Part 7 (1/2)

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 appet.i.te 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 c.u.mmings, maybe, whom he had liked for three years, and Charlotte, whom he had kissed once, but it seemed like he knew girls in p.o.r.no 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 was.h.i.+ng 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 embarra.s.sed. 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 sh.o.r.eline. 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 ap.r.o.n 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 fis.h.i.+ng 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.