Once Upon a River

PART

III





• Chapter Eighteen •


Two weeks after the Indian left, Margo didn’t start flowing as she should have, and one afternoon she realized what that meant, that she was with the Indian’s child. She had been foolish to trust her instincts when she was feeling lonesome. She had been foolish to follow her body’s desire and inclination in this strange new place. She did not stop crying for a long time, until she looked up on the ridge and saw a tall, thin man looking down at her.

The farmer owned the land where she had camped alone for two weeks. During this time, he and the men working for him were harvesting the nearby fields of soybeans. Upon spotting him, she stopped crying instantly, the way a baby bird stopped piping for food when a predator was near. Though her hands itched to lift her rifle, she sighted him only with her gaze. After a good long look, she turned away and set about combing out her loose hair with her fingers. She wound it up and twisted it against the back of her head and fixed it with her barrette. Her sleeping bags and camping pad were already rolled together into a thick bundle. She folded her tarp and collected her other things. The small amount of food at her campsite was piled into the big pot she’d gotten from the old man, and that was already hidden away in the windbreak, with the lid tied down against animal invasion. Her father’s ashes were in their metal box beside it. She was bothered that she could no longer pick up and carry everything she owned. Having the extra gear made her more self-sufficient, but less able or willing to run away from trouble, should there be any.

Though her fire was more or less extinguished, she filled a gallon jug in the river and doused the ashes to show the farmer her presence was not a fire hazard. She tied her oversized bedroll and tarp onto her pack and walked a little upstream. After she entered the cover of trees, she turned to see, through the branches, the figure still silhouetted there, although now he appeared to be looking off over the field.

Margo would return to the campsite this evening. She liked the privacy this place afforded and hoped to stay until she had a boat or another plan. Sometimes the sound of the river moving past her made her feel free in a way that the Stark River had not for a long time. She occasionally heard shots in the distance, but she was down to one cartridge and needed to brave going into town to buy more. Between the fish, game, black walnuts, and garden pilfering, she was doing fine foodwise, and she got her clean water at the hand pump in the barn.

Margo hid her pack away in the branches of a tree in the windbreak and continued upstream with only her rifle, swinging around and through the fence to get into and then out of the cow pasture, landing once again beside the house of the old man in the wheelchair. She had spied on him most days. He often sat alone on the flagstone patio in that wheelchair, staring down at the water through his black glasses. His hair shone bright silver whenever the sun was on him.

The old man was not out today. Margo ventured through the patio, kicking at the pretty orange and yellow maple leaves scattered there. She moved down the steep steps and out onto the boat with the little camper on it. Again, it moved only slightly under her weight. The padlock was hanging loose, and when she turned the handle on the aluminum door of the cabin, it opened, and she was greeted by a mildew smell. Inside she found a narrow upper bunk bed and a bigger lower bunk that could be transformed into a table and seats, a propane stovetop with two burners like the one Brian had, an oven big enough for a cake pan, and the smallest wood-burning stove she had ever seen. She opened the door to the firebox, saw it was maybe twelve inches high by fifteen deep by eight wide. A person would have to cut her own firewood extra-small for this. A six-inch pipe exhausted through the wall behind it.

She heard barking, and when she came out onto the deck, she found the black dog wagging his tail. The old man was sitting on the patio behind the house, dappled sunlight glinting off his wheelchair and his silver hair. He motioned with his hand for her to come to the patio, and she obliged. “What do you want, kid?” he asked.

Margo had some difficulty making out his words through his wheezing, but she remembered what he’d said last time, that if she’d wanted a shower, she should ask for it.

“Can I sleep in your camper for a while?”

The man cleared his throat in a way that sounded painful. His skin was pale and slightly damp, and his hair was sticking to his face.

“You look sicker than you did,” she said. When the dog settled beside the wheelchair, Margo knelt and petted him with both hands.

“There’s good days and bad days. I have emphysema, but the doctors tell me it’s the tumors that’re going to kill me.” He cleared his throat again. “Unless you’re going to save everybody a lot of trouble and shoot me.”

“Do you want me to shoot another cigarette out of your mouth?”

“Yeah, stand right in front of me this time.” He tapped his forehead as if directing a bullet there. “I was too exhausted to come outside, but then I saw you, and I told myself, I’d better kick that kid’s ass.”

“I’m not a kid.”

“Everybody’s a kid compared to me.” He stifled a cough. “Even people my age seem like kids.”

“What can I give you for your boat? I got some money.”

“You’ve got no goddamned money. You’ve got a rifle and a soup pot. And a big kitchen knife that belongs to me, if I figure it right.”

“I’ll give you the knife back. I was just borrowing it. I can’t give you my rifle.”

“I’ve already got two rifles and a shotgun that I can’t aim anymore. And you can keep the damn knife. It’s not my best one.” He held out his pale, shaking hand as a sort of exhibit. “I made my living setting type, and now I can’t tighten a screw or chop stew meat.”

“Can I look inside the houseboat some more?”

“You’ve seen enough. I don’t need a kid sleeping on my boat. Don’t need the neighbors seeing anything.”

“I could help you out in exchange, maybe,” Margo suggested. “I could sweep this patio. I can cook and chop up stew meat for you.”

“My friend Fishbone said he saw you with a Mexican man over on the farm two weeks ago, the night you came here.”

“He’s an Indian. Anyway, he’s gone.” Margo was surprised she’d been spied on.

“Did the son of a bitch break your heart?”

“I’m relieved he’s gone. I don’t need a man.”

“Well, what do you think I am?”

“Sir, your boat is the only way I can live on the river.” As Margo spoke to the old man, she felt strangely aware of something being in her belly, and she worried that he might be aware of it, too.

“Go away,” he said. A coughing fit overtook him, and when he finally straightened up, there was blood on the corners of his mouth. He motioned to her to leave.

“Can I stay here and pet your dog?”

He shook his head. “Come back in the morning.”




Margo spent the night in her sleeping bag by her campfire, with the Indian’s pad and sleeping bag under her for comfort, the tarp over her to protect against the heavy dew. She dreamed she was lying with the Indian, and several times she awoke with a start, feeling as though her body were being pitched from rough waters onto land.

In the morning she made her way upstream, and as she reached the white house, she heard sounds that could have been crows. The sounds became voices, and she noticed two cars in the driveway where she’d seen none on her earlier visits. A little farther down the road was parked a two-toned Chevy pickup truck she had seen a few times. She crept closer. The old man was on the patio with two women. Both were about Margo’s height. One had long, dark hair, straighter than Margo’s; the other had shorter, lighter hair and looked younger, but otherwise they resembled each other.

“You’re supposed to use your oxygen all the time, but whenever we come over, you don’t have it hooked up,” the dark-haired woman said.

“I use it when I need it, Shelly. Don’t bother about it.”

“It’s getting cold, and the doctor said the cold can cause your lungs to seize. Let us help you back into the house.”

The old man wore nothing over his work shirt. Margo wished one of them would get a jacket from the house. Or maybe they hoped his being cold would make him go inside.

“What do you know about anything? You or your sister?”

“Well, I know we love you, Uncle Smoke, and we promised Mom we’d take care of you,” said the blonde niece. She knelt beside the chair to look him in the face, and he turned away from her. She said, “But you can’t stay here. You don’t weigh half what you used to.”

“I don’t try to run your goddamned lives.” His dark glasses made it hard to tell what direction he was actually looking, but Margo thought his attention was on something by the garage.

“It’s all about smoking, isn’t it?” said Shelly. “That’s why you don’t want to go, because they won’t let you smoke. You think you can’t give up smoking, but you can if you want to. They have ways to help you quit.”

“The Nazis had ways, too. I want to be right where I am.”

The blonde niece said, “If there was one thing in this world I could get rid of, it would be cigarettes. They hurt so many people.”

The man put his hands on his wheelchair wheels and moved them a few inches. The blonde stood up. The dog sat smiling on the patio beside the man, seeming to enjoy the company of the women.

“Will you drink a breakfast shake at least, so we know you’re getting some vitamins and protein?” Shelly said.

“Have you tasted that shit? And have you tasted any of that other so-called food they gave your mother in the All Saints home? Turkey bacon, margarine, sugar-free cookies, Sanka? And I won’t have a tube put in me.” He was becoming breathless. “I signed a paper with my doctor saying so. He sent a form to both hospitals.”

“I drink the Carnation breakfast, Uncle Smoke. I like it,” Shelly said.

“Well, you can have the damn stuff.”

“Can’t you let us talk to your doctor?” she asked. “Just tell us his name.”

“No.”

“You make me want to cry. I worry about you all the time,” said the blonde niece.

Tears were indeed running down her face, Margo noted.

“You’re acting plain crazy, Uncle Smoke.”

“Is that what you two wrote to the judge?” the old man asked.

“Why do you have to be so mean?”

“Mean? You want to lock me up at the All Saints home, and I’m mean?”

“It’s Alsand’s Comfort Care, not All Saints.” The younger woman sounded defeated. “Why do you keep saying All Saints? And Mom said they treated her good there. And if you would come live with me, then we would take care of you, and you wouldn’t have to go there.”

“In your apartment with your boyfriend and three cats? I’ve got my own house right here.”

“The township said they sent you a letter about that garage,” said Shelly, nodding toward the sagging building. “They’re going to take it down. You should tell that friend of yours to take out anything he wants to keep. Township says it’s going to collapse, and there’s probably rats in there.”

The old man held back a cough with what looked to Margo like a great effort. She saw the deer hide was still stretched on a pallet beside the garage, not visible from where the women were standing.

“And I know it’s him buying you cigarettes,” Shelly said.

The blonde said, “You would live longer if you got the right treatment. Don’t you want to live?”

The dog’s ears perked up. Margo heard rustling from near the fence beside the garage. She moved the barrel of her rifle toward the sound as if tracking a squirrel, all the way to a burning bush that was beginning to turn red. Behind the foliage, she made out a dark-skinned arm, leading to a short-sleeved blue shirt, and then a face half obscured by a fedora. Bluish smoke rose from under the hat’s brim. He was watching, same as she was, only more conspicuously if you considered he was smoking a little cigar. When she met his eyes, she registered an angry look and quickly dropped her muzzle.

“Well, I’ve got to go to work. Goodbye,” Shelly said and shuffled off the patio. The blonde kissed the old man’s head and followed her sister around the side of the house. The man in the fedora stood and moved to the patio, and Margo hesitantly did the same.

“Don’t you ever point a gun at a person, young lady!” the man said and shook his head in disapproval.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t even know you were there. I thought it was a squirrel making that sound in the bushes.”

The man was thin and wore a button-up shirt with a short collar, creased jeans, and polished black leather shoes. He could have been in his early sixties, but his figure was that of a younger man.

“Smoky, do you know anything about this girl here who’s sneaking around trying to kill a man?” he said calmly. “Is this another niece you haven’t told me about?”

“That’s nothing new to you, is it? A woman trying to kill you? Your wife’s been trying to kill you for—” The old man couldn’t finish his sentence before his words degenerated into a coughing fit. Both Margo and the man in the fedora moved a few steps closer and stood waiting for the coughing to subside.

Margo thought it was an interesting situation here, that two different people had been hiding behind this old man’s house.

“It’s been a while since a woman wanted to kill me,” the man said to Margo. His voice was reassuring. “Since my wife got her blood pressure, she tries to stay calm.”

“Fishbone, you got to—” The old man had momentarily seemed to recover, but now he coughed some more and pulled a bottle of medicine out of a pocket in his wheelchair. After he fumbled with it awhile, Fishbone took it, pushed down and unscrewed the cap, and handed it back. Smoke drank from the bottle.

“That dog sees me five days of the week. Why’s he going to growl at me?” Fishbone asked after Smoke recapped the bottle.

“But you still got to take care of him after I’m dead. You promised me that.”

“You’re not dying anytime soon, you spooky old man,” Fishbone said.

Smoke took off his glasses and wiped his eyes. “What are you two staring at?”

“We’re staring at you, you crazy coughing fool. You think that codeine is going to save you? That codeine’s going to shut you down one of these days. That’s why the doctor won’t let you have more than a bottle a week.”

“It’s part of my plan.” He put the glasses back on. They covered half his face.

“Your nieces are busybodies. Why do they want the township to tear down my lovely cottage?” Fishbone noticed a tiny burr stuck on the bottom of his trousers, and he lifted his foot and brushed it off. “You ought to ask those girls to clean your house, Smoky. Get some good out of them.”

“You live in that garage?” Margo asked.

“I live in Kalamazoo. That there’s my river cottage, where I skin deer and tan hides. There’s more rats in Smoke’s house than in that garage.” Fishbone wore a thick gold band etched with a cross on his ring finger. “By the way, here’s your death sticks, Smoky.”

Smoke accepted the carton of cigarettes from Fishbone. He turned to Margo. “Why are you so late?”

“You didn’t tell me to be here at a certain time,” she said.

“Old folks get up early. Isn’t that right, Fishbone?” His breathing sounded better.

“What would I know about old? I ain’t old like you,” he said.

“At the print shop I had to open the doors at seven in the morning or the Dutch folks would take their business elsewhere. It used to kill me to get up so early. Now that I got nothing to do, I can’t sleep past sunrise,” Smoke said. “Fishbone here, my setup man, felt all right wandering in with half a doughnut at ten o’clock.”

“I prefer a more relaxed lifestyle.”

“Why were you hiding, sir?” Margo asked.

“Didn’t want those harsh ladies seeing me. I try to keep clear of that kind of woman.”

“You’ve got to meet this girl, Fishbone. She can shoot that cigar out of your mouth.” Smoke brushed an unfiltered cigarette butt, half burned, from the seat of his chair onto the stone patio. It must have been hidden there while his nieces visited.

“So I hear,” Fishbone said. He took the burning cigar out of his mouth, studied the plastic filter, and then stuck it back between his teeth.

“I saw your skins, Mr. Fishbone. I can skin animals, too.”

“Not many girls know about skinning nowadays.” He regarded her, head to toe.

“I do. Rabbits, squirrels, deer. I helped my grandpa skin a bear once. And I know how to cook wild meat, too.”

“My wife’ll cook me a squirrel, but I got to bring it to her skinned and gutted with the tail cut off. So she can pretend it’s a chicken.” He regarded her again, this time more suspiciously. “What are you coming around here for, anyway? Smoky’s got no money.”

“He said for me to come today.”

“I’ve got plenty of money,” Smoke said. “I’m a desirable man in every way, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be in school?” Fishbone said.

“I’m finished with school. I’m eighteen.” She was less than two months away from being eighteen.

“Thought all you people went to college nowadays.” As they’d been talking, Fishbone had relaxed his posture. “Smoky, will you tell that dog to stop growling at me? I do believe he’s showing off for the young lady.”

Smoke yanked the dog’s collar and the big dog flattened himself against the ground.

Fishbone stood about six feet tall, and his neat appearance contrasted with what Margo imagined to be her own. She wished she had taken the time to wash her face and hands and to brush her hair before dragging it up on her head.

“Two of my boys dropped out, said they don’t need school, said the teachers are racist, and they don’t got a chance.”

“Don’t look at me,” Smoke said. Margo flinched, thinking she was in trouble for staring again, but he was speaking figuratively, to Fishbone. “I’m not disagreeing with you.”

“They’re right about the racists,” Fishbone said, “but they still need to go to school.”

“Is your name really Smoke?” Margo asked.

“Terry here doesn’t know any better than Smoke’s a black man’s name. So he’s got it all wrong on two counts.” Fishbone winked.

“Go to hell,” Smoke said. “And this fellow in the stylish clothes is Leon Barber, the Fishbone.”

“He wishes he was black,” Fishbone said, “so he’d have something more to complain about.”

Fishbone’s thin face was clean-shaven. His eyes bulged, giving him a slight look of panic, though his calm demeanor countered that impression. Margo had hardly ever looked at a black man, and now she couldn’t stop looking. “That’s a funny name, Fishbone,” Margo said.

“Because of the way he smells,” Smoke said. “Believe me, I worked with him on a daily basis.”

“I’m Margo Crane.”

“You come close to me, Margo Crane, and you’ll know I smell like a flower,” Fishbone said. He reached out and took her hand. His long fingers were callused, warm, and dry.

“You smell okay,” she said. He smelled a little like flowery aftershave, but mostly he smelled like his cigar.

“Them cigarettes tell you why this white man’s called Smoke.” He gently released her hand.

“Could I sell you animal skins?” Margo asked. “If I had them?”

“You got to be licensed with the state of Michigan before you start dealing in skins. I won’t even talk to anybody who hasn’t got a license from the DNR.”

“I can get one.”

“You get one, and I can get you a few bucks for a muskrat skin. Russians want them, but they don’t hardly want to pay for them. And raccoons are worth something for the skin and the meat. But you have to leave a coon paw on the pelt in order to assure folks you didn’t skin a cat.”

She nodded. Until now she had not known why Grandpa had left a paw on a coon’s hide. It was one of the many questions she’d wished she’d asked the old man.

“Pelts have to be perfect, no bullet holes. Shooting cuts them up.”

“What if I shoot them through the eye with my .22?”

“Lord, Smoky. Where’d you find this girl?” Fishbone pulled the butt of the little cigar out of the plastic holder, let it drop to the patio, and crushed it with his shoe. He put a new, unlit cigar in it, stuck it in the side of his mouth, maybe to cover a smile. “Thinks she’s going to shoot critters in the eye.”

Margo knew she’d have to solve the problem of the bullet continuing out the other side of the head.

“See, you old stink,” Smoke said, “girls are capable of anything these days. If you want her to shoot that cigar out of your mouth, you just say the word.”

“You get yourself a license, and then come talk to me. Do you live around here?”

“I want to live on that houseboat down there.”

“Is this child living on her own?” Fishbone asked.

“The Mexican left town,” Smoke said.

“Young ladies living on their own get taken advantage of. Girls aren’t as smart as they think they are.”

“He was an Indian,” she said.

“Yeah,” Smoke said. “Girls are almost as dumb as boys. Almost as dumb as grown men.”

“I can take care of myself,” Margo said.

“Maybe not if the farmer’s brother’s around,” Fishbone said. “The fellow is reputed to pluck the fresh fruits wherever he can find them.”

“Your daughter thought he was a charming fellow,” Smoke said.

“Back in the day, I wouldn’t let my younger daughter near that boy,” Fishbone said. “Now I’ll have to worry about my granddaughters. And the man’s only, what, thirty-five?”

“Thirty-three, I think. Just a pup.” Smoke tore the foil off a fresh pack of cigarettes and held the pack out toward Margo. “You’ll have to worry about your great-granddaughters.”

“Don’t offer her a cigarette,” Fishbone said. “Just because you want to kill yourself by smoking don’t mean you’ve got to drag this young lady into it.”

“Can I please sleep in your houseboat, Mr. Smoke?” Margo said. “I’m sleeping outside on the ground right now.”

“Neighbors’ll tell my nieces there’s a girl hanging around. That, along with a black man gutting out raccoons in my yard, and they’ll say I can’t look after myself. They’ll lock me up in the All Saints home on principle.”

Margo looked around and saw that if she stayed in the camper, people might see her from the windows of several houses. She would not want to become a curiosity for the neighbors.

“Better somebody uses it,” Fishbone said. “You’re not using it.”

“I had a serious plan for that boat. Now my big outboard won’t run. Try moving that thing upstream with the five horsepower.”

“You got plans, all right,” Fishbone said. “Especially that plan to smoke yourself to death. That’s working out fine.”

“That boat saved my sanity,” Smoke said to Margo. “It’s my Pride & Joy. It’s got everything a man needs. If I could drag the hose down, I’d fill up the tank and have running water again.”

“Your pride and joy is that set of lungs you turned black and crusted up with tumors by smoking all them cigarettes,” Fishbone said. He took a seat on an upside-down milk crate at the edge of the patio, pulled his unlit cigar out of his mouth, and looked at the plastic filter again, this time more critically.

Smoke turned to Margo. “I lived in that trailer every time my damned sister and her daughters had to move in with me. I couldn’t stand to be around that cackling bunch of females.” His choked laughter caused him to drop his burning cigarette onto his lap. Margo plucked it up and handed it back to him. Smoke took one more long drag and then dropped the cigarette onto the patio. He rigged up his oxygen tubes to run below his nose.

“Don’t you got nobody?” Fishbone asked Margo. “No place?”

“I’m waiting to hear from my ma. She lives in Lake Lynne.”

Smoke looked at Margo intently.

“How is she going to get ahold of you?” Fishbone asked.

“I need to write her a letter.”

“Don’t give her my address,” Smoke said. “I don’t need another woman poking around.”

“I’m getting a post office box. If they’ve got them in that town of Greenland.”

“Smoky, maybe you ought to let this young lady stay in the boat until she finds her ma. I don’t like to see a girl out alone with nobody looking after her.”

“Take her to your house.”

“I got fifteen people living in my place this week. The folks I’m related to seem to think I’m a free hotel. There’s nobody on your boat but a few mice.”

“Well, she’s going to have to give me something for it,” Smoke said. He turned toward Fishbone and then back to Margo. “You can buy that boat from me on one condition. That you shoot me in the head before they take me to a nursing home.”

Margo wished she could read his expression through the glasses.

“What you saying that for?” Fishbone said. “I’m not going to help you, and she isn’t, either. You’d take killing more seriously if you’d been in the war, Smoky.”

“It ain’t my fault I couldn’t go in the army,” he said.

“Well, if you had, you’d’ve seen how killing anyone, yourself included, is nothing to joke about.”

“You spend too much time at church,” Smoke said. “You’re becoming a regular church lady.”

Fishbone shook his head. “Smoky, you ought to be careful what you say to people.”

“You heard my nieces. They have it all figured.” The old man paused to catch his breath. “They’re having me declared unfit in court. I’m going to lose my freedom.”

“Don’t ask other people to do your dirty work, Smoky. I could probably shoot and bury all the black men I wanted, but I’ll go to the electric chair if I start killing white people, even useless old ones like you.”

“A hundred bucks for my boat,” Smoke said to Margo and took a breath. “But you’re going to help me when the time comes. And I reserve the right to buy my boat back if you don’t hold up your part of the bargain.”

“Do it yourself if you’ve got to do it. Don’t go dragging anybody else into it,” Fishbone said, leaning down and brushing a bit of cigar ash off his black leather shoe.

“I’m going to try,” Smoke said to Margo in a quieter voice. “But if you want my boat, my Pride & Joy, you’re going to owe me.”

“You people always surprise me,” Fishbone said. “Talking that way is unnatural. Life and death is God’s business, not yours.”

“I went to that goddamned nursing home every day for lunch when my sister was in there. I saw people turning into ghosts made out of those mashed potatoes they got, taste like plaster of Paris. I’m not going to die in that prison.”

Margo nodded at the word prison.

“I need somebody to shoot me before they come get me. I need a beautiful kid like you to finish me off. You’ll kiss me on the cheek and then blow my head off.”

“You want to get her in trouble with the law?”

“Nobody’s going to care about a sick old man dying,” Smoke said.

“If this young lady shoots you with that Marlin,” Fishbone said, “they’ll trace the bullet to her microgroove barrel. And if she shoots you with a shotgun, everybody is going to hear the blast. You’re not thinking about what happens to anybody else after you’re gone.”

“So drown me in the river.”

Fishbone shook his head, as though giving up on serious talk for the day.

“Maybe I’ll die in my sleep and you’ll both be off the hook. Kid, you give me a hundred dollars and I’ll sign over my Pride & Joy, and you can go register it in your own name. You’ll have to take her a little ways downstream. But don’t go far.”

“Don’t take the girl’s money. What do you need a hundred bucks for? Just let her use the old thing.”

“To prove I sold it and didn’t give it away. If I start giving things away, the judge will say I’m losing my faculties. I’ll write her a receipt saying she paid for it and keep a carbon copy.” His color looked healthier the longer he argued with Fishbone.

“Probably your nieces won’t even notice if it’s gone.” Fishbone bit the plastic cigar filter and spoke through his teeth. “They are not your most observant ladies.”

“A hundred dollars.” Margo pulled from her wallet five twenty-dollar bills. She would have paid a lot more.

“And a promise you’ll help me at the end,” Smoke said. He took off his glasses again and let them lie in his lap while he looked at her.

Margo was afraid to look back at him to see how serious he was. Instead she watched Fishbone’s wiry figure descend the concrete-block steps. Still shaking his head, he untied the aluminum boat, stepped in, took the cover off the outboard, and started it up. The boat moved upstream. He took the boat out for a run most days, Margo would learn, weather allowing.