Authors: David Vann
The door frame didn’t fit. Gary held it against the gap in the back wall. White-painted pine over rough bark, an unlikely marriage of materials. He had cut the gap narrow so he could adjust later, a decision made when he had imagined more time, believed in more time. Now he needed to cut away almost two inches of cabin wall.
He looked around, a quick glance behind, as if Irene might appear. He hadn’t seen her yet today. She’d left early, before he woke.
Gary centered the frame so that it overlapped both sides. A door set on the outside of the wall, projecting four inches. And why not? He wasn’t building this cabin for anyone else.
So Gary grabbed his hammer and nails, aligned the frame, and propped it with two-by-four cutoffs. If Irene were here, she could hold it in place, much faster, but she wasn’t going to help now.
And the truth was, he did feel bad. He felt guilty. Wanted to apologize, even, and if she’d been here when he awoke, he would have tried. He shouldn’t have called her a mean old bitch. He didn’t like to think of it. Didn’t like to think he had said that. But he knew he had. He had said it twice.
Gary sighed. His breath fogging. A good day again for working, cold and overcast, but he didn’t feel any motivation at all. He hated not getting along with Irene. He wanted everything to be clear between them.
He braced his shoulder against the frame and set a nail at an angle, tapped it carefully. Then a harder hit, but it bent and he felt the frame move, no longer aligned.
Gary closed his eyes then, slumped against the frame, and tried to calm. He wasn’t good at anything. He knew that now. The cabin a failure, the most recent in a series of failures. So fine. He still needed to get this frame attached. He’d spent the night in the cabin, and it had been cold, desperately cold. Not a way they could live through the winter.
Gary set the frame in place again, leaned against it, and tried another nail. Got it in most the way and then cracked the frame. So he stepped back about ten feet and threw his hammer into the wall. A slight echo from the trees and hill behind, then a muffled thud from the ground.
Gary stepped forward and picked up the hammer, tried again to align and fix a nail. It sank but felt light, and when he examined the back, he saw he had caught only a small bit of the cabin wall. No firm purchase because of the angle. Maybe a quarter inch of meat. Nothing that would hold. And the point was sticking out now.
Gary walked over to Irene’s tent for a granola bar. On his knees, reaching in, his face close enough to her pillow he could smell her. So he lay down a moment, head on her pillow, and rested. Curled his knees so they were inside the tent. He would tell her he was sorry. The early cold weather a setback, but they were close to having the cabin ready, and maybe spending the winter together would help them return to who they had been.
But he didn’t want her to find him like this. He would seem weak. So he got up, ate the granola bar while he looked at the door and frame.
To hell with it, he finally said. He hammered a dozen nails around the edges, all shallow, many of them bent or opening up cracks, but together they might hold. Sharp points projecting out the back. Then he grabbed the door, simple white pine, and placed it in the frame. Not sure how to line up the hinges, especially without anyone helping.
The part he didn’t understand was how he had felt excited. She’d helped him all day—no food, in the cold, the pain in her head—and he’d been impatient, too, and she’d put up with that, and they had accomplished a lot, more than any other day. They put the roof on, the entire roof. But then she wouldn’t do the last little bit, just tacking the window on. It might have taken fifteen minutes. And suddenly he was saying everything he’d wanted to say for weeks, for years. And enjoying it. A thrill. A physical thrill, a pleasure, even though she was crying. And how could that be? How could he enjoy that?
Gary propped the door on shims and nailed the hinges. He could feel the frame shift with the blows, rickety. He’d have to buy brackets in town, but hopefully it would hold for now. You have to think you’re a good person. That was the thing. And how was he a good person if he enjoyed making her cry? Something wrong with him, something that needed looking at. Their marriage somehow had brought out the worst in him.
The window was next. He didn’t feel like waiting for Irene. The frame thin, and aluminum, so it wouldn’t crack and he wouldn’t have to nail at an angle. They really could have done this last night in ten or fifteen minutes.
Alone building the cabin. That was the truth. Marriage only another form of being alone. He set the stool in place, held the window up, leaned against it, pinning it to the wall, and hammered a nail. Held the other nails in his teeth. Pounded one on each side and then could let go. Pounded in the rest, all the way around. That’s not going anywhere, he said.
Gary stepped back and looked at his cabin. The outward shape of a man’s mind, he had thought before. A reflection. But he could see now that was not true. You could find an outward shape only if you entered the right field, the right profession, if you followed your calling. If you took the wrong path, all you could shape was monstrosity. This was without doubt the ugliest cabin he had ever seen, a thing misunderstood and badly constructed from beginning to end. The outward shape of how he had lived his life, but not the outward shape of who he could have been. That truer form had been lost, had never happened, but he didn’t feel sad any longer, or angry, really. He understood now that it just was.
Gary walked around back. He had meant for the door to open outward, but it opened inward. So he pushed in and propped it with a rock, the first time entering his finished cabin, a cabin with a roof, window, and door, and he set a stool in front of the window. This was not what he had imagined. In his visions and daydreams, the inside of the cabin had been warm, and he’d sat in a comfortable chair, smoking a pipe. There’d been a wood stove, the hides of bear and mountain goat, Dall sheep and moose, wolf. He hadn’t seen what the floor looked like, but it had not been unfinished ply. And the walls had not let in air. The cabin of his visions had been small but had extended outward infinitely in that dreamtime of belonging. Its walls traveled outward into wilderness. This lake and the mountains became him. No voids, no distance. And there was no Irene. In all the times he had dreamed of the cabin, he had never seen Irene. He hadn’t realized that until now. She was not sitting in a chair beside him, not standing at the wood stove. No place for her in Gary’s dream. He was smoking his pipe, sitting here by the window, looking out at the water, and he was alone in the wilderness. That was what he wanted. That was what he had always wanted.
This island was not right for Irene. The trees too close, too crowded. Trunks no more than a foot wide, spaced three or four feet apart, every space closed by the lower dead branches, thin curved half-hoops aiming at the ground, brittle and fracturing as she pushed through. Never an open space, never a place to run or look out over ridges and valleys. If she found a moose, she would be close enough to touch its hide with her hand. Her bow would be unnecessary. Tangled constantly in the branches. She kept having to yank it free. She was moving fast, a walk that was just short of running. And this was who she was meant to be, walking fast or running through snow and forest. A more open landscape, perhaps, but the same cold and snow. The uncountable generations before her.
She held the bow close, tried to keep it from snagging. Felt exhilarated. Looking for movement, listening to the forest, listening beyond her own footsteps and scrapings. Her blood running thick and beating outward to echo in the forest, a kind of sonar. Nothing could hide from her.
She stopped dead, planted her feet, brought the bow up and notched an arrow. Pulled back hard against the pulleys, felt them turn and break free into the easier part of the pull, held the arrow tight against her cheek and sighted down the razored tip to a cottonwood trunk fifty feet away. Let the arrow fly, the whip of the release, and the arrow buried deep into the trunk. The flight so fast it was instant memory, not something that could be experienced, only known afterward. Irene ran to the cottonwood, examined the arrow buried into the flesh of the tree, four slits lighter against the bark, almost invisible, radiating out from the post, and if she peered into these slits she could just see the back edges of the blades. No way to retrieve this arrow, so she held the bow close again and ran on.
Exhaustion. That was what she wanted. She wanted to run until she could run no more. But she was fueled by some other source now, something beyond muscle and blood. She never tired. She crossed all the way to the shore on the other side of the island, broke free into tufts of grass and rocky beach and saw Frying Pan Island, its graceful curve, notched an arrow, aimed high, and sent it soaring into another forest. Stepped along the water’s edge and hunted larger stones and shadows of reflection and ice, notched another arrow and ripped into the surface. Vanished then, hidden by ripples, and she thought she’d heard blades hit rock but didn’t know whether she’d only imagined it.
Two arrows left, and she would save those. She needed trees again, hurried back into cover, hunted patches of moss, from one to the next, up hills and down into swales, over ridges. Everything closed in, the trees too tight. She was freed against gravity, lofted over hills, scraped and crashing through. She’d been awake for more hours than could be counted, and somehow this brought a new power, her footsteps light in the snow, the air something that could pull her forward. And it felt as if the entire island were rolling, slowly turning over, capsizing. She had to keep her feet moving fast to stay upright. The island born long ago at lake bottom, rising to the surface on some kind of stalk, and now that stalk had been severed and the island was top-heavy, the hills of rock, the trees, and it would roll over until its slick flat underside was facing upward, wet and dark and known for thousands of years only to the lake, new to the sky. What would happen then? But Irene would no longer be here.
Origins. That was the problem. If we didn’t know where we had started, we couldn’t know where we should end, or how. Lost all along the way. Pulled into Gary’s life, the wrong life.
What Irene knew for certain was that this was not the beginning. She would not be made new again. And she would take Gary with her. That had been her mother’s mistake, taking only herself. It was not right that Irene’s father had lived on in some other life, a life without his wife or daughter, a life severed from its origins, a life that could not connect in any way to Irene. That life should not have happened, should not have been allowed.
Irene had lain awake all night again, and in those first hours she wept, raged against Gary and unfairness, injustice, wanted to punish but really wanted to come closer to him. Wanted to continue with him, as wrong as that was. Tried to find a path back, but finally she had calmed and known there was no path back. He didn’t love her, and he had never loved her, but he had used her life anyway. This was truth. Nothing she could do could make that change. It was beyond her power. She had felt her mind a vacuum, windblown space inside her, lain there empty for hours, waited for daylight, and finally this exhilaration, a gift, a final gift. It felt almost as if the pain might leave, still crowding her, still pressurizing, but promising to leave.
Snapping through branches, running downhill now, everything passing too fast to recognize. She had known this forest, and if she slowed, she might find signs, might recognize monkshood, its purple flower, the weight of that flower bending, but she was moving too fast, running, a full run, no stopping now, and she didn’t bother to shield with her arms. Let the branches scrape at her face.
Footfalls in snow and moss, the burn of skin on her hands and face and neck, the cold overcast sky above, and her body could weave on its own between trees. Irene, anything that could be called Irene, removed, quiet. Coming closer to the cabin, her legs slowed, a walk and then slower still, hunting as she had once hunted with Gary, making no sound, avoiding branches now, pushing at them carefully, bending to the side, not breaking. Emerging between the tents, directly behind the cabin. Standing still, listening for any movement, any sound, hearing nothing but a light breeze and small waves at the shore. Water and air, and blood, beating faster now. He wouldn’t be in the tents. He’d be in the cabin or at the shore. So Irene pulled an arrow free, set it and notched it, black bow, black arrow against white snow, walked silently toward the cabin door.
The door frame new and mounted on the outside, white and out of place against the logs. Trash bags and flats of canned goods piled all around. Closer until she was nearly at the threshold, and still she heard nothing. The cabin seemed larger now, the back wall high. Rough bark, gaps, some logs projecting out farther than others. She hadn’t noticed before how uneven the surface, valleys and ridges, a landscape set up on end. She waited at the threshold, let her eyes adjust, darker inside the cabin, but enough light coming from the window and gaps to see the plywood floor. The window itself not yet in view, set off farther to the right, blocked by the door. A dim space and no sign of Gary.
Irene stepped in, bow held close and ready.
Irene? Gary asked. He was sitting five feet from her, on a stool by the window. Lit in relief, the lines on his face. Old. What are you doing, Irene?
She stepped back. More difficult now that she was here and he was talking to her. He stood up, hands opening toward her, fingers in relief in this light. Irene, he said again.
She pulled back the arrow tight against her cheek.
I love you, Irene, he said, and suddenly it was easy again. She let the arrow fly, saw it disappear into his chest. Only the black feathers sticking out past his jacket. He was spun around to the side, looking down at his chest, and fell to the floor, facedown. The arrowhead and shaft sticking up into the air.
Gary crying. Or screaming. Some sound over the blood in Irene’s head. She walked closer and notched her last arrow. His legs and arms moving, pulling himself across the floor toward the wall. And what would he find at the wall? She pulled the arrow back to her cheek, aimed down at his back, and let another arrow fly. Another cry from Gary, the arrow too fast to see. Just suddenly there, sticking up high. But it had nailed him to the floor. He couldn’t crawl forward now. Arms and legs still moving, but not getting anywhere. Still not dead, and she had no more arrows. His screaming lower, a thing that did not sound human. Irene dropped the bow and didn’t know what to do. She stood there waiting for him to die, but he wouldn’t die. An awful, animal sound, the last sound a living thing makes. Her husband. Gary.
Irene walked outside, walked down to the shore. The lake a magnification of sky, white and overcast, cold. Irene felt hot, like she could sear through water and sky and snow, even rock. She was a giantess, powerful, able to crush mountains and scoop out lakes with her hands. Walked down the shoreline and this was her shore. Didn’t feel the wind. Had the need to run, so she ran again, ran faster than she ever had before, the uneven stones and pools and ruffs nothing. She was sure-footed. The world had never been real. There was no gravity, nothing to slow her or hold her down. She ran as her mind willed, the world an extension of her. The waves, the grasses, the snow, all of it created in unison.
But then she had to slow, began to tire somehow. Walked on all the way to the far point, close to Frying Pan Island, looked across at its shore. Felt the urge to swim there, to cross the water, leave this island, but something held her back. She had more to do. She wasn’t finished yet. So she turned around, walked back toward the cabin.
The exhilaration would leave her, she knew. It was a gift, but only a temporary one. She could feel it thinning, dissipating. Ran again, trying to recapture it. Her feet sloppy on the stones, ankles twisting. Making contact now, hard and unyielding, no longer floating above, no longer sure-footed. She slowed to a walk.
The tops of the mountains hidden from view, the summits, the wide bowls. Only the flanks below the cloud line. She wanted to cross to the mountains. The lake should have been frozen, like in her vision. She would cross and climb the mountain. That was how it was supposed to be. What she had done was supposed to happen later, in midwinter. But how could she have waited until then?
Panes of ice all along the edge, broken by waves. Small pools gone opaque. Dark rocks damp from mist or spray. This thin band, margin between water and earth. This time she had now, this brief time when anything might be possible, perhaps, when her life might be anything, but she knew there was only one possibility.
When she reached the boat, she untied the line. Thick cord, strong, thirty feet, more than enough. She walked up toward the cabin, and she went slowly now. Something in her didn’t want to go.
Alder branches brushing against her, last time on what had nearly become a path, the growth beaten down by their passings. A place never meant to be their home, a place intended from the very first to be their end. And she had gone along with that, even though she knew. Had Gary known?
When she stood over him again, he was silent, no longer moving. No more of whatever that sound had been. Something she didn’t want to hear. But now it was peaceful. He was quiet, resting facedown.
Irene set the stool at the other end of the cabin, a few feet from the side wall. Reached up and pushed the rope over a joist. The aluminum sheeting tight, but she could force it through, pulled enough to make a noose. Not sure how to tie the knot. Hadn’t looked at what her mother tied. In movies, it was a big knot with many wrappings, so she wrapped and tied half-hitches, like Gary had shown her for the boat. It didn’t look right, but it would have to do.
Irene hammered a nail on either side of the joist, forward of the rope, so it wouldn’t slide, stacked cutoffs of two-by-eights on top of the stool so she could stand higher and have farther to drop. She stood on that pile, very precarious, and put the noose around her neck and cinched it tight, then realized the rope had to be loose for the snap. So she stepped down carefully, measured while she stood on the lowest step, and pulled the rope tight. Rough on her neck, damp. She needed to tie the free end somewhere secure.
Irene looked all around and couldn’t find anything. No anchor point or post strong enough. But then she looked at Gary and thought of something beautiful. She tied the end around his upper body. Had to lift his head and one shoulder and then the other. She could smell him, his bowels voided when he died. Smell of blood, too. All of this increasing the pressure in her head somehow. That had promised to leave but hadn’t. A splitting pain, and it made her work more urgent. She cinched the rope tight around him, tied it off. The arrows would keep it from slipping.
And then she had to step outside again. The smells too much, the pain in her head. She didn’t know if she could go through with this. It was too much, really. Leading herself to slaughter like an animal. She didn’t know how her mother had done it. And so much less trapped. Hadn’t committed murder. For Irene, there was no choice, but for her mother, there had still been a choice. How had she done that?
Irene walked into the trees. Close cover a comfort now, hidden. Walked aimlessly among the trunks, followed patches of moss poking out through snow, the snow thin and light, in some places no more than a dusting, blocked by branches above. She lay down in a large patch of moss, curled on her side. Up close, like a tiny forest, each finger of moss as large and grand as any spruce and more perfectly formed. Not bent or misshapen, but symmetrical, with layers of branches exactly like a tree, and a defiance of gravity at this smaller scale, the ends of the branches unbowed. Hundreds of miniature trees reaching upward. She reached out and touched one of them, pushed it to the side and it sprang back. She snapped it off at its base, snapped off its neighbors, felled a forest.
Rose again and walked farther into the trees but didn’t know where she was going or what she was doing. Circled back toward the cabin, and when she broke from the trees, stopped and looked at the tents and the cabin, the stove set up between. Their camp. Her husband dead. A murderer. That’s how she would be known forever. Daughter, preschool teacher, wife, mother, murderer, suicide. The earlier ones would be forgotten. Only the last two remembered. She walked to the cabin door, stepped inside, and held her breath. Walked over to the stool and noose, placed her neck in the noose and pulled down with her chin, pointed a toe at the floor, checking to see whether she’d hit. There had to be air underneath still. It was no good if she hit.