Authors: David Vann
Milky with silt, and calm. You could imagine it was only ankle-deep. As Gary cut the engine and they glided toward shore, Irene could hear seagulls on a rocky perch farther up the lake. The smallest of the islands, exposed rock covered white in guano. No wind today, sunny and still, the last good weather of summer. Next week, the first of the fall storms forecast.
Irene looked over the side to see blue-gray stones emerge below the hull. The milky water somehow clear in close, a looking glass, magnifying the stones, bringing them closer. It seemed they should already be touching. The boat bumped, finally, its bottom scraping, and Irene hoisted her backpack, climbed carefully over the side, rubber boot sucking close to her ankle and shin in the water. Slippery. In her backpack, a tent and sleeping bag, pots and pans, clothing. Gary carrying a Coleman stove, another tent. Setting up camp so they could work longer days. From when they rose each morning to when they went to sleep, they would work on the cabin.
Irene careful over the slick stones, a few steps onto shore, more stones but dry and gray, small tufts of grass, miniature freshwater tidal pools of algae and mosquitoes, a cloud of them around her now, going for her knuckles and wrists, any place of bone and blood close to the surface. A narrow band of grass and rock along the shore, then the taller grass and wildflowers no longer in bloom. Most likely there was purple iris, prickly rose, shy maiden, pink twin flower, pyrola, others yellow and white she couldn’t yet name. Deadfall and ruts all through here, Irene hoping not to trip under the weight of the pack.
The alder thicket a third band up from shore, bright green in the sun, all the earth green. The growth thick in here, cobwebs lacing the air. Irene tried to keep her steps light, to avoid any jarring. Her husband behind her, the sound of his faster steps, snapping of small branches.
Perfect day for setting up camp, he said as he passed, and she didn’t reply. She kept her head down, red fireweed in a large patch, the tops already bloomed. A sign of fall coming, the beginning of the end. Six weeks until snow when the tops bloomed, and they had opened a while ago, though she had forgotten to notice exactly when. After enough years here, you could begin to fear that flower, so it was odd she hadn’t noticed.
Irene passed through low alder to the edge of the larger forest, where their cabin tottered too far inward on one side, too far outward on another. The entire thing ready to topple. They’d brought a load of two-by-fours, to set up braces.
Irene walked back to the boat, passing Gary who grinned and jigged his eyebrows. Good eats, he said, carrying a plastic tub of food.
Irene wanted to respond, wanted to make this easier. But she couldn’t. Off medication, every edge was sharp. She had to move carefully, had to avoid speaking or facial expressions.
She grabbed half a dozen two-by-fours from the boat, stepped slowly up through tufts and ruts, set the wood down and returned for another load. Nothing was wrong, so she needed to just wait for the pain to go away.
What a beautiful spot, Gary said. I love this place.
It is beautiful, she said, wincing. But Gary was all movement, didn’t see. He dropped off a cooler and spun around quick for the next load.
Tools and supplies, enough food for two weeks, a toilet seat for an outhouse, more nails and a window and door, two-by-fours and a come-along for pulling the walls into shape: they were making their full assault now.
One last load of wood, then Gary cleared a spot for the tent, near a stand of birch, behind the cabin. Can you help me put up the tent? he called out, as if she weren’t standing nearby on a windless day. It was the excitement. He wanted to do everything at once.
So she helped, a big tent, enough room for the two of them and all their clothing and gear.
What about the food? Irene asked. How do we keep it away from bears?
No bears out here, Gary said. It’s an island.
Bears do swim.
Yeah, but not just to come visiting. It’s a long way from shore.
Only a couple hundred yards on the close side, right?
Something like that. Let’s just put the food in the tent for now. Help me with the cooler. So they put their food next to their sleeping bags.
Now the other tent, Gary said. They looked for level ground, feeling their way through the undergrowth. Large patches of club moss, spongy and soft, lady ferns, shield ferns, an area with more shade.
Seems okay here, Gary said. We’re not sleeping in this one, so it can be a little bumpy.
Irene helped unroll another tarp and tent, helped drive in stakes and spread the rain fly. If only the cabin could be this easy. She and Gary loaded tools and supplies, everything except the wood, into the tent, then stood back and looked at their little camp.
Not bad, Gary said. Outhouse is next.
Irene looked at the lake, so calm today, the mountains reflected. Peaks clear, upper snow patches outlining ridges, the edge of the Harding Icefield. Sunny and warm, maybe seventy degrees. She’d taken her jacket off. The kind of day when all could seem possible.
It shouldn’t be far from the cabin, Gary was saying. We’ll need to use it through the winter.
Let’s just build it on the back of the cabin, Irene said. So we don’t have to go outside at all.
Irene.
What? Every time I have to use the bathroom, I have to wade through a bunch of snow?
The snow’s not too bad here.
Is it the kind that’s not cold and wet?
Irene.
Irene yourself. Build the damn thing on the back of the cabin, just sticking out from the wall. Put a door on it.
We’ll smell the outhouse all winter.
Then so be it. If we’re going to live like shit, we should smell shit.
Gary turned away from her. The kind of moment he was looking for, she knew. Enough fights about this ridiculous cabin and he could justify leaving. Put her in an impossible situation and then say the marriage was impossible. The beauty of it was that he could lie so well to himself he’d still think he was the good guy. He’d actually believe he’d done everything he could.
Look, she said. You can build it ten feet away, with a short hallway connecting. Put a door on both ends. Maybe that way we won’t smell it.
Gary considered. He walked along the back wall of the cabin, turned in place several times, pacing things out. Okay, he said finally. I can do something like that. But we have to move the supply tent to make room.
Crisis averted, and if it was this easy, she wondered whether she could refuse the entire cabin right now. Just say no to the whole idea and go home. But she knew that was not possible. Because the cabin was not about the cabin.
They pulled all the tools and supplies out of the second tent, found another spot farther back, put it up and loaded again. The afternoon passing, Gary looking at his watch.
It’s getting late, he said, and we haven’t even started the outhouse yet. Punishment, indirect. Letting her know the consequences.
Yeah, Irene said. Bummer it’s not June.
Gary tight-lipped after that. Grabbing the shovel to chop a pathway through the growth, a narrow aisle to a larger square for the outhouse, about four feet by four feet. His T-shirt darkening from sweat.
Irene finally pulled the cooler from their tent, sat down on it to watch him work. Digging to China, tearing a hole in the earth to let her know how he felt. No different from a little boy. She should grab him and make him take the tit, rock him until he fell asleep.
It aggravated Irene that she’d had to take care of this man for thirty years. The weight of his complaints and impatience, his failures, and in return, his vacancy. Why had any of that seemed okay?
Irene couldn’t watch him anymore. She got up and walked into the trees. All shaded here, cooler, the trunks close, every tree with rakes of slim dead branches, thin curved fingers, leftovers, perhaps, from when they were much younger. Snapping against her as she broke through, all the green and new growth much higher. Spruce and birch, trees you could tire of after enough years in Alaska. The occasional cottonwood with its rougher bark, a few aspen.
Narrow pathways like alleys opened up, and she followed these, game trails. Small patches of moss and fern, the forest quiet. Irene a hunter or hunted, either way the same feeling, the same awareness of the forest, the same waiting for sound or movement, the same awareness of breath. It was time to hunt again, to bring her bow out here. But she was accompanied now by this new thing, this new betrayal of body, something she couldn’t fight, couldn’t track, could never see because it didn’t exist. Irene climbed higher, hitting plateaus and slopes all hidden by forest, until she had reached a hump with no higher to go, still surrounded, still no view, a panorama that was there but blocked on every side.
Sunday, and Rhoda and Jim both had the day off, so they slept late, had sex, napped again, then just lay there. Jim with his eyes closed, Rhoda with her head propped on his chest, looking at the view. Slow rollers coming up the inlet, a clear and sunny day. Slim black spruce in the flats before the beach, standing individually. They’d always seemed like people to Rhoda, vagabonds heading toward the sea, each walking alone. She could imagine a lower branch as a hand, holding a small suitcase.
The trees look like people, Rhoda said.
What? Jim asked.
The spruce out there, like people, a little bit shaggy, like the Whos of Whoville.
Huh, he said.
You’re not looking.
Okay, he said, and propped his head with a pillow. Rhoda readjusted lower on his chest. The trees out there? he asked.
Yeah.
I guess I can see that. Small ones for the kids, bigger ones for the adults. They’re about the right height.
And where are they going? she asked.
Sounds like a loaded question.
Hm, Rhoda said. It wasn’t. I wasn’t thinking of that.
Sorry, he said.
My parents are so weird. Promise me we’ll never be like them.
That’s easy.
Rhoda laughed. They are freaks.
You’re the one who said it.
When do I meet your parents?
I don’t know, Jim said. They moved to Arizona.
That’s all you ever say about them.
Well I don’t go down there, and they don’t come up here.
That’s sad.
No it’s not. It’s an accidental relationship, unchosen. I never would have chosen them as friends. I don’t even like them.
That’s really sad.
Not for me. I don’t care at all.
Hm, Rhoda said. She didn’t like this side of Jim, cold and unconnected to anyone. It didn’t sound true, and it certainly didn’t fit her vision of having kids and cozy family scenes. Accidental and unchosen.
Am I accidental and unchosen? she finally asked.
Rhoda, he said.
Really. Is it just because I’m here, and available?
No. I love you. You know that.
Rhoda propped up and looked into his eyes. Really? she asked. Can you promise me that?
Absolutely, he said, and pulled her close for a kiss.
Okay, she said, and settled back against his chest. Some of his chest hair was turning gray. A change just in the last year since they’d been living together. And his stomach going soft, a little mound. A thickening at his sides. Eleven years older than her.
I’m worried about my mom, she said.
Yeah. I thought Romano would find something.
I don’t know what’s wrong with her. I don’t know how to help her.
Hm.
Rhoda could tell Jim wasn’t really interested in this subject. Too messy and complicated. You don’t want to talk about this.
I’m fine, Jim said. Really.
I try to understand her, and I just can’t. Maybe it’s retirement. I know she misses her work and feels pointless now. And they don’t have as much money as they wanted for retirement, so she probably worries about that. But there’s something else, too, something more important going on. It’s like she’s making her own secret deals with the gods.
Whoa, Jim said. That sounds a little grand.
I’m serious, though. She’s decided the world is against her, and it’s like she’s getting ready for battle. She’s all paranoid. And then I try to say something, and she knows I’m not in there with the gods. I don’t get to decide anything. I only get to watch it all happen, so I don’t matter.
That’s not true. You matter to her.
I used to. But I don’t now. I think the pain in her head is from getting ready to go to war. And I know the war is with my dad, but I can’t figure out what it’s really about, because I’m not in it.
Rhoda, Jim said. I’m sorry, but I think you’re going off the deep end yourself. You’re making too much of this. She has some kind of pain, probably from being a stress case. Or she needs to get used to retirement, like you said. But that’s it. She’ll get over it.
I don’t think she will. And Rhoda realized this was true. She felt very sad suddenly. She didn’t believe her mother would recover from this. Because whatever was wrong was pulling in every part of her life. That was the key. It was reaching across time. I don’t think she’ll get better, she said to Jim. I really don’t.
Jim held her then, both arms wrapped around her, and she closed her eyes and wanted to find some way to stop everything, but it was all darkness, a void, nothing to grab onto. When are you going to marry me, Jim? she asked. I need something solid. She couldn’t believe she had just said that, said those words aloud. But she had.
There was a long and ugly pause, and she could feel his breath and heart quickening. I love you, Rhoda, he finally said.
Not enough. When are you going to marry me?
The wash table was a cold aluminum trough, a wading pool of blood and saltwater. Carl’s hands aching from the cold, fingers sore. The salmon came to him gutted and beheaded, but he needed to grip thin, clear membranes with his triple-gloved hands and pull them out, then flick onto the floor. Four or five tries for every membrane before he could find it, and sometimes it wasn’t there.
The chu-chunk of the beheading machine a steady rhythm, every few seconds, another fish coming his way, and he was starting to panic. Too many fish, a backup at the wash table. Metallica blasting on speakers above.
Three others were working the same job, all faster, but the fish were piling up, filling the blood bath. The woman across from him, another college student, wasn’t actually grabbing any membranes, so that was stressing him out. She’d give the fish a light caress on each side, to wash off the blood, then give a peek inside the gutted area of the body, where the membranes were hiding, and throw the fish onto a white plastic chute in the middle of the table, sending it on to the inspectors. Each time she threw, she managed to splat the tail against the chute, flicking slime and water onto Carl’s face. She had it perfected. And she’d throw three fish for every one of his.
The inspectors two more women, similar age but not in college, at the end of the trough. They were supposed to give a quick check and sort the fish. Any with gashes or broken spines thrown into a side bin. Any other species of salmon in another bin, because they were packing sockeye only. But they’d pull a membrane or push out a blood spot or pluck a bit of gill if the fish wasn’t clean, and they didn’t seem to care that they had to do this with every one of this other woman’s fish and none of Carl’s. They chatted the whole time, locals, having to shout over the Metallica. They’d worked here for years, and they had a low opinion of the place.
Dude, you can’t get fired from a cannery, one said to the other, especially this cannery. This is as low as it gets.
They chatted about men and money, and they’d had this job so long they didn’t have to pay it any attention. But Carl struggled with every fish. First the membrane, trying to find an edge somewhere down by the asshole, then looking for two blood pockets up near where the head had been removed. He had to push hard with a thumb to get this blood to pop out. Then checking for any leftover pieces of gill and trying to scrape the extra blood from the backbone. Impossible to get all of it, and he had no tool. Just a rough cotton glove over a plastic glove over another cotton glove. Because theoretically, everything had already been removed by a person with a gutting spoon on the conveyor belt. So that was the person Carl resented most.
Carl resented everyone upstream of him, though. They were all skilled, all higher paid, and all had easier jobs. One stood with a shovel and helped move fish from enormous slush tanks. This guy spent a lot of time just standing there watching the fish go by. Then someone lined up the fish so their heads faced the same way. This is the job Carl would have liked. Then a guy made one quick slit from asshole to gullet. One flick of the knife for each fish. Then the beheader. He moved the fish only a few inches, lining up the head for a heavy set of blades. A guillotine, and dangerous. But he wore a lanyard that was attached to the table and kept his hand from scooting too far forward. And he moved the fish hardly at all.
Only men at the head of the stream, until the next station, ripping out the guts. A woman did that. The guts traveled on a small conveyor belt to another woman who sorted the roe, the red sack of eggs, into a small plastic basket. Like a diviner, reading futures from each plop of guts onto her table. Then she’d scrape it clean with a quick swoop before the next plop came.
After that, knives and men again, one quick slit to open the blood along the spine. Then a woman with a spoon to scoop out all the blood and a man with a spray nozzle to wash it down. All of this on a wide conveyor belt, light blue plastic, and the fish exited with a flop into the wash table trough. Every flop spattered the guy standing to the left of Carl, and the guy flinched every time. Worst position in the plant, and though Carl had to pee like a madman, he wouldn’t leave, because he knew the guy would step to the side and Carl would get stuck there.
So the problem was either the woman with the gutting spoon or the man with the spray nozzle. One of them was supposed to be getting the membrane and the last of the blood, but they just sent the fish on as quickly as possible. The salmon kept piling up at the wash table until they were in danger of spilling over the sides and the conveyor was backing up, and there was no water within reach for washing. A mountain of carcasses and no way to wash, and Carl thought he might scream.
Sean, the manager, appeared at the clean aluminum table beyond the inspectors and barked for fish to be sent his way. So the inspectors grabbed fish from the wash table quick and scooted about fifty. Sean glanced inside each one then passed it along to where it was boxed in ice, ready to be shipped. Another sign that Carl’s job was entirely pointless. The boss sending all these fish along in a bypass, after Carl had endured over an hour of rubbish, at five a.m., about quality control in the plant. There was a bucket of hot chlorinated hand wash behind Carl that he could dip his hands into, for instance, and this would help keep the fish cleaner and increase shelf life, but he could never risk walking over to this bucket to warm his hands, because then the guy next to him would step to the side and Carl would be splatted by every arriving salmon. A roving inspector checked temperatures and made sure everyone was doing their jobs, but he stood by the woman across from Carl and seemed to think that her nothing peek into the carcass was sufficient.
To Carl, all of life’s lessons were apparent here. Everything he should have learned already in college. Everything he needed to understand about his future. He made the list in his head as he pushed at blood and scraped for membranes:
1. Don’t work with other people.
2. Don’t work a manual job.
3. Be glad you don’t have to work as a woman.
4. There’s no such thing as quality control. All the other terms of business are bullshit also. The business world is where thoughts and language go to die.
5. Work means nothing except money. So find a job that means more than this, something ideally that doesn’t feel like work.
But the most important lesson was that Carl needed to leave immediately. There were no prizes for sticking around in a shitty situation. He would call his mother tonight and beg for a ticket home. He didn’t care what it would cost him in the end. He was not going to spend even one more day in this place.
Everyone went on break, finally, fifteen minutes after four hours of salmon. It took Carl five minutes to take off his raingear bibs and pee, then he stood outside, by the campfire. A metal pit in the dirt, no flames but a few coals and lots of smoke. The smoke coming Carl’s direction most of the time, dousing him. He and his fellow fish processors stood in a circle staring at the coals, one of the guys talking about his bar fight and brief jail stay. He’d been released this morning just in time for work.
My ex comes in with this known crack dealer, and that means this guy is spending time with my kid. I know who he is, and he knows who I am. He comes right over, and I don’t do anything. I just sit there as he rants.
Carl had trouble making sense of this story, because the guy looked so mild-mannered. Same age as Carl, a bit thicker and stronger, light red beard, but he didn’t look like someone with an ex who was with a crack dealer.
He yells up in my face for maybe half an hour, some incredible length of time. I thought he would stop, but he didn’t, so I finally said, Let’s take it outside.
Let’s take it outside, Carl repeated aloud. What a cliché, he was thinking, grinning a bit, but no one shared this moment with him. Odd looks from the teller and others, only a brief pause in the story. Carl an outsider, as usual.
I slip my beer bottle in my pocket, something he doesn’t see, and when we’re outside, I break the end against the railing and tell him I’m ready.
The group was impressed, Carl could tell. Carl was not impressed. He couldn’t believe he was hanging out with these knuckleheads.
So he doesn’t fuck with me when he sees the bottle. We just circle around and he doesn’t dare get close. And then the cops come, and it’s my friend Bill. I’m just like, do you want me to put the handcuffs on myself? He’s already had to do this a couple times, and he’s like dude, how do you get into this shit? So it was cool. I spent the night at the station, and they let me out in time for work.
Everyone looked at the coals another minute or so, no comments about the story, then it was time to go in, the break over. Back to the guts.
Carl in pole position this time, splatted every time a carcass hit the pool. He tried not to flinch. Cold slime hitting his face and left ear, in his hair. It’s only slime and blood, he told himself. It’ll wash off. He tried to figure out some small way to hurt this business and his coworkers, but he couldn’t think of anything. He was inconsequential. He could do the non-job the woman across from him was doing, but since he was standing here anyway, he decided to keep removing the membranes and blood. Only another four hours. His right hand cramped up, cold, but he could ignore that.
He needed to call his mom, say good-bye to Mark and thank him, and also figure out what to do with Monique’s backpack.
The salmon began appearing with heads. Gutted and gills removed, but heads on. Some change in the plans, and Carl hadn’t been notified, but his job still the same. The eyes wide, dilated, silver-rimmed. Hooked lower jaws on some of them, almost like beaks. The males, perhaps. He wasn’t finding membranes.
Something’s different, he yelled to one of the inspectors over the music. I can’t find any membranes.
These already came through the line yesterday, she yelled back. Head and gills. But the order changed, and now they’re without gills.
Cool, he said.
Yeah, she yelled. It’s great. Why not do everything twice. Motto of this cannery.
You sound like a disgruntled employee.
Bite me.
Carl tried to laugh, but the way she said it was actually kind of mean, and she wasn’t looking at him anymore. The other peons at the wash table gave a quick look up, no sympathy, and looked back down at the fish.
A pause in the line, enough time for the peons to catch up, and then half a dozen smaller salmon came by, whole. Not gutted or beheaded, the upstream folks just watching them pass by. Carl was confused, but he gave a quick wash in the blood pool and passed a salmon along. Smaller, lighter, a little bullet. A different species, but he didn’t ask anyone. Who cared what it was, anyway.
And then they all shifted over to another long table on the other side of the warehouse. Plastic wheelbarrows full of halibut. Flat ghosts. Sideways mouths and thick lips, open, expressions of despair. Their tops dark mottled green, camouflaged, ugly. A beast from another time that hadn’t imagined humans. Floor-dwellers, safely hidden away in the deep, swallowing whatever came near, and they could have gone on like that for the next hundred million years. Carl didn’t want to be a part of this destruction anymore, so he stepped off the line and found Sean, the boss.
I’m sorry, he told Sean. I can’t do this. I need to go home.
You have to finish the shift, Sean said.
I can’t. I need to leave now.
Then you leave without pay.
No, Carl said. You’re paying me for my six hours, forty-eight dollars cash right now, or I’m going to hurt you. I’m serious. I hate this place and everyone in it, and I’ll take all of that out on you. So pay me my fucking money now.
Sean smiled. Fuck off, he said. Then he turned his back on Carl and walked slowly away.
So Carl stood there enraged at the latest sign that the world would not bend to his will, then went to the rack to hang up his raingear. He pulled off the rubber boots, changed into his shoes, and left. Carrying his own backpack and Monique’s, he staggered up the beach to a campground where motor homes had gathered for dip-netting. Empty boat trailers, four-wheelers and dirt bikes, nets and garbage and tents. They had a long-drop outhouse he had used before, and this would be perfect for Monique’s stuff. He wasn’t going to carry around her shit anymore.
He had to wait, and a fat old man came out, finally, swinging the wooden door wide. Carl left his own backpack outside on the ground, stepped in with Monique’s and closed the door. The light dim, air thick, and he didn’t want to get any shit on her backpack, because he was planning to keep it himself, so he stepped outside and set it on the ground, opened up the top and pulled out an armload of her clothing. The panties he’d been all excited about once upon a time, her T-shirts and socks and jeans, scarves, sweaters, all this crap, and he stood over the long-drop to toss one item at a time. Fuck you, Monique, he said to the toilet. And fuck you, Alaska. Thank you very much for a delightful summer. The old man had finished the pile below with very light brown shit, covered now by her clothing. This is what Alaska is, right here, Carl said. A place where people shit. Just a bigger toilet.
He saved her expensive sleeping bag and other small bits of gear. A headlamp, a tiny stove, a knife. But every last scrap of clothing went in the hole, and he felt better, a lot better. Her pack lighter now, something he could carry in one hand.
So then he was on to the phone. Called his mother collect. I have to get out of here, he said.
What about Monique? she asked.
Left me for a dentist. An old guy, like forty or something.
Oh pumpkin.
Yeah, he said, tears forming, feeling sorry for himself. Hearing his mom’s voice brought out all the self-pity.
You’ll find someone else, she said.
Yeah, he said. He could hardly speak, his chest tight, and this whole scene struck him as ridiculous, laughable. But you can’t fake feelings, and he was grateful to have his mom, someone in the world who would help him out. She said she’d deposit cash in his account within an hour so he could get dinner and a bus to Anchorage in the morning, and she’d book a flight. Expressions of love, and then he was walking to the beach to pitch his tent. He had wanted to find Mark to thank him, but now he just didn’t care. He was through with Alaska.