Part 5 (1/2)

No.

Well, we'll think of something. We don't have enough nails, either. But we'll think of something.

That night, Roy stayed awake again waiting for the crying, needing to know if it was every night, but then he woke in the morning and wondered whether it had not happened or he had simply not stayed awake long enough. It was hard to know. His father was hiding from him now, and Roy had to pretend he didn't know this.

They shoveled enough dirt back in to bury the posts side by side. They weren't attached in any other way, just buried next to one another.

I think they'll stay like that, his father said. Just the pressure of everything on the inside against everything on the outside.

What about when we take the food out, Roy asked, or when a bear digs down and tries to take it apart?

His father looked at him, considering. He looked at him more plainly than Roy was used to, so that Roy avoided his eyes and looked at the light beard his father had now and the hair longer on the sides and flattened against his skull from not being washed. He didn't look anything like a dentist anymore, or really even like his father. He looked like some other man who maybe didn't have much.

You're thinking, his father said. This is good. We can talk about what we're doing. I've been thinking about the same things, and it seems to me that we have to bury it deep enough and put enough stuff on top that a bear can't dig down, because if he does get down there, no way of putting the cache together will keep him out.

Roy nodded. He didn't know if it would work, but it made sense at least.

And when we take stuff out, finally, late in February maybe, the ground will be so frozen that nothing will move. It won't be able to cave in even if we take the wood away completely, which we may need to do for our stove.

Roy smiled. That sounds good.

All right.

They placed the rest of the posts, like the walls of a small fort town only a few feet high, and then sat back to look at it.

It needs a roof, Roy said.

And a door. We'll cut long poles that go clear across, and we'll figure out the door in the roof. Probably just a big hole with a second roof over it.

We don't have the food to go into it yet, Roy said.

Right you are. And we won't put it in until it snows. Until then, we have to keep it from caving.

We should have waited to dig it until a few months from now, huh?

Yeah. We dug it too early. But that's okay. We didn't know.

Over the next two days, in the rain, they cut the poles for a roof and a smaller second roof. They sawed the lengths and stripped off the branches with a hatchet, Roy watching this father with his grim unshaven face when he worked, the cold rain dripping off the end of his nose. He seemed as solid then as a figure carved from stone, and all his thoughts as immutable, and Roy could not reconcile this father with the other, the one who wept and despaired and had nothing about him that could last. Though Roy had memory, it seemed nonetheless that whatever father he was with at the time was the only father that could be, as if each in its time could burn away the others completely.

When they had finished cutting the poles for both roofs, they placed them all carefully and stood back to see. The sides were already was.h.i.+ng in around the posts and caving the roof, rivulets of mud everywhere in the unceasing rain.

Some of the posts are soft, his father said. They're getting washed out. Oh well.

How can we stop it from caving in?

I don't know. We don't have enough tarp. Maybe I screwed up. Maybe it was too early. We should just be storing up now, I guess.

That night, Roy did not have to wait long to hear his father weep. It came within only a few minutes, and his father wasn't trying to hide it anymore.

Sorry, his father said. It's not the cache or anything like that.

It's other things.

What is it?

Well, my head hurts all the time, but that's not it.

Your head hurts?

Yeah. It has for years. You didn't know that?

No.

Well.

Why does it hurt?

It's just sinuses, and I'm supposed to have them cleared out, but I haven't bothered. It doesn't always work anyway, and it's an awful operation. But that's not the problem. That's just what makes me feel weak and makes it easy to cry and keeps me tired. The bigger thing is that I just can't seem to be alone.

And his father started crying again. I know I'm not alone, he whimpered. I know you're here. But I'm still too alone. I can't explain it.

Roy waited for more, but his father only cried then and it went on for a long time, Roy not knowing how it was that he could be right here and still, for his father, it was as if he wasn't here at all.

The rain continued and the cache washed in further. Roy and his father stood at the edge looking down at the fallen posts and thinking and not saying anything until finally his father said, Well, let's pull all the wood out and we'll try it again when it first snows.

Roy didn't believe they'd still be here when it first snowed, but he nodded as his father climbed down in and then he took the pieces his father handed him and carried them back to the cabin. Roy knew that somehow this disappointment was worse for his father than the other disappointments had been. If Roy spoke now, he doubted he'd be heard. And he understood this about his father, that he was often gone into his own thoughts and couldn't be reached, and that none of this time spent alone thinking was good for him, that he always sank lower when he went in there.

They stacked the wood against a side wall, and when they were done, they looked again at the pit, at the mud deepening and the walls caving, and both looked into the sky, into the grayness that had no depth or end, and then they went inside.

When the plane came a few days later, Roy was fis.h.i.+ng several miles up the coast. He thought he heard it, then thought he must have made it up, but stopped and listened and heard it again. He pulled in his line, grabbed the two salmon he had caught, and started running. He was far enough off, though, and blocked by so many small points along the way, that he couldn't see it fly into the mouth of their cove. He ran over the rocky beach and, when he had to, up into the trees and down again, becoming more and more afraid that he would miss it. He a.s.sumed his father was there cutting wood, but what if he had hiked back over the ridge for some reason and no one was there? The pilot might not come back again for a long time, might just leave a note saying, Call me on the radio if you need anything. And there was another thing, too, that Roy didn't like to admit. Even if his father was there, what would he say? Was there a chance he would just say everything was fine and send the pilot away and not have him come back? It didn't seem impossible, and Roy needed to leave here, he needed to get away. Roy dropped the fish and his pole and ran faster.

He was only a few hundred yards from the final point when he heard the drone of it again and stopped to see it rush out of the mouth, tilt free of its own spray, and lift precariously over the channel. He stood there then, looking at where it had finally disappeared and breathing hard and feeling that something terrible had happened.

He left, he said out loud. I missed him.

He went back then for his pole and the salmon and walked on to the cabin.

His father was back at the woodpile. Tom came by, he said when Roy walked up.

I heard.

Oh. Well he was just here a minute but I ordered the supplies we need and he'll be back with them next week on his way to Juneau. Though not really on his way exactly, I suppose. And his father grinned then, pleased at how in the middle of nowhere they were.

Roy took his salmon down to the water and gutted them. He scaled them quickly and cut off their heads and fins and tails. He wanted out of here. He didn't care what his father thought about it; he was just going to go.

You want to leave? his father asked when he told him at dinner.