Sukkwan Island Free Novella with Bonus Material Read online

  A few other things, too, his father said. I’ve been thinking about Rhoda and thinking that maybe things could still work with her. I’m having a more positive attitude. I think I could be more attentive like she wants, and make good on my promises and not lie to her. I think I could do those things now. I don’t mean to make them sound like merit badges, like little tasks I can just check off, but I think I could do better now. I might call the operator on the shortwave.

  Sounds good, Roy said. And he kept reading. The people ran in terror of each other like a band of criminals caught, each wondering who would speak and betray the other, as if each had a knife at the other’s back. It seemed like he was getting very little actual information in this book. It was supposed to be a history book.

  Weren’t there supposed to be facts?

  They played cards again late in the evening, and his father won every hand.

  My luck’s a-changing, he said. I am a new man grown out of the ashes. My wings are of the eagle and I shall fly far above.

  God, Roy said.

  His father laughed. Okay, that was a bit much.

  They continued to explore more of the island by snowshoe, only on clear days at first but then on overcast and even snowy days as well. They traveled farther and farther until one afternoon they lost all visibility and were still at least four or five hours’ hike from the cabin.

  Huh, his father said. He was standing only a few feet from Roy and still it was hard for Roy to see his father’s jacket and hood and the scarf wrapped around his face. He seemed a shadow that could be there but might not be there. His father said something else, but Roy couldn’t hear it clearly over the wind. He yelled to his father that he couldn’t hear.

  I said I think I screwed up, his father yelled.

  Great, Roy said, but only loud enough for himself to hear.

  His father came closer, leaning against him. We can do several things. Can you hear me?

  Yeah.

  We can hike back and try to find it and try to make it before dark, but we might not and we might get tired and cold and get stuck. Or we can use what’s left of daylight and our energy and build a snow cave and hope it’s better tomorrow. We won’t have much to eat that way, but we might be safer.

  The snow cave sounds fun, Roy yelled.

  This isn’t about fun, his father said.

  I know, Roy yelled.

  Oh. Sorry. And his father turned away then and Roy had to follow close not to lose him. They went to a stand of cedars, and up against a bank behind the trees where the snow was thick they began tunneling into the side of it. They were out of the wind already, and now Roy could hear his father’s hard breathing.

  What if it collapses? Roy asked.

  Let’s hope it doesn’t. I’ve never dug one of these before, but I know people do use them from time to time.

  They dug until they hit ground and then they continued enlarging from inside, but the angles were all wrong.

  We’ll never be able to sleep in here, his father said.

  So they moved over a bit and dug a smaller entrance down lower and his father went in on his stomach to dig out from the inside until the roof collapsed on him and only his feet stuck out. Roy threw himself on the pile and dug wildly at it to un-bury his father until his father finally backed out and stood up and said, Damnit.

  They stood there like that, breathing hard, listening to the wind and feeling it get colder.

  Got any ideas? his father asked.

  You don’t know how to make one?

  That’s why I’m asking.

  Maybe we need deeper snow, Roy said. Maybe we can’t dig a snow cave with what we have here.

  His father thought about that for a while. You know, he finally said, you might be right. I guess we’re hiking back to the cabin. As much as that’s a stupid idea, I can’t think of anything else. Can you?

  No.

  So they set off up the ridge, exposed again to the wind. Roy fought to keep up, to not lose his father. He knew that if he lost sight of him even for a minute, his father would never hear him yell and he’d be lost and never find his way back. Watching the dark shadow moving before him, it seemed as if this were what he had felt for a long time, that his father was something insubstantial before him and that if he were to look away for an instant or forget or not follow fast enough and will him to be there, he might vanish, as if it were only Roy’s will that kept him there. Roy became more and more afraid, and tired, with a sense that he could not continue on, and he began to feel sorry for himself, telling himself, It’s too much for me to have to do.

  When his father stopped, finally, Roy bumped into his back.

  We’re over the ridge now. I think we go along this and have one more before the cabin. I wish I knew what time it was. It seems like it’s still daylight, but it’s impossible to tell how much of it is left.

  They stood and rested a moment and then his father asked, Are you doing all right?

  I’m tired, Roy said, and I’m starting to shiver.

  His father unwrapped his scarf and Roy thought he was going to give it to him, but he only tied it around Roy’s arm and then to his own. That’s hypothermia, his father said. We have to keep moving. You can’t give in to the tiredness and you can’t sleep. We have to keep moving.

  So they hiked on, and Roy’s footsteps became softer and it seemed a longer time between them. He remembered riding in the back of his father’s Suburban from Fairbanks to Anchorage, the sleeping bags piled in there and the road lolling him back and forth. His sister had been back there in a sleeping bag, too, and they had stopped at a log cabin that had giant hamburgers and pancakes bigger than any Roy had seen.

  Roy was dimly aware of darkness and later of day and hitting hard and waking and then the rocking again and then, when he awoke, he was in their cabin in a sleeping bag in the dark and his father was behind him and he could tell they were both naked, could feel the hair from his father’s chest and legs on the back of him. He was afraid to move but he got up and found a flashlight and shone it on his father, who lay curled on his side in the bag, the end of his nose dark, something wrong with the skin. Roy put on some dry clothes fast because it was so cold. He put more wood in the stove, got it going, and pushed the sleeping bag closer around his father, then found his own bag and got into it and rubbed his hands and feet together until he was warm enough and fell asleep again.

  When he woke next it was light and it was warm from the stove and his father was sitting up in a chair watching him.

  How do you feel? he asked.

  I’m thirsty and really hungry, Roy said.

  It’s been two days, his father said.

  What?

  Two days. We didn’t get back here until the next day, and then we slept through last night, too. I have food hot for you on the stove.

  It was soup, split pea, and Roy could eat only a small bowl of it with a few crackers before he felt full, though he knew he was still hungry.

  Your appetite will come back, his father said. Just wait a little while.

  What happened to your face?

  Just a little frostbite, I guess. It got a little burned. The end of my nose doesn’t feel much.

  Roy thought that over for a while, wondering whether his father’s face would get completely better but afraid to ask, and finally he said, We came close to not making it, huh?

  That’s right, his father said. I cut it way too close. I almost got us both killed.

  Roy didn’t say anything more and neither did his father. They went through the day eating and stoking the stove and reading. They both went to bed early, and as Roy waited for sleep, he felt none of the elation he had always imagined people felt when they came close to death and narrowly escaped. He felt only very tired and a little sad, as if they had lost something out there.

  In the morning, his father spent over an hour at the radio before he was finally able to place a telephone call to Rhoda, but what he got was only an answering machine.
/>
  Oh, he said into the mike. I was hoping I would get to talk with you. This is going to sound stupid into a machine, but I’m just thinking that maybe I’ve changed some out here and maybe I could be better now. That’s all. I wanted to talk with you. I’ll try again some other time.

  When he turned the radio off, Roy asked, If you talked with her and she wanted you to, would you leave here right away to go be with her?

  His father shook his head. I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m just missing her.

  They spent another day in the cabin reading and eating and staying warm and not talking much. Finally they played hearts with a dummy hand, which didn’t work well.

  I’ve been thinking about Rhoda, his father said. You may find some woman someday who isn’t exactly nice to you but somehow reminds you of who you are. She just isn’t fooled, you know?

  Roy, of course, didn’t know at all. He’d never even had a girlfriend except for Paige Cummings, maybe, whom he had liked for three years, and Charlotte, whom he had kissed once, but it seemed like he knew girls in porno magazines better than he knew any real girls.

  His father tried the radio again that evening when they were done playing cards, as Roy was washing the dishes. He got through this time.

  What are you thinking, Jim? Rhoda said. You’ve been away from everyone now for a few months and you think you can be different, but what’s it going to be like when you’re back in the same situations, with the same people?

  Roy was getting embarrassed. There was no privacy to the radio. So he dried off his hands, put on his boots, his father stalling for time, saying, I, uh, waiting for Roy to get out of there.

  And then Roy was out of the cabin for the first time in four days, sinking past his boots into the snow and heading for the shoreline. There was no ice or snow down close to the water. It wasn’t cold enough there, Roy supposed, or else the salt melted everything away. He picked rocks out of the snow and hurled them at thin panes of ice farther up along the creek, cracking and shattering them like car windows. He didn’t know how long he needed to stall out here, but he imagined it would be a while. He walked past the creek mouth and out to the low point, staying close along the edge, out of the deep snow, and wondered whether there were any fish in the cove now. He supposed there had to be, since there was nowhere else for them to go, but he had no idea how they survived. He wondered what he and his father were doing here in the winter. It seemed pretty dumb.

  When his father had asked his mother whether Roy could come here, his mother had not answered or let Roy take the phone. She hung up and told him his father’s request and asked him to think about it. Then she waited for several days and asked him at dinner whether he wanted to go. Roy remembered how she had looked then, with her hair pulled back and apron still on. It had felt like a kind of ceremony, attended with a greater seriousness than he was used to. Even his younger sister Tracy had been silent, watching them. He cherished this part of it, even now. He had felt he was deciding his future, even though he knew that she wanted him to say no and knew also that he would say no.

  And that was the answer he gave that night.

  Why? she asked.

  I don’t want to leave here and my friends.

  She continued spooning her soup. She nodded slightly but that was it.

  What do you think? Roy asked.

  I think you’re answering the way you think I want you to answer. I’d like you to think about it again, and if the answer again is no, that’s fine and of course you know I want you here and Tracy and I will miss you if you go. I want you to make the best decision, though, and I don’t think you’ve thought about it enough yet. Whatever you decide, know that it was the best you could have decided now, no matter what happens later.

  She didn’t look at him as she said this. She spoke as if she knew of events coming later, as if she could see the future, and the future Roy saw then was his father killing himself, alone in Fairbanks, and Roy having abandoned him.

  Don’t go, Tracy said. I don’t want you to go. And then she ran back to her room and cried until their mother went to her.

  Roy thought for the next several days. He saw himself helping his father, making him smile, the two of them hiking and fishing and wandering over glaciers in brilliant sunlight. He already missed his mother and sister and friends, but he felt there was an inevitability to all of this, that in fact there was no choice at all.

  When his mother asked him again at dinner several nights later, he said yes, he would like to go.

  His mother didn’t answer. She put down her fork and then breathed deeply several times. He could see that her hand was trembling. His sister ran back to her room again and his mother had to follow. It was as if there had been some kind of death, he felt then. Certainly if he had known as much then as he knew now he would not have come. But he blamed his mother for this, not his father. She had arranged it. He had originally wanted to say no.

  The clouds were high and thin and there were huge white circles around the moon. The air was white and seemed almost smoky even out over the channel. There was no wind and almost no sound, so Roy stepped hard into the rocks and snow to hear his boots. Then he was getting cold and hiked slowly back.

  When he reentered, his father was sitting on the floor by the radio, though it wasn’t on anymore and he was just staring down at the floor.

  Well? Roy asked, then regretted it.

  She’s with a guy named Steve, his father said. They’re moving in together.

  I’m sorry.

  That’s all right. It’s my fault anyway.

  How is it your fault?

  I cheated and lied and was selfish and blind and stupid and took her for granted and, let’s see, there must be some other things, just general disappointment, I suppose, and now I’m going to get shafted and it’s my fault. The big thing, though, I think, is that I wasn’t there for her when she went through all the stuff with her parents. It just seemed like too much, I guess. And I suppose I left her alone to deal with all that. I mean, I thought she had her family to help, you know.

  Rhoda had lost her parents to a murder-suicide ten months earlier. Roy had not heard much about it except that her mother used a shotgun on her husband and then a pistol on herself, and afterward Rhoda found out that her mother had cut her out of the will. Roy didn’t really understand how this last part worked, but it was all part of something too awful to think about.

  She felt I abandoned her then, his father said.

  Maybe things will change, Roy said, just to be saying something.

  That’s what I’m hoping, his father said.

  A big storm set in the next day. It sounded as if water were hitting the roof and walls in sheets, a great river rather than just windblown, it hit so heavily. They couldn’t see anything through the windows except the rain and hail and occasionally snow hitting them from angles that kept shifting. They kept the stove going constantly and his father ran out for a few minutes to bring in more wood. He returned three times cold and swearing and piled the wood with the food in the extra room, then stood by the stove to dry off and get warm again.

  Blowing like there’s no tomorrow, his father said. As if it could wipe time clear off the calendar.

  The whole cabin shook occasionally and the walls seemed to move.

  It couldn’t actually blow off the roof or something, could it? Roy said.

  No, his father said. Your dad wouldn’t buy a cabin with a detachable roof.

  Good, Roy said.

  His father tried the radio again, saying, I’ll make it quick. I just have a few things to say to her. You won’t have to go outside or anything, of course.

  But he couldn’t get any kind of signal in the storm and finally he gave up.

  This is one of those things she’s not going to believe, he said. I tried to call her but the storm kept me from doing it. But when the tally is made, I didn’t get through to her, and the storm doesn’t count.

  Maybe it’
s not like that, Roy said.

  What do you mean?

  I don’t know.

  Listen, his father said. Man is only an appendage to woman. Woman is whole by herself and doesn’t need man. But man needs her. So she gets to call the shots. That’s why the rules don’t make any sense, and why they keep changing. They’re not being decided on by both sides.

  I don’t know if that’s true, Roy said.

  This is because you’re growing up with your mother and sister, without me around. You’re so used to women’s rules you think they make sense. That will make it easy for you in some ways, but it also means maybe you won’t see some things as clearly.

  It’s not like I got to choose.

  See? That’s one of them. I was trying to make a point, and you turned it around to make me feel bad, to make me feel like I haven’t done my duty according to the rules and haven’t been a good father.

  Well, maybe you haven’t. Roy was starting to cry now, and wishing he weren’t.

  See? his father said. You only know a woman’s way to argue. Cry your fucking eyes out.

  Jesus, Roy said.

  Never mind, his father said. I have to get out of here. Even if it is a fucking hurricane. I’m going for a hike.

  As he pulled on his gear, Roy was facing the wall trying to make himself stop crying, but it all seemed so enormously unfair and from out of nowhere that he couldn’t stop. He was still crying after his father had gone, and then he started talking out loud. Fuck him, he said. Goddamn it, fuck you, Dad. Fuck you. And then he cried harder and made a weird squealing sound from trying to hold it back. Quit fucking crying, he said.

  Finally he did stop, and he washed off his face and stoked the stove and got in his sleeping bag and read. When his father came back, it was several hours later. He stomped his boots out on the porch, then came inside and took off his gear and went to the stove and cooked dinner.