When I was 26, I drove a Jeep pick-up, out of deference to my grandfather, who never stopped driving his, even after it had died and become permanently parked on the front lawn. He'd still go out and sit in it, fiddle around in the glove compartment as if he'd lost something out there. The pick-up was plain brown, I don't know what year, but old, with long scratches down its sides from hunting on narrow fire roads lined by brush and dead branches. He had it parked facing the street and, beyond that, the lake he'd lived on all his life. He'd wave at the neighbours as they passed by on their evening walks.
I was staying with him and my grandmother for the summer. Between teaching jobs - like many others on the fringes of the public-school system, I had no idea if or where I would be hired back in the fall - I needed a place to stay. When my grandparents offered me the small apartment above their garage, I accepted. I cleaned out the debris of over 60 years, the accumulated important forgotten-but-saved remnants of 11 lives, all told. Included somehow was the collection of hexagon-barrelled rifles my great-grandfather had been storing once upon a time for his uncle.
Great-aunt Bertha had photos of high-school sweethearts preserved in mothballs, as well as a favourite pair of boots, her first maths test, a home-made slingshot, and a huge wad of beeswax. None of these heirlooms and relics of my many relatives made any sense to me. All the garbage of a life doesn't make a life. So I spent more than three days wading through all these precious crap piles with the intention of sorting, of elimination, before I realised that none of it could ever be thrown away. I cleared a space in the garage below by piling tools and trinkets perilously high, then simply moved everything down in boxes. All 10 by 12ft of the apartment, in addition to the closet, sink, and toilet, would be mine.
As I was carting boxes down to the garage, however, I noticed my grandfather heading out for the second time that day to his pick-up. I noticed also that all the movements he made were exact replicas of the ones he had made on his first trip. After opening the kitchen screen door slowly and nudging the doormat out of the way with his boot (he wore hunting boots, though the temperature was in the high 80s), he straightened up on the porch, halfway between myself and the pick-up, not looking at either of us, his large belly and thin face in profile, and stared down at the cracked pavement of the driveway.
I don't think the pavement concerned him, however. He looked absentmindedly at one of the buttons on his thick flannel shirt (the same button each time, third from the top), rubbed at his ears for a while with his left hand, pulled out his hanky with his right, folded it and put it back, then turned suddenly to face the pick-up, his head back a little, as if he were having to sight it from far off.
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Then he took a quick glance all around, missed me apparently, and walked slowly down the driveway, left hand in his pocket. His right hand was dangling, ready, because when he reached the pick-up where it sat parked on the front lawn, facing the street, he reached up and gave a tug at the rear corner of the tailgate, just to be sure it was locked and wasn't going to flop down. Hand on the gate, resting there now, he surveyed the lake for 15 or 20 minutes, which made me put down the box I was holding. He waved at several folks walking or driving by, always with that right hand in a single sideways motion, and returned it to the gate. Another quick glance all around and he moved tentatively towards the door on the driver's side. Once the door was open, he was in, one leg at a time, using the door for support.
"Well, that's interesting," I said to myself. So I went and joined him. I tapped on the passenger window and he motioned with a flick upward of his hand for me to come in. He wasn't wearing his seat belt, same as all the years he had actually driven.
"Lake's pretty high this year," he said.
"Lot of rain?" I asked.
He nodded. "Used to be the lake was clear. Clear Lake. That's its name, you know, and there was a time it was actually clear."
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He looked at me to see if I was getting the joke. I smiled. "Were there many powerboats back then?" I asked.
He sat back stiffly against the seat and folded his arms. "No. Not many powerboats. Just a few of us trying to water-ski behind 15-horse fishing motors." He checked his side mirror, gazing at the garage, perhaps, or at my grandmother in the kitchen window. We relaxed a little, settled in, listened to the thick mats of algae clogging up the powerboats.
"Used boards to ski on. Just plain old boards that we'd whittled up a bit."
"Did that work?" I asked.
"Did that work," he said, repeating those words aloud for all to hear. Then he chuckled. He looked over at me and I smiled again.
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Then it was time to drive. My grandfather put his left hand up on the steering wheel and fiddled with the ignition key with his right. Somehow he never actually turned it.
"Well," he said. "That was some trip. That last opening weekend, when Gary came down and Doug Lampson and his boy. I don't think there was a legal buck on that entire mountain."
"Pretty scarce, all right," I said. I had been the only one to fire a shot that weekend, and I was only shooting at trees, pretending there was a buck, five shots fired on the run, exciting and relatively harmless.
"Except, of course, the one you got a few shots at. But still, that's only one."
I wondered whether he suspected the truth. None of the others were shooting at deer any more, either; they just hadn't admitted it to each other yet. I knew for a fact that Doug Lampson's boy had let a three-point pass within 50 yards that trip and not even put a shell in the chamber.
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"Next year, I hear we're going to get even more in the way of rain."
"That's a lot of rain," I said.
"Say, how's your mom doing these days? You know, the first time I met her, she was going to school with your dad, there, and they had come to visit."
I waited, but it seemed that was it for the story. "Sounds nice," I finally said.
"Yeah, by gosh, she didn't like that fishing much."
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"No, she didn't. I remember a picture of her holding a king crab by its claws up on Adak. I wasn't born yet then, of course, but she certainly did not look pleased."
My grandfather chuckled and rubbed at his ear. I began to feel a little tense, because at this point we had exhausted all our familiar topics.
If I focused on the dust on the windshield I could almost imagine there was not a cyclone fence on the other side of the road, impairing our view of the lake. Dust like thin haze, a California summer, and my father and grandfather would have taken only a few steps past the hedge to cross what was then a dirt road. They slipped through bright-green tules not yet covered in foam and slime and descended into clear water. Red-winged blackbirds swung on those tules, mockingbirds up high - ancient mocking-birds, different than the ones now - ducks in close, deer and even children come down to drink at the water's edge, lap, lap, lapping with their bright-red tongues.
"The lake must have looked pretty different before," I said.
"Yeah, I imagine so," he said.
"How different, would you say?"
"Oh, not that different, I suppose."
Years earlier, my grandfather, dipping the newborn babe, my father, up to its armpits in the still-clear waters. My grandfather a dentist, feeling qualified in the other medical professions as well. A trip for mudcats much warned against by obstetricians, but taken.
"Do you remember your father on the lake?" I asked.
"What's that?"
"I'm sorry. I was just wondering whether my great-grandfather liked fishing on the lake, too."
"He fished a little," my grandfather said. "He liked to sit out here on the porch."
Out here on the porch. A photo of my great-grandfather and me when I'm five and he's 95. I'm sitting on his knee, here on the porch. He's very tall. Two Roys. One coming in, one going out. Though you can't tell in the photo, he's had a sinus operation recently, and I will have one 20 years down the road. A bond that transcends time.
"Mudcats?" I ask.
"A few mudcats," my grandfather admits.
"The lantern at night on the pier? Mudcats then?"
"I suppose we went out late a few times. That's when they bite best, you know. A few worms and maybe a full moon; you can still get the occasional mudcat that way. We went out a few times ourselves, didn't we?"
"I remember," I said. "That was fun."
"Yeah, by gosh."
Time to drive again. The hand fiddling at the keys, other hand sliding across the upper rim of an unmoving wheel, describing the arc. And what went first? U-joint? Valves? Transmission?
"There was one year, there," my grandfather began, "the lake came all the way up. It made it clear to the second step of the porch and flooded the driveway."
"Wow," I said. "That's incredible. I can't imagine that."
"It came down pretty good."
I adjusted my side mirror until I could see my grandmother. She was staring out at us, or perhaps the lake. The fingers of one hand were pressed gently against her lips, her thumb hooked beneath her several chins: her contemplative pose. And what was she thinking? She was one unit and over 60 years short of a BA in History at Fresno State. She read Michener's books now, all of them, and practised being uncomplaining in her complaints. A family joke, that bit about "uncomplaining in her complaints", and not a very nice one, at that. But the truth is, I knew very little about her. A kind of crime, it felt like, not to know my own grandparents, but when exactly was the opportunity to know them, when did conversation ever slip enough to let us say something?
"I see Grandma in the window," I said.
My grandfather nodded and wiped his hand over his face. He looked out at the lake. "Yep," he said. "Looking out at the lake, I suppose."
"How did you meet her?"
I asked. This was a question all offspring and offspring of offspring were allowed to ask, I realised.
I simply hadn't thought of it before.
"We had some mutual friends at school, and we decided to get
married after a while."
"Mutual friends?" I asked.
"Yeah, she had some of the same friends I had. We were both in the church there, in Fresno."
"What did your future look like then?" I asked.
My grandfather stared at me.
"I'm sorry," I said. "That sounds strange, I know, and I don't mean to ask too much, but what did you see then, what did you imagine when you thought about marrying Grandma? Did you see this house, here, and the lake?"
"Is this a question you ask your students?"
I laughed. "No, but I guess it sounds like that, doesn't it?"
"Every occupation has its hazards," he said and chuckled. Then he adjusted his side mirror. "Well, I don't know," he said. "I may have to think about that one."
"I'm sorry," I said. "I guess I'm just wondering for myself."
"What about your job? Do you know yet where you'll be schoolteaching?"
"No."
My grandfather nodded. I stretched my legs a little and he took off his cap and looked at it resting there on his knee. He head was nearly bald, and shapeless as a potato, the same as my own would be very soon.
My grandfather alone in Fresno, searching the pleasant bland faces at a church social, not daring to hope, and yet suddenly my grandmother appears. She's lit up like Christmas, outlined in possibility, holding a small paper plate of deviled-ham finger sandwiches. She removes the waxed paper and, in successive outlines, blazing, my grandfather's future, and her future, the house, the lake, kids, the Jeep, radios, boats - all clear, finally, obvious and real. And what was her vision?
"Well," my grandfather said. "I don't know what kind of a future I thought about then. I can't remember." He fiddled with the brim of his cap, looked at the inside, rubbing one thumb over the material, then looked at the top, sighed, and put it back on.
"I do remember a spot of vanilla ice cream on the counter. This was right after I asked your grandma to marry me; we went out for ice cream. And I remember staring at this one spot, right in front of me. It was dried out a little, like freezer burn, and I have no idea what I was thinking. That's always been my clearest memory."
"Huh," I said. I was holding my breath, waiting for more, not wanting him to stop. The whole thing was seeming a lot less far-fetched. My grandfather was starting to seem like a real person, a guy who was staring at nothing and panicking, just like me.
But my grandfather did stop, of course. That was it. He pulled the handle and stepped out, one leg at a time, while I stared at the whiskers on the back of his neck. They were white and grey. He didn't swing the door, but pressed it shut until the lock clicked.I was out and following.
"I do that, too," I said. "I remember turning the corner of our street at 10, the way the cracks looked in the sidewalk. 'I'm 10,' I thought, 'and I'll remember this for ever.' And that's all I have left of 10."
"Huh," he said, and he took his cap off and went inside.
Legend of a Suicide (Penguin, £7.99) by David Vann is available from Sunday Times BooksFirst at £7.59 including p&p. Tel: 0870 165 8585
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Vann's award-winning Legend of a Suicide was The New York Times notable book of 2008. He is a professor at the University of San Francisco and lives in the San Francisco Bay area