Legend of a Suicide (18 page)

In the first part of March, Jim scrabbled around at the water’s edge trying to catch crabs. They were still here, even in winter, but they seemed faster now. Each time he reached out, they retreated sideways into a crevice and disappeared. It took him a long time to realize that the crabs had not actually gotten faster but he had slowed. He hadn’t eaten a regular meal in almost a week. He’d had mostly seaweed and water. And for several months before that, he’d been conserving. He saw now that this had been a mistake. He had made himself too weak. He went back to the cabin and tried to outthink the crabs.

The next day, he went after their babies. He overturned rocks and, sure enough, just as he had hoped, occasionally he found small colonies of baby crabs that were too small to get away from him. He picked them up by the handful and didn’t see how he was going to be able to clean them in his usual way, so he just ate them whole and crunched them down, shells and guts and all.

I’ll be shitting shell necklaces, he told them. It’s going to be real pretty. He chewed well so that the pieces wouldn’t come out too big.

At Roy’s grave, he spent a long time talking about Roy’s mother and how they had met and what had gone wrong. She was only my second serious girlfriend, really, he told Roy. My
brother thinks that was a mistake, to settle down with only the second one, and I think he’s probably right. The thing is, the first one had dumped me, and I think I was mostly scared when I went out with your mother. And there were things that were never right with her. Her parents, for instance. They didn’t like me, thought I was too much a country boy, because they had money. Your grandfather, especially, I didn’t get along with. The man was a bastard. Your mom didn’t want to be critical of him, but he had been hitting his wife and doing other terrible stuff all along. So we couldn’t talk about that. And then, generally, she wanted me to talk more, to entertain her more. She told me about a year into our marriage that she had just expected that eventually I’d have interesting things to say. That wasn’t real nice to hear. I don’t think she thought much about what she said sometimes. Anyway.

It was while Jim was out talking to Roy that he heard the boat go by close and slow down. He got to his feet and trotted as fast as he could toward the beach, but then he stopped. He could hear it out there, at low revs, probably checking out the cabin, but he couldn’t decide whether to run the rest of the way and flag them down. That seemed like too much for this particular day. He didn’t feel ready yet. So he hid in the trees and waited, unsure, and then he heard the engines rev up again and the boat was gone.

Jim went back to the grave. Oh God, he said. I can’t believe I just did that. Something’s wrong. I’m not ready yet to tell people about you.

He lay in bed that night under all of his covers wondering what was coming next. He couldn’t stay out here and starve, yet that was
what he had chosen just this afternoon. He couldn’t hide Roy forever. Roy’s mother and sister had to know. Jim felt so confused that he cried for the first time in weeks. I just don’t know, he kept saying out loud to the ceiling.

The next day, he stayed in bed and didn’t go to the grave. He didn’t go hunting for crabs, either, or have any other kind of food. He kept wanting to get up, but it was cold out and he was preoccupied by daydreams that he kept extending, closing his eyes until finally it was night again and he was still in bed.

He was thinking about Lakeport, about high school, and how he had worked so many hours at Safeway. He had hated that, had known that it was all a waste, that his time there amounted to nothing since he’d eventually do some other kind of work. And killing mosquitoes in the spring. He remembered how they’d oil the ponds and spray insecticides to keep the mosquitoes down. Big tanks of chemicals. He wondered now what had been in them. It couldn’t have been good.

His sinus troubles had begun back then. Persistent infections and then the headaches. They were back now, the headaches. This was what had taken him closest to killing himself, just the pain in his head. It was impossible to get away from, impossible to sleep through. He’d been an insomniac most of the time for probably twenty years now. He should have gotten an operation, but he didn’t like the idea of an operation. He’d worked on too many patients in his dentistry. He knew how brutal surgery was, and the terrible risks.

Another memory from even earlier was the boat they’d had on the lake, an old converted Navy cruiser from the 1920s. They replanked the hull and took it out on warm summer nights, sang
out there on the water. That was what he wanted now, he realized, and what he hadn’t had in decades: a community of people and a particular place and a sense that he belonged. What had happened to that?

The next day he rose and went looking for crabs. It was low tide and there was quite a lot to choose from. He found some kind of small rockfish hiding in one pool and finally killed it with a stick. It was spiny, but he cleaned it right there on the rocks with his pocketknife and ate it raw. Then he sat back in the rare bit of sunshine and smacked his lips. That was damn good, he said. Now that was a meal.

He finished off with a bit of seaweed and went back to the cabin for a drink of water, then went out to visit with Roy. Haven’t been thinking about you as much, he told Roy. Been thinking about myself when I was your age. How I used to hunt ducks right in front of the house. Croppies and bluegill and catfish at night on the pier with a lantern. I’ve been thinking about all of that, too. It seems to me that one life is actually many lives, and that they add up to something surprisingly long. My life then was nothing like my life now. I was someone else. But what makes me sad, I guess, and the reason I bring all of this up, is that you won’t be getting any other lives. You had two or three at most. Early childhood in Ketchikan, then living with your mother in California after the divorce. That would be two. Maybe being out here with me was the beginning of the third. But you know, you killed yourself, I didn’t kill you, so that’s what you get.

The rest of the afternoon, Jim poked around the shed, looking at all the rusting tools and odd projects. He was getting more
active, mostly because it was a weirdly warm spell. Normally he wouldn’t stay outside this long. But really, winter in Southeast was not that big a deal. He had been too freaked out with that cache and everything. It wasn’t that hard to survive here.

And then Jim went through a time when he didn’t seem to have any thoughts or memories at all. He stayed in bed and stared at the ceiling. When he went out, he stared at the trees or at the waves. The water was calm, no whitecaps. A surge more than waves at times, the water gray and opaque and thick-looking. He sat with Roy sometimes, but he was through talking. He was ready to get back to his life, to get back to other people.

But he stayed. A storm came through for over a week and he had nothing to eat. He didn’t want to go outside. It seemed the cabin might collapse under the strain. Hail pelting the windows, rain, snow, outrageous winds, dark all the time. He hated this place. He wanted a hot tub.

When the storm finally ended, he was so desperate and starved he decided to set the fire. Everything was soaked, but he walked out into the trees with his spare gas can and a box of matches, resting several times along the way. He found a spot with a lot of deadfall and trees packed in close and he doused as much wood as he could with the gasoline, then struck a match to it and stepped back as it flared up. He started yelling, excited, as the flames devoured the deadfall and licked up the sides of the small trees. The heat was a beautiful thing. Truly warm for what seemed like the first time since summer, Jim stayed as close to it as possible, close enough that he could feel his face too hot and probably burning. The smoke obliterated the tops of the trees and the evening sky, and the sound of the fire overcame every
thing else. Jim danced around at the edges of it, telling it to consume everything. Grow, he yelled. Grow.

And it did grow, quickly. It took over the entire area where Roy was buried, burned all the way to the water’s edge, and moved along the shoreline toward the cabin. Jim hoped it was spreading in other directions, too. The wind was coming this way, though, toward the cabin, so this was its main movement. He thought for a moment that he should have set it on the other side, so that the cabin would have been upwind, but then he didn’t care. Let it all burn, he thought, and then let them come for me. I can’t spend the rest of my life out here like this.

The fire grew over the next hour, through sunset, and reached the cabin just as it started to rain. Jim raged at the skies, threatened to punish the rain, but it kept coming. The fire burned part of the roof and one wall of the cabin, then drowned and smoked and finally only smelled. It was the middle of the night. He went into the bedroom, which had been spared and now smelled of smoke rather than of Roy, and he slept.

He woke to the roof collapsing in the kitchen under the weight of all the rain. The crash was monstrously loud, but he knew what it was and he didn’t get up. He went back to sleep and woke again at midday wet and shivering. Though the section of roof above him was still good, the rain was blowing sideways into the room and drenching him.

You better find me, he said. You better find me now.

He hiked through the charred forest later that day to Roy’s grave. The rain had ceased. He wasn’t completely sure he was in the right place, but the depression was still there and the charred
trunks in roughly the right places, so he sat down shivering in the wet black ash and visited for a while.

I don’t know, he answered Roy. Could be they’ll see it, could be they’ll see it and not care. It’s not burning anymore, after all. It’s not a fire now.

He went to the unburned section of the forest and was stripping bark to eat when he heard the helicopter pass overhead and then come back and hover just offshore from the cabin. He walked out as fast as he could to meet it, but he was very slow and had to rest several times. It was still there, however, when he cleared the tree line and waved.

Hey, he yelled. You look beautiful. He kept waving. Come on, he yelled.

They weren’t able to set down anywhere, he assumed, because they only hovered. It was a sheriff’s helicopter, but it didn’t have pontoons. He could see their faces, the two of them with their earphones and caps and glasses. He waved and rubbed his arms to make it clear he was freezing, and they waved in return. Their machine seemed a modern wonder to Jim. They stayed there hovering for probably five minutes before they came on over the loudspeaker.

We’ve radioed for a float plane, they told him. You’ll be picked up in an hour or two. If you are James Edwin Fenn, please raise your right arm to confirm.

Jim raised his right arm. Then they rose and turned and flew off. Jim was excited. He was ready to have a normal life again.

An hour or two later, after he had gone back to the cabin, dug out the stove, and started a fire in it to warm himself, afraid now of hypothermia, a float plane came up the channel, banked, and
landed hard in the small chop out from his beach. Jim waved and stood at the edge of his beach waiting. They taxied up until their pontoons hit the gravel and then they cut their engine and two men in uniform came down onto the pontoons while the pilot stayed inside.

Howdy, the lead man shouted.

Jim waved. I’m glad you’re here, he said. I was over on Sukkwan with my son.

We found that, the man said. Been looking for you and your son. Sheriff Coos.

They shook hands.

We’ve been worried about you. Had a missing persons out for both of you for almost two months now.

Well, I’ve been right here. Look, my son died. He killed himself. So I went looking for help and I didn’t find any. I ended up here and I had to survive the winter. I pretty much wrecked these people’s place but I’ll pay for it; I had to do what I did to survive. I buried my son out in the woods.

Whoa, Coos said. Slow down. Your son killed himself?

Yeah.

Okay, Coos said. Let Leroy here take your statement. He has to write all this down.

So Jim waited and then gave a slower, more complete version, though still not the whole story. They said they’d take a more complete statement when they got back to town. But for now, they took the basic story and then wanted to see where he’d buried Roy.

The men were close behind him. Jim tried to walk faster but he couldn’t. And then he got confused and was having trouble
finding Roy. Hold on a second, he said. It’s somewhere around here. It’s hard to find now because of the fire. I came out here and talked to him earlier today, but I can’t find it now.

They only stood close and didn’t say anything. He knew this looked bad, that it looked like he was trying not to find Roy, and that panicked him and made it harder still. Every charred bit of forest was starting to look the same. I can’t do this, he said. I’m sorry, but I just can’t find him today.

He turned to face Coos. Jim knew he could be reasonable. I haven’t seen anyone in so long, he said.

I’m sorry for your troubles, Coos said. And we’ll get you home today. But you need to find your son.

So Jim kept looking until he was standing in one spot and looked down to see that he was in a small depression and saw his prints from earlier in the day and realized this was the grave. He started crying without meaning to and told them, This is it.

Jim backed away from the grave and sat down while the men inspected the depression and Leroy took pictures of it and then went back to the plane for a shovel.

I’m sorry, the sheriff said. But we can’t leave the body here. You understand.

Sure, Jim said. He lay down on his side to watch them. The smell of smoke was so strong close to the ground that it was difficult to breathe, but he felt he was safer lying down here and had no intention of getting up. He would watch and then soon he’d see Roy buried decently. And then if they tried to charge him with anything, he’d get a good lawyer and get out of this. He hadn’t done anything wrong. His son had killed himself, and though Jim had broken a lot of laws after that, it had all
been necessary for survival. Jim felt an enormous pity for himself and hated the sheriff and Leroy, unreasonably he knew. They were just doing their jobs, and they hadn’t even accused him of anything.