Once Upon a River

PART

II





• Chapter Eleven •


Margo brought in the mail from the box. It was April, and she had been staying with Michael since late September. The danger of freezing and flooding had passed, and yesterday they had launched the oil-barrel float. Margo had walked the gangplank onto it no fewer than twenty times today, enjoying the way it tipped beneath her weight. The arrival of a letter addressed to Margaret Louise Crane made her hopeful it would be from her mother, to whom she had written and sent Michael’s address. She had received a Christmas card from Luanne saying once again that now would not be a good time to visit, but that she would write again soon. It contained a twenty-dollar bill. This envelope, however, was from the Secretary of State and contained the Michigan ID card she’d applied for three weeks earlier. She would use the card to get her hunting and fishing licenses.

When Michael got home that evening, he went into the house as usual. Then he came out the back door and approached Margo, who was skinning a bullhead catfish near the upstream edge of his property. Out of squeamishness and a dislike of mess, he usually avoided watching her prepare the fish and game she caught.

“Your ID says you were born in 1963.” He seemed to choke on his words. “I saw it sitting on the table.”

“So?”

“You just turned seventeen in November, after you moved in with me. Jesus, Margaret.”

The tail of the bullhead curled away from the tree. The fish arched its half-skinned body, kept pushing against the nail that held its head to the tree. On this pleasant afternoon, Margo had forgotten about how her age could matter.

“For Christ’s sake, Margaret, can’t you hit it on the head or something?”

“What?”

“Do you really want to skin something alive?” Michael said. “The damned fish. It’s in pain. Can’t you kill it first?”

“My grandpa taught me—”

“He taught you to skin a creature alive?”

“Told me, I mean . . . fish don’t feel pain.”

“Jesus, Margo, look at that thing writhe—if that’s not pain, I don’t know what is.”

Margo picked up her knife and slashed through the bullhead’s spinal cord. Its body fell to the ground.

“I’m sorry I said it like that,” Michael said. “I’ve just never seen one struggle that way. Really, it’s okay.”

“I do hit them on the head, but sometimes they wake up.”

He was holding her ID between his thumb and finger. “You even take a beautiful driver’s license photo. God, Margaret.”

She stood quietly, headless fish in one hand, knife in the other. Silence had so far been her best response when Michael was upset.

“You told me you were turning nineteen when we met. You were sixteen. I slept with a sixteen-year-old girl. And now I’m with a

seventeen-year-old girl. Stop looking at me that way. It’s maddening when you stare.”

Margo looked beyond him, at the river.

“What is the age of consent in this state? I didn’t think I would ever need to know.”

Margo watched him cross the lawn and disappear into the house. When Michael was upset, he didn’t usually stay that way for long. She didn’t know if this time would be different or what that might mean. She finished skinning the fish, stinging her hand only once.

The winter had dragged on too long, and now that spring was here, hundreds of daffodils bloomed alongside Michael’s house. Thirty-some miles downstream, Joanna had planted hundreds of daffodils around the Murray house and yard, ones she called jonquils and narcissus and paper flowers, some etched with orange, so that every April the Murray place looked like a fairyland. Occasionally Margo thought of shooting their blossom heads off with .22 shotshells, but it was only to see the petals spray like fireworks, to create a different kind of beauty. Shotshell was what Annie Oakley used to explode glass balls in the air at exhibitions.

Margo was enjoying living with Michael, but after all these months she still had not dared unpack. She washed her clothes in his machine and stuffed them back into her army bag. She felt restless whenever she spent too much time indoors, but knew she would have a hard time living without Michael’s household comforts again, without furnace heat, hot water, and store-bought food. She had reshaped her life around Michael’s routines and his sensible habits so thoroughly that she could go for hours without thinking about her daddy or her old life, or even about Brian or Paul, despite the cabin being right across the way. Michael worked patiently on his projects in the evenings with her assistance, finishing the floors and installing the baseboards in room after room, striving to master the skills he needed to make his house perfect. The thought that he might finish the remodeling made her uneasy—she feared that when the house was to his liking he might turn his attention to improving her. Fortunately, he was nowhere near finishing the boat, so that could occupy him awhile.

Margo had been learning more about Annie Oakley ever since Michael brought her a copy of Annie Oakley: Life and Legend. It said that Annie had been born Phoebe Ann Mosey and changed her name as an adult. After her father’s death, the girl’s mother sent thirteen-year-old Phoebe away to live with a couple who had no children. They worked her hard, beat her, and didn’t feed her enough. She called them the Wolves. As soon as she could escape from the attic where they locked her, she ran home to her mother’s. Only then did she take the old family rifle off the mantel and start hunting, as a way to earn her keep.

Twenty minutes later when Michael returned, he was still agitated. Margo wiped her hands on her jeans.

“The age of consent is seventeen in this state,” Michael said. “But seventeen. It’s so young. Should we go talk to your relations in Murrayville? Maybe it’s time we track down your mother. What the hell is the matter with her, anyhow?”

Margo shook her head. She wasn’t desperate enough to go where she wasn’t wanted.

“Will you swim with me when it gets warmer?” she asked in a quiet voice. She wanted to change the subject.

“I’m not much of a swimmer. Maybe we should get married,” he said. He looked into her face.

“Why?” she asked.

“Why? For all the normal reasons. Love. I love you, Margaret Louise,” Michael said, “and maybe I’m a little afraid that if I don’t marry you, what we’re doing is wrong.”

“Would I have to go to church?” she asked. “Or school?”

Every Sunday Michael tried to get her to come with him to his hippie church. She had gone once, had listened to the minister. The man meant well, she could tell, but he was as dull as a schoolteacher. She had enjoyed the guitar music, but she didn’t like the way people wanted to shake her hand and talk afterward. She didn’t dislike people, she told Michael, but at church there were too many all at once. He said it was okay that she didn’t go, but he was disappointed she didn’t want to be part of his community. He was also disappointed that she didn’t show any interest in school. He thought Margo needed to set personal goals, that it was not enough to live a beautiful life on the river, fishing, shooting, and collecting berries, nuts, and mushrooms.

“You wouldn’t have to do anything you didn’t want to do. Okay, forget I asked.” He moved away from her. Then he said, “This wasn’t the right way to ask you. Or the right time, when I’m all riled up.”

Margo looked off downstream. People said Joanna and Cal had a solid marriage, and Margo was sure Joanna would say she was glad she had married Cal. Her own ma and pa were a different story.

“But if I did ask you, what would you say?” Michael knelt in the grass and took her hand, which was still sticky with fish guts. “This is a little better. Will you marry me?”

She looked down at him. He was still wearing his creased work pants. He had taken off his tie in the house, but his white shirt was still buttoned up to the neck.

Since she had been living with Michael, she talked more, said things even when she wasn’t certain she should, about her father and mother and some of the Murrays, but she hadn’t told him about Cal or Paul or Brian.

Usually Michael seemed happy to listen to her. Their life together was easy. They made love most nights, with no worry about getting pregnant. Despite the way she knew and loved Michael, marriage had never occurred to her.

“Why are you looking at me so strangely?” Michael asked. “Don’t people get married where you come from?”

“Okay,” she said.

“Okay what?”

“I’ll marry you.”

“The answer is yes or no,” Michael said and grinned. “Okay is a little less enthusiastic than I was hoping for.”

“Okay, yes.”

“Are you sure? I shouldn’t have asked this way. And I don’t even have a ring, Margaret. A man can’t propose without a ring.”

“Annie Oakley married Frank Butler when she was seventeen,” Margo said. “He was twenty-eight. Same as us. They spent the rest of their lives together. With dogs.”

“No kids?”

“Nope.”

“All right, then, if it’s good enough for Annie Oakley, it’s good enough for us. Now, what can we use for a ring around here?”

From what she had read, Margo knew there was some uncertainty about Annie Oakley’s real age. The Wild West Show had an interest in making her seem as young as possible. She also knew that Annie longed to have children, but was unable to.

Michael said, “God, a few minutes ago I was miserable with guilt, and now I’m the happiest person I know.”

He plucked a single dandelion, one of a few that had bloomed so far, and he asked to borrow her fish knife. He cut a slit in the dandelion stem near the flower’s head, looped the bottom of the stem through it, and pulled it tight around her finger, so her hand had a big yellow flower on top.

“We used to make these!” Margo said, delighted. “My aunt Joanna showed me how.”

“Do you want a church wedding?” He clasped her hand. “I guess I know the answer to that. We’ll have riverside wedding.”

She was feeling overwhelmed. She kept looking at the dandelion on her hand.

“We’ll keep it small, just us and a few friends and family. Maybe your mom will show her face.”

They kissed at the river’s edge with the quaking aspen fluttering its new silvery leaves above them. The breeze picked up coolness from the thawed ground and blew it past them into the warm air.

“Should we wait until you’re eighteen? Until the end of November? That’s seven months from now.”

She nodded. Michael sat down cross-legged in the grass and tugged her down beside him. “I’m sorry about the way I yelled at you earlier,” he said, and took both her hands in his. “I freak out sometimes.”