Legend of a Suicide by David Vann

slept.
     
    In the morning his father was grilling pancakes and singing softly, “King of the Road.” He heard Roy wake, looked down at him grinning. He lifted his eyebrows up and down. Hotcakes and cream-of-mushroom? he asked.
    Yeah, Roy said. That sounds great. It was like they were just camping.
    His father handed down a big plate of hotcakes with cream-of-mushroom soup on top and a fork and Roy set it aside for a moment, pulled on his jeans, boots, and jacket, and they went out onto the porch together to eat.
    It was late morning, a breeze already coming up the inlet and forming small ripples in the water. The surface was opaque.
    Did you sleep well? his father asked.
    Roy didn’t look at him. It seemed his father was asking whether he’d heard him weeping, but his father had asked as if it were a regular question. And Roy had pretended just to be sleeping, so he answered, Yeah, I slept all right.
    First night in our new home, his father said.
    Yeah.
    Do you miss your mother and Tracy?
    Yeah.
    Well, you will for a while probably, until we get settled in here.
    Roy didn’t believe he could get settled to the point of not missing his mother and sister. And they were going to get away periodically. That had been another of his father’s promises. They would come out every two or three months or so for a visit, two weeks at Christmas. And there was the ham radio. They could pass along messages with that if they needed to, and messages could be passed to them.
    They ate in silence for a while. The pancakes were a little burned and one of them doughy inside from being too thick, but the cream-of-mushroom on them was good. The air was cool but the sun was getting stronger. This was like Little House on the Prairie or something, sitting out on a porch with no railing and their boots dangling and no one else around for miles. Or maybe not like that, maybe like gold miners. It could be a different century.
    I like this, Roy said. I’d like it to stay sunny and warm like this all year.
    His father grinned. Two or three months anyway. But you’re right. This is the life.
    Are we gonna start fishing?
    I was just thinking about that. We should start this evening, after we work on the lean-to for the wood. And we’ll build a little smoker back there, too.
    They put the dishes in the small sink, and then Roy went to the outhouse. He held the door open with one foot and inspected all around the seat as best as he could, but finally he justhad to use it and trust that nothing was going to take a bite out of him.
    When he returned, his father grabbed the ax and saw and they went looking for board trees. As they walked through the forest, they looked at trunks, but mostly it was just hemlock in here, no thicker than four or five inches. Farther up the draw the trees shrank even more, so they turned around and went down along the shore to the point, where a larger stand of spruce grew. His father began chopping at the base of one that was farther in and partway around the point.
    Don’t want to wreck our own view, he said. It occurred to Roy that maybe chopping down trees here wasn’t even legal, because it was some kind of National Forest, but he didn’t say anything. His father had been known on occasion to ignore the law when it came to hunting, fishing, and camping. He had taken Roy hunting once in suburban Santa Rosa, California, for instance. They had only the pellet gun and were going for dove or quail on some land they found beside a road that was fairly out of the way. When the owner walked down, he didn’t say anything but just watched them as they got back into the car and drove away.
    Roy took over with the ax, feeling the thud each time through his arms and studying how white the chips of wood were that flung out loosely around the base.
    Careful how it falls, his father said. Think about where the balance is.
    Roy stopped and studied the tree, then moved halfway around it and gave the last two blows and it fell away