Caribou Island (21 page)

Authors: David Vann

BOOK: Caribou Island

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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.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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.

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Caribou Island