Once Upon a River (18 page)

“Hey, what are you doing with Cleo?” she yelled when she saw Margo and Cleo in the boat. The woman’s hair was the color of caramel.

“She’s not yours!” Margo yelled, but she was starting to realize the woman probably wasn’t there to take the dog at all. Instead, the woman was making herself at home, no doubt planning to step back into the life she had left. Michael must have known she would come back, and that was why he hadn’t gotten rid of her things.

“I’ll call the police, you little freak,” Danielle said mildly and took a long drink from her glass. She crossed her ankles.

Margo’s hair was clean, and she had braided it neatly. Was it her worn jeans that made the woman call her
freak
? Her old Carhartt jacket? Was it her dark, heavy rowboat with its splintery oars? Or her gun visible on the back seat? Or was she a freak, plain and simple, a wolf girl, an aberration? Would her mother see her that way when they finally met again? Was that why Margo had never been able to make new friends in Murrayville?

“You left the dog and went away,” Margo said, too quietly for Danielle to hear.
And you left Michael
, she thought,
and you left the river
. Whatever Margo might be, this woman had been a fool. Margo supposed the woman knew better now, and that was why she was back.

As Margo rowed upstream toward the cabin, Michael’s Jeep appeared and parked next to the silver car. The woman stood and met him halfway to the driveway. When Margo saw the two of them standing side by side, she felt a little sick. They seemed to belong together.

“Cleo! Come back!” shouted Michael. At the call, King moved around Margo to get to the back seat. She jumped out of the boat, causing it to tip. It happened so quickly that Margo could not compensate for the dog’s weight, and a blast of water splashed into the boat.

Michael shouted, “Margaret Louise! Come back!” And then he began to engage in intense conversation with Danielle.

And upstream and coming toward the cabin was the Playbuoy.

Margo’s boat began to turn in the current, and soon her prow was headed downstream. She maneuvered herself toward the edge of the river with one oar so she would be less visible to Paul.

She glided slowly out of sight of the cabin and Michael’s house, past a solitary black fisherman holding a bottle twisted in a brown bag. The green heads of willows wept nearby. Painted turtles and blue racers sunning themselves on fallen trees slid into the water at her approach. A great blue heron fished silently from its perch on a root, one bulging banded eye on her as she passed, wary but not alarmed so long as Margo was moving with the current. She was tempted to take up the oars and row toward the bird, but decided to leave it in peace. She felt the exhaustion of her journey of the last ten months, the whole foolish, failed journey upstream to find her mother. She needed to just sit and let things run through her head as if her life were just a story that she could read or hear about.

A man steered his aluminum motorboat around her. She tossed side to side in his wake, and then she twirled. She had not swum since long before she’d left home, and she had forgotten the freedom she’d once known in letting the river take her where it would. She passed a half dozen sandpipers on a sandbar, and then watched a green heron slinking through poison ivy vines along the water’s edge. She knew she should pull over to the side of the river and take charge of her situation, but then she saw a tree that resembled Paul with his arms upraised. Another tree had her father’s brooding face. Her mother’s willowy, suntanned arms momentarily appeared as reflections of branches, but the water was swift there, providing no place to rest. She did not want to go back to Murrayville, but she could not go back to her cabin. She climbed onto the boat’s back seat beside her rifle and curled there and thought about how nice it was to float, to let the river guide her, and how nice it had been to lie with Michael last night in his big bed.

The next she was aware, she was no longer moving. The air had grown cooler, and she seemed to be tilted to the starboard side on the back seat of the boat. Above her was a rickety dock with one pole missing, but it was not the marijuana house in Murrayville as she had thought for one confused moment. Her prow was stuck in a sandbar beside a burned-out cabin she’d seen on trips downstream with Brian. The sun was sinking, but not more than half an hour had passed since she’d closed her eyes. At first she thought she was hallucinating when she saw a great blue heron standing before her, not four feet away, on the middle seat of the boat. Margo moved not a muscle, tried not to blink. She studied the clear, savage banded eye, the dagger of a beak, and wondered if this animal was going to attack her. Drops of water beaded on the bird’s spiky crest. She remained perfectly still as the heron stepped off the seat onto the wet floor of the boat, coming even closer, as though Margo might be prey. She had watched herons spear fish in tangled underwater roots and feed their chicks in the tops of trees, but she had never dared hope she would be close enough to touch one. Margo followed the bird’s gaze and realized it wasn’t really looking at her; it was stalking something in the shallow water in the bottom of the boat, a gold shimmer, a little fish, perhaps. Suddenly the dagger beak dipped and snatched the bright object. It was a gold-colored .22-caliber long-rifle cartridge. The bird looked into Margo’s eyes and began to take flight. As it spread its wings, its feathers brushed Margo’s knees, and, as if realizing its folly, it dropped the cartridge onto Margo’s hip. Margo held her breath as the bird rose and flew upstream. She studied the cartridge and wondered if it was some kind of message.

She sat up and let herself imagine the flush of wings again, the swoosh of air; she thought about Michael in his bed, the night wind through the window, his warm skin brushing hers. She would follow the heron back upstream. She wasn’t certain how far down she had floated, but if it was three miles, it would take that many hours to return to where she’d started. To lessen the effect of the current, she hugged the edge of the river as closely as she could without scraping bottom with her oars. She faced backward, toward a fiery orange sunset, and as the color faded, her eyes adjusted to the darkness. She rowed steadily past the unlit wooden cottages and shacks, alongside the ancient trees. A whip-poor-will’s haunting cry raised the hair on her arms. A nighthawk made a crazy flutter and followed her for a while. A big hoot owl appeared silhouetted in a tree. Muskrats and other night hunters slid into the water, rose alongside her boat, and then slipped below the surface again as she made her way upstream. When a quarter moon appeared, Margo pulled herself into a snag to rest. Her arm muscles burned, and her hands were roughed up from the oar handles. She felt the night pulling at her boat, luring her into the dark, easy current. She pushed off again.

The river curved and narrowed slightly, and she recognized a familiar irrigation pump and boathouses on the north bank. She held the brightest stars in her sights until they disappeared behind trees.

But once she neared the cabin, she saw the Playbuoy was still there. When she reached Michael’s oil-barrel float, she misjudged the distance from shore and stepped out into thigh-deep water. She tied the boat under the gangplank, between the float and shore, where it would be less noticeable. The noise must have woken Michael or King. A light came on in the bedroom, and King soon jogged out into the yard, over the planks, and onto the float. Margo petted her and held the Marlin out of the water.

She saw the kitchen light go on, and she dragged herself to shore.

Michael opened the kitchen door before she knocked. “Margaret!” he said.

“Can I have some matches?” It was all she could bring herself to say, not knowing if Michael’s dinner invitation was still open. Margo should have checked for Danielle’s car in the driveway before coming to the door.

“Margaret, come in,” Michael said. She saw the clock behind him. It was ten-thirty. “It’s cold out there. Feels like fall.”

“Is Danielle here?” Margo clenched her teeth. King stood beside her.

“Nope. I’m all by myself.”

“I brought King back. She came out to find me.”

Michael looked at Margo. “Do you want to talk about whatever’s going on?”

Margo hunched her shoulders to stop her shivering. “That island with the willows upstream,” she said. “I’ll row you up there if you want. Tomorrow.”

“Come in, and let’s talk about it,” Michael said. He leaned against the doorframe. “Tell me about that man at the cabin.”

“Do you like great blue herons?” Margo asked. She felt drunk, dizzy.

“Who doesn’t like them?” Michael said.

“There’s herons on Willow Island. A campment of herons, living in the trees.” She put one hand against the doorframe.
“Dozens of them. One came so close that it brushed my leg with its wing.”

“I don’t suppose you know the story about Leda and the swan?”

Margo thought of the word. “
Heronry
,” she said. “The herons are in a heronry.”

“I like cranes, too. Not as common in these parts, of course. The females are reclusive. Now it’s time to come inside and dry off.” He tugged at her wrist, but stopped when she resisted. He took her hand. “If you seriously don’t want to come in, I’ll just give you some gas for your boat, okay? And I’ve got a box of matches you can have.”

“Thank you,” she said. “You know, I miss my dad. And my ma. She doesn’t want me to visit her.”

“Come inside, Margaret. We can talk about it.”

“I mean . . . I miss them so much.” She couldn’t imagine Michael or anyone understanding how even losing Brian had been difficult.

Michael nodded. He held both of her hands gently. “Cleo’s going to get cold out there waiting for you. We’ll let her have two names, like you. She can be
King Cleo
. Come in, and I’ll make you an omelet. By tomorrow afternoon you’ll be thanking me for it.”

Before she stepped through the doorway, Margo looked behind her, across the river, toward the dark little cabin. She would row across tomorrow, after Paul was gone, to get her belongings—hopefully her pack would still be under the bed. King followed her inside, where it was warm and safe.

PART

II

• Chapter Eleven •

Margo brought in the mail from the box. It was April, and she had been staying with Michael since late September. The danger of freezing and flooding had passed, and yesterday they had launched the oil-barrel float. Margo had walked the gangplank onto it no fewer than twenty times today, enjoying the way it tipped beneath her weight. The arrival of a letter addressed to
Margaret Louise Crane
made her hopeful it would be from her mother, to whom she had written and sent Michael’s address. She had received a Christmas card from Luanne saying once again that now would not be a good time to visit, but that she would write again soon. It contained a twenty-dollar bill. This envelope, however, was from the Secretary of State and contained the Michigan ID card she’d applied for three weeks earlier. She would use the card to get her hunting and fishing licenses.

When Michael got home that evening, he went into the house as usual. Then he came out the back door and approached Margo, who was skinning a bullhead catfish near the upstream edge of his property. Out of squeamishness and a dislike of mess, he usually avoided watching her prepare the fish and game she caught.

“Your ID says you were born in 1963.” He seemed to choke on his words. “I saw it sitting on the table.”

“So?”

“You just turned seventeen in November, after you moved in with me. Jesus, Margaret.”

The tail of the bullhead curled away from the tree. The fish arched its half-skinned body, kept pushing against the nail that held its head to the tree. On this pleasant afternoon, Margo had forgotten about how her age could matter.

“For Christ’s sake, Margaret, can’t you hit it on the head or something?”

“What?”

“Do you really want to skin something alive?” Michael said. “The damned fish. It’s in pain. Can’t you kill it first?”

“My grandpa taught me—”

“He taught you to skin a creature alive?”

“Told me, I mean . . . fish don’t feel pain.”

“Jesus, Margo, look at that thing writhe—if that’s not pain, I don’t know what is.”