made shore, it was close to sunset and Roy was soaked and they still hadn’t seen anyone. Jim went for wood while Roy stayed with the boat and Jim wanted to make a fire and he piled up the sticks he had found but all the wood was wet and he didn’t have any matches, so he cried. Then he went back to the boat and said Sorry to Roy as he dumped him out of the sleeping bag onto the beach and got into the wet bag himself and tried to get warm and woke again in darkness and was still cold but also somehow still alive. I got lucky, he thought, but then he thought of Roy and got out of the bag to go find him, frightened now that Roy had been picked at or even dragged away by something, but when he found him nearby he still seemed pretty much like how he’d been, though it was hard to tell for sure because he didn’t have a flashlight and Roy only had half a head. That sounded funny and Jim laughed for a second, then started weeping again. Oh Roy, he said. What are we gonna do?