Once Upon a River

• Chapter Eight •


From Brian, Margo learned to thin-slice half-frozen venison across the grain and dry it on the woodstove to make jerky. He explained to her the qualities of different types of firewood: hickory burned the hottest and smelled the best, but was hardest to split. He taught her about keeping under the radar of the authorities, insisting that she park her boat behind his and cover it with a green canvas tarp whenever she wasn’t using it. Margo was grateful for all she was learning and for a place to stay where she could be herself. She loved to have someone to cook for; Brian appreciated all the foods her daddy had liked. Margo was getting an idea that maybe she loved Brian, that love was different than she’d expected, that it was something ordinary. If you knew every detail of a person, if you studied his pink-skinned, black-bearded face every day for hours, if you knew the feel of his soft hair and knew how he felt in his skin when you touched him, if you listened to every word a man spoke, his truth and his lies, then you couldn’t help but love him. And loving a new person might even eventually dull the pain of having lost the people you had loved before, even if it didn’t happen as quickly as you wanted it to.

On most days, she spent hours shooting with the Marlin, going through the stack of paper targets Mr. Peake had given her. She’d sighted in her Marlin for the Winchester long-rifle cartridges at thirty to fifty feet for hunting small game, and she was learning to adjust her sight picture to other distances and ammo. Brian brought her mostly longs and long-rifles, but occasionally shorts or something like low-velocity CB cartridges, which fired quietly and didn’t penetrate the target as deeply. She shot enough with her left hand that she became fairly

accurate—Annie Oakley had been able to shoot expertly with both hands, according to Little Sure Shot. For plinking, Brian had gotten hold of a four-tang auto-reset target similar to the one she’d had in Murrayville. Once in a while she took out the shotgun Brian had given her and blew apart plastic bottles and pieces of trash she’d found floating in the current. This variety of targets helped her resist shooting another buck out of season, though she saw them often enough drinking at the river.

When Brian forgot to get her ammunition, Margo didn’t want to bother him about it. A couple of times she put his outboard motor on The River Rose and went upstream to Heart of Pines to the grocery store to get a brick of ammo and some food. Before going inside, she pulled a stocking cap over her long hair, and no one at the store paid her any special attention. She loved the freedom of traveling alone. She spent the forty dollars she had and wanted to cash the money order from her mother, but she feared for her name coming up at the post office. As far away as she felt from home, Heart of Pines was only thirty-five miles upstream from Murrayville. The DNR official who she feared would find her dead doe was the same guy who could have nailed her for killing more than her fair share back home. She had visited the doe’s body all spring, kept her covered with branches, and noted, day by day, how much of her the coyotes, raccoons, and crows had eaten, how her skeleton collapsed with the cartilage fetus inside, how her bones disappeared from the heap one after another. Last week, she had been able to pluck her deer slug from the flattened remains.

As the weather warmed and the ground thawed, Brian picked up jobs removing trees, landscaping, and digging, either using machines he rented or a shovel when it was a tight space or when folks were worried about the ornamental bushes over their septic tanks. Margo didn’t miss her father any less as the weather warmed, but by then her body had absorbed the habit of sadness, so that sadness flowed all through her and became a natural part of her movements. Missing her mother was different; her mother was an agitation and a puzzle. She tried to imagine situations her mother might be in that were so delicate that they couldn’t meet, not even for a visit. Was her mother being held prisoner? Was she taking care of some man’s children, a dozen of them, so that she couldn’t take care of one more person? Luanne should have known that Margo didn’t need much taking care of.

The most satisfying part of Margo’s days was watching the yellow dog downstream on the opposite bank. The creature hardly ever barked, and it remained still for as much as an hour, its nose just above the water. Whenever the man or the woman returned home and let the dog out, whenever it bounded to the water’s edge, Margo shared its pleasure at being released. In the early spring, the woman seemed to be gone more often, and then the woman and her car stopped appearing at the house at all. After that, in early May, she watched the man spend hours alone in the evening, repairing the oil-barrel float before launching it and setting out the gangplank, trimming the hedges around the house, and painting the little shed. She watched the man sweep debris off the roof of the house and then watched him clean the gutters, even wiping them with a towel. Brian’s cabin didn’t have gutters.

The first night Margo saw Brian drunk as a skunk, she was sitting up late, cleaning the shotgun, when she heard the sound of his boat pulling up to the dock. Paul and another man wrestled Brian up the stairs and onto the screen porch.

“Here’s your man,” Paul said. “Do what you want with him. He was too drunk to drive himself. We passed a sheriff’s boat on the way down, so we’re all going to stay the night here.”

She determined from the slowness of Paul’s gaze, as it moved from her throat to her face, that Paul, too, was drunk.

“Paul dropped his glasses in the drink.” Brian got up from the couch on the porch where they had placed him and stumbled to the doorway and stood there.

“You knocked my goddamned glasses in the drink,” Paul said. “I didn’t drop them.”

“Sorry about that, bro. Listen,” he said, but then seemed to forget what he was going to say.

Margo knew it would take forty-five minutes to get the place warm again after the men had left the door wide open for this long.

“What’s your point, Brian?” Paul said.

“Well, I know I love my brother. I love you, man. And I’m sorry I shot you in the eye.” He supported himself on the doorframe, and then suddenly lurched toward the table, knocking dishes to the floor. A plate and a glass broke. Margo’s gun-cleaning supplies scattered. She righted her bottle of solvent before much leaked out, but the oily smell filled the room.

She picked up the pieces of the orange plate. Brian grabbed her shoulder and pulled her onto his lap so suddenly that she cut herself on a shard. Blood dripped onto the Annie Oakley book on the table, onto a depiction of a frowning Sitting Bull, who had given Annie the name Little Sure Shot. Margo felt embarrassed for these men to see she was reading a children’s book. It was meant for the nine-year-old she had been when Joanna had given it to her.

“Oh, damn,” he said when he saw the blood on her forearm. He bent his head and closed his mouth around the wound. And as he did, she noticed that the knuckles were bleeding on his scarred right hand. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, Maggie. Your blood tastes sweet like wine.”

“What happened to your hand?” She settled into his lap. There was no rag on the table, so she used her sleeve to dab the blood off the book.

“You know, Pauly tells me he’s still off the drugs. I’m so f*cking proud of my little brother. Brother,” he slurred, “I’m f*cking proud, and I’m not going to deny it.”

“Oh, shut up, Brian,” Paul said.

Margo didn’t realize she was staring at Paul, but he turned sideways to see her through his better eye and said quietly, “Stop always staring at me that way. It drives me crazy. I don’t know what you’re looking for.”

Margo thought he would not have spoken to her so harshly if Brian were sober. When Paul entered the cabin, the other man appeared in the doorway behind him and raised his hand in greeting.

“Maggie, this is Johnny. A half-wit from Kalamazoo,” Paul said. The blond man with gray eyes followed Paul into the room, wavering, as drunk as Brian but lighter-bodied. “He’ll sleep on the couch, and I’ll sleep on the screen porch,” Paul said. “That way I won’t have to listen to any of these a*sholes snore.”

Brian stood and slurred, “I’m going to pass out.” He stumbled into the bedroom and fell onto the bed with his clothes on, including his big insulated canvas jacket. Margo wondered how on earth she would get into the bed and under the covers with him lying there like that.

Johnny winked at Margo as she unrolled her old army sleeping bag for him. “Paul says I’m a fool, but I know what I see.” Johnny laughed and plopped onto the couch.

“Yeah, you’re a fool,” Paul said. “You signed away your birthright for whiskey money.”

“I’m not a farmer,” Johnny said. “I never wanted to be a farmer.”

Paul shook his head and returned to the porch. Johnny did not seem inclined to do anything with the sleeping bag other than pet it with his hand. He looked at Margo and slurred the word “beautiful” a few times, and Margo found she didn’t mind the attention. She realized that Johnny was the blond guy who had been passed out on the Playbuoy, the man who fondled the deer carcass she had sold to Brian in Murrayville. That moment had been funny enough that she laughed a little remembering it. Of course, Johnny had not even seen her that day. And as drunk as he was now, he probably wouldn’t recognize her next time he saw her.

When Johnny fell over sideways, he finally pulled his legs up and shifted into a lying position. Margo leaned over and covered him as Brian had once covered her. When she adjusted the sleeping bag, he grabbed her arm and pulled her down close to him. To avoid having her face so close to his, she turned away and ended up sitting on the edge of the couch, her backside against his chest. He snaked both arms around her waist and then tickled her ribs until she giggled. He whispered, “You need to get out of this place and have a little fun, girl.”

He gradually loosened his grip until his arms were draped lightly around her. Margo had seen female dogs and pigs stand still for males when it was clear they meant to run away. She didn’t mind this weightless feeling of indecision.

“I wish it was summer,” he whispered. The kerosene lamp turned down low made Johnny’s skin look smooth, made his eyes glitter. He smelled good, she thought, less musky and less smoky than Brian. “We could go skinny-dipping.”

Margo didn’t intend for anything to happen with her and Johnny, but she wanted to remain in this strange moment for a while, to figure out what this feeling was. The moment did not seem to have anything to do with Brian. Instead, she was thinking about her mother, wondering if her mother might have left her father just to have a lighthearted moment with another man. Her father had not taken her mother out on a date since they’d been married, Luanne used to complain.

When Margo sensed somebody watching her, she looked up to see Paul in the doorway holding boat cushions.

“What the hell is this?” he said. He shook his head as though confirming something he’d known all along. Margo stood up, let Johnny’s hands drop, and moved to the bedroom. She felt Paul’s gaze on her until she went inside and closed the door.

“Do you want to get yourself killed, a*shole?” Paul said behind her. “Just f*ck with my brother’s precious river princess while he’s in the next room.”

Meanwhile, Brian had gotten himself out of his jacket and under the covers. As Margo climbed in, he made space for her. He laid a heavy arm over her.




A month later when Brian arrived home drunk again, this time alone, he crashed his boat into the dock with enough force that he cracked some boards. He cursed as he entered the cabin. Margo saw the neck of a pint bottle sticking out of his jacket pocket. Usually she’d seen him with half-pint bottles.

“Who’s been here with you? I smell a man.” His voice was blunt.

“No one’s been here.” Margo moved around so she was closer to the door, just in case she had to run outside to get away from him. There was something different in him tonight. She’d seen this in Crane the one time he’d struck her—it was about a month after the trouble with Cal, and Crane had demanded she speak to him. When she remained silent, he slapped her face, only his hand was half curled into a fist. Afterward, he went out and sat in his truck and didn’t come back in until Margo was asleep. In the morning she discovered she had a broken blood vessel in the corner of that eye, a blood mark spreading over the cornea, and a bruise had formed under her eye. Crane had never taken a drink of alcohol again.

“Are you two-timing me, Maggie?” He stepped into the center of the room.

“No.” She studied the door. She would not hesitate to run.

“Are you a two-timing slut?” Brian slurred. He sounded a little tentative, as though he were less certain about his words than usual.

“No,” she said. That word had hit her hard coming out of Cal’s mouth—it had hurt her feelings—but now it made her angry. She said, “Why do guys want to call girls sluts?”

Brian sat at the table, and she sat across from him. He lit a cigarette and studied her. While she sat quietly mending the collar of her jacket, he tapped his fingers. Finally he crushed out the cigarette and said, “Okay, Maggie, I won’t call you that again. I was just worried. You know I love you.”

She reached across the table and touched the scars on his hand. “Why are you getting mean?”

“I worried that maybe you weren’t alone. Something Pauly said. I couldn’t stand for anybody else to slip in and have you.”

“If you’re not here, I’m alone, Brian. I got nobody else. I don’t even have a dog. I need to find my mom, but she doesn’t want me. Why hasn’t she written back telling me to come, even just for a visit?”

“Did you tell her your daddy got shot?”

“No.”

“Maybe you ought to tell her. Maybe she doesn’t know.”

Margo shrugged. She had tried, but couldn’t bring herself to write the words.

“Don’t worry, Maggie. You got me. I’ll always take care of you,” he said. “Maggie, how much would you do for me? Would you kill for me?”

“I killed that rabbit for you. It’s overcooked now.” She had thought of Brian the whole time she’d skinned and cleaned it at the edge of the river, thought of how he’d enjoy eating it. She had started making a blanket of rabbit skins, cured with salt, something to put over their bed. It was the softest thing to touch on the fur side. Everything she did now was tangled up with Brian, for better or for worse.

“Would you kill a man for me?” He held her wrist while he waited for her answer.

“If a man was going to kill you, I’d kill him.”

“I’ve never known a woman who’d kill for me. I’d kill a man for you,” he said loudly, as though showing off for someone who wasn’t there. “I’d kill my own brother if he messed with you, Maggie. If I ever see Cal Murray again, I’ll kill him.”

“Nobody has to kill anybody,” she said. “You’re hurting my wrist.”

“Oh.” Brian pulled away with exaggerated care. “I don’t want to hurt you.” He reached out clumsily to touch her hair at the side of her face, and the motion, performed in drunken slowness, spooked her. “I promised myself when you came to me that I’d never hurt you, that I’d always be gentle. I told God, I said to God in my head, If she’ll stay with me, I’ll treat her good. Please don’t leave me, Maggie. Promise you won’t leave me.”

Margo would have liked to ask him not to drink whiskey, but she knew he wouldn’t listen when he was this drunk. The best thing now would be to get him to bed.

“Where else would I go, Brian? I got nobody else.”

“I never knew I’d be so lucky, to have a girl like you in my life, a beautiful girl who cooks me dinner and makes love with me and doesn’t ask me for anything.” He pulled her around the table to sit on his lap, and he wrapped both arms around her. Margo usually liked the feeling of being contained by and connected to Brian—it was like being attached to a powerful weapon.

When Brian went outside to relieve himself, Margo sat at the table listening to the croaking snore of leopard frogs through the walls. She wondered how much longer she could stay here.

“I’m doing my best, Daddy,” she whispered, in case Crane was aware of what was going on. “Don’t worry about me.” This was the first time she had spoken aloud to him. If there was a heaven or hell, Margo worried about how Crane was getting along in either place without her.




The river never flooded that year. The late spring rains were steady and mild. It wasn’t until June that the first pair of seventy-degree days came up with a wind out of the south. Brian came home from the bar on the second of those warm days with his knuckles cut up again. A man had taken his jacket, he said.

“You let somebody take your jacket, he thinks he owns you. You don’t know what he’ll do after that. Next thing you know, he’ll be screwing your woman.”

Margo looked at him, startled.

“You know about evening the score, girl. I know you understand that. I know you’ll get even with your cousin someday.”

She nodded. She knew better than to want revenge, but she couldn’t let go of her desire for it. She did not tell Brian what else she knew and knew too well: you couldn’t always keep things even, that in trying to keep things even, you could lose everything.