Part 7 (2/2)

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 s.h.i.+fting. 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 wis.h.i.+ng he weren't.

See? his father said. You only know a woman's way to argue. Cry your f.u.c.king eyes out.

Jesus, Roy said.

Never mind, his father said. I have to get out of here. Even if it is a f.u.c.king 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. f.u.c.k him, he said. G.o.dd.a.m.n it, f.u.c.k you, Dad. f.u.c.k you. And then he cried harder and made a weird squealing sound from trying to hold it back. Quit f.u.c.king 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.

Roy listened to the kitchen sounds and to the howling outside and the rain thrown against the walls in gusts. It seemed to him they could just go on like this, not speaking, and it seemed even that this might be easier.

Here, his father said when he put the plates on the card table in the middle of the room. Roy got up and they ate without looking at one another or saying anything. Just chewing away at the Tuna Helper with sculpin in it and listening to the walls. Then his father said, You can do the dishes.

Okay.

And I'm not going to apologize, his father said. I do that too much.

Okay.

The storm continued for another five days, days of waiting and not talking much and feeling cooped up. Occasionally Roy or his father went for a short hike or brought in wood, but the rest of the time was just reading and eating and waiting and his father trying to reach Rhoda on the shortwave or the VHF but this never worked.

You'd think I could get through for just a few minutes, his father said. What good is all this s.h.i.+t if we can't use it in bad weather? Are we supposed to have emergencies just on good days?

Roy considered saying, Good thing we haven't needed it, as a way of getting talking again, but he was afraid this would be interpreted as some kind of comment about his father's need for Rhoda, so he kept quiet.

When his father did finally get through again, the storm had mostly died. Roy went out into light drizzle and ground so soaked it was like walking on sponges. The trees were dripping everywhere, big drops on the hood and shoulders of his rain gear. He wondered who Rhoda really was. He had spent a lot of time with her, of course, when she and his father had been married. But his memories were all a kid's memories, of how she threatened to stab their elbows with her fork if they left them on the table at dinner, for instance, and a peek of her once in the bathroom through the crack in the door. A few arguments between her and his father, but nothing distinct. They had divorced only one year ago, when he'd been twelve, but somehow everything was different now, all his perceptions. As if thirteen were a different life than twelve. He couldn't remember how he'd thought then, how his brain had worked, because back then he hadn't thought about his brain working, so he couldn't now make sense of anything from that time, as if he had someone else's memories. So Rhoda could have been anyone. All she meant to him now was this thing his father had to have, a craving as if for p.o.r.nography, a need that made his father sick, though Roy knew it was wrong, incorrect, to think she actually made him sick. He knew it was his father doing it to himself.

Around the point, Roy sat on a large piece of driftwood that was soaked through and cold. He watched his breath fogging out and looked at the water and actually saw a small boat pa.s.s, about a mile away. An extremely rare event. A small cabin cruiser out fis.h.i.+ng or camping, with extra jerry cans of gasoline tied along the bow rails. Roy stood up and waved but he was too far even to see if there was a response. He could see the dark patch inside where there was a person or several people but could not make out anything more distinct.

He wondered whether this thing his dad had with Rhoda would ever happen to him. Though he hoped not, he knew somehow ahead of time that it probably would. But by now he was just thinking to be doing something and wished he were back in the cabin where it was warm. It was just too cold out here. It was a miserable place.

When he returned, he was still too early, but he didn't go back outside. He figured he had stayed out long enough.

I know that, his father said. That's not what I'm saying. Roy's here now, by the way. He was outside.

Rhoda's voice came in unclear, warped by the radio. Jim, Roy's not the only one hearing this. Anyone with a ham radio is getting to hear everything.

You're right, his father said. But I don't care. This is too important.

What's important, Jim?

That we talk, that we work things out.

And how are things going to work out?

I want us to be together.

They listened to the static then for at least half a minute before Rhoda came back on.

I'm sorry I'm having to say this in front of Roy and everyone else, Jim, but we're never going to be together again. We've already tried that, many times. You have to listen to me, to what I've been saying. I've found someone else, Jim, and I'm going to marry him, I hope. And anyway, it doesn't matter about him. We still wouldn't be together. Sometimes things just end, and we have to let them end.

Roy pretended to be reading while his father sat bowed before the radio.

f.u.c.king radio, his father said to Rhoda. If we could be together now, in person, face to face, this would be different. And then he turned the radio off.

Roy looked up. His father was hunched over with his forearms on his knees and his head down. He began rubbing his forehead. He just sat there like that for a long time. There was nothing Roy could think of to say, so he didn't say anything. But he wondered why they were here at all, when everything important to his father was somewhere else. It didn't make sense to Roy that his father had come out here. It was beginning to seem that maybe he just hadn't been able to think of any other way of living that might be better. So this was just a big fallback plan, and Roy, too, was part of a large despair that lived everywhere his father went.

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