Once Upon a River

• Chapter Twenty-Three •


After Smoke’s death, the snow and ice storms continued, and the sun didn’t come out for three weeks. On the morning the clouds finally lifted, Margo cooked a big carp on the woodstove. She was boning and processing it on the deck of the Glutton that afternoon when she saw a man coming down the path from the old barn. The slim figure approached, and Margo saw by the hat that it was Fishbone. She was cutting the fish into strips that she hoped she could smoke, dry, and store for later. The meat was shredding, though, and by the time Fishbone reached the riverbank, she was starting to question the wisdom of the project. She was wearing her father’s Carhartt jacket because she didn’t want to stink up her mother’s parka, which she wore into town when she went to check her PO box and to buy potatoes and onions and tins of corned beef, for which she’d recently developed a craving.

Margo wiped her bare hands on a cloth wired to the table and grabbed the six muskrat hides she’d strung together with baling twine. She made her way across her gangplank. She held out the skins, clean and dry, all with perfect eye holes. Fishbone took a folded garbage bag out of his jacket pocket, slid the skins into it, and rested the bag near his feet. Margo thought she could feel the snow around them melting as they stood there. Fishbone stuck one of his little cigars into his plastic holder and lit it.

“I was curious about your rifle, so I looked into it,” he said.

“Presentation-model Marlin 39A. Five hundred of them made in 1960 with that squirrel and chrome. Marlin’s ninety-year-anniversary rifle. You’re probably the only person shooting with one. Everybody else keeps the thing in a box.”

Margo tugged on her jacket, pulled it down over her belly. Fishbone took a drag off his cigar. Snowbirds landed near the fire pit. The neighbor lady had given her a paper bag of seed and told her to see what kind of winter birds she could attract near the water.

“Smoky called me that morning, you know,” he said. “Woke up my poor wife, scared her with his voice all wheezy. Now I think he was calling to say goodbye.”

“He said he didn’t want to die alone.” Margo put her hands in her jacket pockets.

“After you left, I called the cops, and they found the note in the kitchen. No doubt about what it said. Cops asked me about suicide, and I told them Smoky’d talked about it plenty. His favorite topic.”

Fishbone was wearing his usual slim-fitting leather jacket over a thin wool sweater, and though he was more than three times Margo’s age, he was not shivering the way she was. She had moved and reset her underwater traps this morning and had still not recovered. She would not be completely warm until this evening, when she would stoke the fire in her cabin. Sometimes she felt overwhelmed by the comfort she could create in her little home on the water, whether she was sitting up working or lying in her own bed reading with the woodstove blazing.

“You didn’t come to the funeral,” Fishbone said.

“I walked into town. I even went into the building. But I couldn’t stay with that many people. I didn’t want to see him dead, anyway.” The gray-and-white snowbirds rose suddenly and took off upstream. A half dozen cardinals flew in and fell upon the seed.

“Farmer Harland was there, and his wife. Old customers from the print shop, too, people I knew. I wish you could have met him before the emphysema. He knew how to shoe horses, take care of sick cattle, build a boat, set type. He could do about anything.”

She nodded.

“He helped a lot of people in different ways. I still owe him money. He told me I owed it to you now.”

“You don’t owe me,” she said.

“Yes, I do. I should’ve done more to take care of him. He took care of me whenever I needed it. But I just couldn’t.”

“Smoke said you were a tough nut to crack.”

Fishbone inhaled deeply on his cigar, something he usually didn’t do. He exhaled a rich stream of smoke and warm breath into the winter air. “It’s a great big wide world, isn’t it, young lady?”

“Did you love Smoke?”

He paused as though he were going to say something complicated, but said, “He was a good friend.”

They were both silent for a while.

“I loved sitting and talking with you and Smoke,” Margo said. “It was paradise to me.”

“Funny paradise.”

“I liked listening to the way you guys argued.”

She thought she might tell him how she’d tried to save Smoke, and how, in the end, it had been a relief to realize she had to let him go. She wanted to tell Fishbone how she’d dreamed that night about Smoke being with her in her bed, about how his ghost had climbed inside her with the baby, but she couldn’t imagine how to get started saying such a crazy-sounding thing.

“Smoky made a new will. Did you know that? He put you in it.”

She squinted. “What for?”

“For his house. He changed it right after you came back from your ma’s. He had me take him to the lawyer. The house isn’t worth too much.”

Margo didn’t think Fishbone would joke with her about this, but she studied his face for a sign. She had missed his company.

“I’ve got a favor to ask you,” he said. “Can I keep my boat at your place? You can use it anytime you want.”

“Smoke said you didn’t visit him anymore. You came to visit the river.”

“I visited him, all right.”

“How come you want to be on the river?”

Fishbone snorted. “I grew up on a river down in Ohio. We would have starved if not for hunting and fishing and trapping.”

“Why’d you leave?”

“I came up north to get a job, but it turned out I couldn’t work in that auto plant. It would have killed me. Smoky saved me by giving me a job, and by letting me keep a boat at his place.”

Margo nodded. With Fishbone’s boat she could row upstream or down and find the nearest heronry—every river had one, surely. And there would be a creek where she could find snapping turtles and watercress. She would practice moving the oars through the water without making a sound.

“My own kids had no interest in fishing or the river, grandkids neither, but maybe my great-grandkids will.” Fishbone looked at his half-burned cigar.

“I can help teach them to fish if you want. Are you sure about Smoke’s house? I never thought.”

“Better place for a child than this boat. You glad now you’re keeping that baby?”

She wouldn’t try to explain why she was keeping her baby. It wasn’t some point of principle—it was personal, between herself and the

child.

She would cook something for Fishbone next time she saw him. She had flour and sugar from the store, and she would have raspberries in June, mulberries when she had a boat for getting across to the other side, wild gooseberries from the woods, and maybe wild strawberries, too. She would make a deal with the farmer to trade deerskins and venison for eggs year-round. She nodded, though she’d already forgotten what Fishbone had just asked her.

“Then stop splitting wood,” he said. “Use the propane. That’s why Smoky vented that propane heater out the side. I’ll bring you another bottle of gas when you need it. I told Smoky I’d help you. And your ma will help. Have you gone to see her again?”

“Not yet,” Margo said.

“I don’t know if Smoky was a good influence on you, always saying you should live any way you want. There’s a lot to be said for trying to live a normal life.”

“You know a lot about little kids, don’t you?” Margo asked.

“Oh, I got more kids and grandkids than I can count. And now great-grandkids,” Fishbone said. “I wish you teenage girls could wait till you had a husband.”

“I’ve met the neighbor lady who lives across from the barn up there. I found her standing in her yard holding out birdseed, trying to get a chickadee to eat out of her hand.”

“Mrs. Rathbone?” he said.

“Rathburn, I think. She says she has baby clothes I can have. She said she’d watch the baby sometimes if I needed her to. She says she loves babies.”

Fishbone nodded.

“Her youngest daughter has a giant rabbit she takes for walks like a dog. Its ears are this long.” Margo flattened out her hands and made rabbit ears out of them.

“I don’t suppose you told her what you usually do with rabbits.”

“No. But I could eat good on that rabbit for two weeks.” Margo laughed. She noticed Fishbone had beard stubble today, something that was not usual for him.

“What’s that you’re doing with that carp over there?” Fishbone gestured with his chin at the table on the boat’s deck. She was using her piece of teak boat as a cutting board. The asymmetrical curve of the thing made the juices run off over the words River Rose and through the bullet hole.

“Making jerky. I put too much salt on it, I think. It changed the texture. Maybe I should can fish in jars like tomatoes?”

“Maybe the venison would be better for canning.” He pulled some bills off a roll in his front pocket and paid her for the hides. He took his cigar out of his mouth and studied it one more time. “I don’t know if you’re really trying to live like days gone by, but my ma used to can meat and fish. I can ask my older sister about it on the phone, see if she remembers how our ma did it. I think you’ve got to boil the jars under pressure. And my wife has pint jars she don’t use. Smoky’s got a pressure cooker somewhere, I’m sure. You’re going to have to sort through all his junk.”

Margo nodded. She would learn everything she could from people who were willing to share what they knew. She would use the tools she was given to make her own kind of life. In one of the Foxfire books, she’d just read about how to make bootlaces out of woodchuck hide.

“My babies were born at home,” Fishbone said, “but people don’t do that anymore. You’re going to have to go to the hospital.”

“I don’t want to go to the hospital.” She could not imagine the people from Foxfire going to the hospital for their babies. Her Grandpa Murray had not been born in a hospital, and Annie Oakley was born at home, too.

“It doesn’t matter what you want to do, young lady. You’ve got to get your baby his shots so he don’t get sick. And if you don’t take care of your baby, I’ll call social services, and they’ll take him away from you. If you put your child in danger, I’ll take him away myself. That’s the same as I told my granddaughter.”

Margo looked up at him in surprise.

“And you need to get a birth certificate at the hospital. Where else you going to get one?”

“You don’t have to help me, you know.”

“I need a place on the river.” Fishbone squinted against cigar smoke going into his eyes. “And maybe I’ve got a soft spot for a baby.”

“What about Nightmare?” Margo asked.

“I wanted to talk to you about that. He’s in the truck.”

“Can I see him?” She held up her hands as if to show there was nothing in them.

“My wife wanted him for protection, but he just lies there, won’t move. He growls all day and all night. I promised Smoky I’d take care of him, but he’s lost fifteen pounds and his eyes are bloodshot like he’s drunk.”

“He’s a river dog,” Margo said. “River dogs have to be on the river.”

“Let’s say he lived with you. How would you feed him?”

“He can eat meat, same as me. I’ll cook the muskrats for him. Take the glands out. And I’ll get him dog food, too, if that’s what he wants. I saw big bags at the grocery for five dollars.”

“Maybe you’d want to cook the muskrats outside. And you couldn’t use the leg traps anymore. And he’d fill up that houseboat as long as you’re staying there. You’d be stepping over him all day.”

“I’ve just been using the drowner line, and I live-trap the coons, toss the whole cage into the drink and drown them.” In fact, she’d never even set the leg traps Smoke had given her, for fear of catching up a stray dog.

“And he’s going to bark and growl at every man comes around. And I’m not sure he won’t bite a man who doesn’t suit him.”

“He’ll be happy living with me.”

“Are you sure you want this?”

Margo was more certain about the dog than she was about the house, which sounded like a fairy tale. Maybe she felt as much certainty about Nightmare as Luanne felt when she packed her bags and finally left Murrayville to make a new life. Maybe it was what Joanna felt when she swore at her wedding to honor and obey her husband, to forsake all others. Maybe when Smoke headed down that hill toward the river to drown he was as certain as Margo was about this dog.

Margo pushed the carp into a bucket with a tight-fitting lid, splashed some springwater from another bucket over the cutting board. She grabbed her rifle, slung it over her shoulder, and followed Fishbone along the trail to the barn. Nightmare was sitting in the driver’s seat of the pickup. When the dog saw Margo, he put his front paws against the window. When Fishbone opened the door, Nightmare leapt heavily to the ground, bowed before Margo, wagged his massive tail, and barked once. He then turned back to Fishbone and growled.

“For crying out loud, dog,” he said and shook his head. “I’m not your enemy.”

Margo hugged the dog and petted him. His ribs stuck out through his skin. “Be nice, Nighty. We’ll fatten you up.”

“I guess you’re sure about this,” Fishbone said. “With that tail he kept knocking everything off my wife’s coffee table.”

Margo nodded. She had worried about Johnny showing up, coming along the riverbank. She had feared his scent was a key that could unlock her whole body, and it was his nature that he would try her. But not with this dog beside her, a barking and growling reminder that she wanted something more, that she had something worth protecting.

“Do you know anything about a dog star?” Margo asked.

“That would be Sirius. Your brightest star most nights.” He removed his burned-down cigar and put the holder in his pocket.