Legend of a Suicide by David Vann Read Free Book Online Page B

didn’t know how to talk with his father like this. Yeah, he said, but he didn’t. He didn’t know at all what his father was really saying or why he was going on like that. And what if things didn’t work out the way his father was saying they were going to work out? What then?
    Are you all right? his father asked, and he put his arm around his boy’s shoulders. We’ll be all right here. Okay? I’m just talking. Okay?
    Roy nodded and stepped out of his father’s grasp to continue looking for wood.
    They brought what little they had found back to the cabin, and it was clearly not much of anything, so his father took out the ax, but then looked up at the sky and changed his mind. You know, it’s getting a little late in the afternoon here, and we need food and we need to set up our bunks and stuff, so maybe this should wait.
    So they got at the dry wood that was in the small box behind the cabin, which they found had an access door from the inside, and they used some of this wood to get a fire going in the stove.
    It will be our heat, too, his father said. It’ll keep us toasty, and we can get it to slow-burn all night if we close off the vents.
    We’ll need that, Roy said. Though he knew it wouldn’t be like Fairbanks here. Single digits and below zero would be rare. His father had promised everyone that. He had sat in their living room with his elbows on his knees and stressed how safe and easy it all would be. Roy’s mother had pointed out that his father’s predictions had rarely come true. When he had protested, she’d brought up commercial fishing, the hardware store investment, and several of his dental practices. She hadn’t mentioned either marriage, but that had been clear, also. His father had ignored all this and told them that mostly it would be above freezing.
    Once they had the fire going, Roy went for cans of chili in the other room and his father asked for bread, too, to toast on top. It was dim in the cabin, even though it was still afternoon outsideand the real darkness wouldn’t come until very late. He did remember this, all the evenings as a little kid he’d had to go to bed while it was still light. He wasn’t sure what the rules were now, but it seemed like all the normal ones about homework and bedtime were off. He’d never be busy and never have to get up for school. And he’d never see anyone else other than his father.
    They ate their chili out on the porch, their booted feet dangling. There was no railing around the porch. They watched the calm inlet and an occasional Dolly Varden leaping. There were no salmon leaping yet, but that would come later in the summer.
    When’s salmon season again?
    July and August mostly, depending on the type. We might get the first run of pinks in June.
    They stayed on the porch after they were done and didn’t say anything more. The sun didn’t set but sat low on the horizon for a long time. A few small birds came in and out of the bushes around them, then a bald eagle came down from behind, the sun golden on its white head, its feathers a chalky brown. It flew to the end of the point and landed in the top of a spruce tree.
    You don’t see that everywhere, his father said.
    No.
    Finally the sun started dipping down and they went inside to arrange their sleeping bags on backpacking pads on the floor of the main room. Roy could see red in the sky outside their narrow window as he and his father undressed in darkness. Then they lay in their bags, neither one of them sleeping. The ceiling vaulted out from Roy and the floor hardened beneath him and his mind wallowed until finally he drifted off, then came back because herealized he was hearing his father weeping quietly, the sounds sucked in and hidden. The room so small and Roy didn’t know if he could pretend not to be hearing, but he pretended anyway and lay there awake another hour it seemed and his father still hadn’t stopped but finally Roy was too tired. He stopped hearing his father and