Once Upon a River

• Chapter Twenty-One •


Christmas Eve at dusk, Fishbone entered Smoke’s kitchen with-out knocking. He removed his fedora, brushed the snow from it, and hung it on a peg over the forced-air vent, where Smoke never hung anything else. Margo did not understand how Fishbone’s ears didn’t freeze. She wore a stocking cap in this weather, and now that she had the parka, she sometimes also pulled the hood up and tied it tightly.

Because the kitchen table lamp hurt Smoke’s eyes, the room was lit only by two Christmas candles. Nightmare growled gently at Fishbone and then relaxed.

“Merry Christmas,” Fishbone said and handed Margo four wooden stretching boards. Brand-new ones without bloodstains. “I made these out of basswood. They’ll be soft so you won’t tear the hides.”

She thanked him and wished she had something to give him. He brushed the snow off the shoulders of his leather jacket and sat on Smoke’s second kitchen chair, the one without any back. It occurred to Margo that in these last few months she had taken Fishbone’s chair. Margo showed what Smoke had given her, four muskrat-sized body traps and three wool blankets, one of which was military-issue and had MESSER stenciled on it. Smoke had told her it was from his father’s time in the military. Fishbone accepted Margo’s offer of a piece of black walnut cake she’d made with dried apples. He ate it slowly and swore it tasted as good as anything he’d eaten all year. When he finished, he pushed the plate to the center of the table. “The farmer wants to speak to you, Margo,” he said.

Margo looked at Smoke.

Fishbone continued, “I told George Harland you were a young lady who could take care of herself and not cause him any trouble. He said you didn’t answer your door when he knocked on your cabin, after he saw you go inside.”

“You talk to him for her,” Smoke suggested.

“She’s capable of talking for herself, Smoky. She’s on his land. There’s no reason to be afraid of the man.” Fishbone picked up the leather bag of lead type Smoke kept on the table and moved it from hand to hand as they spoke. It weighed about ten pounds.

“I’m on the water,” she said, “not on his land.”

“And when you step off the boat, you’re on his land. And when the water gets low, you’ll be on his land. When you take drinking water from the hand pump in his barn like you do, you’re on his land. Talk to him and he’ll give you his permits next year.”

“I might not stay there. I might go somewhere else on the river.”

Fishbone shook his head. “This whole situation is odd, don’t you think, Smoky? A girl living out there alone is not normal.” He looked back at Margo. “If you were my kid, I’d want you to finish school. You ought to be with your rich ma on Lake Lynne.”

“Why do you care so much about normal?” Smoke said, sounding more forceful than Margo would have expected. “It’s hard enough to figure out how to live . . . without worrying about what the hell’s normal. You keep your goddamned normal life to yourself.”

Margo felt a catch in her throat. She didn’t want to be the source of more disagreement between them.

“This girl’s going to have a baby,” Fishbone said and put down the leather bag heavily. “It ain’t just about her.”

“Look at her, sitting there. Really look at her, Fishbone. Look at that kid’s beautiful face. She’s got strong arms, splits her own firewood. You got all kinds of kids, Fishbone. I got none. My life ain’t worth a shit, but I can help this girl live the way she wants to live.”

“Your life’s worth plenty, Smoky.”

“Sure as hell doesn’t feel like it these days.”

“Why do you have to swear all the time? You make every night a cuss fest.”

Margo was relieved when Smoke’s temper quickly subsided. She retied a rawhide bootlace that had come undone. She smoothed her hands over her soft, worn jeans, just washed in Smoke’s machine. She had left the top three buttons unbuttoned and wore the pants low because her belly was sticking out. She felt warm and clean and comfortable, despite the arguing, despite her uncertainty about the baby. She belonged with these men and Nightmare.

“Something doesn’t smell right in here, Smoky.”

“The candles are cinnamon,” Margo said, but she, too, had been smelling something, a skunky odor.

Fishbone leaned close to Smoke and smelled around the collar of his work shirt. “It’s you. You feeling okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“You need to take a bath.”

When he was leaving, Fishbone put on his hat and patted Smoke on the shoulder and let his hand linger there. Smoke reached up and pressed his hand until Fishbone pulled away.

“Please take care of him,” Fishbone said to Margo. “I would if I could, but I’ve got a house full of family and guests waiting on me.”

After Fishbone closed the door behind him, Smoke said, “Like hell he would.”

“How come he’s not cold with only that jacket and hat on?” Margo asked.

Smoke thought for a moment. “That there is a man who decides how he wants to feel, and then that’s how he feels. Temperature be damned.”

“Can you do that?” Margo put Fishbone’s plate and fork in the sink and filled up Smoke’s coffee cup again. “Can you just decide how to feel?”

“Some people can,” Smoke said. “Tell me something, kid, is he right? Do I smell bad?”

“Why won’t you let the health aide help you wash like she’s supposed to?” An aide from senior services was stopping by once a week, and Smoke only allowed her to tidy the house, change the sheets, and put away the groceries she brought. Margo leaned close and smelled the collar of Smoke’s shirt.

“My body is none of them bitches’ business. But it has been a few weeks since I’ve been able to bathe.”

“Let me wash you, Smoke, before you go to your niece’s place tomorrow for Christmas. You don’t want them to think you’re not taking care of yourself,” she said. “I told you I helped my grandpa when he was sick.”

Smoke nodded. Margo didn’t really want to wash him, but she was the only one he would let near him. And Fishbone had asked her to take care of him.

Margo turned up the thermostat on the furnace and heard it kick on. Smoke unbuttoned his work shirt and revealed a dirty long underwear shirt. She pulled it off him and the smell was stronger. She helped him into the bathroom, and she put a milk crate in the shower and a folded towel for him to sit on. She washed his arms and chest with a washcloth.

Margo found a sore under his armpit that might be getting infected. She did the best she could in the low light of two candles—he wouldn’t let her turn on the overhead light, nor would he take off his glasses. As she worked, he seemed to relax in her hands. There were swollen red areas on his back that emanated heat. “What’s this?”

“Pressure sores,” Smoke whispered and winced at her touch. “I’m supposed to change position in my chair. And I’m supposed to sit up straight. I asked the doc how I’m supposed to do both at once.” He had another pressure sore on his tailbone.

Focusing on each part of his body made her forget the awkwardness and strangeness of what she was doing, and she found she liked caring for him this way. She emptied and refilled her pan of water a few times to keep it warm and clean. She let him wash his privates, which he did with care.

“I never washed anybody else before,” Margo said.

“I’d rather wash myself.”

Margo washed Smoke’s thin legs, on which there were only a few wisps of hair. She had to be gentle in touching the backs of his knees, where there were more sores. His shins were scarred and marked with a variety of new and fading bruises. She washed his callused feet. Margo wondered if she would care for her mother in old age; maybe it would take her mother until then to need her.

She dried Smoke by patting him with a towel and helped him into clean long underwear and a work shirt with Smoke on it. They hooked his oxygen back up.

“My dad had shirts that said Crane on them,” Margo said. “I wish I had one of those old shirts, but they belonged to the uniform service.”

“Thank you, kid,” Smoke said when they returned to the kitchen.

Margo poured him more coffee; it was astounding how much black coffee Smoke drank at all times of day. He said it helped keep his lungs and his bronchial tubes open.

“Fishbone is afraid he’ll end up like this if he touches me. We’re almost the same age, though you wouldn’t know it.”

“How come you didn’t get married, Smoke?”

“I did once.”

“What happened to your wife?”

“Lousy eight years for both of us, until she figured out to leave and go off with somebody else.”

“Why does Fishbone help you and look after you?”

“Why do you help me, kid? Why does anybody help anybody? Do you think we ought to just stay home and help ourselves? Is that how you want to live?”

Margo felt herself blush. “Do you love Fishbone?”

“You’re an observant girl. What the hell else have you managed to figure out after all these months of staring at me?”

“I mean, like loving a woman?” She said this hesitantly, thinking it might anger him.

“I wouldn’t know,” Smoke said. “I haven’t ever loved a woman the way I love him.”

“But he’s got a wife. And kids and grandkids.”

“So he does,” Smoke snorted. “And I do not. That’s why I have no one to take care of me in my old age.”

Margo nodded.

“Every person out there is a nut you can’t crack,” Smoke said. “That’s what I’ve learned, kid. We can’t even crack ourselves.”

“Well, I’ll take care of you, Smoke.”

“You’re a good girl. I’m sure even your crazy mama knows you’re a good girl.”




One clear, cold morning between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, when Margo was in the cow pasture, halfway to Smoke’s house, she could make out the sounds of saws and a big diesel engine. On the road were a dump truck and a huge backhoe. Margo stood behind a tree outside Smoke’s house as two men in insulated coveralls cut into the old unattached garage that Fishbone called his river cottage. Then a third man operating the backhoe began working with the bucket, stabbing at the wall of the garage like a big yellow bird, punching through the wall boards. When the backhoe tapped the roof, the whole thing collapsed with a whoosh. With a few more artful gouges, the building was down, and the men on the ground began loading the bucket with debris, which was then dumped into the back of the truck. At this time, Smoke rolled his chair out onto the patio. Margo went inside to retrieve his coat and hat. She brought out the milk crate and sat on it to watch.

As the men lifted away chunks of wood, roofing materials, and window glass and deposited everything in the dump bed of the big truck, Smoke alternated puffs of oxygen and cigarettes. The men finished the job in a few hours, hardly offering a nod to her or Smoke. Neither she nor Smoke said anything much to each other, either, until, finally, all that remained was a square slab of pitted concrete between the patio and the fence line. While one potbellied man swept it clean with a wide broom, the other two negotiated the front-end loader onto a trailer. Then the three men got into the front seat of the dump truck, and they hauled it all away.

“They’ll send me a bill,” Smoke said. “Wait and see. And you tell me if you see one damned rat.”

Margo saw no evidence of rats, but she knew that wherever there were people, there were rats, especially on the river. Nobody wanted the skins or meat, but Margo did not despise them the way everybody else seemed to. Rats were just creatures getting by on the river as best they could. People exaggerated the grubbiness of river rats the way they exaggerated the ferocity of wolverines.

“Do you see how people will take away your right,” Smoke said and paused to catch his breath in the cold air, “to live the way you want? Remember this.”

Though she would not say so to Smoke, she would remember, as well, the pleasure of watching the demolition. Margo knew they should go inside, but she wanted to keep taking in the strange new landscape, the pitted slab, the length of fence she’d never seen from the patio.

“We could build a new garage,” Margo said, “right on that same spot. Fishbone will help us. He says you know how to build just about anything.”

“I can’t think about it.”

“I can imagine us all putting up wall studs and maybe a metal roof so we can come out and listen to the rain on it. As soon as the snow’s off the ground.”

“Was nothing wrong with the old garage.”

“We should’ve fixed it up.”

“You know, Fishbone used to visit me.”

“He still visits you.”

“Now he comes to visit the river. He comes to get out of his house in the city, to get away from screaming grandchildren. He even comes to see you, I think. You know, I never told anybody what I told you.”

“Can I tell you something?” Margo said, and her voice began to warble. “Something I didn’t think I’d tell anybody?”

Smoke lit another cigarette and looked at her.

“You know how you joke about how I should kill you?”

“I’m not joking.”

“Well, I did once kill a man,” Margo said. “Last year.”

“With that .22?” He sounded skeptical.

“A shotgun. I thought I had to kill him. He was hurting somebody I loved. For a while I thought I didn’t regret it. But I wish I hadn’t done it.”

“You going to turn yourself in?”

“Heck, no.”

Smoke laughed. “Was he a lousy son of a bitch of a man?”

“Yes.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“He had little kids and a wife. They probably miss him. And thinking about you dying, and my dad and my grandpa dying. If I could undo it and make him alive again, I would.”

“If you could kill a man once, you can do it again,” Smoke said. He took off his glasses and squinted at her, but Margo, who was hugging herself against the cold, just kept looking at the empty slab.




The neighborhood Christmas lights came down after New Year’s, and the winter trudged on through short days and long, cold nights. Margo took trips into town to get essentials for herself and Smoke, but she felt she was in a kind of semi-hibernation, a state in which she moved slowly and quietly and did only what she had to do. Her fake-fur-lined parka reached halfway down her thighs and more than covered up the fact of her slightly swollen middle to strangers she might come across, but whenever Smoke or Fishbone saw her taking off her jacket in Smoke’s kitchen, they smiled at her belly as though she were bringing somebody prettier than herself into the room. Margo’s body had always been her reliable friend, whether in handling a rifle, splitting firewood, rowing for miles, or keeping her balance despite physical strain, but now her body was becoming strange to her.

Fishbone was right that Margo had hidden from the farmer the first time he came to her boat; she had gone inside and curled up under her sleeping bags. She hadn’t been ready to meet a new man, especially one who could ask her to leave. She didn’t know if she’d be attracted to him the way she was to his brother Johnny. When he next came to her boat, in the middle of January, she couldn’t hide. She was standing on a stepladder, raking the roof of her camper, dragging the snow off—it was something she had not thought about until Smoke mentioned it, that the weight of snow on the flat roof could collapse the structure. Margo climbed off the ladder and walked across her shoveled and sanded gangplank to meet the farmer. He was very tall and very thin.

“You must be Margo Crane,” he said. “I’m George Harland.”

When he offered his hand, she stepped forward and shook it.

“Smoke’s boat,” the man said and nodded. “He tells me he sold it to you. Tells me I ought to go along with you anchoring it here on my property so his nieces don’t get upset.” The farmer looked up and down the river and concluded, “It’s an odd sort of proposal. But here you are in person.”

She nodded. She liked his patient manner. When she had spied on him arguing with his wife, his slow calm had made him seem a little stupid. Margo wondered if that was how she seemed to other people. She focused on his right hand, which was missing most of its index finger.

“His Pride & Joy. He worked on it for years. Told me and my little brother that if a man was going to live on the water, he ought to have a boat that suited him.”

Margo glanced back at the cabin. Her rifle stood on its butt in the corner by the stove.

“Leon said I ought to give you my crop-damage permits this year. I’m cautious about who I let shoot on my property.”

Margo had a delayed realization of who Leon was. She looked at the man’s hand again.

“I’ve given Leon the permits for years on Smoke’s advice, but he only took two deer last year. Both of them say you’re a regular sharpshooter.” The farmer nodded as though agreeing with Fishbone or agreeing with the universe. “You’re younger than I expected you’d be.”

She nodded along with him. She knew she should speak up, say something. The farmer’s eyes were gray like Johnny’s, but he did not have what his brother had, that raucous shine in his face, that dangerous scent.

“You must be about nineteen? Smoke says you’re trapping. You got your license?”

She nodded.

“The crop-damage permit is for June through October to keep the deer out of my corn and beans. The deer eat thirty percent of my crop if I don’t have somebody out here. And I’d like to have a few of the hides tanned. I can pay you for them if you’ll skin them and bring them to me.”

She nodded again. She did want to stay here, at least for now, and she wanted the permits. It felt good to know what she wanted.

“And I’d ask you to tell me if you find a weasel or a mink or an otter down here. As much as the river has gotten cleaned up these last years, I’d put money on it that weasels are coming back. I might have to take more care with my chickens.”

Margo knew there was a bit of money to be made from these. She would talk to Fishbone about how to trap ermine and mink.

“Can you speak at all?” he asked and tilted his head.

“I’m not going to sleep with you,” she said. She felt her throat go unsteady, but her voice stayed strong. “And not your brother Johnny, either.” She had not meant that to be the first thing she said to the farmer, but she had to make clear she would not take in every man who showed up.

“So you’ve met Johnny, then. I was going to warn you about him.” He smiled, and when he showed his teeth, he looked a bit more like his brother. He said, “I wondered if you were okay out here. I don’t want to find a frozen woman when I come out in the spring.”

“I won’t freeze.” She crossed her arms over her belly. There was no reason he would suspect her of being with child, no reason to think Fishbone or Smoke would have told him, though she was surprised he referred to her as a woman rather than a girl.

“What’re you doing for heat in there?”

“Wood. Smoke had Fishbone check the stove for leaks. And there’s a propane backup.”

He nodded. “You can take any dead wood around here, but I’d ask you, don’t cut any live trees out of my windbreaks.”

She’d already taken some dead wood.

“Go ahead and take any of that stuff behind the hay barn if you can split it. I let landscapers drop off extra wood there, but it’s mostly stumps with roots. You can borrow my wheelbarrow from the barn, but be sure to put it back where it is now, on the lower level.” He paused. “You really want to live out here on my land?”

“On the river. I might move somewhere else when I get a bigger outboard.”

“I’ll mention it to the neighbors, tell them not to be surprised if they see you. A few years ago, I took pity on a fellow, let him spend the winter in my chicken shed. My wife was furious. He rigged up an old kerosene heater, burned the shed down.”

Margo nodded. “I won’t burn anything down.”

“My wife may not be crazy about this situation when she figures it out, but Smoke says you’re a grown person. He thinks you know what you’re doing. Leon says you’re some kind of throwback. He admires you.”

Margo didn’t know what throwback meant apart from fish too small to bother eating. She thought about all the things the farmer and his wife must have in their kitchen, all the pans and ingredients, the utensils, the rolling pins for piecrusts, stoves with coils that glowed beneath pots, windows that let in the sunlight, big overhead light fixtures for when there wasn’t enough natural light. Those were the things Margo had given up for now, for her life on the river. She was sure the farmer’s wife, like Joanna, had all kinds of cotton cloths for cleaning up messes in the kitchen and a washing machine to wash them in, chairs that scraped against wood floors when they were pushed out from tables, a chest freezer that could hold a whole deer. Maybe Margo was giving up too much to live out here on a boat, giving up too much for the freedom to travel away from here if she had any trouble. But for now she knew she would be giving up more if she tried to live any other way.

“I don’t want to live in anybody else’s house,” she said. She had four cooking pans that she loved, one from the Indian and three from Smoke, and they were sufficient for any meal she’d wanted to make so far. She had two propane burners plus the top of the woodstove. She loved the small, white-painted kitchen drawers with elegant handles into which her few utensils fit. Her dining table folded up against the wall, and the seats folded down to become her bed. The curtains over the window were a pattern of leaping fish in different colors. She’d washed the curtains and hung them back up. She couldn’t imagine the fuel bills for a big house like the farmer’s, all that waste heating room after room, indoor space that a person like Margo, who had the whole river for her home, didn’t need.

“That’s good,” the farmer said. “I don’t think my wife would like some unknown young woman living in her house. But you’re right in thinking that if it got too cold, I’d feel I ought to invite you anyhow.”

“Thank you for the permits, sir, but please keep off my boat,” she said. “No men are welcome here.”