Legend of a Suicide (14 page)

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 fucked up, he said. He was squatting beside the pit and
rocking. I really fucked 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 God, 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. Goddamnit, 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, wishing 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 fucking 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 shivering 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 pushing 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 shivering 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 shore, 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 shore and finally he realized this was hypothermia setting in, that if he didn’t get to shore 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 shore, 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. Damn you, he said out loud. It doesn’t make any fucking 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 fucking passengers, one of whom must be looking this way, just passed 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 passing 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 shoreline 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 shore. 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.

Hello, 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 shivering 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 hell of a father and you’re a comic, too.