Free Legend of a Suicide by David Vann Page B

I can’t do everythingat once, and first we need to eat. If you catch anything, gut it for eggs and put out another couple of lines on the bottom with the eggs. Just tie the lines off to something and we’ll leave them there around the clock.
    So Roy went to the point again and cast across the mouth. It was a long time of catching nothing. He started by staring at the water as he fished, feeling like a fish would be there any moment, as if he could wish one onto the end of his line, but then he started looking off across the channel at the islands. There were a few whitecaps farther out, and in the distance, at the edge of the horizon, a fishing boat passed. It was far away, but Roy could see how it was humped up in front and he imagined even that he could see the spreaders, but that was just imagination. And then he was daydreaming about how he’d have to shoot their flares off this beach and try to get the boat’s attention because his father had been gored by a bear and half eaten, and then a fish finally hit and he pulled it in, surfing it fast across the water, its head wagging, because it was only a small Dolly. He got it on the rocks and would normally have thrown it back, it was so small, but they needed anything they could get at this point, so he smashed its head and slit it from its asshole to its gullet to see if it had eggs. It did, which was lucky, though they were very small and not many of them. He cut them out, left the fish and his pole, and walked toward the cabin to set the bottom lines, but then he could hear the wings coming down and turned and ran but wasn’t fast enough. The eagle already had his fish in its talons and was lifting off with its huge brown wings before Roy could get there. He picked up a rock and chucked it at the eagle to make it drop the fish but he missed by too far and the eaglelumbered off across the inlet to a tree on the point and landed and sat there watching Roy while it ate the fish.
    Roy considered the shotgun, but even maddened and feeling they were desperate for food and fearing what his father would say about losing the fish he didn’t want to think about shooting a bald eagle.
    He got an extra spool and hooks from the cabin to set the bottom lines.
    Get something? his father called from the back.
    Yeah, I got the eggs to set the lines, but it was only a small fish and when I turned away the eagle grabbed it.
    Shit.
    Yeah.
    Well, go catch another one.
    I’m planning on it.
    He put big sinkers on the bottom lines and hurled them out by hand. He hoped the water was deep enough. He set two right out in front of the cabin and tied them to roots, then walked out to the point again and threw a line into the mouth where he’d been fishing and trailed it clear back to tie off to a tree. The eagle was still sitting high up, watching him.
    Then Roy picked up his gear and walked farther down the shoreline, more than half a mile of slow going over the rocks and in some cases up into the woods to get to the next small inlet. Here when he cast over the mouth and trundled in, he got something bigger right away. It pulled sideways at the line heading out to sea, the reel singing, until Roy realized his drag was just set too loose and he tightened it up and then the fish still pulled but Roy had no trouble horsing it in. It jumped twice just as itwas pulled in close to the beach, two twists into the air, the head ripping back and forth trying to free itself. It was an early pink salmon, very silvery and fresh. Roy walked backward with his rod tip high to pull it up smoothly and quickly onto the rocky beach. It flopped wildly and threw the hook, but by then it was too far inland and Roy ran over to scoop it quick by the gills and throw it farther up the beach, where it lay gasping and wild-eyed and he smashed its head three times with a rock until its body arched quivering and bloody and then lay flat. Its muscles still spasmed every few seconds but it was dead.
    Roy covered it in a