Sukkwan Island Part 8

There were no good times after this. His father sank into himself and Roy felt alone. His father read when the weather was miserable and went for hikes alone when it was only bad. They talked only to say things like, Maybe we should fix dinner soon, or Have you seen my gloves? Roy watched his father all the time and could discover no crack in the sh.e.l.l of his despair. His father had become impervious. And then Roy came in one day from a hike alone and found his father sitting at the radio set with his pistol in his hand. It was oddly quiet, with only a few small humming and chirping sounds from the radio.

Jim? Rhoda said over the radio. Don't do this to me, you a.s.shole.

His father turned off the radio and stood. He stood looking at Roy in the doorway and then looked around the room as if he were embarra.s.sed by some small thing and searching for something to say. But he didn't say anything. He walked over to Roy and handed him the pistol, then put on his coat and boots and went out.

Roy watched him go until he'd disappeared into the trees, then he looked at the pistol in his hand. The hammer was back and he could see the copper sh.e.l.l in there. He eased the hammer down with the pistol pointed away from him and then he pulled the hammer back again, raised the barrel to his head, and fired.

PART TWO.

Jim in the trees heard the shot and didn't know what it was about. He wondered for a moment whether he had really heard it, but then he figured he had. Roy was making some kind of scene. He was going to shoot up their cabin because he needed to be taken care of now. Jim hiked on. He hoped Roy would hit the radio.

It was drizzling and the fog was in close. The trees had become ghosted and the entire island seemed uninhabitable. Jim hiked on, hearing his breathing the only rhythm, the only moving thing. He couldn't think about Rhoda. She had become a sense now, a part of him that he couldn't differentiate enough to think about. She was a longing and regret in him like a growth. And she was really doing it, really leaving him. Jim could feel himself on the edge of crying again, so he hiked on faster and counted his steps in rhythm, onetwothreefour in a group, fivesixseveneight, over and over. He hiked on until he stopped because he was tired and then he turned around and hiked back, but he didn't like the thought of arriving, of having to find the next thing to do to fill his time. The days were so long.

When he neared the cabin, he saw the door was still partway open, which p.i.s.sed him off. It was like Roy to storm off on his own little hike and not close the door but just let them freeze.

And then he got to the door and looked down and saw his son. His son's body and not really his son because the head was missing. Torn and rough, red, with dark slicked hair along the edge and blood splattered everywhere. He stepped back because looking straight down he saw that he was stepping on a piece that had come free, a piece of his son's head. A piece of bone.

He stood there rocking and looking and breathing. He glanced around the rest of the room but there was nothing else to see, and then he had to sit down and he sat down in the doorway, a few feet from Roy, and as soon as he heard this name in his head, he started to shake and it seemed that he was crying but he wasn't crying or letting out any sound. What's happening here? he asked out loud.

He touched Roy's jacket then, and shook Roy's shoulder gently. Then he looked at the blood on his hand and back at the stump for a head that was all Roy had now and then from inside him he began to howl.

And howling did nothing but fill itself and he was like an actor in his own pain, not knowing who he was or what part now to play. He shook his hands oddly in the air and slapped them against his thighs. He pushed himself back farther away from Roy but this was phony, another act, and still he didn't know what to do. No one was watching. And though it couldn't be his son there, it kept being his son there.

Some of the inside was white. He kept waiting for it all to turn red, but it wouldn't. And soon there were small flies, gnats and no-see-ums, landing there inside his son's head and crawling and hopping around. He swished them away, but he didn't want to actually touch the head and they kept landing again. He leaned in close and blew on them and could smell the stink of blood and then he grabbed Roy's jacket and pulled him onto his lap, the stump with part of a face showing now, a jaw and cheek and one eye that had been hidden against the floor. He looked at this and kept looking and shook him there and looked when he could see and wasn't blinded by the heaving and all he could think was why? Because there was no sense to it at all. He was the one who'd been afraid he might do this. Roy had been fine, had always been fine.

No, he kept saying out loud, even though he knew this was a stupid thing to say. He kept trying to think because whenever he stopped thinking for a moment he was crying terribly. And yet even this he was aware of. It was as if he couldn't reenter the world to act unconsciously. As if every thought and feeling and word and everything he saw were artificial, even his mutilated son. As if even his son dead before him weren't real enough.

He put Roy back down on the floor and looked at all the blood on his hands and jacket and jeans, blood everywhere so he got up and went down to the water and waded in. He gasped from the cold and already his legs were numb. They were stumps, and then the terror ripped through him again from that word, stumps, and he was sobbing hideously. He walked around and around in the shallows and slipped and went under and came back up and walked out, shaking now from the cold also, and went back to Roy, who still lay there dead, who hadn't moved. He had just seen Roy alive. It hadn't been more than an hour ago, and Roy had been fine.

And then Jim felt an unaccountable rage. He went into the cabin looking for something and he went to the radio and picked it up and smashed it down onto the floor and then kicked it again and again and grabbed the lantern and hurled it against the wall where it shattered and then he grabbed the VHF and hurled that, too, and threw a bag of smoked salmon that lay open on the table, then kicked over the table, but then he stopped, standing in the middle of the room, because only a few more minutes had gone by, if even that, and all this destruction had not helped. He wasn't even interested in it. It had seemed like living but now it seemed like nothing.

Jim sat beside Roy again and watched him. He was still the same, still exactly the same. He picked up the .44 Magnum from where it had bounced a few feet away. He put the barrel to his own head but then put it down and laughed savagely. You can't even kill yourself, he said to himself out loud. You can only play at killing yourself. You get to be awake and thinking about this every minute for the next fifty years. That's what you get.

And then he cried, as much from self-pity as for Roy. He knew this and despised himself for it, but he stripped out of his wet clothing, put on his warmest clothes, and cried this time for hours and there was no break, no end to it, and he wondered only whether it would ever stop.

But it did stop, of course, in the evening and Roy still there on the floor and Jim didn't know what to do with him. He realized now that he would have to do something with him, that he couldn't just leave him there on the floor. So he went around back and found a shovel. It was past sunset already, getting dark, but he went off a hundred feet or so behind the cabin and started digging, then realized this was too close to the latrine and he didn't like that, so he went farther into the trees, toward the point, and then he started digging again, but there were roots, so he went back for the ax and chopped and dug his way through until he had a pit about four feet deep and longer than Roy's body, and then this idea, Roy's body, sent him crying again and when he finally stopped and returned to the cabin it was the middle of the night.

Roy was in the doorway, blocking it. He still hadn't moved. Jim knelt down to pick him up but what was left of his head lolled wet and cold against Jim's face and Jim threw up and dropped him and then walked around in circles outside saying Jesus.

He went back in and picked up Roy again and carried him this time fast out to the grave, and he tried to set Roy carefully into it but ended up dropping him and then howled and hit himself and jumped up and down at the edge of the grave because he had dropped his son.

And then it occurred to him that he couldn't do this, that he couldn't just bury Roy out here. His mother would want to see him. And the thought of having to tell her twisted him up again and he was off in the woods stumbling around again and feeling sorry for himself and by the time he got back it was already getting lighter, even through the trees.

I f.u.c.ked up, he said. He was squatting beside the pit and rocking. I really f.u.c.ked up this time. And then he remembered Roy's mother again, Elizabeth. He would have to tell her. He would have to tell her and everyone else, but he wouldn't be able to tell them everything, he knew. He wouldn't tell about handing Roy the pistol. And then he was sobbing uncontrollably again, like some other force ripping through his body, and he wanted it to end but also didn't want it to end since it at least filled time, but after a while, after it was fully light out, the crying did stop abruptly and he was left there again by the pit looking down at Roy and wondering what to do. Roy's mother would have to see him. He couldn't just bury him out here. She would want to have a funeral and she'd have to know what had happened. He'd have to tell her. And Tracy.

Oh G.o.d, he said. He would have to tell Tracy that her big brother was dead. She would have to see him too. He wondered for a moment if there'd be some way of putting Roy's face back together a little, but then he saw right away that that was crazy.

He reached down into the pit and pulled Roy out, then hefted him up again and carried him back to the cabin. He was heavy and cold and stiff, bent up weirdly now from being in the pit, and he was covered with dirt. There was dirt all in the head part. He didn't want to look at it, but he kept glancing over and worrying. None of this would look good.

Jim laid his son back down in the cabin, in the main room, then sat against the far wall and watched him. He didn't know what to do. He knew he had to do something soon, but he had no idea what.

Okay, he finally said. I have to tell them. I have to let his mother know. And he went to the radio but then saw that he had destroyed it and remembered that he had destroyed the VHF as well. G.o.dd.a.m.nit, he yelled at the top of his voice and kicked the set again. And then he started crying again, mid-yell. It could start any time, had a will of its own, and it didn't make him feel any better, as crying is supposed to. It was a terrible kind of crying that only hurt and made everything seem increasingly unbearable and though it filled time it seemed each time that it might not end. It was to be avoided, so when he could get his eyes clear enough to see he went out to the boat, which they had tied behind the cabin, and went back in for the pump and the outboard and life jackets, flares, oars, horn, bilge pump, spare gas can, everything, and carried it all out onto the beach and carried the boat out too and pumped it up there and mounted the engine and put all the stuff in. Then he went back for Roy.

Roy was still propped oddly against the wall, still stiff. The side that had his face was showing, but the skin was all yellow and bluish like a bloated fish and Jim threw up again and had to walk around outside, wis.h.i.+ng he could just never go back into the cabin, saying, That's my son in there.

When he returned, he looked again at Roy and looked away and wondered how he'd carry him. He couldn't just dump him in the boat like that. He thought of garbage bags but then was weeping and shouting again, He's not f.u.c.king garbage. So when he calmed again he laid out a sleeping bag and rolled Roy onto it and zipped it up and drew the drawstring at the top. He picked Roy up over his shoulder and carried him out to the boat.

Okay, he said. This is going to work. We're going to find someone, and they're going to help us. He went back to the cabin for some food and water but when he got there he couldn't remember what he had come for, so he just closed the door and returned to the boat.

He had inflated the boat too far away from the water, so he unloaded Roy and the gas cans and then dragged the boat to the edge of the water, then reloaded the cans and Roy. When he finally pushed off, it was afternoon, not very smart, he realized now, but he pulled the starter cord and pushed the choke back in when it coughed to life and then he put it in gear and they were heading out. The water was very calm in their inlet and the sky gray, the air heavy and wet. He tried to get up on a plane, but they were too loaded down, so he throttled back to a slow five or six knots as they cleared the point, Jim s.h.i.+vering a bit in the wind and his son wrapped up in the sleeping bag.

They were exposed beyond the point to a cold breeze up the channel and small wind waves that splashed a little into the boat.

This isn't real good, Jim said to his son. We're not doing the smartest thing here. But he kept going and then began to wonder where he was going. I don't know, he said aloud. Maybe to wherever those houses are. But that's twenty miles or something. That's not close. We need a boat to find us.

And then he was thinking again of Roy's mother, of her face when she would hear about this and her face when she'd heard about all the other things, when he told her he was sleeping with Gloria, for instance. After they moved and tried to make things work and he had been what she'd wanted for a whole month, thirty days exactly of being considerate and affectionate and trying not to think of other women, she came to him in bed smiling and happy and he wanted only for her never to touch him again. He told her he'd just been acting the past month, that it wasn't him, and her face then and her face when they told their children they were getting divorced, and now this. This couldn't even be compared to the other things. This isn't just a thing, he said out loud, sobbing, and then he couldn't see to steer and they curved all over the channel and lurched and took on water until he could get himself under control again.

And Tracy. She would hate him. All her life. Along with her mother. Everyone. And they'd be right. And what would Rhoda say? She would know exactly whose fault this all was.

The boat steered badly and the current was pus.h.i.+ng them sideways. Jim tried again to get on a plane, but the nose only pushed into the air and wouldn't come down, so he throttled back again. Everything was gray and cold and completely empty. There were no other boats, no houses, anywhere. By the time he was halfway across the channel to the next island, it was late in the afternoon and he was s.h.i.+vering uncontrollably and worrying about running out of gas and worrying what Roy would look like when he finally got there and whom he'd have to talk with first.

He stopped twice to pump out the water and continued on toward the sh.o.r.e, wanting finally only to make that and not worrying if they went farther today. He was so cold he was numb and had trouble thinking. He'd think, I wonder how far, and then his brain would stop for a while and then he'd wonder again how far to the sh.o.r.e and finally he realized this was hypothermia setting in, that if he didn't get to sh.o.r.e and get warm he would be in trouble. And he wondered why he hadn't brought more clothing and something to sleep in and some food. He was hungry.

When he made sh.o.r.e, it was close to sunset and Roy was soaked and they still hadn't seen anyone. Jim went for wood while Roy stayed with the boat and Jim wanted to make a fire and he piled up the sticks he had found but all the wood was wet and he didn't have any matches, so he cried. Then he went back to the boat and said Sorry to Roy as he dumped him out of the sleeping bag onto the beach and got into the wet bag himself and tried to get warm and woke again in darkness and was still cold but also somehow still alive. I got lucky, he thought, but then he thought of Roy and got out of the bag to go find him, frightened now that Roy had been picked at or even dragged away by something, but when he found him nearby he still seemed pretty much like how he'd been, though it was hard to tell for sure because he didn't have a flashlight and Roy only had half a head. That sounded funny and Jim laughed for a second, then started weeping again. Oh Roy, he said. What are we gonna do?

Jim slept again and in the morning Roy definitely had been picked at. The seagulls were still milling nearby and Jim went after them with rocks, chasing them so far along the beach that by the time he returned the others were back at Roy again, stealing away little pieces of him.

Jim put him back in the sleeping bag and tied it up again and reloaded the boat. This time, Jim said. This time we find someone.

Under way, he was hungry and cold and had trouble staying awake. He saw no cabins or boats of any kind, but he kept going into the waves and trying to look around and trying not to think but thinking anyway of what he was going to say. I don't know why he did it, he imagined saying to Elizabeth. I just came back from a hike one afternoon and there he was. There was no sign, no indication. I hadn't imagined he could do this kind of thing. But then he lost it again because there really hadn't been any sign and he really hadn't imagined Roy could do this. Roy had always been stable, and sure they had argued a little, but things hadn't been bad, and there was no reason to do this. d.a.m.n you, he said out loud. It doesn't make any f.u.c.king sense.

As he rounded another point, he saw a boat far away, heading into the next channel. He stopped the engine and fumbled with one of the flares, finally got it lit and then held it high over his head smoking orange and burning and stinking of sulfur, but the boat, something big, some kind of huge yacht with a hundred f.u.c.king pa.s.sengers, one of whom must be looking this way, just pa.s.sed on and disappeared behind another coastline.

So Jim continued along the island at a slow five knots maybe and against the current again and wondered how well he knew this area. He wondered if he could just keep going along this and other islands and run out of gas and never find anyone. It seemed possible. It wasn't exactly everyone living out here. But then late afternoon, after he'd poured in the spare gas and was sure he was just going to run out and have to drift around forever, he saw a cabin cruiser crossing on the other side, back toward the island he and Roy lived on, where they'd come from. They could have hailed it from there. Jim got out another flare and struck the end with the cap and nothing happened, so he struck again and looked up at the boat going fast and pa.s.sing away from them now. He grabbed the last flare and struck it and it ignited and he held it high and the boat swerved slightly toward him and he was sure it must have seen him. But then it swerved back the other way, just avoiding a log or something in the water, and the flare went out and the boat was only a speck receding into the gray.

Jim yelled, over and over, growling at the sh.o.r.eline and the water and air and sky and everything and hurled the burned-out torch and just sat there looking at the sleeping bag that held Roy and then at his hands on his knees. The boat was rocking and drifting and cold water was lapping onto his lower back and down his seat.

Jim continued on and, coming around a small point, happened to look over just in time to see a small cabin disappearing back into the trees. He turned the boat around and motored back and saw it was bigger, actually, than that, a home it looked like, a summer house, and he landed the boat on the small gravel beach before it and left Roy to go up and investigate.

It was hidden behind a stand of spruce and he'd been lucky to see it at all, though it wasn't far from sh.o.r.e. There was a path leading to it and when he got up close he saw it was a log cabin but big enough to be someone's house, with several rooms and storm boards on all the windows, locked up for the winter.

h.e.l.lo, he said. Then he walked up onto the porch, which had debris all over it from the storm, and he knew no one would be around. Hey, he yelled, I happen to have my dead son with me. Maybe we could come in and chat and have dinner and spend the night, what do you say?

There was no answer. He went back to the boat and Roy and tried to think. It was late in the day and he hadn't seen anything else. He was on his reserve gasoline already. It wouldn't last long, and he was still s.h.i.+vering and starving and dizzy and they might have left something in their house for him to eat. And maybe a radio. They would certainly have some kind of blanket, and a fireplace and some wood. He had seen the chimney. And he had been lucky to warm up enough last night. He hadn't been sure he would in a wet sleeping bag, and it might not work out as well a second time, because he was much weaker now. He had to deliver Roy, he knew, but the truth was, the kid didn't look all that great anyway. Jim laughed grimly. You're a card, he said out loud. You're a h.e.l.l of a father and you're a comic, too.

Wait right here, he said to Roy, and he went back up to the cabin again and this time continued around back. He was looking for a way in. The windows all had storm boards fitted and probably locked from inside. The front door had a big padlock and, as it turned out, so did the back door. He looked all around and there was nothing left open, no gla.s.s to break, even.

Okay, he said. It was quiet, only a few drips from the trees. And it was getting on toward sunset. He had no flashlight, no food. He continued farther and found the wood shed. The door was padlocked but looked weak enough, so he found a good-sized rock and threw it at the door and it made a crunching sound, then bounced back at him so he had to jump out of the way. G.o.dd.a.m.nit, he said. He ran to the door and slammed himself against it, fell down and got up and did it again. He was breathing hard now. He kicked with his boot at the center of it and could feel it bend each time, but it wouldn't give, so he walked back down to the boat.

He saw the sleeping bag propped up there with Roy in it and realized he had forgotten about Roy for a few minutes. The thought that he could do that seemed terribly sad, but he didn't stop and indulge himself. He had work to do before dark. He loosened the engine from its mount and carried it stiffly up to the cabin, set it down on the porch. The thing weighed at least fifty pounds, all metal.

Jim went to the shed again for the rock and came back to the cabin. He had hoped to find an ax or a saw or something in the shed, but he decided now to just work on the cabin directly. He pounded at each door and storm board with the rock in his hand until he found one over the kitchen window that seemed to give a little more. It was because the window was bigger, he thought. So he carried the outboard around and then he grabbed the housing with both hands and rammed the prop end into the board and it only sc.r.a.ped a little on the prop and knocked him off balance so that he almost fell with the engine on top of him.

He was beyond swearing or yelling. He felt only a cold, murderous hatred and wanted to destroy this cabin. He picked up the outboard, this time by the lighter, skinnier shaft end, and could get the other, heavier end to lift only by turning like a shot-putter, so he turned a couple of circles like that and hurled the motor at the storm board and jumped back.

The crash was monstrously loud and the engine fell back onto the porch with a smashed housing.

Of course, Jim said. The housing was only plastic. He un-latched it and lifted it off twisted and crushed and now he had steel motor sticking out, the engine head, and he swung the motor around again and hurled it, screaming, and it bounced back again and almost got him but this time it had crushed part of the storm board. He picked it up and hurled it two more times and by then had destroyed his engine but also had shattered the storm board and the gla.s.s behind it and had a way in.

The cabin was dark inside and there was no electricity, no light to switch on. Fumbling around in the kitchen in the dark, he finally found matches and then a paraffin lamp that cast weird shadows everywhere as he hunted around from room to room. He found a wood stove in the kitchen and then another for heat in the living room. Beside this one there was still a stack of dry wood. There was a bedroom off this and it had been stripped, the mattress bare, without blankets. The whole place had been stripped, winterized. But he kept looking in every closet and shelf and drawer and under the bed and couch, and finally in a dresser drawer he found two sets of sheets and a blanket.

Okay, he said. Now, where's the food? You don't bring everything every time. You must leave something here. Some canned goods or something. Where is it?

He looked in the kitchen and found it surprisingly bare. He did find a few cans of soup in the cupboard, though, and then another cupboard with canned vegetables.

Not enough, he said. Not enough. I've got a growing boy with me, a strapping young lad. You must have a cellar. Your own little indoor cache in a fancy place like this. He stomped on the floor all around the kitchen and looked for latches and looked in the living room, pulling back the small piece of carpet, and looked in the bedroom, and then, giving up, on his way back into the kitchen followed by his own paraffin shadow like a nimble doppelganger, he saw a latch in the pa.s.sageway from living room to kitchen.

Open sesame, he said and lifted it and found the cellar, a hundred cans and jars and bottles and freeze-dried packets of Alpine Minestrone and vanilla ice cream and in a large bag even vacuum-sealed packets of smoked salmon. Okay, he said.

Roy was still in the bag. He lifted him over a shoulder and pushed him through the kitchen window, trying not to tear the bag on the bits of gla.s.s on the sill but tearing it some anyway. Then he climbed in himself.

Time to get to work, he said. We need to make this place home. He dragged Roy back to the bedroom, where he'd stay cold and out of the way. Then he started a fire in the kitchen stove and decided not to light the one in the living room, to conserve wood. He'd just sleep in here in the kitchen. And that would help Roy keep cooler, also.

He opened a can of ravioli and put the can right on the burner, then decided he wouldn't be such a slob and put it in a small pot. He heated canned milk in another pot and made himself some hot chocolate. A treat, he said. He ate there in the kitchen in the lamplight and was looking all around trying to find something to focus on, something to read. He kept thinking about Roy and Roy's mother and he didn't want to do this, so he looked all around the cabin for reading material and couldn't find any but finally found some family pictures in the bedroom and brought them back to the kitchen and stared at them while he ate.

This family was not good-looking. They had a parrot-faced daughter and a son with big ears and eyes too close together and a mouth that twisted up oddly. The parents were no lookers, either, the man stocky and a nerd and his wife trying to look surprised for the camera. They went for vacations everywhere, apparently. Camels and tropical fish and Big Ben. Jim disliked them and felt fine about eating their food. f.u.c.k you, he said to the pictures as he slurped up their ravioli. But this lasted only so long and then he was sitting there at the table in lamplight with nothing to focus on. Time, he said.

He went back out to the boat, though it was dark now and very cold, and brought all of the gear up to the porch, then dragged the boat around back and left it and lifted his stuff through the window. Then he carried it all into the back room with Roy, who still was just there in the sleeping bag, not doing anything, not partic.i.p.ating, just like a junior high kid. Fine, Jim said to Roy. Then he returned to the kitchen and made his bed on the floor.

That night he kept waking, paranoid that something awful had happened, and then he'd remember Roy and cry and then, because he was so exhausted, fall asleep again. He had no dreams and saw nothing. It was fear he woke to each time, his breath tight and blood pounding, and a sense that the sky was bearing down on him. And in the morning, when it had been light out for hours and he finally got up off the floor, the sense had not completely gone away.

He stoked the stove and wanted to boil water to cook Malt- O-Meal but no water came out of the tap. Okay, you f.u.c.kers, he said, you parrots, where's the water switch? He searched the kitchen and the cellar and then walked around the back of the cabin and searched for faucets but found nothing. He hiked up to the shed and still nothing so he searched the entire hill behind the house for two or three hours, foot by foot, and finally found a pipe buried partly in the dirt and then covered with bark. He went along it on his hands and knees feeling for fixtures until he found the faucet. He turned it and went back inside, found water and air sputtering out of the tap.

Okay, he said, give me a steady stream, and as if all things followed his spoken will, the tap stopped sputtering and emitted a solid stream of clear, cold water.

He made the Malt-O-Meal, put brown sugar in, and sat down to it but again needed something to look at and didn't have anything. So he went back and dragged Roy out, still in the sleeping bag, and tried to prop him up in the other chair in the kitchen, but he wouldn't bend right. The blue sleeping bag was terribly stained now, still wet and dark all around the top.

Okay, he said. If you're not going to sit right. He looked in the drawers until he found string and scissors and he wrapped Roy, then tied him to a rafter and a leg of the table and a hook that came out of the wall for hanging pots or something, and so Roy was standing there in his sleeping bag and Jim could sit down and eat.

Your father's becoming pretty weird, he told Roy. And it's not like you haven't had a part in that. And yet, the truth is, do you want to know the truth? Well, in some ways I feel better now. I don't know why that is.

Jim concentrated on his eating then and when he was through he did the dishes. Then he wiped his hands on his jeans and turned to Roy. Okay, big boy, he said, time to go back in the cooler. And he untied Roy and carried him back to the bedroom, then felt so lost all of a sudden he lay down on the bare wooden floor in the bedroom and just moaned for the rest of the day, no idea at all in his head as to what he was doing or why. The room was cold and dim and seemed to stretch on forever, and he a tiny speck lost in the middle of it.

At dinner, after dark, Jim ate alone. I don't feel like company, he said aloud. Then he went for a walk in the woods.

Jim, Jim, Jim, he spoke out loud, you have to do something. You can't just leave your son tied up in the sleeping bag and cooling in the bedroom. Roy needs a funeral. He needs to be buried. His mother and sister need to see him.

He hiked on some more, not bothering to duck much and getting sc.r.a.ped up a lot by small branches, one of his hands on fire from nettles. There was no moon or anything out, and he couldn't see a d.a.m.ned thing.

As he talked, he imagined he was in a great room, at a trial, and these words were being spoken to him. He was sitting at a heavy desk and listening and couldn't speak.

How was he tied up? someone was asking. Why did you tie up your son at the table? Did that make any sense at all? And what about the sleeping bag? Was that your idea, too? Have you been planning this for some time? Was that really what this whole trip was about? It could have been suicide, sure, but it could also have been murder.

This idea stopped him. He stood in place in the woods breathing hard and hearing nothing else and thinking that they could think that. How could he ever prove that he hadn't shot his son himself? And now he'd run away, too, and broken into someone else's place and was hiding out with the body. How could he possibly explain any of this?

Jim was scared now for himself, and turned around to hike back to the cabin, but he wasn't sure which way it was. He hiked for over an hour, it seemed, and much farther than he had come, he was sure, and still he couldn't see the cabin or anything familiar or really anything at all. He had just hiked out into the dark and not bothered to pay any attention to where he was going.

The ground was uneven and occasionally he fell through where the dead wood and undergrowth had built up and he was sc.r.a.ped from the sides and above. He had his arms out and head turned away and was walking sideways hoping just to find his way somehow and listening but hearing only himself and starting to feel very afraid of the woods, as if all he had done wrong had somehow gathered here and was out to get him. He knew that didn't make any sense and that scared him more, because it felt so real anyway. He seemed impossibly small and about to be broken.

He stopped periodically and tried to stand still and be quiet and listen. He was trying to hear what way to go, or because that didn't make any sense, maybe trying to hear what was after him. Up through the trees, he could see a few faint stars much later, after the sky had cleared some. He was cold and s.h.i.+vering and his heart still going, and the fear had sunk deeper into a sense that he was doomed, that he would never find his way back to safety or be able to run fast enough to escape. The forest was impossibly loud, even over his pulse. There were branches breaking, and twigs and every leaf moving in the breeze and things everywhere running through the undergrowth and larger cras.h.i.+ngs beyond that he couldn't be sure whether or not he had simply imagined. The air in the forest had bulk and weight and was part of the darkness, as if they were the same thing, and rushed toward him from every side.

I've been afraid like this all my life, he thought. This is who I am. But then he told himself to shut up. You're only thinking this stuff because you're lost out here, he said.

It was impossible that it was taking him this long to find the cabin. He'd never been lost in the forest in his life, and he had been in forests all the time, hunting and fis.h.i.+ng. But once you take that first wrong step, he told himself, because he knew that after that it was possible to never find your way again, because you couldn't know where you were coming from and so wouldn't have any firm basis for any direction. And that seemed appropriate for more in his life, too, especially with women. Things had become so twisted early on that it had been impossible to know what was good, and now, with Roy dead, there was absolutely nothing left to go on. It wouldn't matter if he perished out in the forest tonight, if he just gave up and lay down and froze.

But he continued on anyway, until the sky lightened finally and then it was dawn and he had found the sh.o.r.e by going consistently downhill. It wasn't the sh.o.r.e in front of the cabin, and he didn't know in which direction to follow it, but it was a sh.o.r.e, and he went the way that seemed right, hiking along it and waiting for the cabin.

It was a sunny day, cold and bright, the first clear day they'd had in a long time. He was very hungry and tired and sore but grateful for the sun. He didn't find the cabin after several hours, so he turned and walked back the other way, but even this seemed all right. At what must have been about noon, the sun overhead, he pa.s.sed the point where he'd started and continued on for another hour or so before he arrived at the beach in front of the cabin. He stopped and stood there and just looked at it for a while, then he went in.

Everything was where he had left it, and Roy still in the back room. Jim ate a can of soup straight out of the can, without heating it, and then he lay down on the floor wrapped in the blanket and slept.

When he woke, he was very cold and it was night. He found the lamp and then got a fire going in the stove. I'm going to be more careful now, he told himself as he was pus.h.i.+ng more wood in. And I'm going to take care of things. I'm going to find someone on this island and let Roy's mother know and give Roy a decent burial. I'll go today.

He ate another can of soup and then some instant mashed potatoes and went back to sleep for a few hours and woke in the morning. Okay, he said as soon as he'd opened his eyes, I'm going.

He restoked the stove and fixed some breakfast. As he was eating, he realized he'd have to leave a note. If anyone came here and found this, found the broken cabin and Roy in the back room and saw he'd been living in here, they'd think the wrong things. And he'd have to close up the kitchen window, too, so nothing got in to eat his food or get at Roy.

Jim looked in drawers until he found a pen and an envelope that he could write on. I've gone for help, he wrote. My son killed himself and is in the back room. I didn't have any way of contacting anyone. I couldn't go farther in the boat. I'm hiking around the island now trying to find some help and I will be back. He reread it several times and couldn't think of anything better, so he signed it and then got some food together and packed the blanket in a garbage bag in case he had to sleep out there.

The window was a problem. He didn't have a hammer or nails or even good boards. So he carried the busted outboard to the shed and used it to bash in the shed door, the same as he'd done to the kitchen window. When he had broken through, he rested until his breath calmed and then he pulled away the pieces of splintered wood and went back for the lamp to search the shed.

All the tools were here: ax, shovel, saws, hammer, nails, even a sander and chain saw and chains and a ratchet and screwdrivers, wrenches, all just sitting in here rusting away. Jim chopped off a big piece of the door with the ax and then brought it over to the kitchen window to hammer it up. Before he did this, though, he went in to say good-bye to Roy and let him know what he was doing. I'm taking care of things now, he said, standing in the bedroom doorway. I'm sorry things have gone so badly so far, but I'm getting it together now. Then he brought out his bag of food and the blanket and the note and nailed up the board and nailed the note to it and started hiking.

It was already very late morning. He should have had an earlier start. But at least I'm going, he told himself. He hiked up the sh.o.r.eline past where he had been the day before. He kept going, moving at a fast pace, keeping an eye out for boats or cabins or any sign of a trail that people might be using. The visibility was good enough he might be able to signal a boat. The air wasn't too cold, either, and the only clouds were thin and high up.

This coastline of banded rock and deadfall and dark sand seemed ancient to Jim, prehistoric. As he hiked along it quietly for hours, hearing only the sound of his boots and an occasional bird and the wind and small waves coming in, it seemed as if he might be the only man, come out to see what was in the world. He mused on this and walked more cat-like, hopping from stone to stone, and he longed for this simplicity, this innocence. He wanted not to have been who he was and not to find anyone. If he found someone, he would have to tell his story, which, he admitted to himself now, could only sound terrible.