Legend of a Suicide (6 page)

You were spawned on rocks like these, and to these rocks dost thou return, he spoke and grinned. Thou hast becometh lunch.

He built up some rocks around it to keep the eagle away, and he thought of his last English class and the plays they had done and how he wouldn’t have any of that this year. He didn’t have his friends, either, and there were no girls here.

As he trundled his lure back across the mouth again and again, he was thinking of girls in school and then of a particular girl and kissing her on the way home. He got an erection thinking about it and looked toward the cabin, then pulled in his line and went back into the trees, where he leaned against one tree with his pants open and masturbated and imagined kissing her and came. He had figured out how to masturbate less than a year before and he did it usually three or four times a day, but he hadn’t been able to since he’d arrived because his father was always there.

He sat down by another tree and felt lonely and thought of all his missed opportunity.

Then, bored, he fished again, caught another the same size, and returned to his father. The afternoon was getting later by now, the light richer and the view of the mountain as he walked back very beautiful.

His father was still sawing when he came up.

There you are, his father said. Hey, looks like dinner. Dolly Varden, both of them?

Yeah.

Great. And he started singing what sounded like a sea chantey. Oh, the Dolly Varden came swimming, and up he grabbed his rod. And caught two or three and brought them back, and ate them with his grog.

His father smiled, pleased with himself. Better than radio?

Definitely, Roy said. This was an odd father he was seeing out here. I can cook them while you finish up. How’s it going?

His father pointed at his pile. Looks like ten or fifteen of the finest shingles anywhere, I’d say. And all very uniform. We know about quality control here on the ranch.

The ranch, Roy said. Looks like a pretty small spread.

The herds are farther back on the island.

Yeah, Roy said. I’ll fix some dinner. He cleaned the fish out front at the water’s edge and watched the guts just under the water, caught on the rocks and streaming back and forth with the small waves that came in. They looked like aliens. One had what looked like eyes.

He started the fire in the stove, then put the fish in a pan with butter and pepper and went back out to the porch feeling like a pioneer, feeling so good he walked around back to his father and watched him and talked until he figured the fire was hot enough and he went back in and rearranged the coals and fried up the fish.

They had the Varden out on the porch with sourdough bread and some lettuce and dressing.

Enjoy the lettuce, his father said. It won’t last more than a week, and then we’re down to canned veggies only.

Are we gonna grow anything?

We could, his father said. We’d need seeds, though. I didn’t think of that. We can have Tom bring some next time he flies in.

You’ll order by radio?

His father nodded. We should try it out, anyway. The evening’s the best time, so maybe we can set it up after dinner.

They watched the sun getting lower. It was so slow they couldn’t see it dropping, but they could see the light changing on the water and on the trees, the shadow behind every leaf and ripple in the sideways light making the world three-dimensional, as if they were seeing trees through a viewfinder.

They put their plates in the sink and brought the radio gear into the main room, in the far corner. His father plugged it into two large batteries and then remembered the antenna.

We need to put this on the roof, he said. So they went out and looked and decided it was too big a project and decided to wait for the next day.

That night, late, his father wept again. He talked to himself in small whispers that sounded like whining as he cried and Roy couldn’t make out what he said or fathom what his father’s pain was or where it came from. The things his father said to himself only made him weep harder, as if he were driving himself on. He would grow quiet and then tell himself another thing and whine and sob again. Roy didn’t want to hear it. It frightened and disabled him and he had no way of acknowledging it, now or during the day. He couldn’t sleep until after his father had ceased and fallen away himself.

In the morning, Roy remembered the crying, and it seemed to him that this was exactly what he was not supposed to do. By
some agreement he had never been witness to, he was supposed to hear it at night and then by day not only forget but somehow make it not have happened. He began to dread their nights together, though they had had only two.

His father was cheery again in the morning and cooking eggs and hash browns and bacon. Roy pretended to be sleepier than he was and having a harder time awakening because he wanted to think and he wasn’t ready yet to join in on the cheer and the forgetting.

The smell of the food cooking, though, got him up finally, and he asked, So are we doing the radio today?

Sure, and the wood shed and smoker and why don’t we build a little summer cottage?

Roy laughed. It’s true there are a lot of things.

More than eggs in a salmon.

They ate on the porch again, Roy thinking it would be a lot harder in bad weather, when they’d have to sit cramped in that little room inside. This morning was overcast as it was, though it was still warm enough for only a sweatshirt. He remembered it had been gray like this or drizzling most of the time in Ketchikan. He liked how it looked on the water, how the water became a molten gray, the sea heavier than anything and impossible to see into, and how the salmon and halibut rose up out of this.

After breakfast, they set about installing the antenna but could not find a way onto the roof. They didn’t have a ladder, and there was no lip at the edge, nothing to hold on to, no high rails or other walls to brace against. His father stepped away from the cabin and walked around it several times.

Well, he said, without a ladder, I guess we’re not going up there. And even then, I’m not sure how high a ladder is going to get us.

So they strung the antenna along the edge of the roof. It turned out that the antenna was only a long cord on a spool anyway, so the solution seemed fine. But when his father set up the radio and tried the reception, they couldn’t hear anything clearly. It was only static and ticking and odd warped sounds that reminded Roy of old science fiction, of black-and-white TV, Ultraman and Flash Gordon. And this was supposed to be their only contact with anyone else.

Are we going to be able to talk with anyone? Roy asked.

I’m working on it, his father said, impatient. Hold it down for a sec.

It doesn’t seem like it’s changing at all, Roy added after another few minutes of warping.

His father turned and looked at him tight-lipped. Go do something else for a little while, okay? You can work on sawing the shingles.

Roy went around back and looked at the shingles and started in on one, but he didn’t feel in the mood, so he found an elbow in one of the larger branches that came out at forty-five degrees. He sawed about eight inches from either end of the elbow and started carving the piece down with his pocketknife to make a throwing stick. He wondered if there were any rabbits or squirrels up here. He couldn’t remember. He’d make a fish spear, too, and a bow and arrows and a rock hatchet.

He worked on the throwing stick, flattening the sides and
rounding the ends, until his father came out, saying, I can’t get the damn thing to work, and then saw what Roy was doing and stopped. What’s that?

I’m making a throwing stick.

A throwing stick? His father turned away and then turned back. Okay. That’s fine. Never mind. You know, I’m losing it here already, and the whole point was to relax and find a different way of living, so fine. Let’s quit this project and just take a break.

He looked at Roy, who was wondering whether his father was really speaking to him.

Why don’t we go for a hike? he said. Get out your rifle and shells. We’re gonna take a look around today.

Roy didn’t say anything, because the whole arrangement felt too shaky. He wasn’t sure they wouldn’t have a different plan in a few more minutes. But his father went inside, and when Roy followed him, his father was in there taking his own rifle out of its case, so Roy went for his, too, and stuffed some shells in his pocket and grabbed his hat and jacket.

Better bring your canteen, too, his father said.

When they set off, it was still before noon. They entered the hemlock forest and followed a game trail up and down small hills until they came to spruce and cedar at the base of the mountain. The game trail they were on petered out and they were hiking then on blueberry and other low growth, trying to keep their footing in the scrub. The earth beneath was uneven, spongy and full of holes. They passed hemlocks again and rested to look out over the inlet. They were both winded, already at least five hundred feet above their cabin and the mountain above them so
steep they couldn’t see its top but only the curve of its flank. The cabin below looked very small and difficult to believe.

The other islands, his father said. You can see them much better from here.

Where’s the mainland?

A long ways behind us, past all of Prince of Wales Island and some other islands, too, I think. In the east. That’s one thing we won’t see much of, is the sunrise. We’re in shadow until midmorning.

They stayed there a while longer looking out and then grabbed their rifles and started climbing again. Small wildflowers crumpling beneath their boots and hands, moss and the blueberry that wasn’t yet in season and odd grasses. There were no animals around that Roy could see, and then he saw a chipmunk on a rock.

Hold on, Dad, he said, and his father turned. Roy reached back and flung his stick. It went wide of the chipmunk about ten feet, bounced several times, and stopped about fifty feet down the mountain.

Oh, man, he said, and he left his rifle, retrieved the stick, and returned.

I guess we won’t count on that getting dinner for a while, his father said.

As they rose higher, they started hearing more wind and a few small birds flitted past. They still weren’t on any kind of trail.

Where are we going? Roy asked.

His father kept hiking for a while and finally said, I guess we’re just going up to the top and have a look around.

Farther up, though, they hit the cloud line. They stopped
and looked down. It was overcast everywhere, and no bright light, but the low areas were clear of fog and cloud, at least, and warmer. Here on the edge great fans of cloud reached down and then were blown past. Above only a few faint outlines and then everything was opaque. The wind through here was stronger and the air damp and much colder.

Well, his father said.

I don’t know, Roy said.

But they continued on higher into the clouds and cold and still there was no trail. Roy as they passed tried to make from the dim shapes around them bear and wolf and wolverine. The cloud enclosed him and his father in their own sound so that he could hear his own breath and the blood in his temples as if it were outside of him and this too increased his sense of being watched, even hunted. His father’s footsteps just ahead of him sounded enormous. The fear spread through him until he was holding his breath in tight gasps and couldn’t ask to go back.

His father kept hiking on and never turned. They climbed past the tree line and past the thick low growth to thinner moss and very short hard grasses and occasional small wildflowers showing pale beneath. They hiked over small outbreaks of rock and finally mostly rock and they climbed up steeper cairns holding the ground above with one hand, their rifles in the other, until his father stopped and they were standing at what seemed to be the very top and they could see nothing beyond the pale shapes below them disappearing after twenty feet, as if the world ended in cliff all around and nothing more could be found above. They stood there for a long time, long enough for Roy’s breath to calm and the heat to go out from him so that he felt the cold on his
back and in his legs and long enough for the blood to stop in his ears so that he could hear the wind now passing over the mountaintop. It was cold, but there was a kind of comfort to this place in the way it enclosed. The gray was everywhere and they were a part of it.

Not much of a view, his father said, and he turned and they descended the way they had come and they did not speak again until they were out of the clouds.

His father looked across the low saddle extending to the next ridge and then at what they could see behind this saddle, more mountains beyond and uncertain in the gray. Maybe we should just head back down, he said. It’s not very warm or clear, and there don’t seem to be many trails.

Roy nodded and they continued down through the low growth to the small forests at the mountain’s base and along the game trail to their cabin.

When they got there, it didn’t look right. The front door was hanging slantwise on one hinge and there was trash on the porch.

What the hell, his father said, and they both jogged over and then slowed when they got up to the cabin.

Looks like bears, his father said. That’s our food on the porch.

Roy could see ripped garbage bags of dry goods and the canned goods spilling out the door over the porch and onto the grass below.

They might still be in there, his father said. Put a shell in the chamber and take the safety off, but don’t get jumpy on me, and keep the barrel down. Okay?

Okay.

So they levered in shells and walked slowly toward the cabin until his father went up and banged on the wall and yelled and then waited and nothing moved or made a sound.

Doesn’t seem like they’re here, he said, but you never know. He went up on the porch then and pushed the broken door aside with his barrel and tried to peek in. It’s dark in there, he said. And bears are dark. I hate this. But he finally just stepped in and stepped back out again quickly and then slowly stepped in again. Roy couldn’t hear a thing, his blood was going so crazy. He imagined his father thrown out the front door with the bear after him, his gun knocked away, and Roy would shoot the bear in the eye and then in the open mouth, perfect shots the way his father had told him he would have to aim to kill a bear with a .30-.30.