Once Upon a River (15 page)

As Paul and Charlie powered upstream, Margo traced their progress with the barrel of her unloaded rifle, sized Paul up as a target, and dry-fired at him. Before pulling away, Paul had given her food from his cooler—a hunk of cheese with a hardened edge, summer sausage, and a couple sleeves of saltines—and though she thought of knocking it all off the table where he’d placed it, she was too hungry to waste it. When Paul had tried to kiss her mouth before boarding the Playbuoy, she moved away and spit on the ground. He laughed as though she’d been making a joke. Later Margo discovered two twenty-dollar bills on her pillow.

She went back outside, took off her jeans, squatted beside the pump, and scrubbed between her legs with the cold water until she felt raw.

She slung her empty rifle over her shoulder to feel its weight, and the rope dug into her shoulder. It had been hurting her for a while. She found two leather belts on a wall hook in the bedroom and cut both buckles off. She punched holes in them with a hammer and a Phillips screwdriver, sewed them together with fish line, and threaded the leather through the sling swivels. She practiced to get the length right, flipping the rifle from her left side quickly up to aim and press the trigger with her right index finger. When she finished, she thought her homemade hasty sling felt as fine and solid as the one on her daddy’s old Remington, the rifle with which she’d performed that miracle of winning the 4-H competition.

Margo made herself a supper of cheese, crackers, summer sausage, and wild blackberries and was grateful not to be eating fish.

Though she knew revenge was as likely to hurt as it was to heal, she hoped she would make Paul regret what he had done.

Hours later, after the Jeep returned to the house across the river, the fishing dog appeared in its usual place on the water’s edge. To lighten the boat, Margo lifted off Brian’s outboard and placed it carefully on blocks so as not to bend the propeller, and then she rowed across. She had never touched the fishing dog or even seen it up close, but when she called, the dog walked out onto the oil-barrel float and stepped down into her boat without hesitation. Margo petted the yellow head. “I’ll call you King,” she whispered, thinking of the big-headed kingfisher bird who had always fished just upstream from her house in Murrayville.

Then she noticed that this was absolutely a female fishing dog, a female kingfisher, a female king.

She didn’t consider it stealing when she rowed the dog back to her side of the river and let her out to sniff the water’s edge. She always used to row the Murrays’ dog Moe across the river to her side for a visit. If this dog wanted to stay and chase raccoons up trees, that was her choice. Margo followed the dog on foot along the river and into the woods. With a companion like a fishing dog, Margo wouldn’t mind staying here alone. She could train the dog to bark when an intruder came. But it wasn’t long before Margo heard a man’s voice shouting, “Cleo! Where are you? Come, Cleo!” The dog jumped off the riverbank, plunged into the water, and swam downstream and to the other side. She shook herself and ran up the lawn to greet the man.

Margo looked around where the dog had been sniffing, and she found some ragged shelf fungus, yellow as an egg yolk, growing on the base of a tree: a chicken-of-the-woods mushroom. Clearly this dog was good luck. She snapped off a hunk of mushroom and brushed away a few ants. She would cook it for dinner tomorrow with her last two chicken bouillon cubes.

A week of heavy rain made Margo a prisoner in the cabin. When Brian was there she hadn’t minded being without a phone or a radio, but now she longed to hear a voice. The rain banged on the tin roof, reminding her of the sound of rain on the roof of the big Murray barn. The water rose until it was level with the dock. Most kids her age would have been getting ready to go back to school in a few weeks; Margo hadn’t looked forward to school in past years, but at least school would have put her with other people. She wished Brian had more books at the cabin, something besides the guidebooks for tying knots and identifying animal tracks, both of which she’d read and reread.

The first day the rains let up, Margo crossed the river. She called the dog out to the float, and the dog jumped in her boat. But before Margo could push off, the man appeared from behind the shed and stepped knee-deep into the water in his swim trunks and tennis shoes. He grabbed the back end of her boat. He was thin and at least a few inches taller than Margo. “Evening,” he said calmly. “Where are you taking my dog?”

“A-cr-cr-cross the river. I live over there.” She glanced behind her at the dog sitting on the prow seat. The dog’s mouth was open in what looked like a smile. She barked happily.

“I know where you live, but why are you taking my dog?” His biceps strained against his bones. Tendons stood out on one side of his neck, and he was losing his balance as Margo continued rowing in place. “You’re just plain not going to answer me.”

Mosquitoes landed on Margo’s legs and arms, and they bothered the man, too. When he let go of her boat with one hand to swat at them, Margo broke free. The man folded his arms and stood in the water watching her, looking more perplexed than angry as she rowed away.

“Cleo, you and I probably need to have a talk,” the man said in a loud but conversational voice. To Margo’s relief, he did not call the dog right away. His figure grew smaller as she rowed upstream and approached the cabin. She parked at the dock, and King jumped over the side of the boat and swam to shallower water to sniff along the muskrat holes and twisted roots. The man across the river disappeared and returned with binoculars. A while later he called, “Cleo!” and the dog dove into the water and headed home.

A few days later, Margo motored to the gas station at Heart of Pines to buy food, ammo, toilet paper, and bottled gas with the money Paul had left. She had not dared bring her rifle. She couldn’t carry it into the store for fear someone might recognize it as Cal’s, but she didn’t want to leave it in the boat and risk it being stolen. She tied her boat a ways from the other boats and draped her tarp over it. Inside the store, she added up prices, calculated tax in her head, and managed to put together a purchase totaling $33.82. She had planned to buy gasoline, but there was a line at the single pump and she didn’t want to wait around with the dozen men who were hanging out there. She figured she would get gas next time.

Halfway back, just above Willow Island, she cut the engine and floated downstream with the current to save gas, rowing only to fix her direction, keeping an eye out for dogs, birds, and kids—any sign of life—along the water’s edge. The miles of dark, empty river belonged to her. She drifted near the riverbank and imagined some people inviting her to a meal or just to sit and listen to stories. Instead, as she rounded the last bend above her cabin, she saw Brian’s boat parked at the dock. A bright, cold light shone from inside the cabin—Paul’s fluorescent lantern. She steered herself toward the opposite bank and hoped Paul would not be watching the river as she floated past. She pulled over at a snag just below the yellow house and watched the cabin until she saw Paul and Johnny go outside. A few minutes later, they returned to the cabin, carrying a jug of something. She wished she had taken her chances with her rifle and hadn’t left it under the bed with her backpack. The night grew darker, and she waited for the men to leave, but they did not. A half-moon appeared and disappeared behind the trees. The night grew cool. When their light went out, she unfolded her canvas tarp and curled atop it on the boat’s back seat. She pulled the rest of the tarp over her like a blanket and used her orange life vest as a pillow.

Margo awoke shivering to the sound of barking. The light of the rising sun was diffuse behind a haze of clouds. She was no longer in the boat, but was wrapped in her tarp in the sand. And then King was beside her, licking her face. Margo studied the beautiful eyes and perfect dark nose. She pushed her fingers into the dog’s fur, but when she saw a man standing over her, she stood up, stepped into her boat, and fumbled with her oars. “I’m sorry,” Margo said.

“Sorry for what?”

“For taking your dog.”

He shrugged. “Dogs are loyal. You feed them, and they come back to you.” He nodded upstream toward her cabin. “If you’re hiding from this guy, you can come to my house. Once the sun rises, he might see you if you stay out here.”

With the sun rising behind him, the man’s face was in shadow, but he seemed harmless. He hadn’t bothered her about his dog, even. Unsure what else to do, but sure she did not want to be seen by Paul, she decided to trust him. She checked the rope and knot she’d tied around a fallen maple, a clove hitch, according to Brian’s book. She had also learned the name of the knot on the ring at her boat’s prow: round turn and two half hitches. The spray of leaves along the branch would camouflage the boat so long as no one was looking right at it. So long as Paul hadn’t replaced his glasses, there was nothing to worry about. She carried her oars and the bag from the store and followed the man along the river path. The dew that coated the weeds and grass soaked the bottom of her pant legs. Where the poison ivy had climbed to the tops of trees for sunlight, she saw those triple leaves had already turned blood-red. Autumn was coming.

Margo put down her oars, food, and ammunition before they entered the yellow house by the side door. She found herself in a kitchen with white walls, yellow countertops flecked with black and white, and a glossy wooden floor. But the baseboards were missing, revealing an uneven gap at the bottom of the wall around the room. Though the kitchen counters were clean and orderly and the floor was swept, the table was comfortably messy with newspapers and books. “Bathroom’s through there if you need it. Do you drink coffee?” the man asked.

She nodded and ventured through the kitchen, into what should have been a living room but contained a big bed with an unwrinkled bedspread. She walked around it and looked through the sliding glass door. Upstream, parked at the dilapidated green cabin on stilts, was the Playbuoy. She unlocked the glass door and tugged it open a few inches, to assure herself she could leave that way if she needed to.

The top drawer of a dresser at the foot of the bed was open a few inches, exposing a cache of white bras and underwear. She traced her finger along the scalloped lace edge of a bra. These were the kinds of fancy underthings her mother used to like to wear, and now probably wore all the time in Lake Lynne. Luanne had complained about how the iron in the water stained her white clothes, just as she had complained about the green mold that crept over her leather shoes in the closet.

When the man appeared in the doorway, Margo hurriedly shut the drawer.

“Oh, don’t worry. She’s long gone. I guess she left those for my next girlfriend.”

“I’m sorry.”