Once Upon a River

• Chapter Twelve •


Margo sat across the table from Michael, eating lunch dis-tractedly, keeping an eye on the activity upstream and across the river. Paul had been at the cabin since midmorning with Charlie and Johnny, and Margo planned to stay inside until they pulled away in the pontoon boat. Usually they were at the cabin just long enough to fill glass jugs from the blue drum buried behind the house, but Charlie was sweeping the cabin’s screen porch, and that made Margo worry that one of them might be planning on staying. She took some comfort in the fact that Paul’s eyesight was poor and that Michael’s house was set back from the river’s edge.

“It’s a hot one,” Michael said and took a bite of his grilled ham-and-cheese sandwich.

“Maybe King and I will fish downstream today,” Margo said, bringing her attention back to Michael and their lunch. Wednesdays were his late day, when he went in to work at noon and got home by eight-thirty or nine at night. “Do you want to have brown trout tonight? Maybe I can get a couple with night crawlers in the evening.”

“Don’t you ever want to do anything more than fish and shoot?” Michael said hesitantly.

“You know, Grandpa taught me to skin rabbits and muskrats. He said it was a skill that would benefit a girl. And you know I can cook.”

Michael laughed. “Your grandpa probably imagined you would have other skills as well, like math and history, on top of skinning animals.”

“He only went to school through the eighth grade. Annie Oakley only went through the fourth grade.”

“It was a different time. Now you need education to get anywhere.”

“I could be a trick shooter,” Margo said.

“Says here in the newspaper Murray Metal Fabricating is laying off another eighteen people. Tough times for manufacturing. Are you sure you don’t want to go visit the Murrays? I’ll go with you. It says here, Cal Murray has been in a wheelchair since he was attacked in that bar last year.”

“I told you, we don’t get along,” she said. “Not since my grandpa died.”

“Well, I wish I had met your grandpa. I mean, he was a man of the wild, but a businessman, too.”

“His father started the company. Grandpa never really wanted to be president, he said. But he made the company grow.”

“Sometimes people have to do things they don’t want in life.”

“Do you want me to make money?” Margo asked. According to the book Michael had gotten her, Annie Oakley supported her family through hunting and trapping. She killed animals and birds to eat and sell in town. Only later did she make her shooting a show.

“That’s not it. I want you to have the joy of learning new things. And sometimes it’s even worth it to tolerate what you don’t like in order to achieve your goals. You don’t have to graduate high school. I think you can get a GED and go to community college. You could get a two-year degree in biology or something like that. Maybe you could get a job working outside.”

“You said I didn’t have to go to school to learn. I could read books.”

“You don’t like any of the books I’ve gotten you other than the Annie Oakley book. Tell me what else you want to read.”

“I like the Indian hunter book, about the guy who lived in the cave up north,” Margo said. “And I’d like to read more about shooting, I guess. Trick shooting.” She glanced across the river. Paul seemed to be wiping down the seats of Brian’s boat with a bucket and a rag, and though it was hot, he was still wearing jeans and boots. While she watched, Johnny slipped out of his cutoffs and tennis shoes and posed naked at the end of the dock. His arms were tan from his biceps down, but his torso below the neckline was pale, and the sight made Margo smile. He dove off the dock with a pretty splash. Why hadn’t she swum this year? Margo wondered. It was already July. Why hadn’t she swum at all since she left Murrayville? Johnny emerged from beneath the surface.

“What about a vacation?” Michael said. “Do you want to go somewhere?”

“We could go up the river and camp overnight on Willow Island.”

“We should go see something new,” Michael said.

She shrugged. Johnny dragged his body out of the water and climbed onto the dock. He was grinning, no doubt, shouting something to Paul. His bottom was moon-white against the lush foliage around the cabin.

“Maybe I’ll swim today,” Margo said.

“After the wedding we’ll have to go on a honeymoon.”

“You mean like to the cabins in Heart of Pines?”

“The herons go to Florida in the winter,” Michael said. “I’ve heard you can see hundreds of water birds in some places down there. Maybe cranes, too. Wouldn’t you like to see sandhill cranes, Miss Crane? To work on your crane calls.”

Margo thought it was incredible that Michael didn’t seem to notice anyone was at the cabin across the way.

After Michael went off to work a few minutes before noon, Margo went into the bedroom and looked out the sliding glass door. She didn’t worry the first time she saw Paul looking across the river, but then he kept looking, and she saw he held binoculars. She slipped away from the glass door and regretted having stood there like a target as long as she had.

The house might be the safest place to stay, but if Paul and the other two showed up, then she’d be trapped inside. Despite the heat, she left the doors open while she did dishes and cleaned the kitchen, wiped the counters even though they were already clean, the way Michael would have done. Her anxiety remained even after the three men closed up the cabin and headed upstream and out of sight. She thought she would do something nice for Michael, and she mowed part of the lawn with the old reel push mower, but her lines weren’t as straight as she’d hoped they’d be. The wind that afternoon brought a tar smell that she had never noticed before. Mallard ducks and a few black ducks landed on the river between her and the cabin, but they did not respond to her quacking, and they let the current tug them downstream. Normally she felt fine spending a few hours staring into the water alongside the fishing dog, but she now wondered if she ought to be doing something more productive. A few days ago she’d retrieved some overgrown zucchini that had been floating down the river. They were bigger around and longer than any fish she’d ever caught, and it had been fun chasing them down and dragging them out of the current. This afternoon she carried them into the woods and set them up as targets. It had been months since she’d fired the shotgun Brian had given her. She carried the twelve-gauge out and put on the ear protectors that Michael had given her for Christmas. She had several dozen small-game shells in her pocket, along with a half dozen of the large-sized buckshot. She didn’t like to lock up Cleo when she shot, but she had promised Michael she would after the time he saw her studying the photo of Annie Oakley and her dog, Dave; in that photo Annie was preparing to shoot an apple off Dave’s head.

Margo then moved through the woods, imagining the zucchinis were Paul and Billy or some unknown rapists and killers, and blasted them to pulp, one after another. If Michael would only shoot with her, the two of them together could rig up a launch for clay pigeons, but when she had mentioned it recently, he suggested she join the gun club. The notion surprised her. Cal and his sons belonged to the Rod and Gun Club between Murrayville and Confluence, but Margo didn’t know of any women members.

Margo shot at hunks of squash until the light became gold-tinged. She took off her ear coverings and sat cross-legged against a tree and waited for the birds to return. The sound of the cicadas rose to a screechy roar and then gradually subsided. Margo imitated the nasal yank-yank of a white-breasted nuthatch and then the meow of a catbird perched between her and the water. When she heard Michael’s car pulling in the driveway, she smiled and meowed in his direction, though he couldn’t see or hear her. A few minutes later, as she was heading back toward the house with her shotgun, she saw a pontoon boat pull up and tie off at the oil-barrel float. Margo ducked down and watched Michael make his way across the gangplank and onto the float to talk to the visitor. As she crept nearer, she confirmed what she’d feared: Michael was talking to Paul. Margo stayed hidden and moved closer so she could hear their voices.

“Well, where is she, then?” Paul said. His face was haggard. “I’d like to talk to her.”

“She seems to want to avoid you.”

“She doesn’t belong to you. Tell her I want to talk to her.”

Margo crouched so quietly that a coot continued moving downstream past her.

“Of course she doesn’t belong to me,” Michael said. “She belongs to herself.”

“Is that her in the house?” Paul said. Margo saw that Cleo was standing up almost as tall as a small person with her paws against the screen door. Margo hid herself behind the trunk of a willow. The cicadas grew louder again.

“That’s my dog,” Michael said.

“I saw her earlier, from across the river. I know she’s here.”

As if on command, the fishing dog barked.

“Did you do something to her?” Michael said.

“She doesn’t mind what a man does. She’s a game girl.” Paul stepped off the front of the boat and onto the oil-barrel float. It tipped under his weight. He stepped to the center and stood a few feet from Michael. No one else was on the boat. Margo glanced across the river at the dark, empty cabin. When Paul had gone up the river some hours ago, he must have ferried Charlie and Johnny back to Heart of Pines.

“What do you want with her?” Michael asked.

“I want to tell her that my brother Brian will be away for eight years on an assault charge, plus six more for manslaughter. Damned lawyer convinced him to plead guilty. He said he’d get a few years off for good behavior. Problem is, my brother forgets what good behavior is when he’s got to show off for a bunch of guys.”

“Who’s Brian to her?” Michael asked.

“She doesn’t tell you anything, does she? My brother is in prison because of doing a little dirty work for her.”

“She’s just a kid. She’s not responsible for what men do.”

“And she’s got some things she took from me and Brian. A shotgun, for one.”

Margo wanted to scream over the cicadas that Brian gave her that shotgun, but she stayed put.

“Maybe I’ll take her boat instead. As an exchange.”

“Why don’t you leave now?” Michael said. “Get off my property.”

“It’s funny for a little feller like you to threaten me.” Paul stepped backward, causing the float to tip, and then rocked it a few times by shifting his weight. The current held the Playbuoy tight against the float, and its side knocked against the planks.

“I’ll call the police if you don’t leave,” Michael said. He fought to keep his balance. Margo wanted to tell Michael that threatening Paul with the law wasn’t going to calm him down.

“Do you really think the police would get here in time if I wanted to hurt you?” Paul grabbed the front of Michael’s shirt and pulled him forward. Margo remembered Paul’s strength when he had grabbed her in Brian’s bedroom. Michael stiffened, pushed against Paul, and almost fell backward into the water. Then he straightened up and stood his ground again.

“Just bring her out here,” Paul said.

Margo moved closer. Paul’s face was almost as familiar to her as Michael’s. At this distance, she saw how even his good eye looked strange, red-rimmed and oily.

“And I hope you don’t think you’ve got some innocent flower,” Paul said to Michael. “I’ve had a piece of her myself.”

Margo’s heart raced. Her daddy had begged her, Think before you act, and so she was thinking, but then Paul stabbed Michael’s chest with his finger. “Next time you’re in the sack with her, ask if she remembers—”

“Leave him alone!” Margo shouted. Her voice echoed down the river. She crouched again behind some red osier dogwood.

“Is that you, Maggie? Why don’t you come over and talk to me, sweetheart?” Paul said. His voice sounded strangely intense. He was high.

Margo didn’t move.

“No, Margaret Louise,” Michael yelled. “Don’t do anything.”

“Oh, it’s Margaret now? Margaret Louise. Very nice. Why don’t you come on out and talk with us. I’ll tell you how you ruined my brother’s life.”

She could run to the house, grab her backpack, and head out, leaving Michael and Paul to work this out themselves. But she could too easily imagine Paul knocking Michael out and throwing him into the water.

As if reading her thoughts, Paul grabbed Michael’s collar and pulled him closer. Then he pushed him away, and this time Michael fell backward onto the float. His head clunked the wood and made a hollow sound.

“What do you want with that little slut, anyhow?” Paul asked Michael and put his boot on Michael’s chest. “You seem like a respectable guy here. Nice house. You wear a goddamned tie to work.” The toe of Paul’s work boot pressed Michael’s tie now, and Michael was no longer fighting.

Michael coughed.

“Let him go,” Margo shouted and approached until she was only about twenty feet away.

Michael shouted, “No, Margaret! Go into the house, call the cops.”

“You know you’ll talk to me eventually, Maggie. And your boyfriend’s got to go to work sometime and leave you alone.”

“Please leave now.” Margo raised the barrel of the shotgun to point at Paul’s knees, his groin, his stomach, his heart and lungs like a buck’s.

“Give that shotgun to me, Princess. You’re not going to shoot anybody.”

Paul pushed his toe into Michael’s neck. Margo knew its delicate bones and sharp Adam’s apple. With those heavy work boots, Paul could crush his throat.

“Let me go, man,” Michael spat.

“You’re really not in a position to tell me what to do.” He moved his foot and Michael gagged. Margo remembered that feeling of being crushed, unable to breathe, with the heat of Paul’s breath on her. She adjusted the butt of the shotgun in her shoulder, got her sight bead on Paul’s good eye.

“You’re hurting me!” yelled Michael.

“I’m going to hurt you more,” Paul said. “And her, too.”

Margo pulled the trigger.

At twenty feet, the twelve-gauge sprayed a tight pattern of buckshot into Paul’s face, hitting him seemingly even before she had finished pulling the trigger. Margo was so solidly planted, she hardly even felt the shotgun’s recoil. Paul flew backward, slammed into the side of his boat, which bobbed wildly under the impact, as did the oil-barrel float once his weight had left it. Paul’s feet were barely touching the float, while his shoulders and arms leaned backward over the siderail of the Playbuoy. His back was bent the wrong way. The blood from his face poured down his body, onto the portside pontoon and became a red river flowing into the Stark. Margo wondered how so much blood could be in him. Michael had not managed to stand, though he was apparently unharmed. He gripped the planks beneath him.

Margo pointed the shotgun barrel down and walked toward Michael. She studied Paul’s body, frozen in a position with his head thrown back, his chest tipped upward. Paul’s body looked as unnatural as her body had felt beneath his. She heard a jet overhead, slowly crossing the sky.

“Margaret, what’s happened?” Michael asked. He attempted to stand again, but sat back down. “Call an ambulance. He’s bleeding bad.”

A seagull screeched somewhere; a second gull answered. Margo tried to get her bearings.

“I’ll call. I’ll tell them to hurry.” Michael stood up at last. He looked at the body. His hand reached toward Margo and retracted. “He’s not dead, is he?” Michael said.

“I had to protect you,” Margo said.

“What the hell? Oh, my God. He’s dead?”

“He was going to kill you,” she said. “He had his foot on your throat. You have a mark there from his boot.”

“Margaret, please put the gun down.” Michael sounded scared. “I wish you’d gone into the house and called the police.”

“I couldn’t leave you alone with him. He was stoned. Did you see his eyes?”

“Let’s call the police right now. We’ll go together.”

“He raped me,” she blurted.

“Oh, God. I should have known. I wish you’d’ve told me. We could have gotten a restraining order. Or something.”

“That wouldn’t have stopped him.” She couldn’t bear the way Michael’s face was falling apart.

He reached out and grabbed at her shotgun. She jumped away from him and dropped the gun on the planks between them.

“It all happened so fast,” she said. “But you don’t realize. He was really going to hurt you.”

“We were the happiest people on earth. That’s what we were at noon, the happiest people in the world. Do you remember?” His voice increased in pitch until it was shrill like the sound of the cicadas.

Margo kept her eye on the shotgun. Yes, she remembered. She remembered eating lunch today. The sunlight on the table, the yellow-and-white-patterned plates speckled with crumbs.

“There’s no blood on the float. Nobody saw,” Margo said. Though blood continued to run in red ribbons down the side of the boat, there was not even a drop visible on the planks. She glanced up and down the river and saw no one approaching or departing, no one milling about near the water. The next-door neighbor’s driveway was empty. If she did this right, she thought, then tomorrow they could have breakfast as usual, eggs and toast, butter and jelly. The river’s surface glimmered gold with the setting sun. Her first thought was to push Paul the rest of the way into the boat and launch it from the float, send it down the river, but it might not drift far enough away before it was discovered adrift or pushed onto shore by the current, as her rowboat had been when she’d fallen asleep in it.

“We have to call the police.”

“Nobody saw, Michael. Let’s get him onto the boat.” Her voice sounded weak. She wished she hadn’t spoken aloud. This was not the time for talking.

“This is a crime scene. We can’t move the body.” Michael continued to shake his head. “I need to think, Margaret. Let me think a minute.”

Margo recalled the buck she had shot across the river in Murrayville. She had struggled with the big body before figuring out the trick of negotiating herself beneath the corpse and lifting it using the strength of her legs. She should have been able to do that when Paul was on her in Brian’s bed, should have been able to lift him with her shoulder and topple him. Should have then put a knife to his throat and prevented him from going any further. Then she wouldn’t have had to shoot

him in front of Michael. While Michael stepped away slowly, Margo got herself beneath Paul’s legs and shoved. The body slid sideways, rolled up over the siderail, over the bench seat, and onto the Astroturf floor, where Johnny had once fallen onto her tarped deer. Paul’s work shirt rode up and revealed his pale stomach. Margo splashed water over the side of the boat and kept rinsing until the blood disappeared from the fiberglass. The current carried the residue downstream. Her own T-shirt was plain black, so blood would not show on it. She bent down and rinsed her hands in the water and smoothed her hair. Then she picked up the shotgun.

“This is a crime scene, Margaret. Disturbing it is a whole new crime. You don’t understand. You need to stop now and do the right thing. You need to realize the gravity of what’s just happened.” He backed up farther, until his heel hit the end of the gangplank, and he tripped and almost fell.

Margo tugged a folded blue tarp from a compartment beneath the bench seat at the back of the boat. She unfolded it over Paul’s body, covered the pool of blood forming around him, soaking through the Astroturf that carpeted the boat’s floor.

“Talk to me,” Michael said. “Tell me you realize what you’ve just done to another human being.”

The only regret she felt at that moment was what was happening to Michael, the way he was moving away from her when she needed him.

“Nobody will know.”

“Margaret. You’re not thinking clearly. We have to report this. The authorities will understand you were protecting me.”

Margo turned the key in the boat’s ignition, and it fired right up. She checked the gas tank and the gauge registered more than half full. She turned off the engine and looked around, grateful to see nobody else, no lights coming on in the nearby houses. She dug in the boat’s toolbox for work gloves and put on a brown cotton pair. She rubbed the shotgun all over to get rid of the fingerprints. She re-covered the body and the shotgun with the tarp.

“Margaret, honey, we’ll tell them he raped you. We’ll tell them he threatened to kill me. You said I’ve got a mark on my throat.” He reached up and felt his neck. “Let’s call them right now.”

“I’ll go to jail, won’t I?”

“I don’t know,” Michael said. “God, you’re so young, too young for this. Too young to know a man like that. When I learned your real age, I should have sent you home.”

Margo thought of Billy, how the police took him, and he was a Murray. Murrays could do about anything without paying a price.

“They’ll want to question you,” Michael said. “And me. Both of us. Let’s get in the Jeep right now and drive to the police station. Tell them the whole story.”

Margo squinted downstream into the setting sun. Darkness often crept in without her noticing, until suddenly the riverbanks were black. Now she was grateful to sense night coming on.

“Say something, Margaret. You’re scaring me.”

“You don’t have to worry,” she said.

“You’ve never done anything like this before. They won’t be hard on you. Though I hate to guess what they’ll think of me when they find out I’m with a seventeen-year-old girl.”

Margo resisted the urge to go into the house to retrieve her rifle for fear she might change her mind or lose confidence in her plan. Really she didn’t want to go upstream with Paul; she wanted to stay with Michael and soothe him, try to make him understand how dangerous Paul had been, how he wasn’t like other people. She had saved Michael’s life, but so far he wasn’t listening to her.

She took a few breaths, absorbed the river’s movement through her feet and legs. Fish and turtles and water birds were her family, she supposed, not humans, despite the comfort she might get from food and beds, from hot showers and lovemaking. Even when she had lived in her father’s house, every morning in summer and winter the river had spoken to her more clearly than he had.

She sat in the driver’s seat, started up the boat’s engine, and studied the dashboard. Gasoline fanned out on the water behind the boat, glistened in colors that became psychedelic in the fading light.

As she moved upstream in the growing darkness, she heard a crunch behind her. Cleo tore through the screen of the aluminum storm door. She jumped out through the hole she had made and ran to the edge of the river, out to the float. The last time Margo turned around, she saw Michael sitting cross-legged, hugging the fishing dog.




When she returned on foot just before five a.m., Michael was in the shower. She dug a T-shirt out of her backpack, put it on, and checked to make sure her jeans were dry before sitting on the edge of the bed. She ran her hands over King Cleo’s head and waited. When Michael entered the bedroom and saw her, he dropped the towel he’d been adjusting around his waist.

“I should go to the police,” he said. He picked up his towel and covered himself. “I’ve thought about it all night.”

“The boat is in Heart of Pines,” she whispered. “It’s tied up in his regular spot, upstream of the Gas and Grocery. They might not find him under the tarp for days. Maybe weeks.” She reached her hand out to Michael, and he automatically accepted it.

“Don’t tell me any more,” Michael said and let her hand go.

“I didn’t leave any fingerprints. I hid out until dark and then parked the boat. Nobody saw me.” Then she had walked back along the river road. She’d tied her bloody T-shirt around a rock. She’d filled her work gloves with muck and sunk them.

“You can’t kill a person and not pay the consequences.”

She pulled her hand back into her lap. She didn’t know if that was true, or whether any of Michael’s rules would hold up over the long haul. After all, Brian had gotten away with killing a man up north, until he’d stupidly attacked Cal. Maybe she would pay different consequences than the ones Michael expected.

She knew Michael hated it when she clammed up. She had hoped he would’ve changed his mind during the night, but if anything, now he was more certain they should call the police.

“Over this last year, I thought you’d changed,” he said and closed his eyes.

“Changed how? I thought you liked me how I was.”

“But you haven’t learned anything.”

“What do you want me to learn?”

“That you can’t live like a wolf girl. That there are laws for a reason, that laws allow us to live together. Even finishing school—there’s a reason for it, so you can be a better citizen. Now I see that. If you turn yourself in this morning, I’ll do anything for you. I’ll hire you the best lawyer I can afford. I’ll spend every penny I have to get you free. Maybe you won’t even go to jail. I could tell them he was crushing my throat, like you said.”

She studied his face, tried to figure out whether he would really turn her in, whether he would be able to lie for her. He was an honest person, and she didn’t want him to have to lie.

“Stop it,” Michael said. “Stop sitting there looking like a kidnapped Indian maiden. I didn’t steal you, Margaret Louise. You came to me. Remember. You came to me.” He shook his head. “You came to me with no home, and I took you in.”

She went back to petting the fishing dog. Maybe Michael had seen her the way he saw Cleo, as a pleasant creature for whom he could provide a home.

“I’m trying, Margaret, but I’m scared,” he said. “Tell me you’ve never done anything like this before. Tell me you’ve never shot anybody.” He let his face fall into his hands. “Oh, God, you have killed someone before.”

“No. I just shot him. I didn’t kill him. He did something. I was just getting even so I didn’t have to send him to jail. Jail is worse than being shot for some people.” Margo looked out through the sliding door, settled her gaze on the reflection of Michael’s security light on the surface of the dark river.

Michael sat at the end of the bed beside her. “Why did this have to happen?” he said. “Tell me what you’re feeling, Margaret.”

“He could have killed you,” she said. She didn’t know how she felt except that she was scared.

“You’re probably right he could have hurt me,” Michael said. “Was that his shotgun?”

“His brother gave me that shotgun. I didn’t steal it.”

“Maybe it would be just a little while in jail. A juvenile home, maybe, with other kids.”

“I don’t think I could stand one day,” she said. “Would you turn me in?”

“I’d have to. Or I’ll go to jail, too, for being an accessory. But you’ll turn yourself in, won’t you?”

“Why don’t we just wait and see what happens?”

“I can’t live that way, dreading what might happen. Knowing I’m guilty of a crime. Thinking any day the hammer could fall.”

Margo herself had lived with dread, like every other creature in the wild. Dread about what she might lose or who she might encounter that day, maybe someone who wished her harm.

“You can’t stay here if you don’t turn yourself in,” Michael said.

She was startled to hear the words spoken so bluntly, but it all made sense. She’d known this orderly, comfortable place wasn’t her home. Michael had given her clothes and books, but he hadn’t changed who she was.

“I can’t have anything to do with you ever again if you don’t turn yourself in,” he said.

The dog raised her head from Margo’s thigh and looked at her.

Margo stood up and dragged her backpack from the closet. If she turned herself in, not only would she be locked away, but Michael might spend all his money and destroy his own life in the process of defending her. She had no choice. She would give up the comforts here and return to her real life on the river.

“Oh, Margaret. This is all a mess,” he said.

Margo took her hairbrush off the dresser. She moved as deliberately as she could, putting her few stray things into her bag, which was already packed, as it had been the whole time she’d been there. She pulled her rifle from the wooden rack Michael had built. She slung it over her left shoulder, dropped the four boxes of .22 cartridges into her bag, and looked around for any other evidence she had been there. She hadn’t brought much into the house other than what they’d eaten. She took the new Annie Oakley book from the bedside stand. She wanted to take the Indian hunter book, but Michael had not given that to her. She said goodbye to the fishing dog and to Michael without looking at either of them and headed toward the river.