by David Vann
Yep.
Maybe you should come outside for a bit.
Nope.
It’s not so bad out there. Cold but not that cold. And the raingear works.
No thanks.
She was losing it, he could tell. Going a little nuts in here. But there was nothing he could do, really. They couldn’t take the boat out in this storm even if they wanted to. So he closed his eyes and tried to catch a little shut-eye. Then he’d have some food and go back out to build. It was a simple cabin. It shouldn’t be taking so long. He needed to just nail it all up.
He tried not to think about the cabin. He could never sleep if he spiraled off into thoughts. And he tried to ignore the sound of the tent, but after about twenty minutes, he gave up. He grabbed the peanut butter and jelly, made a sandwich, and put on his raingear as he ate.
I’m going, he said.
My regards to the storm.
Ha, he said, and stepped out into the blast, zipped the tent quickly. He turned his back to the wind, feeling a quick chill even through raingear, and jammed the last of the sandwich. Finished chewing, put some nails in his mouth. A little galvi for dessert, he told himself, and he liked this part, hunching into the wind and grabbing a hammer. He could have been a Viking heading off into a storm wearing only hides and a sword and shield. Or maybe a war hammer, a big piece of iron on the end of a stick. He could have done it. He would have been tough enough. Rowing and sailing, the blast of spray with each wave, days or even weeks on the water waiting for land to appear. And when it did make itself out of the fog, they’d sneak along that coast looking for a town, something small, perched on a headland or hidden up in a cove. And they’d blast ashore right onto the beach, the prow hitting sand, and leap over the side with their hammers and swords and spears and slaughter the men who had come to meet them. The feel of bringing a hammer down on another man’s head. Like nothing else, Gary was sure. Brutal and true. Like animals, nothing deceptive. Just the stronger killing the weaker.
And then they’d run into town, dirt streets and hovels, sticks and thatched roofs, and they’d know that all the men were already dead. Women and children, and Gary standing before a hut with a woman inside. She’d be afraid. Her legs bare, and he realized he was slipping into bad movies here, that no one would have bare legs in that environment, wearing hides only on top. No G-string or Wonder Bra animal hides. But he felt turned on anyway, imagining a woman lying there on hides. He would strip her bare, tear the hides off her.
Gary was really feeling turned on, even though he knew it was dumb, especially for an Anglo-Saxonist. He looked toward the tent. It had been a long time, and rare he felt anything at all. But he knew Irene would think he was crazy, getting a boner out in a storm, coming in wet and cold expecting to do something about it. So Gary walked around to the front of the cabin, leaned against the log wall, his back to the outrageous wind, and opened his pants. He closed his eyes and saw himself spreading this woman’s legs. She was still fighting, trying to pluck his eyes, so as he entered her, he was pinning her arms down.
He felt himself tighten and come onto the wall of the cabin, pathetic little spurts, his hips bucking, and he pressed in close to the wood, his eyes still closed, pressed in against the wall and just waited until his breath calmed.
Then he bent down to wipe his hand on some ferns, grabbed a bunch to wipe off the end of his dick, and buttoned up. He didn’t bother to clean off the cabin. Irene would never notice, especially with all this rain.
Gary walked around onto the platform again and grabbed his hammer and nails. He felt tired now, ashamed of the violence of his imaginings. Raping a woman. This wasn’t who he was, and it shouldn’t excite him, either. It had just been so long since he and Irene had had sex. He didn’t know why that was. The pain in her head, certainly, but even before that. He didn’t understand marriage. The gradual denial of all one desired, the early death of self and possibility. The closing of a life prematurely. But this wasn’t true, he knew. It was only the way it seemed right now, during a bad time. Once Irene got better and returned to her old self, he’d feel differently. He stood in the wind and rain, facing it, eyes closed, and tried to feel close to her, tried to feel what was best, the sense of the two of them providing mutual comfort, animal comfort, not being alone in the world, but at the moment, he just couldn’t feel any connection at all. He didn’t care to see her ever again. And maybe that was his fault. Maybe it was who he was. Maybe he was incapable of that kind of connection. But he didn’t like to think about this. So he put an arm over a wall, cranked down on it with all his weight, and hammered a nail into the top log, kept hammering until he had driven it through, compressing into the next log, compacting the layers, and then he moved back a foot and drove in the next nail.
Rhoda was trying to save a golden retriever, a dog locked in a shed for weeks without food. There had been enough water to keep her barely alive. Red-gold hair filthy and matted, ribs and spine protruding, a skull with slack hanging skin. Still good-natured despite everything. Licked Rhoda’s hand, looked at her with love, then had to put her head down again, no energy left. This killed Rhoda, the abuse of animals. She didn’t understand how anyone could do this.
You’re a good girl, Rhoda said as she set up an IV drip. We’re going to fix you right up. A bit of struggle, frightened at the prick of the needle, but Rhoda stayed close and calmed her. You’re beautiful, Rhoda said. We’ll make you strong again. But she knew the dog might be dead by morning. She hated this part of her job.
So she went on lunch break. She had to get out of here, and it was almost two o’clock anyway. Full raingear just to get to the car. Coming down in buckets, the wind insane. Cold, too. She wondered about the wisdom of driving anywhere in this, idled in the parking lot and tried again to call her mother, but couldn’t get through. She’d given her mom a cell phone, but there was no cell phone service on the island, maybe. They should have tried it before, not waited until a storm. What if something went wrong out there? No way off the island, no way to call anyone.
Damn it, Rhoda said. She tried a couple more times, then backed out and drove slowly onto the spur highway. She wanted a chicken pot pie. Comfort food. Fattening, but she needed something.
Another run through a parking lot with puddles, then she was settled in a booth drinking hot tea and waiting for her pie. She felt lost, alone. Rainy days did that to her, but there was also the abused dog dying, her parents unreachable on that island, and Jim not wanting to marry her. And her best friends had all left over the years, moving to places like New York and San Diego and Seattle, better places. No one stayed unless they were stuck. So there was no one to talk to. Her mother, but she couldn’t reach her mother.
Rhoda put her forehead down on the table and just stayed like that until the pot pie arrived.
Tired, darling? the waitress asked.
No, just unmarried and unloved.
Ah, darling, the waitress said, and gave Rhoda’s shoulder a squeeze. The way I look at it, men are like that pot pie, but God forgot to put in the filling.
Ha, Rhoda said. Thanks.
No problem, darling. Just let me know if you need anything else.
Rhoda lifted the top carefully, set it aside on the plate, portioned crust with filling, not wanting to run out at the end. The pie was good. Gravy for the soul. She felt like crying, but held back. Was it too much to ask for, to get married? She was willing to give everything, her whole life, so was it really too much to ask in return?
Jim was the one who’d asked her to move in. Easy access to sex. Maybe that’s all she was to him. The drive across town an annoyance, and her apartment small and dark, with old carpet. Maybe asking her to move in was just a way to not have to see that apartment again. She was only providing a service. Sex and food and house cleaning, a few errands and help with secretarial crap. She should be getting paid.
She took a bigger piece of crust, because she wanted it, even though the ratio would be off at the end. Everythin
g was supposed to be different. He was supposed to love her and want to take care of her. The care should follow the love. It should be obvious.
Rhoda closed her eyes and stopped chewing, stared into the empty dark space behind her eyes for a while. She could feel her mouth pulled down in a frown, and she didn’t care if anyone saw. Her face heavy, her cheeks old. She finished chewing and swallowed. Nothing inside her except longing. For a home and a husband and the end of worry about money, the end of worry about her mother. She would give up her time to get to the other side. Not live these weeks or months if she could fast-forward to when things would be better.
Darling, the waitress said, and Rhoda opened her eyes. Only dessert is going to fix that one.
Rhoda smiled. A sundae, with everything.
You got it.
Rhoda already felt a little full, but she finished the last bites of her pie to clear the decks for the sundae. Expensive lunch, and she ran out of crust, but oh well.
Her waitress was right. What she didn’t understand about Jim was where his filling was. Nice golden crust on the outside. A dentist, with money and respect. When she first told people she was dating him, they were all impressed. His house fit the dream, too. A buttery life.
And he could be funny. He made up little songs, even, songs about her, though it had been a while now. And he didn’t watch sports or any TV at all, so that was good. He didn’t have disgusting guy friends or really any friends, so that was maybe more a negative than a positive. He didn’t hunt or fish, so she was spared that. He wasn’t building some ridiculous car in the garage. He wasn’t sneaking porn on the side or addicted to computer games. But what was he living for? What did he care about? She used to think it was her, and their future together, a family. He used to talk about kids, but maybe she had been the one talking about kids. She had no idea what he wanted, and if she didn’t know that, maybe she didn’t know who he was at all.
This thought stopped her for a moment. She stared down at the stained restaurant carpet and wondered what it was she loved. Was it only an idea? Did the love she felt have anything to do with him?
The cheap carpet had fleur-de-lis patterns, mock royalty. The divider wall trimmed with a strip of light brown plastic where it met carpet, the heads of the nails showing. She hated cheap, and depressing, and cold, and lonely. That’s all she was. Just someone who hated these things and was running from them. She didn’t have any filling either.
Here you go, the waitress said, and Rhoda couldn’t even respond. She felt like none of it mattered. She stared at the sundae, half a banana on each side, though she hadn’t ordered a banana split, and the three flavors of ice cream that had been served for fifty years or longer, with the four sauces, and three cherries on top. A formula for happiness, no different from a husband and house and kids, the three mounds, and somehow it was supposed to fill you up or make you sick trying.
The Coleman stove had a back to it, a windbreak, but when Irene tried to put it up, the stove blew over, spilling fuel, the wind too strong. Plenty of propane stoves available now, and they were still using one with wet fuel. She’d be bringing fumes into the tent. The wind was something you could learn to hate. Pressurized and vindictive.
Irene’s hood blew off, her head exposed now to the rain, but she jammed the lighter right against the burner, flicked again, and it caught. A quick flash of warmth on her hand. She adjusted the knob and the flame held, though it was blown so much it was never a full ring, one side or another snuffed.
Irene pulled the hood of her raingear back on, turned away from the wind, and shivered. It should be visible. You should be able to see the wind. It had weight and heft, an intent born purely into the world, unforgiving. It would blow until all the world was smooth and nothing left in its path.
The six-gallon water jug was heavy, so Irene only tipped it, filled a pot, placed the pot on the stove and put a lid on. The water should come to a boil in about two hours. That was her guess. Another impossible part of their stupid plan. Why don’t you make some pasta, Irene? Sure thing, big daddy, coming right up. Wouldn’t want to slow down your pile of sticks.
Irene hunched over as low as she could, her face close to a patch of horsetail, thin spindles, segmented. Only a foot high now, she said to the plants, but you used to be higher, didn’t you. They looked frail now, on their way out, but once they had grown as tall as redwoods, in a time when other plants hadn’t yet figured out how to grow above two inches. First with a vascular system. The lives of plants like humans, full of struggle and domination, loss and dreams that never happened or happened only briefly. And that was the worst, to have something and then not have it, that was certainly the worst by far.
Irene ripped out all the horsetail, tossed it aside. Time to move on, she told the plants. You’ve stayed past your time. Then she stood up, braced against the blast, and tromped over to Gary, to the hovel.
Gary was sawing down through the front wall, a jerky motion, stops and starts.
Can you push out against the wall? Gary yelled. The saw’s jamming up.
So the wall was folding back already, pinching the saw. What would it be like when he removed a section? Irene knew he hadn’t thought that far ahead, though. She leaned into the wall beside him. Smell of sawdust even in all this wind, huff and puff of Gary beside her, sound of saw teeth ripping. He liked this, she knew. And maybe she shouldn’t grudge him. She held on to the top log, rough bark, laid her cheek against it, and could feel the whole wall moving.
A concentration again behind her right eye, a fault line, the bones of her skull like tectonic plates moving, grinding at the edges. Her only goal each day now was to get through the day, her only goal each sleepless night to get through the night. Reduced to existence, to bare survival, and there was something good about that maybe, something honest. But she still felt other things, too, light drifting notes somewhere out there: loneliness, for instance. She missed Rhoda. She hadn’t stopped feeling entirely.
Irene wondered if this was what had made her mother’s end possible, the fading away of feeling. She had always imagined the opposite: her mother in a fit of passion, distraught at losing her husband to another woman, unable to imagine her life without him. But what if she simply hadn’t felt anything anymore, after losing everything? That was a new possibility, something Irene couldn’t have guessed. And it felt dangerous. You could end up there without having noticed the transition at all.
Lean harder, Gary yelled. It’s still jamming up.
Sorry, Irene yelled back, and she pushed harder into the wall, her feet slipping on the ply. She doubted any cabin had ever been built like this, having to push at the walls, walls so frail they bent in the wind. Even the first pioneers, with their rough tools, would have done better.
Pushing harder pressurized her head, brought the pain to a new intensity, the cold and wind and exertion a perfect combination. That was the other possibility: suicide to end the pain. A very simple equation. Not worth living if you only felt pain, so if the pain seemed unending, the logical thing was to end your life. But she would never forgive her mother for that. Her mother should have loved her, and that should have been enough. Irene would never do that to Rhoda.
Irene had to stop pushing for a moment, the pressure in her head too intense, the entire thing a balloon.
Keep pushing, Gary yelled.
I can’t, she told him. My head.
Gary stopped sawing, the saw left jammed in the wood, hanging there. He straightened up and had to grab the wall with one hand to keep from blowing over. Irene hunched against the wind.
You can’t work? Gary’s lips pulled back a bit, angry, impatient. But then maybe he realized how that sounded. Closed his mouth, looked away. Sorry, he said.
Yeah, me too.
Sorry, what? he asked. Couldn’t hear you over the wind. The wind buffeting, pumping in blasts, a rising howl each time it accelerated.
I said, Yeah, me too.
Oh.
She could
tell he was afraid to ask what that meant.
Gary looked down at the wall, at where he was sawing, the wall curving back, pinching the gap. I think I have to brace this better first, he yelled. If I get the braces ready, can you push while I nail?
Yeah, she yelled. Why not.
Gary climbed over the back wall, going for the pile of two-by-fours. Irene slumped down inside the cabin, out of the wind for the most part, ducked her head down, her chin inside her jacket, folded her arms, closed her eyes.
A fair representation of her three decades in Alaska, slumping down in raingear, hiding, making herself as small as possible, fending off mosquitoes that somehow managed to fly despite the wind. Feeling chilled and alone. Not the expansive vision you’d be tempted to have, spreading your arms on some sunny day on an open slope of purple lupine, looking at mountains all around. This was her life, and she wanted it to pass. At least right now. Thick rain came down again, and she remembered the pasta water but didn’t want to get up.
Gary sawed away at the lumber pile. The braces would be knees jutting inside the cabin from every wall, impossible to walk around inside without running into them. First house in the world designed like that. Irene the lucky wife.
But she shouldn’t be so small-minded, ungenerous. That wasn’t who she wanted to be. So she stood up, sailed across the platform, climbed over the back wall, and went to tend the water. Lifted the lid, saw no bubbles. Hadn’t expected to see any.
She hiked over to Gary. A patch covered in sawdust now, bright and reddish in the rain. Water’s not boiling, she yelled. Too much wind. How about I make PB&J?
Yeah, Gary said, not looking up, concentrated on sawing.
So Irene turned off the stove burner, left the pot of water sitting there for next time. The storm forecast to last a week, maybe two, so it might be a while. At the tent, she kneeled just inside the opening, careful not to drip on a sleeping bag, and made sandwiches. Made four, to get them through the afternoon. Almond butter and lingonberry jam, not bad.