Once Upon a River

• Chapter Seventeen •


Margo hiked back downstream. She lugged big rocks from the woods and the river to encircle her fire pit. A carp jumped out of the middle of the river and splashed down. People called carp trash fish, but Margo thought they tasted fine if you could work around all the bones. Sometimes she even thought they were beautiful in their iridescence. She sat by the water’s edge and cooled her duck in a plastic bag. Brian had always soaked a duck in salt water overnight, but Margo didn’t have that much time, and for salt she had only the little packets she got from the Indian. She watched the birds drink at the sandy place where the spring trickled in, blue jays first, then a red-bellied woodpecker, followed by a few tree swallows that glided over from across the river. Three crows landed in a tree and looked down at her. One by one they rose from their perches and resettled in an adjacent tree. Watching the crows move their wings made Margo’s desire to row a boat so powerful that she let her head fall back and closed her eyes. She relived shooting the cigarette out of the old man’s mouth. When she opened her eyes, she admired her new canning kettle, big enough that she could heat water in it for a sponge bath, big enough to boil a few gallons of maple sap down to a cup of syrup, as she and her cousins had done in one of the Murray sheds, rendering everything sticky. The canning kettle was something she had earned by her own skill. This was how Annie Oakley must have felt when she discovered her shooting was not just fine, but profitable.

She figured she wouldn’t start cooking the bird until the Indian returned—nobody liked overcooked duck—but she got the fire started. By singeing the plucked bird in the flame, she removed the last hairlike feathers and made a stink that took a while to dissipate. Margo thought she did not need a big kitchen to eat well, just a few more things that she could buy, trade for, or shoot for, maybe a heavy kitchen knife like the one she’d secretly borrowed from the old man, as well as a big metal stirring spoon. If only there were a river’s-edge cave around here, she might even be able to survive the winter.

As the air was beginning to cool, Margo spotted something white in the windbreak: a giant puffball mushroom twice the size of a human skull, something she could eat for a week. She felt she had been looking for such a puffball for years. She’d last gotten one this size on the day her mother left Murrayville. Normally it would’ve had to rain for a puffball to grow this big, and that suggested to her that the dew along the river would be heavy.

When the Indian finally returned, the sun was setting. He said he’d spent the afternoon at the township library, talking to the librarian about local history and looking at old documents. Margo found a decent-sized hickory stick and whittled off the bark in order to use it as a spit. She skewered the duck and got it balanced over the fire. When a bit of duck fat began to drip onto the coals, Margo caught it in the Indian’s frying pan so she could use it for cooking a slice of mushroom. She considered herself lucky—mallards usually had no fat. Maybe this duck had been living well on the farmer’s corn.

Margo instructed the Indian not to leave the duck unattended, and she hiked up to the car to get her pack. As she was closing the trunk of the station wagon, she saw a woman the size and shape of her aunt Joanna come out of the house right across the road to fill a bird feeder and spread seed over a patch of her lawn. Before she even stepped away, a half dozen cardinals fell upon the seed, four blood-red and two military-green. The woman, maybe ten years older than Joanna, wore her gray-streaked hair long on her shoulders, and she had on an old denim barn coat. When the woman looked up and saw she was being watched, she regarded Margo in a good-humored way, as though she were accustomed to seeing all sorts of people, but had not yet seen one quite like her. Beside the house was a big garden, and Margo could see rows of eggplants and tomatoes. The woman waved at Margo, and Margo automatically waved back.

Only then did Margo see the teenage girl in the yard, lying barefoot in a lawn chair. She was wearing frayed cutoffs and a purple sweatshirt and looked to be about Julie Slocum’s age. The girl was reading a book, and it took Margo a few seconds to make out what it was she had on her stomach: a giant rabbit, weighing maybe twenty pounds. She was using that rabbit to hold her book up. The rabbit’s ears were longer than the girl’s hands, and they twitched, but otherwise the rabbit just sat there. Margo laughed out loud. She put on her pack and picked up her box of ashes and her piece of The River Rose and headed toward the river.




When the sun was setting orange downstream, Margo and the Indian were sitting beside the fire eating the duck and some salted tomatoes the Indian had bought at a farm stand. In the frying pan was a thick slice of puffball mushroom Margo had browned in the bit of duck fat, along with some butter from foil-wrapped packets the Indian gave her.

“You know I’m not touching that mushroom,” the Indian said.

“I don’t care. I’ll eat it all. You still owe me five dollars for the duck.”

“I don’t want to be hallucinating. And I’d rather you didn’t, either, not with that rifle.”

“It’s not that kind of mushroom,” Margo said. The rifle was wrapped in its tarp near the fire. “Your cousin said the duck would release its feathers, but it was dang hard to pluck.” She had never really been good at swearing, so she was trying out the Indian’s words, heck and dang.

“Oh, that’s just a story.” He handed her a ten. “Keep the change.”

“I’ll make you breakfast,” she said and put the bill in her front pocket.

“How’d you get so clean?” the Indian said.

“Took a shower at an old man’s house.”

“You make friends fast. I think your hair changed color. It matches the river now.”

She pulled some of her hair out in front of her and studied it. It seemed to have grown longer, too, since she took the shower. She smelled the old man’s Breck shampoo.

“You’re way too pretty a girl to stay out here alone,” he said. “You’re too vulnerable.”

Margo ate some more puffball.

“But don’t worry, beauty fades eventually.”

“I shot a cigarette out of the old man’s mouth. That’s why he let me have a shower.”

“You what?”

“He was in a wheelchair, and he said if I shot the end off his cigarette, I could have this big pan.” Margo regretted that she hadn’t nabbed one of his buckets, too, while he was sleeping. “I’m going to make soup with our leftovers.”

The Indian let himself roll backward, and he lay there on the ground, hugging his knees, laughing. “You could have killed him. I mean, it’s not funny, but . . . oh, Lordy.”

“I wish you’d stay here for a little longer. One more day.” She regretted the words as soon as they came out of her mouth, for the way they made her sound like a beggar. She knew the Indian wasn’t going to stick around, whatever she might say.

“In one week I’ll be teaching, and in two weeks I’m cohosting a math conference. I’m leaving tomorrow. And why aren’t you enrolled in college?”

“I didn’t finish high school.”

“You can’t get ahead in this life if you don’t finish school.”

“I don’t want to get ahead. What’s so great about getting ahead?”

“I loved school,” he said. “I was bored out of my skull at home. I was an only child, and my adoptive parents were old and boring.”

“I liked school when I was little. But later I couldn’t figure out what the teachers wanted. They said I was too quiet.”

“You don’t seem all that quiet to me.” He took another bite of meat and said, “I’ve always thought of duck as tender.”

“Not old wild duck.” Margo made herself keep on chewing through the tough, slightly gamey meat. He was right—she wasn’t quiet. The realization made her laugh.

After they finished eating, Margo put into the kettle the rest of the meat, the bones, and the wing parts she’d managed to pluck. She added fresh water from the Indian’s jugs and put the pan on the fire to simmer. Margo then carried heaps of pine needles from beneath the evergreens in the windbreak and piled them around the fire to make soft places to sleep. They unrolled their sleeping bags on opposite sides of the fire. The Indian produced a quart juice bottle with masking tape around the lid. The contents were the color of apple juice. He unscrewed the cap and sipped from the wide mouth. His whole body shivered visibly as he swallowed. He said, “It’s bitter. Raw. Must have something in it besides mash.”

“You don’t have to drink it,” she said. “Do you? If you don’t like it?”

“I didn’t say I didn’t like it. Here, taste it.”

She shook her head, but he held it out and kept holding it there until she accepted the bottle. He watched until she pressed it to her closed lips. It burned worse than siphoning gasoline. She handed it back.

“I should only drink about half of this,” he said. “I’ll tell you a story if you promise to stop me at half the bottle.”

She nodded. By the firelight, she could see all the details of his face. His cheekbones were wide and his features, like his hands, seemed soft.

“My cousin told me this story his great-uncle told him. It probably happened on this very river. There was a girl who was marrying age, maybe your age. She loved growing corn and beans and squash. So there was a boy from another tribe a week’s walk away, and he wanted to marry the girl, but there were no gardens where he was taking her, because the land was wooded and the soil was rocky. He told her she would gather food in the woods and she would make him clothes and raise children and preserve meat for winter.” The Indian looked at Margo as if to make sure she was listening. He reached out and touched her hair, smoothed it over her shoulder.

“The thought of giving up gardening broke this girl’s heart. She said she had to wait to marry him until the corn was harvested.” He took another drink of whiskey and shivered.

“Was it Indian corn?” Margo asked. “My aunt grew Indian corn for decoration.”

“Yup. It was a big harvest, and the corn kept coming. Nobody understood how, but new ears sprouted on stalks that were already finished, and the new ears became ripe in weeks instead of months. But the girl knew that bits of her broken heart were generating the ears of corn, and the corn silk was made from the strands of her hair. She knew that soon her heart would be gone, and she would have to marry the man and leave her home.”

“And she’d be bald-headed,” Margo said.

“Yup,” said the Indian, apparently not registering what she’d said. He took another drink. “When her heart was finally gone, she threw herself into the river and drowned. An opossum dragged her body back up onto land, and her family buried her in her garden. And they say that corn continued to grow above her body, and even when the white people marched the Indians away to Kansas, the corn grew. Though the farmers tried to plant wheat for their cereal and oats for their horses, only corn would grow.”

“How did a possum drag her body onto the riverbank?” Margo stretched her legs in front of her, alongside the fire, and moved Crane’s ashes farther away. The sky was dark and starry.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “It just did.”

“I mean, a possum weighs like eight pounds,” Margo said. “And its hands are tiny. Like doll hands. I’ll shoot one and you can look at it.”

“Maybe he had help from his possum friends. Or maybe he was a really big possum. I don’t think you’re getting what’s important out of the story, focusing on the possum.” The Indian stretched his own legs out and nudged the toe of her boot with his loafer.

“Possums wouldn’t help anybody.” She felt strangely cheerful to be arguing with this drunken man in a way she never would have argued with her father or Brian. Even Michael had seemed distressed when she had disagreed with him. She said, “Possums have their own plans. They don’t even walk. They waddle. And they have three rows of sharp teeth.”

“Maybe I don’t have the story right, but you’re missing the point. The girl wanted to have her garden and not have any man. If she moved up north to marry, she’d have to give up gardening.”

“I’d rather hunt.” For the first time in her life, she was getting the idea that talking was as pleasurable as shooting. She thought of things she might like to tell the Indian if she got the chance, that a deer can eat a fish or a bird, that a heron can swallow a snake and the snake can still slither free. It warmed her to know she had things to say that he would argue with.

“If you were an Indian woman, you’d know it’s a heartbreaking story. That’s what a young woman can do in a community. That’s one of her powers, to break hearts.”

“Is your wife an Indian?”

“She’s a quarter Sioux. But let’s not talk about her now.”

“Sitting Bull used to tell Annie Oakley stories in the Wild West Show.”

“Sitting Bull was a great man. The Wild West Show was an insult to his sensibilities.” The Indian was slurring his words. He held up the bottle, which was two-thirds full. “I think there’s something funny in this whiskey. Jimson weed, maybe. I’m seeing things that aren’t there.”

“I wish I could live right on the river, like the old-time Indians did,” Margo said.

“Indians never lived on the river,” he said. “The river was their highway. They got up above it so they could keep an eye on who was coming and going. We had a lot of enemies in those days. The men were always fighting some other tribe.”

“I don’t have any enemies on this river.”

“Your hair looks just like my wife’s hair. Let me comb it for you,” the Indian said. He took another big drink and produced a comb from a small zippered bag. “I always brush my wife’s hair.”

Margo hadn’t had anyone comb her hair since she was little. The Indian worked gently, starting from the tangled ends, and he didn’t lose patience and pull as her mother and Joanna used to. And every time one of his hands brushed against her, her skin flushed and her body seemed to swell. When he declared his work finished, he put his arms around her and pulled her back against his chest. She let herself relax there, as though she had dived into the river and was letting herself go with the current. He kissed her neck, and she twisted around and pressed her mouth to his. She had not meant for this to happen, but she wanted it now.

They made love for a long time, rolling over onto soft pine needles. She felt the minutes stretch into hours, as if the normal rules of time had been suspended. She had never made love with a man outdoors. The wind gave them something, as did the water flowing past. Every creature that scurried on the ground, or flew in the air nearby or swam or splashed in the river passed some energy to them. After a while, the river itself seemed to creep up over its banks to flow around them and the current pushed them closer to each other. When he finished, he said, “You know, there’s an idea that when a woman makes love to a man, she gives over the strength and power of the other men she’s been with.” When he realized her breathing was strained, he rolled off and propped himself on his elbow. He lay naked in the cool air. “Tell me what I get from you.”

She shrugged. “You look like an animal.”

“What animal?”

“I don’t know.” She brushed pine needles off his hip, studied his resting cock.

“A fox?” he suggested. “I always think if I could be an animal I’d be a fox.”

“Why a fox?”

“Because the fox is clever. What about you?”

She glanced around at the ancient landscape of trees and river. She didn’t want to choose any single animal.

“I need another drink.” He glanced around for the bottle, which Margo saw was leaning against one of the stones by the fire, half full.

“You said you didn’t want to drink more than half the bottle.” Margo got up and retrieved a few small chunks of wood she had split earlier with the Indian’s hatchet. She moved her soup aside and tossed them on the fire.

“That wasn’t the real me. This is the real me. Naked me.”

She handed him the bottle, and he took a long drink and replaced the cap. Margo sat at the foot of her sleeping bag near him. Though it was cool, she liked being naked under the stars. She thought maybe if the Indian was hungover he wouldn’t leave in the morning. He’d have to wait another day to drive, and she could put off being alone.

“You have to take a drink of this,” he said.

“I don’t like it. I already tasted it.”

“You can’t know this whiskey from a taste. You didn’t even open your mouth before. You have to take a swallow.” He sidled up close to her, so his naked shoulder was pressed against hers. She had hoped that his effect on her would have quieted, but she felt the electricity, stronger than before, and pressed back against him in an effort to subdue it. She listened for a clue from the river, but it had gone silent. “I don’t like to drink alcohol,” she said.

“Whiskey is a religion, a spirit in a bottle. Take a swallow, feel it move through your whole body. You know, Margo, I’ve never betrayed my wife up to now.” He leaned into her neck. “My wife uses that same shampoo. I know the smell. Your hair looks black like hers in the dark.”

“I’ll take a drink if you take a bite of puffball mushroom.”

“I don’t know.” He rested the bottle on her knee.

“You saw me eat it, and I’m not poisoned.”

“Okay, I’ll eat it for breakfast. If you’re still alive then,” the Indian said. “I promise.”

Margo took a deep breath, tipped the bottle up, and swallowed. Her mouth and throat burned. “God,” she said, when she could speak.

“That’s the first time I’ve heard you say God. Now what do you see? An animal?”

“I don’t know,” she said, choking. Her brain was short-circuiting as the whiskey moved through her. When the burning in her mouth subsided, she tasted more clearly the bitterness.

“Close your eyes,” the Indian said. “What do you see when you close your eyes?”

She did not close her eyes. “God, how can you drink that?”

“You have to tell what you see.”

“Just the river,” Margo said, though the animal was as real as life before her. She wanted to keep the vision of the wolverine to herself—it was just like the one in the Indian hunter book, just like the one her grandpa described, the glutton. For the Indian hunter, a wolverine hissing in his cave meant he should return to his tribe. But this animal was not threatening Margo. It regarded her calmly, seemed to accept her, and then it disappeared. Margo couldn’t shake how clearly she’d seen it standing before her, dog-sized, with skunk colors and long claws. She wished it had made a sound she could make in turn, but it had been silent.

The Indian put his face in her hair and said, “I think you’re a river spirit.”

“I’m not a river spirit. Why do guys always want to make a girl into something other than what she is?” Margo asked. She was not a wolf child, as Michael had called her. Even her grandpa’s naming her Sprite and River Nymph seemed odd now, as though he wanted her not to be a person, exactly.

“It makes a better story,” he said. “But there’s no story better than how you look naked, my dear, in this ancient place.” He lifted the hair off her neck and caressed her shoulders. When he finished the bottle, he kissed her. Once again, Margo could imagine no reason on this earth not to trust her body.

But this time, he was different. This time he rolled over her like floodwaters surging downstream. He sucked at her breasts as though he were feeding from her.

“What’s your name?” she whispered. She wanted this whole experience, whatever it was, but the change in the Indian scared her. “Who are you?” she asked.

“I don’t know my name. I swear I don’t know,” he whispered into her chest, and she felt his jaw grind against her breastbone. He took a deep breath and exhaled heat over her. “But we’ll never be here again in the land of my ancestors.”

“Now you sound like an Indian,” she said.

He climbed on top of her, and she rose to meet him. They moved their bodies on the sleeping bags and pine needles with such force that Margo felt her insides shaking. Her teeth rattled. She was too warm with his body on hers, and even when she straddled him, the night air couldn’t cool her. When the Indian pulled her down hard onto him, together they were a flood that rolled through the river valley, cleared the land, and swept away everything not tied down. The river noises and the slap of carp bodies on the surface filled the air around them, and above them the flying squirrels chittered and squeaked. Beneath them, the ground, which had been cool, now radiated heat.

By the time he rolled off her, they were slick with sweat. Margo could hardly breathe. She lay still, expecting to see steam rising off their bodies into the cool air. Even after a few minutes, she could not catch her breath. When he passed out, she curled beside him and calmed herself by listening to the gurgling sounds of the river.

She fell into a state that was not quite sleep, her body awake and wrestling with itself. Margo reached out to touch her daddy’s ashes, but found the box too hot. After a time she did sleep, and she dreamed of the wolverine, big as the black dog and with a weasel face, and then the wolverine became a fish coming up the river, big as Paul, and then, in the dream, she shot Paul and felt how it was a terrible thing to take a man’s life.

She awoke with the Indian pulling her close to him. She felt the cold zipper of his unzipped sleeping bag touch her naked belly. When she opened her eyes, she met his black eyes staring into hers. She told him she’d dreamed of a big fish, and he whispered, “I dreamed it, too. A sturgeon. They used to be in the river, big as cows.”

It wasn’t until later that Margo realized how crazy that sounded, that they’d both dreamed the same giant fish. In the morning she lay still, too exhausted to move or speak, while the Indian pulled away from her and stumbled up the path toward his car. He left behind his sleeping bag and camping pad, his frying pan and his hatchet. She didn’t try to stop him.

When she opened her eyes again, it was full daylight, and she was still exhausted. Her body ached. Everywhere she touched herself she found stones and pine needles and plants stuck to her skin. Tucked beneath her sleeping bag was a small cowskin bag with a drawstring and a simple bead design, and inside was a folded note and a roll of twenty-dollar bills.

Goodbye, Margo, the note began. I’ve never been unfaithful to my wife in the three years we’ve been married. I’m going to forget what happened between us. I hope you will do the same. Remember you have options in this life. Go back to school. The note was dated September 14, 1981, but signed only XXX.

“Jerk,” she said. A big carp surfaced and a smaller carp did the same, and then both returned to the depths. She sat as still as a bird on a nest of eggs for hours that afternoon, clutching her rifle, but with no inclination to shoot anything, not even a squirrel when it scampered over her sleeping bag. She was drunk with the Indian’s scent, hungover with him, was half in love with him after just two days, but she thought she would be okay once she worked him out of her system. He had come to her for help, and she had helped him. She had fed him, and he had paid her for the food. Sex with him had been like nothing she had known, but if he had stayed any longer, they might have hurt each other. She needed to get some rest and think about how she would survive until her mother wrote to her. The Indian had left enough money for her to buy a boat. That evening she ate the soup she’d made from their leftovers.