Caribou Island

by David Vann

  Footfalls in snow and moss, the burn of skin on her hands and face and neck, the cold overcast sky above, and her body could weave on its own between trees. Irene, anything that could be called Irene, removed, quiet. Coming closer to the cabin, her legs slowed, a walk and then slower still, hunting as she had once hunted with Gary, making no sound, avoiding branches now, pushing at them carefully, bending to the side, not breaking. Emerging between the tents, directly behind the cabin. Standing still, listening for any movement, any sound, hearing nothing but a light breeze and small waves at the shore. Water and air, and blood, beating faster now. He wouldn’t be in the tents. He’d be in the cabin or at the shore. So Irene pulled an arrow free, set it and notched it, black bow, black arrow against white snow, walked silently toward the cabin door.

  The door frame new and mounted on the outside, white and out of place against the logs. Trash bags and flats of canned goods piled all around. Closer until she was nearly at the threshold, and still she heard nothing. The cabin seemed larger now, the back wall high. Rough bark, gaps, some logs projecting out farther than others. She hadn’t noticed before how uneven the surface, valleys and ridges, a landscape set up on end. She waited at the threshold, let her eyes adjust, darker inside the cabin, but enough light coming from the window and gaps to see the plywood floor. The window itself not yet in view, set off farther to the right, blocked by the door. A dim space and no sign of Gary.

  Irene stepped in, bow held close and ready.

  Irene? Gary asked. He was sitting five feet from her, on a stool by the window. Lit in relief, the lines on his face. Old. What are you doing, Irene?

  She stepped back. More difficult now that she was here and he was talking to her. He stood up, hands opening toward her, fingers in relief in this light. Irene, he said again.

  She pulled back the arrow tight against her cheek.

  I love you, Irene, he said, and suddenly it was easy again. She let the arrow fly, saw it disappear into his chest. Only the black feathers sticking out past his jacket. He was spun around to the side, looking down at his chest, and fell to the floor, facedown. The arrowhead and shaft sticking up into the air.

  Gary crying. Or screaming. Some sound over the blood in Irene’s head. She walked closer and notched her last arrow. His legs and arms moving, pulling himself across the floor toward the wall. And what would he find at the wall? She pulled the arrow back to her cheek, aimed down at his back, and let another arrow fly. Another cry from Gary, the arrow too fast to see. Just suddenly there, sticking up high. But it had nailed him to the floor. He couldn’t crawl forward now. Arms and legs still moving, but not getting anywhere. Still not dead, and she had no more arrows. His screaming lower, a thing that did not sound human. Irene dropped the bow and didn’t know what to do. She stood there waiting for him to die, but he wouldn’t die. An awful, animal sound, the last sound a living thing makes. Her husband. Gary.

  Irene walked outside, walked down to the shore. The lake a magnification of sky, white and overcast, cold. Irene felt hot, like she could sear through water and sky and snow, even rock. She was a giantess, powerful, able to crush mountains and scoop out lakes with her hands. Walked down the shoreline and this was her shore. Didn’t feel the wind. Had the need to run, so she ran again, ran faster than she ever had before, the uneven stones and pools and ruffs nothing. She was sure-footed. The world had never been real. There was no gravity, nothing to slow her or hold her down. She ran as her mind willed, the world an extension of her. The waves, the grasses, the snow, all of it created in unison.

  But then she had to slow, began to tire somehow. Walked on all the way to the far point, close to Frying Pan Island, looked across at its shore. Felt the urge to swim there, to cross the water, leave this island, but something held her back. She had more to do. She wasn’t finished yet. So she turned around, walked back toward the cabin.

  The exhilaration would leave her, she knew. It was a gift, but only a temporary one. She could feel it thinning, dissipating. Ran again, trying to recapture it. Her feet sloppy on the stones, ankles twisting. Making contact now, hard and unyielding, no longer floating above, no longer sure-footed. She slowed to a walk.

  The tops of the mountains hidden from view, the summits, the wide bowls. Only the flanks below the cloud line. She wanted to cross to the mountains. The lake should have been frozen, like in her vision. She would cross and climb the mountain. That was how it was supposed to be. What she had done was supposed to happen later, in midwinter. But how could she have waited until then?

  Panes of ice all along the edge, broken by waves. Small pools gone opaque. Dark rocks damp from mist or spray. This thin band, margin between water and earth. This time she had now, this brief time when anything might be possible, perhaps, when her life might be anything, but she knew there was only one possibility.

  When she reached the boat, she untied the line. Thick cord, strong, thirty feet, more than enough. She walked up toward the cabin, and she went slowly now. Something in her didn’t want to go.

  Alder branches brushing against her, last time on what had nearly become a path, the growth beaten down by their passings. A place never meant to be their home, a place intended from the very first to be their end. And she had gone along with that, even though she knew. Had Gary known?

  When she stood over him again, he was silent, no longer moving. No more of whatever that sound had been. Something she didn’t want to hear. But now it was peaceful. He was quiet, resting facedown.

  Irene set the stool at the other end of the cabin, a few feet from the side wall. Reached up and pushed the rope over a joist. The aluminum sheeting tight, but she could force it through, pulled enough to make a noose. Not sure how to tie the knot. Hadn’t looked at what her mother tied. In movies, it was a big knot with many wrappings, so she wrapped and tied half-hitches, like Gary had shown her for the boat. It didn’t look right, but it would have to do.

  Irene hammered a nail on either side of the joist, forward of the rope, so it wouldn’t slide, stacked cutoffs of two-by-eights on top of the stool so she could stand higher and have farther to drop. She stood on that pile, very precarious, and put the noose around her neck and cinched it tight, then realized the rope had to be loose for the snap. So she stepped down carefully, measured while she stood on the lowest step, and pulled the rope tight. Rough on her neck, damp. She needed to tie the free end somewhere secure.

  Irene looked all around and couldn’t find anything. No anchor point or post strong enough. But then she looked at Gary and thought of something beautiful. She tied the end around his upper body. Had to lift his head and one shoulder and then the other. She could smell him, his bowels voided when he died. Smell of blood, too. All of this increasing the pressure in her head somehow. That had promised to leave but hadn’t. A splitting pain, and it made her work more urgent. She cinched the rope tight around him, tied it off. The arrows would keep it from slipping.

  And then she had to step outside again. The smells too much, the pain in her head. She didn’t know if she could go through with this. It was too much, really. Leading herself to slaughter like an animal. She didn’t know how her mother had done it. And so much less trapped. Hadn’t committed murder. For Irene, there was no choice, but for her mother, there had still been a choice. How had she done that?

  Irene walked into the trees. Close cover a comfort now, hidden. Walked aimlessly among the trunks, followed patches of moss poking out through snow, the snow thin and light, in some places no more than a dusting, blocked by branches above. She lay down in a large patch of moss, curled on her side. Up close, like a tiny forest, each finger of moss as large and grand as any spruce and more perfectly formed. Not bent or misshapen, but symmetrical, with layers of branches exactly like a tree, and a defiance of gravity at this smaller scale, the ends of the branches unbowed. Hundreds of miniature trees reaching upward. She reached out and touched one of them, pushed it to the side and it sprang back. She snapped it off at its base, snapped off its
neighbors, felled a forest.

  Rose again and walked farther into the trees but didn’t know where she was going or what she was doing. Circled back toward the cabin, and when she broke from the trees, stopped and looked at the tents and the cabin, the stove set up between. Their camp. Her husband dead. A murderer. That’s how she would be known forever. Daughter, preschool teacher, wife, mother, murderer, suicide. The earlier ones would be forgotten. Only the last two remembered. She walked to the cabin door, stepped inside, and held her breath. Walked over to the stool and noose, placed her neck in the noose and pulled down with her chin, pointed a toe at the floor, checking to see whether she’d hit. There had to be air underneath still. It was no good if she hit.

  She reached up with both hands to hold the rope, hung down on it and pointed her toes and still didn’t touch. Swung in the open air and had trouble getting back on the stool, panicked for a moment she would be stuck like this, not properly hanged. But she caught the stool, freed her neck, then placed the pieces of two-by-eight on the top step, three layers, enough to create a good fall.

  Holding the noose, she stepped carefully onto the two-by-eights. Stood there balancing, placed the noose around her neck. Afraid she’d use her hands, though. How do you not grab the rope with your hands, even during the fall? Impossible to stop that instinct.

  So Irene removed the noose again, stepped carefully down, and walked outside to Gary’s tent with the tools, found a folding knife. Returned to the cabin and stood over Gary, found the loose end after the tie around his chest, cut off a few feet, dropped the knife and tied one end around her wrist.

  It shouldn’t be this difficult. No dignity in life, ever. Even one’s own death interrupted by crass things, small concerns. It wasn’t right. And the pain had not left. It had promised to go but had not. You’d think enough had happened to clear it away. Irene was angry now as she stepped onto the stool, put the noose around her neck again, climbed onto the loose blocks of wood, precarious and about to fall, and she very carefully led the line from her wrist between her legs and tied it to the other wrist. Hard to make much of a knot, but she tried to make it tight.

  No way out now. Hands tied, balancing on the blocks, noose around her neck. Breathing fast and hard, panicked, her heart clenching. Blood and fear. Not the calm she had imagined. No sense of peace. She didn’t want to do this. Every part of her said this was wrong. But she kicked out then, launched herself into air, yelled from deep in her lungs, a yell of defiance, and then the noose caught and at first it didn’t feel so hard but then it caught with a terrible weight, all her muscles pulled, a sharp pain, her breath gone, her throat crushed, and she swung in that cold, empty place. Her hands struggling upward, held back, and she would never forgive herself.

  Rhoda would be the one to walk in the door and find this. Irene knew that now. She didn’t know why she hadn’t seen this before. She felt tricked. She was doing to Rhoda exactly what had been done to her. A cold day, overcast, just like this, her mother hanging from a rafter, wearing her Sunday best, beige and cream with lace, a dress come all the way from Vancouver, Irene remembered it now, white stockings, brown shoes. But her mother’s face, the lines in her face, the sadness, her neck grotesquely stretched. All that could never be said. Irene knew now that it would not have been quick, that her mother would have known what she had done. Enough time to know what she had done to her daughter.

  Rhoda stood on the shore as Mark tossed handfuls of rock salt onto the ramp. Like rice at a wedding. The urgency she felt left her almost breathless. She wanted to yell at Mark to hurry, but knew she couldn’t, so she stood at the edge and looked at the water, waited for time to pass. She could almost make out the island against the far shore. The water and air oddly calm, only very small waves, overcast with low clouds but the clouds seemed unmoving, moored in place in the sky. Shouldering into one another, bulky and dark.

  We’ll just wait a few minutes for that to melt, Mark said, and then we should be good.

  Rhoda couldn’t respond or even turn around. She knew she would sound impatient, and that would start a fight with Mark.

  Right-o then, he said. I’ll be in the truck.

  Rhoda angry at her mother, for saying that someday she would be alone too, her life spent and nothing to show for it. What kind of thing was that to say? And especially right after she had told her mother she was getting married. An early wedding gift. But her mom was like that. Rough and not very careful with anyone’s feelings. Or at least not lately.

  Rhoda had the satellite phone and batteries, but she wanted more than that now. She was going to ask her parents to come in, to leave the island. The cabin and island were not good for them. The whole thing a mistake. They needed to live in their house, and they needed other people. Rhoda would come see them every day.

  Rhoda stepped closer to the edge. A small ruff of ice, broken and piled by waves. The beginning of larger cracks and crevasses that would build all through winter along the shore, but there wasn’t much now. Patches of clear water all the way to the dark rocks of the beach, the ice uneven. The lake and ice always moving. A few submerged pieces, miniature icebergs bobbing.

  Next week, all of this would melt. Warmer weather coming, for a short time at least, and then the real cold would hit, an early winter. She had to make sure they came in before then.

  Mark already had the truck running for the heater, but Rhoda could hear him shift into reverse, then hear his tires as he eased the boat back onto the ramp. She watched as the boat and trailer entered the water, slipped into cold, the tires crunching ice.

  Then she held the rope while he parked, and watched him walk down from the lot. He was wearing that stupid pink Hello Kitty jacket, borrowed from Jason. And his Russian hat with the earflaps. Every day a joke for Mark, his life a fucking joke. And she was having to be nice to him because she needed his help.

  What? he said when he got close. Why are you looking at me like that?

  Sorry, she said. It’s nothing. I’m just worried about Mom.

  Right, he said. He pulled the boat close and waved an arm for her to board. Your chariot, my love.

  Thanks, she said, and climbed aboard.

  Cold as they crossed the lake. Rhoda pulled the hood tight on her coat, looked to the side to avoid the wind. No one else out here, of course. And how many other lakes in Alaska even less inhabited? How many lakes scattered across endless valleys and mountain ranges that no human ever visited? Skilak could feel like wilderness. It was easy to forget that this was one of the few toeholds in a narrow path of settlements, and that all around was the real wilderness, extending unimaginable distances. What happened there, no one knew. Something tempting about wilderness, something inviting and easy, and yet the truth was that the spaces became much larger once you entered them. Hard and cold and unforgiving. Even Caribou Island was too far away.

  The lake grew as they crossed. Expanded as it always did, and made islands from its far shore, broke off bits of land and shaped them. The whimsical curve of Frying Pan, then the more solid chunk of Caribou. The mainland shore beyond lower and swampier, moose country with stunted black spruce and dead stands killed by beetles. Hundreds of gray-brown trunks bare to the sky, outlined now in white. Gliding past them in the calmer water of the back side, curving around toward the exposed coast where her parents were building their cabin. Rhoda would end this, bring them home. And then she could focus on what she needed to be doing, planning her wedding. A green, sunny bluff over blue ocean, far away from here. Steep mountains and waterfalls across Hanalei Bay, the beginning of the Na Pali Coast. It would be magnificent. And they would all be there, would all walk down into soft warm sand after the ceremony. Walking the beach in her wedding dress, holding Jim’s arm, her parents and Mark following behind, kicking off her shoes and letting her feet feel the warm water, letting her dress trail behind her, not caring if the edges were wet. A place carefree, a day she had dreamed of all her life, the beginning, finally.

  ACKNOWLE
DGMENTS

  I’d like to thank Mary Mount, Joe Pickering, Matt Clacher, Matthew Byrne, and Tina Gumnior at Penguin for their brilliance and hard work, Tom Weldon for his support, and Peter Straus. So many others in the UK, Ireland, New Zeland, and Australia have been unbelievably generous to me, and I’m deeply grateful. Then there’s my wife, Nancy Flores, who was cheerful even when there was no book, no job, no money, and I wore the same sweater every day for a year.

  Índice

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Contents

  Caribou Island

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29