by David Vann
She had a strange attentiveness, something he couldn’t place at first, and then he realized what it was. She was excited. You’re excited, he said.
Yes. I guess I am. It’s been so long. I’ve been afraid of you for so long. But now I won’t have to see you ever again. I get my life back.
You can’t just throw people away.
You threw yourself away.
Please. I’m your son.
She turned away then, walked down the stairs and toward the kitchen.
Where are you going?
She didn’t answer, but there was a phone in the kitchen. He dropped his duffel and went after her fast. The light in the kitchen was on, and she was already reaching for the phone.
No! he yelled.
Her hand jerked back as she saw him coming after her. She screamed and ran out the pantry door.
He followed her onto the lawn, but she was already across it, running for the shed.
What the fuck are you doing, Mom? he yelled. I’m your son. I’m not some kind of monster.
She disappeared around the corner, and he just stood there on the lawn. Prison. He couldn’t believe any of this. None of it could possibly be real. But it felt real. It felt more real than anything else ever had before. The world did not seem like an illusion. His mother was going to call the police. That had an enormous and terrifying reality.
Galen’s life closing in around him. The shed, the old house, the trees above, the walnut orchard, all of it edging in closer. The end of a future. To have no future at all.
I’m not garbage, he yelled. I’m not something you can just throw away.
The air so hot and thick. He walked through it past the corner of the shed, into the orchard and around to the sliding bay door. It was closed. He stood there before it in the hot sun and begged. Please, he said. Please. I’ll go away. You won’t have to see me. But I can’t go to prison. I don’t even know what prison is.
He got down on his knees in the dirt, in the broken furrows. Please, he begged. Please.
He could feel the heat radiating from the old wood and from the ground. His body slick. He crawled closer and reached up for the handle. I’m just coming in to talk, he said. I just want to talk. But she’d somehow locked the door. It wouldn’t slide.
He stood up and pulled harder, but it wouldn’t budge. The old rusted handle, the old padlock hanging. It didn’t have a lock inside. But she must have jammed a piece of wood or something.
Please, he said. Let me in. We need to talk.
I’ll give you a head start. If you leave now, I’ll give you one hour before I call.
No. I don’t want one hour. You can’t do this, Mom. He slumped against the door, old gray wood, rough and weathered and hot against his cheek.
The unfairness was too much. Rape. It couldn’t be called rape. I’m not a rapist, he said.
She didn’t answer. Just waited there in the shed, the place of her childhood. Her childhood that was so special and couldn’t be touched by anyone else. The whole thing a lie.
I’m not a rapist.
You are a rapist, and an abuser. And you will never abuse me again.
What the fuck? He slapped the wood with his open palm.
See?
You’re crazy.
See?
You stop fucking saying that.
See?
Galen was so frustrated he yelled and kicked at the door.
You’re an animal, she yelled at him. You’re an animal, and you deserve to live in a cage.
Galen stepped back and turned to kick at the door with the heel of his shoe. He kicked it hard. But it was tougher than it looked. I’ll show you some fucking abuse, he said. If you’re going to use that word, then you should learn what it means.
You’re just giving me more to say in court. I’ll tell them you tried to kill me.
Galen stopped kicking. He couldn’t believe any of this. She kept twisting things around. He needed to think. He needed to think his way out of this.
Look, he said. Let’s calm down. Let’s think about this. I never hurt you. I’m not an abuser. Can we agree on that, at least?
You’re an abuser.
Galen couldn’t stay here. He was going to just scream if he stayed here. He needed to go away for a while and calm down and think. But he couldn’t have her calling the police while he did that.
There was a bar that fit over the door handle. He swung this in place and then tried to close the padlock. It was rusty and didn’t close easily, but he brought a thigh up to hold the bottom of it and he pushed down with both hands until it locked.
What are you doing?
I closed the padlock. I have to think for a while. I have to figure this out. And I can’t have you calling the police.
She laughed. That’s perfect. You’re hanging yourself.
Are you my mother? he screamed. He screamed so hard his throat hurt, the same as when he vomited, his mouth and throat stretched wide open and burning. Are you my mother?
Chapter 19
Screaming at her like that made him weak. Everything gone inside, a hollow. It wasn’t even anger. It was something far more desperate, the entire world unmoored. He walked toward the house reduced to a shell. There was nothing left at all.
The blanket was somewhere in the house, and he would find it. Not that finding it would make much difference.
Her room a child’s room still. Wooden toys from Germany on the shelves, wagons and nutcrackers and small wooden girls. A full-size rocking horse also out of wood. Everything placed carefully, the most special of her childhood remembrances.
He didn’t really understand who his mother was. He hadn’t been there when she was made, or lived any of the years when she was remade. He didn’t have anywhere to start from. And what she was doing now was unimaginable. The way they were talking to each other was unimaginable.
What happened? he asked aloud.
He found her small suitcase in the closet, but it was empty, already unpacked from the trip. He pushed dresses and coats aside, found paper bags of sweaters and socks. No sign of the blanket.
Her bed small, with a light blue cover. He knelt down, looked under the bed, and there it was. An old brown blanket from the cabin, and somewhere on it the signs of his crime.
Galen lay down on the wood floor and put the blanket under his head, a pillow. He just lay there because he didn’t know what to do. He needed to undo things, to make them not have happened. Where had he and his mother first gone wrong?
The blanket was rough wool, very old. And this was the problem. Galen and his mother had gone wrong before Galen was even born. That was the truth. And it was outrageously unfair that he should be blamed now.
This is not me, he said. This is not even about me.
He rose and took the blanket into the backyard, dumped it on the lawn. Then he went to the kitchen for matches and returned to burn this blanket and everything it meant. He watched the flame start at one corner, nearly invisible in the sun. Hints of blue and orange. He could feel the warmth as the fire spread, warmer even than this hot sun, and he could see the wool turning black and thinning as it was consumed. The fire known by what it left behind.
The blanket shrank into a ball, knitted itself up tightly and blackened and then returned itself to earth and air, becoming ash and vapor, no more than a gray smudge against the green. This is what Galen needed to do somehow with his life. He needed to find some burning away, some regeneration, some promise to start fresh.
He washed himself in the shower, scrubbing mercilessly at his dick. There’d be no sign left of Jennifer. And no doubt she’d had three showers by now.
Galen took his underwear to the back lawn and burned that, too. Then he walked to the shed, stood before the door with its rusty lock.
I’m thirsty, she said. It’s hot in here. You need to unlock that door and leave. I’ll give you one hour.
I burned all of it.
What’s that?
I burned the blanket. I burned my un
derwear. I took a shower. And you know Jennifer’s had a shower already. So there’s no evidence left.
It won’t matter. I’m the witness, and that’s what’s important. How often does a mother testify against her own son? They’ll believe me.
Why are you doing this?
Why did you become who you are?
Not like I could help that.
Well it’s the same for this now. It’s not like I have another choice.
You need to talk to me. You can’t just talk like that.
I don’t need to do anything.
This isn’t even about me.
That’s what I was saying. I knew you’d think this wasn’t about you. I knew you’d feel it was just my problem and a betrayal and unfair. But I need you to know this really is about who you are. You’re an animal, and you deserve to spend the rest of your life in prison.
Mom. Galen didn’t know what else to say. I’m not an animal.
You are an animal.
The sun so hot. He walked around the corner to the small toolshed, built off the wall of the main shed. It would be shady in there. He swung open the wooden door and was reminded of his grandfather. The tools rarely used now, but his grandfather had been in here all the time, always working on the orchard or hedge or buildings when he wasn’t at work as an engineer. His entire life had been work. And that should have made him a good man, but he beat his wife, and because of that he would never be a good man. He was an abuser. That’s what the word meant. And everyone in the family screwed up because of it. He was the one who should have been locked away. Galen had done nothing wrong. His mother was blaming him for her father. She was sending her father to prison.
I’m not your father, he said, loud enough for her to hear through the wall.
Where are you?
I’m in the toolshed. And I’m not your father.
Why are you in the toolshed?
It’s shady in here. It’s hot, and there’s nowhere to sit, but at least it’s not in the sun.
Well it’s hot in here. You have to unlock the door and leave. I’m tired of waiting. I need to get out of here, and I need something to drink.
You’re trying to send your father to prison. That’s what’s happening.
This is about you.
Galen picked up a shovel and smacked the wall. It was a big shovel, heavy, with a wide flat blade, not rounded.
What are you doing?
He smacked it again, started a rhythm.
Stop that.
I’m going to keep doing this until you admit this is all about your father and not about me.
Stop it right now.
But Galen kept hitting the wood with the shovel, a steady rhythm, getting the face to hit as flat as possible for the loudest smack. Leaning over the smaller tools to get to the wall. Pruners and hedge clippers and small garden shovels, tools accumulated over decades. The shovel heavy very quickly, his shoulders burning and his breath ragged, but he kept going.
She had stopped talking, and that was good.
Galen wished he had used a smaller shovel. He didn’t want to interrupt the rhythm, but finally he just couldn’t hold it up anymore.
Keep going, she said.
He walked out into the sun and just wandered through the orchard, bareheaded and sun-crazed, the heat moving in heavy bands around him. The furrows uneven and clodded, unturned for years now. The irrigation system still working, thin dark tracks along the rows of trunks, evaporating. He took off his shoes and squished into the mud, cooling his feet at least. The shade here still hot, sunlight everywhere through the leaves, no real shade. The walnuts a brutal tree.
In the heat and bright noon sun, the trunks seemed farther apart, the orchard expanded, just like metal.
He moaned and growled for a while and walked aimlessly through the dirt. When his feet got too hot, he stepped in mud and then roved on. Weeds and stickers, every single plant unfriendly. Most of them looked dead, but they were still standing upright, thin brown and yellow stalks of crap bush and shitty weed and fuck grass. Years of dead and dried leaves decayed, a layer of skins. And where the dirt still showed, even the brown had been bleached out of it. Dirt become more white than brown. This desolate place. Great for the grasshoppers and bees and butterflies, the grasshoppers the worst, the sound of their landings all around him. He went after a few, stomped on them as they landed, smashed them in his hands, crunchy brown bodies, oversize heads with big black eyes watching him, legs too thin to be made of anything. What he wanted was for all of them to die and just take the weeds with them, clear out the orchard, and then he wanted some rain. He wanted the dirt to be brown again, and he wanted the sun to stop.
One parent, he said. I get one parent in life, and this is it. This is what I get. He walked to the far fence, a high fence the new subdivision had put up, twice as tall as he was, made of cinder blocks painted an orange-brown to blend in. The houses the same color, the top part of their second stories protruding. The racket of their air conditioners running all day and night. Another kind of prison, living in that subdivision, but nothing like the prison he had coming.
He couldn’t even think of it. He couldn’t see himself in a prison. That was not something his brain was willing to do. That was not a picture that could make any sense. It was like standing on the moon in a T-shirt and shorts, or lounging in a chair on Mars, having tea.
Galen felt dizzy from the heat, so light-headed, he walked over and sat against a trunk. The shade a kind of punishment. A reminder of shade without being the real thing, the walnut leaves not dense enough in this sun. They had grown more thickly before, when the trees were pruned and taken care of. They had dead branches now, and produced less walnuts, and were ragged looking.
Lemonade, he said. I need some lemonade. So he got up and walked all the way across the orchard, another moon mission, and said nothing to his mother as he passed the shed. He crossed the lawn and into the house and made a big pitcher, a glass pitcher with a glass stirrer, a long clear shaft with a clear bulb on the end. It made a nice sound as he stirred, and he added lots of ice so that would clink around. He was making lemonade from a mix, and he didn’t add fresh lemons as his mother usually did, but it tasted fine.
He brought the lemonade on a tray with two glasses to the table under the fig tree.
Galen? his mother asked.
Yep.
You let me out of here right now.
Sorry, he said. I’m busy. He pulled a chair closer to the shed wall, moved the table over. The shade here from the fig tree was perfect. Huge leaves, an old enormous tree, and none of it was dying. It was in the peak of health. He poured himself a glass, then he asked her, would you like a glass too?
What?
I just poured myself a glass of lemonade. Would you like a glass too?
Yes.
Okay then. He poured her a glass. There you go, he said.
That’s cruel.
It is what it is. You’re the one hiding in the shed. Safe in your special place. If you want the lemonade, then come out and get it.
He had a drink of the lemonade. Ah, he said. That’s good. I was really thirsty. It’s a scorcher today.
He could hear the shed door rattled and slammed, but muffled since it was far away on the other side.
Galen! his mother screamed.
That’s abuse, he said. Try to rein in that anger. Come and just sit and have a glass of lemonade and we’ll talk. We’re both reasonable here.
I’m going to tell them you tried to kill me. I’m going to tell them you locked me in here.
You locked yourself in.
Your fingerprints will be on that lock.
Yeah, he said, and tilted the glass. He closed his eyes and tried to focus on the lemonade, cold and sweet and bitter, also. He didn’t know how they had arrived at this moment, him sitting under the fig tree alone, his mother locked in the shed, sending him to prison. None of it was possible. I don’t understand how we got here, he said.
/> You raped your cousin. That’s pretty simple.
If you keep saying that, how can I let you out?
You let me out right now.
You know what I imagine when I imagine prison?
Walk around the shed right now and unlock this door.
What I imagine is standing on the moon in a T-shirt and shorts. That’s what I just imagined, when I was out there in the orchard.
If you don’t unlock this, you’ll get more than prison. You’ll get the death sentence.
It’s the moon, but the air is fine, and the temperature is fine. It’s really quiet, and there’s no wind. There’s only rock and dark sand stretching as far as I can see, and I know that this is it. This is all I get. I’ll never see another person. I’ll never see another color except the color of this rock and sand.
Prison is not the moon.
I know. What I’m saying is that I can’t imagine prison. I can’t even imagine it. I can’t go there.
You’re going there.
But that’s the thing. I’m not going there.
Yes you are.
Fine, he said. He stood up and grabbed the glass pitcher. He stepped to the wall and poured the lemonade against a wide plank. There’s your lemonade, he said. Enjoy.
I’m telling them all of this. They’re going to hear every detail. How you tortured me.
Torture, he said. Now I’m a torturer. Is there anything you’re not willing to call me?
I’m not willing to call you my son.
Galen laughed. That’s great. That’s great. Thanks, Mom. You’re a hell of a mom. Thanks for really being there for me.
Galen. You need to understand this. Every minute that you keep me in here makes it worse for you.
Mom. You need to understand this. You’re locked in a fucking shed.
Chapter 20
Galen lay on his bed staring into the dark caverns of his ceiling. Like craters, his own moonscape right here all along. Sunspots floating around his eyes still, solar flares. His mother another planet, far away, twisting and twisting. The two of them locked into some kind of orbit together.
The air cool in here, even without air-conditioning. Old house, thick walls, thick roof, heavy insulation and heavy drapes. A kind of fortress against the valley.
