Once Upon a River

• Chapter Ten •


When night muscled in, Margo used her last match to light the lamp. There wasn’t much kerosene left, and the flicker of light only seemed to intensify the darkness. She heard rain on the roof, and it occurred to her, as if for the first time, that Brian really would not be coming back and that Paul surely would. She thought of the Murray farm, of the shoulder-high stacks of wood Uncle Cal and the boys must have already cut, split, and stacked for the winter. Her own supply was a sled full of split oak and two armloads of broken branches. Last winter, Brian had kept the cabin well stocked with food and fuel, but Margo didn’t have the resources. She didn’t even have a chainsaw, since Brian had taken it to town the day he was arrested. Maybe she ought to get out while she could, row across and hide her boat somewhere, and then hitchhike to Lake Lynne. If only her mother wanted her to come.

All evening Margo sat on Brian’s bed with blankets around her and watched the lights in Michael’s house. She imagined she could make out his silhouette hunched over the table, where he was probably reading. She wondered if he had to clean house every night in order to keep things as tidy as they were, and she wondered if there were really girls who had been raised by wolves.

She had no matches left; if the woodstove and lantern went out during the night, she wouldn’t be able to relight them or the propane cooking stove. And Paul could show up at any minute. Though it was late, she had to get out of the cabin, at least until she was certain Paul wouldn’t come that night. The gas station was open until ten o’clock. She pulled one of Brian’s wool sweaters over Michael’s clean sweatshirt and carried the sleeping bag to the boat in case she had to sleep outside. She wrapped her Marlin in the sleeping bag and put it on the rear seat beside her. She couldn’t put anything under the seat because she hadn’t bailed the water after the recent rains. Past Willow Island, her engine sputtered out of gas and died. She took up her oars and rowed for a few hundred yards, before she paused. She patted her front pants pocket where she’d put her bills and change yesterday, and she found it empty. The pants were Michael’s. She had her wallet, but it contained no money. She had left her bills and change in her own jeans on the edge of Michael’s bathtub. She lifted her oars out of the water and let herself be pulled back down the river. No stars shone tonight, and cold rain began to pour down.

Rainwater pooled around her feet. Instead of going to her own side of the river when she rounded the last bend, she pulled up at Michael’s oil-barrel float. She could get her money back, and surely he had some matches she could borrow. He probably even had lawn mower gas she could use in her motor to get back upstream. She tied up her boat, checked the shed door, and found it padlocked. With her rifle in one hand, the sleeping bag held around her with the other, she approached the house and looked in through the sliding glass door. At first she could see only the glowing numbers on a digital clock. As her eyes adjusted, she saw King rise from the floor at the foot of the bed.

As quickly as King began to bark, Michael was standing on the other side of the glass, wearing boxer shorts and no shirt.

He switched on an outside light and slid the door open. “Margaret Louise? Don’t you ever sleep in a bed?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Well, come on in. Be sorry inside. Sorry for the way I’m dressed. I wasn’t expecting a visitor.”

When she stepped in, Michael looked down at the puddles forming on the plywood.

“Damn, I’ve really got to finish this floor,” he said. “That’s my next project.” He took the wet sleeping bag from her shoulders, pointed at where she should leave her shoes, and retrieved a towel from the bathroom to clean up the mess.

Margo had not realized how chilly she was until she stepped into the warm house.

“So you’ve come to me armed and dangerous this time,” he said. “If you leave your rifle here in the corner with your shoes, I promise nobody will touch it.”

“Do you shoot?”

“I’m the only guy in my family who doesn’t. My dad thinks I’m an aberration.”

“What’s that?”

“What?”

“An aberration.”

“An oddity, I guess. A freak.”

“Like a girl raised by wolves?”

He smiled. “Your blanket’s soaked—I’ll put it in the dryer. I’ll put your other clothes in there from this morning, too. I already washed them. Hey, talk to me, Margaret Louise.”

She stammered and said, “Thank you for the omelet.”

Michael laughed. “Take a shower, and you can thank me for the hot water tomorrow.”

Margo rested her gun in the corner just inside the door. For the first time in a long time, she had wanted to get the thing off her shoulder. She followed Michael into the bathroom. He was explaining how the hot water took a while to heat up and was showing her how to switch the flow from bath to shower. She peeled off her three shirts before considering she shouldn’t undress in front of a stranger. Michael looked away and abruptly left the room. Margo hardly recognized the thin, dirty creature in the mirror. She didn’t think her body looked strong enough to accomplish anything. Her shoulders were hunched from the cold. Her mud-colored curls were matted, and her face was a mess of scratches, insect bites, and poison ivy blisters. Her small breasts seemed shriveled. Her mother might’ve said she looked like a Slocum. Three times she shampooed her hair before the water rinsed clean.

Though she was in a stranger’s shower, she felt safe. With the water running, she could let herself cry, and when the hot water finally began to peter out, she composed herself by recalling the serene photos of Annie Oakley aiming her rifle, preparing to shoot, knowing she would hit her target every time. There was one photo Margo liked of a young Annie Oakley standing with her new husband, Frank Butler, and their big white dog, George.

Margo put on the dark terry-cloth robe that hung on the back of the door and padded across the hall into the room with the boat skeleton. It looked too big to fit through the doorway. The room did not even have a view of the water, so it was no wonder he didn’t sleep in there. A half dozen tools were lined up neatly on a wooden chair. She returned to the room with the sliding glass door and curled with King on the floor. Michael came in and sat on the foot of the bed, looking amused. “Are you a wolf girl? Or maybe a dog girl?”

“I watch King fish from my house.”

“Why do you call her King?”

“For the kingfisher bird. It has a big head like hers.”

“I didn’t have a dog before I bought this place,” Michael said. He squatted down and stroked the dog’s head. “It was the craziest thing. When I closed on this house, the old owner asked if I’d keep her, because she loved the river and wouldn’t be happy anywhere else. But he called her Renegade. Cleopatra fits her better. Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile, a river dog. Cleo for short.” He tugged gently on the dog’s ear and her mouth opened in a smile. “You sleep in my bed, and I’ll sleep on the floor. You might have noticed I don’t have a couch.”

“We can both sleep on the bed,” Margo said. “It’s huge.” Still wearing the bathrobe, she climbed in on the river side. Michael sat on the end of the bed for a while before shrugging his shoulders and joining her.

“What’s that mysterious light at your house?” he asked.

“A kerosene lamp.” She had left it burning, figuring it would burn itself out, but it hadn’t.

“Are you going to teach me how to fish?”

“I need some matches. And I ran out of gas. If you let me borrow some, I can pay you back.”

“Did you see my boat in there?” Michael waited for her to nod. “After Danielle left I thought I should redo that room, but then I figured I’d rather have a boat. As soon as I finish it, I’m rowing up to that island with the black willows.”

“My grandpa gave me my boat.”

Michael nodded. “I built this bed out of red oak. I slept on a mattress on the floor for two months after Danielle left, until I finished it. Odysseus built his own bed, you know. I want to build everything that matters myself.”

“What about a car?”

“Cars don’t matter,” he said. “So what kind of wood is your boat made of?”

“Teak. The only teak boat on the river, my grandpa said.” Margo didn’t have the energy to ask who Odysseus was. She ran her hand over the headboard above her. It was made of solid planks, nothing fancy. It was the kind of bed Margo would like to have, though she wouldn’t need one that took up most of the room the way this one did.

“It must be heavy,” Michael said. “I have a teak cutting board. It’s like a brick.”

“It’s fine in the water. But I can’t go farther downstream than Confluence, because it’s too heavy to carry around the dam. My grandpa used to say he was stuck on the Stark.”

“Maybe you can take me for a row one of these days.” Michael was propped on one elbow. “The River Rose. I like how your boat’s name is a complete sentence.”

Margo had never rowed her boat with a man in it, and it struck her as a fine idea that she would take this handsome Michael with his hair parted in the middle up to Willow Island. She looked at Michael, fixed him in her sights. She moved closer and kissed him. The kiss she got in return was so mild that she wasn’t sure it’d happened. When Brian kissed you, you knew you’d been kissed.

“Talk to me,” he said and laughed. “I don’t kiss just any girl who wanders in here.”

She kissed him again, and this time he pulled away more slowly. She was surprised at how much she wanted to keep kissing him, though he was practically a stranger. She was feeling the same urgency she felt when she had a buck in her sights. Only she didn’t want to shoot Michael.

“Why were you out in the rain?” he whispered. The way he asked questions suggested to Margo that problems could be discussed and solved, that nothing was as dire as it seemed. She wasn’t able to answer him yet, but she considered telling him something else, something interesting—maybe that she’d once seen a heron carry a little snake up to its nest—but then he would want her to talk more, and she wanted to be silent with him. She wanted to know his smooth chest, his ribs, his solid shoulders, his delicate throat. His arm lay above the blankets, thin compared to Brian’s or Paul’s. This arm couldn’t hold her down, couldn’t put her anyplace she didn’t want to be. A girl could stand and fight a man like Michael, instead of running away. She would do with him only what she wanted to do. The kerosene lamp across the river dimmed, and a few minutes later it flickered and went out.

“What are you afraid of out there?” Michael asked.

“I’m not afraid of anything,” she whispered. Even if it was a lie, she liked saying it. She wrapped a hand around the back of Michael’s neck and kissed him hard, as though pulling the trigger of a rifle and holding it steady all through the shot. She pushed her fingers through his hair and felt along his shoulder, wanting to touch as much of his skin as possible all at once, to have his whole body of skin beneath her hands. She leaned across him, felt the curve of his back and his buttock, and continued down his leg until she felt him shudder and move toward her. Fresh air trickled through a window not quite closed. The dog sighed on the floor. From the end of the hall she heard the clothes and sleeping bag in the dryer. Michael worked his hand between her legs and her breathing collapsed into laughter—something that had never happened before. He rolled onto her easily, like waves onto sand.

Later, when she closed her eyes, she felt his affectionate gaze on her. As she drifted off, she thought maybe she had drowned with Paul and was now revived.

She awoke alone to light pouring through the thin curtains covering the sliding glass door; the sun was warm on her clean skin. Brian’s cabin had no southern exposure, and she usually slept with her clothes on. Margo sat up and saw her sleeping bag folded on the far corner of the bed. On top of it were her jeans, her dark blue turtleneck, flannel shirt, and sweater. Paper money was folded on top. Her heart thudded before she realized that it must be the bills and change that she had left in her pants pocket. Her Marlin was still sitting in the corner where she’d put it last night. She dressed and found Michael in the kitchen wearing a button-up shirt and sport jacket. She put her rifle next to the broom in the corner and sat at the table.

“I’m going to church,” Michael said. “I’m meeting with a study group afterwards. We’re going to explore how various skills can help those who are less fortunate. I’m going to talk about home improvement skills. Would you like to come? You could talk about fishing.” He leaned back against the sink with his arms crossed, a cup of coffee in one hand. She tried to remember being wrapped in his arms, held tight against his chest, but this morning his body seemed stiff beneath his shirt and jacket, and she couldn’t imagine him without clothes. “I wish you would. It’s a very relaxed church. Some people around here call it the hippie church.”

“I’m going home,” she said automatically.

He handed her a cup of coffee with milk already in it. “How old are you, Margaret Louise? I’m twenty-eight.”

“I’ll be nineteen in November.” She then remembered she’d told him she was already nineteen. In fact, she’d be seventeen in two months.

“You know, I had no intention of doing that last night. I don’t really even know you.” He stared at Margo in a way that seemed rude, so she sipped her coffee without looking up at him and stroked King’s head. The silence in the room grew large, and Margo let herself settle into it. Silence was a game she could play.

“And I didn’t use protection. Don’t worry about pregnancy—I’ve been snipped—but still we shouldn’t have. Is there anything you want to tell me?”

She looked into his face. His eyes looked a little frantic, but they were kind.

“I’m sorry,” Michael finally said, sitting across from her and relaxing. “I just don’t know anything about you. For all I know you’re some lost heiress or a girl who just killed her whole family and buried them in a garden.”

“Or a girl raised by wolves?” Margo said.

“Or maybe I’m dreaming you.” His voice grew quieter. “Because, believe me, if I dreamed a girl, she’d be just like you. She’d have beautiful arms like you. She’d be smart, and she’d even smell like you. She’d teach me to live off the land.” He stood up, picked up a dishcloth, and wiped the clean counter with it.

What could she smell like? Margo wondered. She’d just had a shower.

“Except this girl would talk.” He folded the cloth and put it down. “She’d argue with me. And if I was lucky, she really would be an heiress with an island in the river.”

Margo kept his words on the surface. She wasn’t a wolf girl or a murderer or an heiress. Or a dream. She was a girl who needed some matches and gas for the outboard motor. King pushed her head beneath Margo’s hand until Margo resumed petting her.

“But maybe that big guy you live with will come back and use me for bait.”

Margo thought it was the first sensible thing he’d said. She smiled.

“You’ve lived with him since last December, but now you’re afraid of him.”

Margo looked at her cabin. She was grateful no boat was parked there. After last night, she realized she no longer wanted to see either Paul or Brian. Margo had appreciated the home Brian had given her, but she didn’t want to be with him again, not even if he were set free. She had learned a lot from Brian, but last night it had been so nice to be the equal of a man, and to feel safe and comfortable.

Michael took a drink of coffee. “Are you going to live in that cabin all winter? Keep warm with a woodstove? Or do you have a propane or kerosene heater?”

“I might go stay with my ma,” she said. She wanted to hear how it sounded.

“Oh, of course you have a mother! Where does she live?”

“Lake Lynne.”

“Will you come back tonight?” Michael’s eyes were as brown and hopeful as King’s. “We can eat dinner. I could come get you in the Jeep.”

“The closest road is a half mile from the cabin,” she said, slinging her Marlin over her shoulder. “Then it’s just a walking path.”

“And I don’t have a boat yet, so I guess it’s up to you, Margaret Louise.” He watched her stand, drain her coffee, and walk toward the door, just as he had watched her row away with his dog on the day they’d met.

A half hour later, Margo was back at the cabin, sitting cross-legged on the dock, enjoying a warm breeze off the river, watching Michael’s Jeep pull out of the driveway again. She wished she’d told him she would come to dinner. If he asked her again, she would accept his invitation on the spot and offer to bring something—fish fillets, maybe. She watched the Jeep pull onto the river road that led upstream to Heart of Pines and past hundreds of regular houses like his. She should write to her mother and ask if Luanne was living a regular life in Lake Lynne or if she was an aberration in her new town. A heron dropped from the sky and settled out of sight downstream. Two mallards drifted near shore, and from their slightly rusty chest feathers Margo figured they were first-year males. She wondered if they were all that survived of a dozen chicks that a mama had hatched in the spring. Margo quacked, and they made a gentle noise in response, but kept moving.

That evening, while Michael was still away, a silver car pulled into his driveway. Though Margo didn’t recognize the car, the driver was clearly Danielle, the woman who had left Michael. She disappeared on the road side of the house, and shortly afterward King appeared and bounded down to the water. It occurred to Margo that the woman might have come to take Michael’s dog. Margo reeled in her line and dragged the outboard motor off the boat without taking care to protect the propeller. She pushed off from shore and in a few minutes was downstream and on the other side of the river. King ran out onto the float to greet her, bowed playfully, and tossed her head instead of climbing into the boat. “King! Come!” Margo barked. “King! Come!” As the dog finally jumped in, the woman appeared from inside the house. She wore a white blouse under a thin white vest. She was holding a glass of something clear with ice in it and carrying a lawn chair. She rested her drink in the grass, unfolded the chair, and then sat and stretched her legs out.

“Hey, what are you doing with Cleo?” she yelled when she saw Margo and Cleo in the boat. The woman’s hair was the color of caramel.

“She’s not yours!” Margo yelled, but she was starting to realize the woman probably wasn’t there to take the dog at all. Instead, the woman was making herself at home, no doubt planning to step back into the life she had left. Michael must have known she would come back, and that was why he hadn’t gotten rid of her things.

“I’ll call the police, you little freak,” Danielle said mildly and took a long drink from her glass. She crossed her ankles.

Margo’s hair was clean, and she had braided it neatly. Was it her worn jeans that made the woman call her freak? Her old Carhartt jacket? Was it her dark, heavy rowboat with its splintery oars? Or her gun visible on the back seat? Or was she a freak, plain and simple, a wolf girl, an aberration? Would her mother see her that way when they finally met again? Was that why Margo had never been able to make new friends in Murrayville?

“You left the dog and went away,” Margo said, too quietly for Danielle to hear. And you left Michael, she thought, and you left the river. Whatever Margo might be, this woman had been a fool. Margo supposed the woman knew better now, and that was why she was back.

As Margo rowed upstream toward the cabin, Michael’s Jeep appeared and parked next to the silver car. The woman stood and met him halfway to the driveway. When Margo saw the two of them standing side by side, she felt a little sick. They seemed to belong together.

“Cleo! Come back!” shouted Michael. At the call, King moved around Margo to get to the back seat. She jumped out of the boat, causing it to tip. It happened so quickly that Margo could not compensate for the dog’s weight, and a blast of water splashed into the boat.

Michael shouted, “Margaret Louise! Come back!” And then he began to engage in intense conversation with Danielle.

And upstream and coming toward the cabin was the Playbuoy.

Margo’s boat began to turn in the current, and soon her prow was headed downstream. She maneuvered herself toward the edge of the river with one oar so she would be less visible to Paul.

She glided slowly out of sight of the cabin and Michael’s house, past a solitary black fisherman holding a bottle twisted in a brown bag. The green heads of willows wept nearby. Painted turtles and blue racers sunning themselves on fallen trees slid into the water at her approach. A great blue heron fished silently from its perch on a root, one bulging banded eye on her as she passed, wary but not alarmed so long as Margo was moving with the current. She was tempted to take up the oars and row toward the bird, but decided to leave it in peace. She felt the exhaustion of her journey of the last ten months, the whole foolish, failed journey upstream to find her mother. She needed to just sit and let things run through her head as if her life were just a story that she could read or hear about.

A man steered his aluminum motorboat around her. She tossed side to side in his wake, and then she twirled. She had not swum since long before she’d left home, and she had forgotten the freedom she’d once known in letting the river take her where it would. She passed a half dozen sandpipers on a sandbar, and then watched a green heron slinking through poison ivy vines along the water’s edge. She knew she should pull over to the side of the river and take charge of her situation, but then she saw a tree that resembled Paul with his arms upraised. Another tree had her father’s brooding face. Her mother’s willowy, suntanned arms momentarily appeared as reflections of branches, but the water was swift there, providing no place to rest. She did not want to go back to Murrayville, but she could not go back to her cabin. She climbed onto the boat’s back seat beside her rifle and curled there and thought about how nice it was to float, to let the river guide her, and how nice it had been to lie with Michael last night in his big bed.

The next she was aware, she was no longer moving. The air had grown cooler, and she seemed to be tilted to the starboard side on the back seat of the boat. Above her was a rickety dock with one pole missing, but it was not the marijuana house in Murrayville as she had thought for one confused moment. Her prow was stuck in a sandbar beside a burned-out cabin she’d seen on trips downstream with Brian. The sun was sinking, but not more than half an hour had passed since she’d closed her eyes. At first she thought she was hallucinating when she saw a great blue heron standing before her, not four feet away, on the middle seat of the boat. Margo moved not a muscle, tried not to blink. She studied the clear, savage banded eye, the dagger of a beak, and wondered if this animal was going to attack her. Drops of water beaded on the bird’s spiky crest. She remained perfectly still as the heron stepped off the seat onto the wet floor of the boat, coming even closer, as though Margo might be prey. She had watched herons spear fish in tangled underwater roots and feed their chicks in the tops of trees, but she had never dared hope she would be close enough to touch one. Margo followed the bird’s gaze and realized it wasn’t really looking at her; it was stalking something in the shallow water in the bottom of the boat, a gold shimmer, a little fish, perhaps. Suddenly the dagger beak dipped and snatched the bright object. It was a gold-colored .22-caliber long-rifle cartridge. The bird looked into Margo’s eyes and began to take flight. As it spread its wings, its feathers brushed Margo’s knees, and, as if realizing its folly, it dropped the cartridge onto Margo’s hip. Margo held her breath as the bird rose and flew upstream. She studied the cartridge and wondered if it was some kind of message.

She sat up and let herself imagine the flush of wings again, the swoosh of air; she thought about Michael in his bed, the night wind through the window, his warm skin brushing hers. She would follow the heron back upstream. She wasn’t certain how far down she had floated, but if it was three miles, it would take that many hours to return to where she’d started. To lessen the effect of the current, she hugged the edge of the river as closely as she could without scraping bottom with her oars. She faced backward, toward a fiery orange sunset, and as the color faded, her eyes adjusted to the darkness. She rowed steadily past the unlit wooden cottages and shacks, alongside the ancient trees. A whip-poor-will’s haunting cry raised the hair on her arms. A nighthawk made a crazy flutter and followed her for a while. A big hoot owl appeared silhouetted in a tree. Muskrats and other night hunters slid into the water, rose alongside her boat, and then slipped below the surface again as she made her way upstream. When a quarter moon appeared, Margo pulled herself into a snag to rest. Her arm muscles burned, and her hands were roughed up from the oar handles. She felt the night pulling at her boat, luring her into the dark, easy current. She pushed off again.

The river curved and narrowed slightly, and she recognized a familiar irrigation pump and boathouses on the north bank. She held the brightest stars in her sights until they disappeared behind trees.

But once she neared the cabin, she saw the Playbuoy was still there. When she reached Michael’s oil-barrel float, she misjudged the distance from shore and stepped out into thigh-deep water. She tied the boat under the gangplank, between the float and shore, where it would be less noticeable. The noise must have woken Michael or King. A light came on in the bedroom, and King soon jogged out into the yard, over the planks, and onto the float. Margo petted her and held the Marlin out of the water.

She saw the kitchen light go on, and she dragged herself to shore.

Michael opened the kitchen door before she knocked. “Margaret!” he said.

“Can I have some matches?” It was all she could bring herself to say, not knowing if Michael’s dinner invitation was still open. Margo should have checked for Danielle’s car in the driveway before coming to the door.

“Margaret, come in,” Michael said. She saw the clock behind him. It was ten-thirty. “It’s cold out there. Feels like fall.”

“Is Danielle here?” Margo clenched her teeth. King stood beside her.

“Nope. I’m all by myself.”

“I brought King back. She came out to find me.”

Michael looked at Margo. “Do you want to talk about whatever’s going on?”

Margo hunched her shoulders to stop her shivering. “That island with the willows upstream,” she said. “I’ll row you up there if you want. Tomorrow.”

“Come in, and let’s talk about it,” Michael said. He leaned against the doorframe. “Tell me about that man at the cabin.”

“Do you like great blue herons?” Margo asked. She felt drunk, dizzy.

“Who doesn’t like them?” Michael said.

“There’s herons on Willow Island. A campment of herons, living in the trees.” She put one hand against the doorframe. “Dozens of them. One came so close that it brushed my leg with its wing.”

“I don’t suppose you know the story about Leda and the swan?”

Margo thought of the word. “Heronry,” she said. “The herons are in a heronry.”

“I like cranes, too. Not as common in these parts, of course. The females are reclusive. Now it’s time to come inside and dry off.” He tugged at her wrist, but stopped when she resisted. He took her hand. “If you seriously don’t want to come in, I’ll just give you some gas for your boat, okay? And I’ve got a box of matches you can have.”

“Thank you,” she said. “You know, I miss my dad. And my ma. She doesn’t want me to visit her.”

“Come inside, Margaret. We can talk about it.”

“I mean . . . I miss them so much.” She couldn’t imagine Michael or anyone understanding how even losing Brian had been difficult.

Michael nodded. He held both of her hands gently. “Cleo’s going to get cold out there waiting for you. We’ll let her have two names, like you. She can be King Cleo. Come in, and I’ll make you an omelet. By tomorrow afternoon you’ll be thanking me for it.”

Before she stepped through the doorway, Margo looked behind her, across the river, toward the dark little cabin. She would row across tomorrow, after Paul was gone, to get her belongings—hopefully her pack would still be under the bed. King followed her inside, where it was warm and safe.