Sukkwan Island Part 10

They were careful. And they took pictures. When they came to the sleeping bag finally, they took many pictures of that, from the first glimpse of it to fully uncovered, and then Leroy opened it and threw up.

Coos took over and got the bag open, and they took flash pictures of what was inside but didn't empty it out. They closed it up again and then Leroy went to the plane for a big clear plastic bag. They put the sleeping bag and Roy in this and duct-taped it shut.

I'm placing you under arrest, Coos told Jim. And then he read Jim his rights.

What? Jim asked, but they didn't answer. The two of them pulled him to his feet and Leroy held his arm as they walked back over ash and rock and beach to the water's edge.

They loaded Roy in the back and then put Jim in one of the aft seats. The pilot taxied, then gunned the engines and the plane lifted free. Jim was dizzy during the flight and fell asleep until they landed in water again.

When they got out, Jim was surprised to see that they were in Ketchikan. He had lived here with Elizabeth and Roy, and Tracy had been born here just before everything had fallen apart.

We've called the boy's mother, Coos said. And we're taking you to the hospital so they can take a look at you.

Thanks, Jim said.

No problem. But I have to tell you, if you've killed your son, and I think you did, I'll see you put in prison, and if you ever get out, I'll kill you myself.

Jesus, Jim said.

The doctor examined him quickly and said all he needed was lots of food, water, and rest. He looked at the end of Jim's nose and said he had lost a little piece to frostbite but there was nothing he could do about that. Then Jim was taken to the sheriff's office to give a longer statement. For the rest of the day, they made him give his statement over and over. They kept coming back to why his son would have wanted to kill himself.

I wanted to kill myself, and I came close to doing it. I was on the radio with Rhoda, and I intended to do it. Roy had been having to listen to a lot of that for a while. Not just on the radio, but when I would talk with him about it and when he'd have to hear me crying and such.

Jim shook his head. He was having trouble continuing, trouble breathing. His lungs were getting all gluey. So I was there with the pistol to my head and ready. I'd been like that for a while and hadn't been able to actually pull the trigger. I kept thinking, What if I'm wrong. But Roy walks in and sees this and the way he looked at me I didn't know what to do, so I turned off the radio and handed him the pistol and walked out. I didn't mean anything by that. I had no idea what he might do.

Tell us what happened then, Jim.

Well, I was out walking and I heard the shot, and even then I didn't figure out what had happened, so I kept walking around like a dumba.s.s for a while longer and then I got back and found him.

What did you see when you found him?

Jesus. How much do you want? It was him lying there. He'd blown off his head. You know what that looks like.

No, I don't.

Don't you? Well, he only had half his face and parts of him were everywhere, and there was nothing I could do to put him back together.

What did you do after with the body?

I buried him. But then I realized he needed a burial with his mother and sister to see it, so I dug him up and then I guess I went looking for a boat or cabin or someone with a radio.

What happened to your own radios?

I broke them.

When?

Right after he killed himself. I don't know why I did it.

You broke the radios right after your son's death. Was this so no one would be able to contact you? Did you have something to hide?

Stop it, Jim said. Stop being idiots. I just broke them and then went looking and couldn't find anyone and had to break into that cabin to survive while I waited. It took you forever to find me, and that was only after I set half the island on fire. Otherwise I'd still be rotting out there.

Who was rotting?

Shut up, you f.u.c.ker.

Mr. Fenn, let me remind you. We have you on many charges, not only murder. You need to cooperate with us and answer our questions.

I'm a dentist. This is outrageous. I didn't kill my son.

That may be.

This was only the first of many sessions. They had him tell the story over and over, all the details, trying to find pieces that didn't fit. Why Roy was in the sleeping bag. Where the pistol was, which was something Jim honestly could not answer. Where had he put it? He had no memory of putting it anywhere. The last he remembered it had been on the floor, but they hadn't found anything. So apparently he had done something else with it.

Breaking the radios was another thing they went back to again and again. And the time he'd stepped off the small cliff. And handing Roy the pistol. All of these things over and over until Jim could not be completely sure whether any of it had happened exactly as he remembered. It began to seem almost like someone else's history.

They kept him in jail for several days and didn't let him make any calls. No one except the doctor knew he was there until finally they sent in a lawyer. But this man wouldn't say much. He only paced back and forth in front of Jim's cell, then said, You want your own private lawyer, right? Is that what you're asking me right now?

Sure, Jim said.

Okay, the man said. I'll go call one and he'll be in today.

The man left then. Much later in the day, another man in a suit and tie came in.

Name's Norman, the man said. Be happy to have me. It sounds like you're in trouble. But first I need to know whether you can afford me.

I need to get out of here, Jim said. On bail or something.

That's all. I don't care what it costs me.

Okay, Norman said. I can work with that.

It was almost a week before they held the arraignment and Jim was able to leave. He wanted to fly to California to see Elizabeth and Tracy and Rhoda and try to explain, but the terms of his bail were that he couldn't leave Ketchikan, so he took a taxi downtown to a hotel, a c.r.a.ppy little place called the Royal Executive Suites. When Jim had lived here in Ketchikan eight years before, he had befriended the owner of this hotel, who at that time had been only a young guy fresh off the ferry. The man had been moving here, and though he was a Mormon and Jim was not, Jim had taken him fis.h.i.+ng and let him stay at the house and helped him to find work. The man's name was Kirk, and he didn't have time for Jim now, but he did let Jim buy a room for twice what it was worth.

Jim stayed in his room with the heat on and made phone calls. He called Roy's mother, Elizabeth, but only got the answering machine. After the beep, he stood there with the receiver in his hand and had no idea what to say. He finally just said, Sorry, and hung up. Then he thought about calling Rhoda, but he didn't feel ready for that yet. He didn't feel ready to talk with anyone, really, so he gave up on the phone calls.

He spent the rest of the day sitting in a chair by the window, looking out at the water and not thinking anything coherent. He daydreamed that Roy had been shot and he had killed the men who had done it, picking them off one by one from around the cabin with the rifle, and then he carried Roy to the inflatable and sped over to the next island, where he found a fis.h.i.+ng boat and got Roy aboard. They laid him on the deck with the red salmon and Jim pumped at his chest to keep him alive until a helicopter came and lifted him away. Jim tried to hold on to this last image of Roy spinning slowly above him on the stretcher, being lifted into safety. He felt his love for Roy hard in his chest and was overwhelmed by the grief of having saved his son.

But he couldn't hold the daydream forever, and soon he was just sitting in a chair by the window and it was another overcast day with the heater going. He looked down at his feet in socks on the clean beige carpet and looked at the cream walls and s.p.a.ckled ceiling and back down to the bad watercolor of a gillnetter pulling in its catch. He wanted to talk to his brother or Rhoda, but he also couldn't imagine calling. When he was too hungry to sit there any longer, he bundled himself up and prepared to face the good folk of Ketchikan.

Jim walked through the lobby without looking at anyone and crossed the street to a restaurant that served fish and chips. He sat himself in a corner booth and stared down at his own clenched hands. The waitress when she finally came over didn't seem to recognize him, though he had seen her here years before. He didn't seem to be famous yet for what had happened out in the islands, either. He had imagined the whole event might attract more attention.

Jim drummed his fingers on the red Formica and waited and sipped his water and wondered how it was he had ended up without friends. No one was flying up here to visit him or to help him wait this thing out. John Lampson in Williams and Tom Kalfsbeck in Lower Lake: he hadn't called them yet, so they couldn't know, but even if he did call, he was pretty sure they wouldn't come. And this was because of women, too. It was because of his obsession with Rhoda over these past years that he had lost touch with his friends in California and not made new ones in Fairbanks. He had done his work and bought things and talked on the phone and seen prost.i.tutes and had dinner a few times with other dentists or orthodontists and their wives, but that was about it. It was no wonder to him now that he had fallen so low. He had cut himself off from everyone and had nursed what he thought was love but was only longing, a kind of sickness inside him that had nothing to do with Rhoda at all. And it had taken this to get him out of it, to get him to see it. His son had had to kill himself so that Jim could get his life back. And yet that wasn't going to work, either, because it wasn't just that his son had killed himself.

Jim held back his sobbing as well as he could for fear that someone might notice and he might seem like a guilty man, though they couldn't possibly know the crimes he had actually committed. None of the obvious ones like murder, but all of the more important ones.

The waitress set his food before him finally and he ate though it was tasteless to him and he could think only of Roy.

That evening, late, he went back out and walked along the waterfront. He walked past the downtown area where he had practiced and on to the old red-light district, preserved now as a kind of monument and converted to small tourist shops. The small wooden buildings hung precariously along the banks of the narrow river. He stood at the bridge and stared at them, trying to imagine life here before he'd been born. But this was what he'd never been able to do, send his life into another's.

In the morning, he heard knocking at his door and he opened it to Elizabeth and his daughter Tracy.

Whoa, he said. G.o.d, I didn't expect you.

Oh Jim, Elizabeth said, and she wrapped her arms around him for the first time in years. It felt unbelievably good. Then Jim bent down and hugged Tracy. She had been crying and looked exhausted. Jim didn't know what to say.

Come in, he said. They followed him in and sat down on the couch.

Tracy started crying. Elizabeth held her and kissed the top of her head, then looked at Jim and asked, What happened out there, Jim?

I don't know, Jim said. I honestly don't know.

Try a little harder? But then she started crying, and Tracy was crying, and they went away, Elizabeth promising they'd be back later in the day.

So Jim waited, in a chair facing the door to his hotel room, unable to believe they were here in town. He had been gone so long, and it was harder still to understand that they were all here in Ketchikan, all together, except Roy of course, and then his mind stopped again. It was all too much to take in. He felt very afraid, and yet had no idea what in particular was frightening him.

When Elizabeth and Tracy returned, it was past dinnertime, but they weren't hungry, so they sat in the room not talking and Jim wanted this family and this life back, and he kept fantasizing that Roy might just walk in.

Did you kill him? Elizabeth asked, and then she was lost in loud, awful, ugly sobs that got Tracy going again, too. Jim wasn't crying; he was calculating, trying to figure a way to get them back, but he couldn't see how.

I'm sorry, he said. I was afraid all the time I was going to kill myself. He was taking care of me. Then he surprised me and ended up killing himself.

What happened, Jim?

I handed him the pistol as I walked out the door. I didn't mean for him to use it.

You handed him the pistol?

Jim could see this had been the wrong thing to tell her. I didn't mean anything by it, he said.

You handed him the pistol? And then Elizabeth was up and crossing the room and hitting him, hard, and he was looking at Tracy, who had this terrible frozen look on her face and was just watching, and then they were gone and he waited that night for them to return, and the next morning and still they hadn't, so he started walking around town, searching, and finally found their hotel but they had checked out. He searched until night and then realized he could call the airlines but he could only get a recording so he had to wait until morning, when he found out they had flown back to California, and with Roy's remains.

Jim called and kept calling Elizabeth, and finally one day she answered. He tried to explain himself, but she wouldn't listen.

I don't understand this, Jim, she said. I will never understand this. How my son became the boy who did that to himself. What you did to him to make him that way. And then she hung up and didn't answer for days and then changed her phone number with no new number listed and he couldn't leave Ketchikan or reach anyone he knew who would tell him her new number. Everyone, even his own brother and friends, was against him. The only person he didn't call was Rhoda. He couldn't call her, because in a way she had killed Roy, too.

Jim tried to discover how to spend his days. He would have to reenter his life at some point. He couldn't spend the next fifty years sitting here aching. But the truth was, he was scared now. He wasn't sure how he could prove he hadn't murdered his son.

Sometime after two a.m., Jim realized it had been almost a year since he'd been with a woman. So he bundled up and went looking for a prost.i.tute.

The streets were wet, the fog down close. Sound carried oddly from the waterfront and from the road. Fis.h.i.+ng bells, fog bells, seagulls, and the hiss of tires on asphalt. He walked downtown to his old office.

They had redone the front of the building. It looked more modern now and was a dark green. Gold lettering on the window with the dentists' names, two of them.

I could have stayed here, he said. If I had not cheated and broken everything up. If I had been able to stand my wife. If salmon had flown like birds through the streets.

He wasn't sure what to do with this office. He turned away from it, finally, crossed the street and headed down the other side toward the canneries.

The canneries were packed in summer with college students, but now, in the spring, they were deserted. He pa.s.sed an old man sitting on a bench in front of a cannery and they ignored each other. He continued on past all of the canneries but couldn't find any prost.i.tutes. He went to the old red-light district along the river just for the h.e.l.l of it, knowing he wouldn't find any there, and he didn't. He stood at the wooden railing looking down into green-black water moving swiftly out to sea and he gave up.

But instead of walking back to the hotel, he walked in the opposite direction, away from town. Past the canneries, along the highway, he walked in fog and drizzle, the only walker on the road. It was a pleasure to walk, and a pleasure to be alone outside. He couldn't stay much longer in that hotel.

The forest on either side of the road loomed roughly out of the fog. It had been better out on the island, he saw now. He had still believed in his rescue then, and he had been able to go talk with Roy. Now Roy was fifteen hundred miles away.

A dark-green pickup came out of the fog quickly and swerved to avoid Jim. It stopped about a hundred feet past him and the two men looked back at him through the rear window. They looked for a long time; Jim stood in place and stared back at them until they moved on. He was scared, though, that they would come back with others. He had been stupid to stay here. It was too great a risk. Then he realized this was only paranoia, since no one could possibly know who he was.

Jim hurried back anyway, walking on the side of the road and hiding himself in bushes whenever he heard a car coming. It was a long way to town. He hadn't realized how far he had gone. Curve after curve and the sh.o.r.eline appearing twice through the fog, calm gray water lit by a shrouded moon.

He reached the canneries finally and stopped hiding from cars. He pa.s.sed the old red-light district and the tourist area and then downtown and continued around the point to his hotel. It was nearly dark but he grabbed the few things he had: a change of clothes in a plastic bag, his razor and shampoo, his wallet, his boots. He threw everything in the bag, left a note to Kirk saying, Thanks for ripping me off, and walked out into the evening toward the ferry that could take him across to the airport.

The ferry terminal was over three miles away, past Jackson Street, at the end of town. He was tired when he got there, and hungry, and there was nowhere to eat. He looked at the schedule, then found out this wasn't the right terminal for the ferries that went across to the airport. This terminal was for the big Alaska Marine Highway ferries that went clear up to Haines and down to Was.h.i.+ngton.

He decided he didn't need to fly. He just needed to leave, and a ferry was leaving for Haines early in the morning. He would sleep on one of the benches.

On the ferry, he ordered a hotdog and a mini-pizza and some frozen yogurt. The constant vibration and sound of the engines beneath the floors were a comfort. It occurred to him that if his whole life had been spent under way, he might have been a lot happier. These ferries were heavy and solid and almost never rolled or pounded at all, but as he sat there eating, he did feel different, anyway. And then he got to thinking again about sailing away to the South Pacific. If he got through all of this okay, he might try that. He felt like telling this to someone, felt like talking about it with someone to find out how it sounded.

Jim looked around but everyone was sitting in groups. He chewed on through the rest of his food, then walked around the upper deck looking for someone standing alone at the railing, but this boat, at least on deck, seemed to be Noah's Ark, everyone in pairs.

Though he didn't drink, he went to the bar, because that seemed a likely place, even though it was morning. And he did find a woman sitting alone at one of the tables. Dark hair and an unhappy look, or perhaps just bored. She looked a few years younger than he was. She didn't look as if she were waiting for anyone.

Mind if I join you? he asked.

That's okay, I guess, she said, but this sounded so bad, so bored, he hesitated. She just watched him.

Okay, he said, and sat down.

It's not like you're doing me a favor, she said.

Jim got up and walked away. He stood on the stern and stared at the wake. He had wanted to tell that woman about Roy. He wanted just one person he could tell the whole story to, to work it out. Because when he left it alone, it just seemed more and more like he had killed Roy.

Jim couldn't think about this well. He stared at the wake. Though it trailed away and spread and dissipated, it remained exactly the same from his viewpoint. It would never catch up with the boat nor would it ever be lost. It seemed like this might mean something, but then Jim was only wondering what his life was now, and not knowing. One thing had happened after another, but it seemed to him random and odd that things had worked out the way they had.

Jim could smell the diesel exhaust back here. It made him nostalgic for the Osprey, Osprey, his fis.h.i.+ng boat. He had failed at that, finally, and had to sell the boat, but really it hadn't been a failure. He had spent all that time with his brother Gary pulling in albacore and then halibut; he had gotten to know the fis.h.i.+ng fleet, all the Norwegians, even though he had not really talked to them. He had listened to them on the radio, their check-ins every morning and evening, their reports on the fis.h.i.+ng, their evening entertainment. They had taken turns singing old songs and playing harmonica and even accordion. It had been an amazing time, really, though he and his brother had been outcasts. The his fis.h.i.+ng boat. He had failed at that, finally, and had to sell the boat, but really it hadn't been a failure. He had spent all that time with his brother Gary pulling in albacore and then halibut; he had gotten to know the fis.h.i.+ng fleet, all the Norwegians, even though he had not really talked to them. He had listened to them on the radio, their check-ins every morning and evening, their reports on the fis.h.i.+ng, their evening entertainment. They had taken turns singing old songs and playing harmonica and even accordion. It had been an amazing time, really, though he and his brother had been outcasts. The Tin Can, Tin Can, they had called his boat, for the raw aluminum. They had older wooden boats, most of them. Some of them were fibergla.s.s. He'd hear them mention him occasionally, but it was never an invitation to come on the radio and join in. He missed that life. He wished it had worked out. Roy could have worked on the boat in the summers. they had called his boat, for the raw aluminum. They had older wooden boats, most of them. Some of them were fibergla.s.s. He'd hear them mention him occasionally, but it was never an invitation to come on the radio and join in. He missed that life. He wished it had worked out. Roy could have worked on the boat in the summers.

One night, the Norwegians lost one of their boats. They came on in the morning, checking in, and no one knew where that one boat was. Most of it was in Norwegian, but there was enough said in English that Jim and Gary knew what was happening. They had slipped anchor themselves once when their sea parachute collapsed. The water was far too deep for bottom anchors, so the whole fleet put out sea parachutes off their bows and stayed anch.o.r.ed together that way, but the night their parachute collapsed, Jim and Gary awoke far from the fleet, no fis.h.i.+ng boats around and right in the s.h.i.+pping lanes. So this was what must have happened to this Norwegian boat, they figured, and nothing was heard from it again.