Read Online Caribou Island by David Vann - Free Book Online Page B

more helpful. Something to rip all this stuff out. He had good gloves, so he kneeled down and raked with his fingers, pulled and yanked and found all of it far more resilient than expected. Tough little buggers, he said.
    He stood and tried the shovel again, used it to chop. That seemed to work. So he chopped along the outside of his cabin, the entire boundary, the mosquitoes hounding him now, all over his face and neck, slowing the work with all the swatting he had to do.
    He dropped to his knees and pulled at the growth he had chopped free, but some of it was still anchored, so he was chopping and digging again with the shovel, the entire area a thick mat of growth, really, and he began to wonder whether he should have just used this as the floor and built on top. Why was dirt better? This entire area was going to become a mud pit when it rained.
    Gary lay back in the dirt and closed his eyes. The smell of the earth, wood rot, skunk cabbage. Buzzing of mosquitoes in his ears. He was wearing repellent, but they were undeterred as usual. He opened his eyes, and the sky was spinning. His pulse going in his temples, his head feeling a little dizzy.
    Thirty years ago, this place had been new. And he’d been younger, the dream still fresh, still reachable. The air clearer, mountains cut more sharply against the sky, the forest more alive. Something like that. Some animated sense of the world that dissipates over time. We’re given a gift but it’s a fragile one, impermanent. Now this place was closer to an idea, hollowed out, lacking substance. Reduced to mosquitoes and a tired old body and ordinary air. He was supposed to live out here, but he was supposed to have done it back then.
    Irene thought he was just being bitter, some character flaw. She couldn’t see the shape of the world, the shape of a life. She didn’t understand the enormous differences. He should have gone for someone smarter, but instead he went for someone safe. And his life made smaller because of that.
    But he needed to focus. I need to think this out, he said aloud, and he tried to think clearly. He was making a mud pit. The logs set into it would form dams, a kind of pool for gathering water. He was making a cistern, not a cabin. But then his thoughts were wandering to his lunch, to Irene and her headache, to Rhoda and whether she or Mark might ever come out here to help. Meandering, slipping, unable to focus. A once-clear mind reduced.
    Okay, he said. A platform, I need a platform. And he could see this was true. A wooden platform, a floor, raised up about six inches off the ground, leveled out. Then he’d build his walls around this.
    So he stood up and decided to go for a hike. It was too late today to get materials for the platform, so he might as well explore the island a little.
    He tromped up to the birch trees at the back of his property and continued on until he found a path. Much easier to follow this, a game trail, the ground more level. Birch and spruce all through here, no view of the water, and he came upon an empty cabin. A log cabin, like what he had imagined, their logs much bigger than his, about a foot thick. He wondered where they had found those. He came up close to examine, tried to figure out how they got the logs to fit so well. Something in the gaps, but he couldn’t tell what it was. Covered in moss now and cobwebs. He peered in a small window and could see a white basin, a dark wood-burning stove. He walked around back, a big cabin, two other rooms, and peered in more windows, tried to see the floor. Looked like boards. Then he knelt down all around the edges, tried to find a clue for how the walls met the floor, but there were no gaps in the walls, nothing to see.
    Well, he said, and stood back up. This will be good for a reference. And he wondered why anyone would build here. No water view, just an outpost in the trees. No wonder it was empty. He could do better than this.

Irene waited alone all day, lying in bed,