Caribou Island: A Novel

by David Vann

  The inspectors two more women, similar age but not in college, at the end of the trough. They were supposed to give a quick check and sort the fish. Any with gashes or broken spines thrown into a side bin. Any other species of salmon in another bin, because they were packing sockeye only. But they’d pull a membrane or push out a blood spot or pluck a bit of gill if the fish wasn’t clean, and they didn’t seem to care that they had to do this with every one of this other woman’s fish and none of Carl’s. They chatted the whole time, locals, having to shout over the Metallica. They’d worked here for years, and they had a low opinion of the place.

  Dude, you can’t get fired from a cannery, one said to the other, especially this cannery. This is as low as it gets.

  They chatted about men and money, and they’d had this job so long they didn’t have to pay it any attention. But Carl struggled with every fish. First the membrane, trying to find an edge somewhere down by the asshole, then looking for two blood pockets up near where the head had been removed. He had to push hard with a thumb to get this blood to pop out. Then checking for any leftover pieces of gill and trying to scrape the extra blood from the backbone. Impossible to get all of it, and he had no tool. Just a rough cotton glove over a plastic glove over another cotton glove. Because theoretically, everything had already been removed by a person with a gutting spoon on the conveyor belt. So that was the person Carl resented most.

  Carl resented everyone upstream of him, though. They were all skilled, all higher paid, and all had easier jobs. One stood with a shovel and helped move fish from enormous slush tanks. This guy spent a lot of time just standing there watching the fish go by. Then someone lined up the fish so their heads faced the same way. This is the job Carl would have liked. Then a guy made one quick slit from asshole to gullet. One flick of the knife for each fish. Then the beheader. He moved the fish only a few inches, lining up the head for a heavy set of blades. A guillotine, and dangerous. But he wore a lanyard that was attached to the table and kept his hand from scooting too far forward. And he moved the fish hardly at all.

  Only men at the head of the stream, until the next station, ripping out the guts. A woman did that. The guts traveled on a small conveyor belt to another woman who sorted the roe, the red sack of eggs, into a small plastic basket. Like a diviner, reading futures from each plop of guts onto her table. Then she’d scrape it clean with a quick swoop before the next plop came.

  After that, knives and men again, one quick slit to open the blood along the spine. Then a woman with a spoon to scoop out all the blood and a man with a spray nozzle to wash it down. All of this on a wide conveyor belt, light blue plastic, and the fish exited with a flop into the wash table trough. Every flop spattered the guy standing to the left of Carl, and the guy flinched every time. Worst position in the plant, and though Carl had to pee like a madman, he wouldn’t leave, because he knew the guy would step to the side and Carl would get stuck there.

  So the problem was either the woman with the gutting spoon or the man with the spray nozzle. One of them was supposed to be getting the membrane and the last of the blood, but they just sent the fish on as quickly as possible. The salmon kept piling up at the wash table until they were in danger of spilling over the sides and the conveyor was backing up, and there was no water within reach for washing. A mountain of carcasses and no way to wash, and Carl thought he might scream.

  Sean, the manager, appeared at the clean aluminum table beyond the inspectors and barked for fish to be sent his way. So the inspectors grabbed fish from the wash table quick and scooted about fifty. Sean glanced inside each one then passed it along to where it was boxed in ice, ready to be shipped. Another sign that Carl’s job was entirely pointless. The boss sending all these fish along in a bypass, after Carl had endured over an hour of rubbish, at five a.m., about quality control in the plant. There was a bucket of hot chlorinated hand wash behind Carl that he could dip his hands into, for instance, and this would help keep the fish cleaner and increase shelf life, but he could never risk walking over to this bucket to warm his hands, because then the guy next to him would step to the side and Carl would be splatted by every arriving salmon. A roving inspector checked temperatures and made sure everyone was doing their jobs, but he stood by the woman across from Carl and seemed to think that her nothing peek into the carcass was sufficient.

  To Carl, all of life’s lessons were apparent here. Everything he should have learned already in college. Everything he needed to understand about his future. He made the list in his head as he pushed at blood and scraped for membranes:

  1. Don’t work with other people.

  2. Don’t work a manual job.

  3. Be glad you don’t have to work as a woman.

  4. There’s no such thing as quality control. All the other terms of business are bullshit also. The business world is where thoughts and language go to die.

  5. Work means nothing except money. So find a job that means more than this, something ideally that doesn’t feel like work.

  But the most important lesson was that Carl needed to leave immediately. There were no prizes for sticking around in a shitty situation. He would call his mother tonight and beg for a ticket home. He didn’t care what it would cost him in the end. He was not going to spend even one more day in this place.

  Everyone went on break, finally, fifteen minutes after four hours of salmon. It took Carl five minutes to take off his raingear bibs and pee, then he stood outside, by the campfire. A metal pit in the dirt, no flames but a few coals and lots of smoke. The smoke coming Carl’s direction most of the time, dousing him. He and his fellow fish processors stood in a circle staring at the coals, one of the guys talking about his bar fight and brief jail stay. He’d been released this morning just in time for work.

  My ex comes in with this known crack dealer, and that means this guy is spending time with my kid. I know who he is, and he knows who I am. He comes right over, and I don’t do anything. I just sit there as he rants.

  Carl had trouble making sense of this story, because the guy looked so mild-mannered. Same age as Carl, a bit thicker and stronger, light red beard, but he didn’t look like someone with an ex who was with a crack dealer.

  He yells up in my face for maybe half an hour, some incredible length of time. I thought he would stop, but he didn’t, so I finally said, Let’s take it outside.

  Let’s take it outside, Carl repeated aloud. What a cliché, he was thinking, grinning a bit, but no one shared this moment with him. Odd looks from the teller and others, only a brief pause in the story. Carl an outsider, as usual.

  I slip my beer bottle in my pocket, something he doesn’t see, and when we’re outside, I break the end against the railing and tell him I’m ready.

  The group was impressed, Carl could tell. Carl was not impressed. He couldn’t believe he was hanging out with these knuckleheads.

  So he doesn’t fuck with me when he sees the bottle. We just circle around and he doesn’t dare get close. And then the cops come, and it’s my friend Bill. I’m just like, do you want me to put the handcuffs on myself? He’s already had to do this a couple times, and he’s like dude, how do you get into this shit? So it was cool. I spent the night at the station, and they let me out in time for work.

  Everyone looked at the coals another minute or so, no comments about the story, then it was time to go in, the break over. Back to the guts.

  Carl in pole position this time, splatted every time a carcass hit the pool. He tried not to flinch. Cold slime hitting his face and left ear, in his hair. It’s only slime and blood, he told himself. It’ll wash off. He tried to figure out some small way to hurt this business and his coworkers, but he couldn’t think of anything. He was inconsequential. He could do the non-job the woman across from him was doing, but since he was standing here anyway, he decided to keep removing the membranes and blood. Only another four hours. His right hand cramped up, cold, but he could ignore that.

  He needed to call his mom, say go
od-bye to Mark and thank him, and also figure out what to do with Monique’s backpack.

  The salmon began appearing with heads. Gutted and gills removed, but heads on. Some change in the plans, and Carl hadn’t been notified, but his job still the same. The eyes wide, dilated, silver-rimmed. Hooked lower jaws on some of them, almost like beaks. The males, perhaps. He wasn’t finding membranes.

  Something’s different, he yelled to one of the inspectors over the music. I can’t find any membranes.

  These already came through the line yesterday, she yelled back. Head and gills. But the order changed, and now they’re without gills.

  Cool, he said.

  Yeah, she yelled. It’s great. Why not do everything twice. Motto of this cannery.

  You sound like a disgruntled employee.

  Bite me.

  Carl tried to laugh, but the way she said it was actually kind of mean, and she wasn’t looking at him anymore. The other peons at the wash table gave a quick look up, no sympathy, and looked back down at the fish.

  A pause in the line, enough time for the peons to catch up, and then half a dozen smaller salmon came by, whole. Not gutted or beheaded, the upstream folks just watching them pass by. Carl was confused, but he gave a quick wash in the blood pool and passed a salmon along. Smaller, lighter, a little bullet. A different species, but he didn’t ask anyone. Who cared what it was, anyway.

  And then they all shifted over to another long table on the other side of the warehouse. Plastic wheelbarrows full of halibut. Flat ghosts. Sideways mouths and thick lips, open, expressions of despair. Their tops dark mottled green, camouflaged, ugly. A beast from another time that hadn’t imagined humans. Floor-dwellers, safely hidden away in the deep, swallowing whatever came near, and they could have gone on like that for the next hundred million years. Carl didn’t want to be a part of this destruction anymore, so he stepped off the line and found Sean, the boss.

  I’m sorry, he told Sean. I can’t do this. I need to go home.

  You have to finish the shift, Sean said.

  I can’t. I need to leave now.

  Then you leave without pay.

  No, Carl said. You’re paying me for my six hours, forty-eight dollars cash right now, or I’m going to hurt you. I’m serious. I hate this place and everyone in it, and I’ll take all of that out on you. So pay me my fucking money now.

  Sean smiled. Fuck off, he said. Then he turned his back on Carl and walked slowly away.

  So Carl stood there enraged at the latest sign that the world would not bend to his will, then went to the rack to hang up his raingear. He pulled off the rubber boots, changed into his shoes, and left. Carrying his own backpack and Monique’s, he staggered up the beach to a campground where motor homes had gathered for dip-netting. Empty boat trailers, four-wheelers and dirt bikes, nets and garbage and tents. They had a long-drop outhouse he had used before, and this would be perfect for Monique’s stuff. He wasn’t going to carry around her shit anymore.

  He had to wait, and a fat old man came out, finally, swinging the wooden door wide. Carl left his own backpack outside on the ground, stepped in with Monique’s and closed the door. The light dim, air thick, and he didn’t want to get any shit on her backpack, because he was planning to keep it himself, so he stepped outside and set it on the ground, opened up the top and pulled out an armload of her clothing. The panties he’d been all excited about once upon a time, her T-shirts and socks and jeans, scarves, sweaters, all this crap, and he stood over the long-drop to toss one item at a time. Fuck you, Monique, he said to the toilet. And fuck you, Alaska. Thank you very much for a delightful summer. The old man had finished the pile below with very light brown shit, covered now by her clothing. This is what Alaska is, right here, Carl said. A place where people shit. Just a bigger toilet.

  He saved her expensive sleeping bag and other small bits of gear. A headlamp, a tiny stove, a knife. But every last scrap of clothing went in the hole, and he felt better, a lot better. Her pack lighter now, something he could carry in one hand.

  So then he was on to the phone. Called his mother collect. I have to get out of here, he said.

  What about Monique? she asked.

  Left me for a dentist. An old guy, like forty or something.

  Oh pumpkin.

  Yeah, he said, tears forming, feeling sorry for himself. Hearing his mom’s voice brought out all the self-pity.

  You’ll find someone else, she said.

  Yeah, he said. He could hardly speak, his chest tight, and this whole scene struck him as ridiculous, laughable. But you can’t fake feelings, and he was grateful to have his mom, someone in the world who would help him out. She said she’d deposit cash in his account within an hour so he could get dinner and a bus to Anchorage in the morning, and she’d book a flight. Expressions of love, and then he was walking to the beach to pitch his tent. He had wanted to find Mark to thank him, but now he just didn’t care. He was through with Alaska.

  The first fall storm. Gary leaned into blasts of wind and rain as he tried to nail the next layer of logs. Time. He hadn’t finished on time, and now he would pay the price. A thirty-degree drop in temperature, the sky gone dark, a malevolence, a beast physical and intent. You could see why the ancients gave names. The lake a corollary beast, awakened also into whitecaps, breaking waves, cresting six feet high, pounding the shore. The wind in blasts, compressed, colder and colder, born in the icefield, accelerated in the wind tunnel over Skilak Glacier, funneled by mountains.

  Atol ytha gewealc, Gary called out, the terrible surging of the waves. Irene in the tent, so he was alone and could speak. Bitre breostceare, bitter heart-care, hu ic oft throwade, how I often suffered, geswincdagum, in days of toil, atol ytha gewealc. He had always wanted to go to sea because of that poem, but never had. This storm now perhaps the closest he had come. Iscealdne sae, ice-cold sea, winter wunade, in winter inhabited, wraeccan lastum, in paths of exile, and this was true. He had lived almost his entire adult life in exile, in Alaska, a self-exile as good as any sea, and he wanted now to experience the very worst this storm could throw at him. He wanted the snows to come early, he wanted to suffer. He wanted to pay a price. Bring it on, fucker, he yelled into the storm. Isigfethera, he yelled. Icy-feathered.

  He tried to catch a glimpse of the boat at the shore, but the rain drove into his eyeballs, pinpricks, the air so thick with water he couldn’t see more than fifty feet. The boat driven onto the shore already, battered and pounded against rocks, but it was aluminum and would survive, unfortunately. Better if it were wood and smashed, its keel broken, no way ever to leave, better if the island were uninhabited by others, no one to go to for help. Gary wanted to be desolate, alone, not even Irene to witness. He wanted her to disappear, vanish, never have been. Bitter woman, sulking in the tent, contriving punishments worse than any storm.

  Gary held the wood in place and kept driving nails, compacting the wood, forming a wall that would keep out nothing. Wood a satisfaction because it was once alive. A way to strike back at the earth, a way to mete out his own small punishment.

  He stood on the platform swaying and catching his balance in each new blast, anchored by his left hand on the wood. Holding nails in his teeth, more in his pocket. Taste of galvanized steel. Arms and shoulders ropy now, fit, corded from work, enough time out here. Muscles a way to remember and return, hard work the only solace. So he pounded for hours, cut new logs, sawed their ends and lifted into place, hammered again. Rammed braces below, trued the walls a bit, didn’t care they would never be true. The platform become a cage, a place of battle.

  The tent a different battleground entirely. Old lump seething, waiting. But none of this was true, of course. He could see he was just getting himself worked up in the storm. Real life not so simple. His relation to the lump not so simple. But it was good to stand out here and blow a bit, and now he was hungry for lunch.

  Hey Reney, he said as he unzipped the tent. Room for an old man in there?

  He heard wha
t sounded like a grunt, ducked in fast and closed the zipper.

  Wow, he said. The storm’s for real.

  Don’t get our stuff wet.

  I’m being careful, he said. And he kept to the edge near the flap as he stripped off his coat and bibs and boots. Good to have a tent with full standing headroom, he said, but he could see it was catching a lot of wind. Irene lying down in her sleeping bag. Still not feeling well? he asked.

  No.

  Were you able to sleep?

  No.

  Is it because of the tent moving around in the wind?

  Yeah, that and the pain. And not being home.

  Sorry, he said.

  It’s okay. I know we have to be out here building to finish before the snows.

  Gary crawled over to his own sleeping bag beside her. Midday but dark. It won’t take long, he said. I promise. We’ll be in the cabin and have a roof.

  Irene didn’t say anything in response. She was curled facing the other way.

  So he lay in his sleeping bag, looked up into blue nylon, faintly backlit. The movement berserk, the sound unbelievable. Like living in a hurricane. Lying here, you could start to feel afraid, even though nothing was wrong. The tent wasn’t going to blow down. The storm wasn’t going to come in. They were safe. But if you spent enough time living in this confined space, you could begin to believe anything. You could feel the end coming. Terror fabricated from nothing, from nylon and wind. The mind that frail.

  You could go crazy lying in this tent, he said to Irene.