Sleep never does come. He has to rise several times to pee and drink, he blows his nose a hundred times, and he eats a bowl of cereal twice. The light finally comes in white and dark from clouds, just light without direction. Hard to know when sunrise is, but by the time the clock says six fifteen it must be there somewhere behind the cloud cover. He takes more codeine and has more cereal and lies down again to weep until seven thirty, which is eight thirty in California. He rises still dressed in Gary’s clothes from the day before yesterday, too tired to change or maybe wanting to be in his brother’s clothes, and he sits at the card table, at the one place possible, and picks up the phone receiver.
He dials information, asks for a flower shop in Lakeport, California, orders a dozen roses for Rhoda, for her birthday three days from now, to be delivered.
He picks up the magnum and puts it in his lap, just holds it for a while, feels his life moving, opens the cylinder and reaches for each slug in the Styrofoam and loads until the cylinder is full then snaps it shut. He places the pistol on the table by the phone, and he pulls back the hammer, makes sure the safety is off. Hair trigger, only one light touch now. He keeps his hands away.
He rises to get paper and pen, wants to write a note. He can’t do this without a note, without some statement.
No paper in the kitchen but he goes upstairs and rummages through boxes in one of the spare bedrooms. Goose calls and his navy dress uniform. He still has the sword, ceremonial but also real, in its gold braid. All strange, from someone else’s life. He never believed he was in the navy even when he was there. Their unit a joke anyway. The dentist leading them, marching backward, tripped and fell into a sandbox during one of the ceremonies. No one expected anything more from dentists.
That must have been one of the only days on Adak when the wind was low enough for them to be outside. Most of their time spent indoors and in tunnels. Hunting with the .300 magnum whenever the weather did clear. Shooting seals and sea lions and then trying to recover the bodies with a halibut gaff. Risking his life on the rocks, so slippery. Waves and thick green kelp. The water so cold and the hide rough.
Elizabeth almost blew away once. Went outside stupidly when the winds were over a hundred. So easy to die there, and yet no one did. Their friend run over by a bull sea lion, a thousand pounds, but mashed into the mud and nothing broken. David with jaundice at 105 degrees, almost dying right after birth but lived. Only the heart attacks died. The place didn’t kill anyone, as dangerous as it was.
He finds a pen set given to him and has no memory when or from whom. Finds a large white pad of notepaper in a box of books, mostly westerns, and some old letters, including one he wrote to his uncle Frank in 1951, when he was ten.
Dear Uncle Frank: I have found the best place in the world to trap skunks. It is very high, and you have to crawl through a hole to get to it. There are many acorns, and it is very dark. I caught two civet cats there, and is very dangerous. I bet you wouldn’t guess where it is.
I have had good luck in fishing this year. I have caught lots of catfish, and there are many worms. I caught about the biggest mudcat you ever saw in freshwater lakes, except in Lake Michigan, Superior, Erie, and Ontario. We gave two catfish to Mr. Lewis. The lake is up very high but it is going down.
I hope you can come up this summer. It is a lot of fun to ride on our launch. I will send you a funny story about some eager beavers. Ho yes do you know what a skunk is? A skunk is a pussycat with a fluid drive.
I forgot to tell you the danger about trapping skunks. The skunk might squirt you.
I forgot to tell you where I caught the skunks. Guess again.
Love, Jimmy
Jim reads the letter again, a way to touch that time, that different mind, not yet broken. Or were there signs even then? The dark place, the threat, the fascination with the fluid drive? Are we ever innocent? He should read these other letters, all of them, but he feels exhausted. He takes only the pad of paper and pen and returns downstairs.
Right now staying alive is only concern, he writes, as if it might be something to remember. Somehow he imagined a kind of letter might spring forth, but now he can tell this isn’t going to happen. Nothing as simple as hunting or fishing to report. You shafted me, he writes. A note for Rhoda. What else does a suicide note contain? Who gets what, as in a will? There won’t be anything after the IRS.
He writes his brother’s name and phone number, Elizabeth also, and his father. Please cremate my body in Fairbanks and scatter ashes at White Ranch.
He gets his checkbook and writes checks to Gary, emptying most of that account.
Checks belong to Gary Vann. Choker belongs to Rhoda Vann. He’s been carrying the choker around for a while now, a small gold chain, a piece of her, pulls it from his pocket and leaves it on the card table.
Gary—would like you to have White Ranch and hold one half in trust for David and Tracy.
Gary, you and all the relatives did everything you could possibly do. It’s just that I need something that you can’t give me.
Most scary thing is not being able to love again and not being able to maintain a relationship that would provide a fulfilling life for me.
He sets the pen down, holds his head in his hands, wishes the pain would just stop. But it’s not enough. He can see that now. Nothing will ever be enough to make him do it. He’s only going to play at suicide and write stupid notes that mean nothing. There will never be a time bad enough that it becomes inevitable. He picks up the pistol and holds the barrel to the side of his head. It should be like this, but accompanied by some crisis of spirit and memory and physical pain, something irresistible, something no one would be able to endure. And that is never going to happen. What he will be offered is much thinner than that.
He puts the pistol down, keeps it pointed carefully to the side in case it goes off, that hammer still pulled back, and reaches for the phone, dials Rhoda.
Waiting as the connections are found, a line snaking down to the doctor’s office in Lakeport where she works now. This is how he could have found her in Lakeport. So stupid and easy and somehow he didn’t think of it.
Someone else answers, so he has to ask for Rhoda, then wait again. They sound busy.
“Hello Jim,” she finally says.
“I love you but I can’t live without you,” he says, a line he remembers now, already planned, and he picks up the pistol and places the barrel to the side of his head to make this more real. Phone receiver on the left, barrel on the right, like some kind of operator.
“What?” she asks. “I can’t hear well. Hold on a minute.” He waits while there are scuffling sounds, and a door closing, and less background noise.
“Okay,” she says. “I should be able to hear now.”
“I love you but I’m not going to live without you,” he says, and he feels none of the drama he had imagined, feels nothing in fact, and he knows he won’t do it, won’t pull the trigger, and then he does.