Once Upon a River (31 page)

Though her fire was more or less extinguished, she filled a gallon jug in the river and doused the ashes to show the farmer her presence was not a fire hazard. She tied her oversized bedroll and tarp onto her pack and walked a little upstream. After she entered the cover of trees, she turned to see, through the branches, the figure still silhouetted there, although now he appeared to be looking off over the field.

Margo would return to the campsite this evening. She liked the privacy this place afforded and hoped to stay until she had a boat or another plan. Sometimes the sound of the river moving past her made her feel free in a way that the Stark River had not for a long time. She occasionally heard shots in the distance, but she was down to one cartridge and needed to brave going into town to buy more. Between the fish, game, black walnuts, and garden pilfering, she was doing fine foodwise, and she got her clean water at the hand pump in the barn.

Margo hid her pack away in the branches of a tree in the windbreak and continued upstream with only her rifle, swinging around and through the fence to get into and then out of the cow pasture, landing once again beside the house of the old man in the wheelchair. She had spied on him most days. He often sat alone on the flagstone patio in that wheelchair, staring down at the water through his black glasses. His hair shone bright silver whenever the sun was on him.

The old man was not out today. Margo ventured through the patio, kicking at the pretty orange and yellow maple leaves scattered there. She moved down the steep steps and out onto the boat with the little camper on it. Again, it moved only slightly under her weight. The padlock was hanging loose, and when she turned the handle on the aluminum door of the cabin, it opened, and she was greeted by a mildew smell. Inside she found a narrow upper bunk bed and a bigger lower bunk that could be transformed into a table and seats, a propane stovetop with two burners like the one Brian had, an oven big enough for a cake pan, and the smallest wood-burning stove she had ever seen. She opened the door to the firebox, saw it was maybe twelve inches high by fifteen deep by eight wide. A person would have to cut her own firewood extra-small for this. A six-inch pipe exhausted through the wall behind it.

She heard barking, and when she came out onto the deck, she found the black dog wagging his tail. The old man was sitting on the patio behind the house, dappled sunlight glinting off his wheelchair and his silver hair. He motioned with his hand for her to come to the patio, and she obliged. “What do you want, kid?” he asked.

Margo had some difficulty making out his words through his wheezing, but she remembered what he’d said last time, that if she’d wanted a shower, she should ask for it.

“Can I sleep in your camper for a while?”

The man cleared his throat in a way that sounded painful. His skin was pale and slightly damp, and his hair was sticking to his face.

“You look sicker than you did,” she said. When the dog settled beside the wheelchair, Margo knelt and petted him with both hands.

“There’s good days and bad days. I have emphysema, but the doctors tell me it’s the tumors that’re going to kill me.” He cleared his throat again. “Unless you’re going to save everybody a lot of trouble and shoot me.”

“Do you want me to shoot another cigarette out of your mouth?”

“Yeah, stand right in front of me this time.” He tapped his forehead as if directing a bullet there. “I was too exhausted to come outside, but then I saw you, and I told myself, I’d better kick that kid’s ass.”

“I’m not a kid.”

“Everybody’s a kid compared to me.” He stifled a cough. “Even people my age seem like kids.”

“What can I give you for your boat? I got some money.”

“You’ve got no goddamned money. You’ve got a rifle and a soup pot. And a big kitchen knife that belongs to me, if I figure it right.”

“I’ll give you the knife back. I was just borrowing it. I can’t give you my rifle.”

“I’ve already got two rifles and a shotgun that I can’t aim anymore. And you can keep the damn knife. It’s not my best one.” He held out his pale, shaking hand as a sort of exhibit. “I made my living setting type, and now I can’t tighten a screw or chop stew meat.”

“Can I look inside the houseboat some more?”

“You’ve seen enough. I don’t need a kid sleeping on my boat. Don’t need the neighbors seeing anything.”

“I could help you out in exchange, maybe,” Margo suggested. “I could sweep this patio. I can cook and chop up stew meat for you.”

“My friend Fishbone said he saw you with a Mexican man over on the farm two weeks ago, the night you came here.”

“He’s an Indian. Anyway, he’s gone.” Margo was surprised she’d been spied on.

“Did the son of a bitch break your heart?”

“I’m relieved he’s gone. I don’t need a man.”

“Well, what do you think I am?”

“Sir, your boat is the only way I can live on the river.” As Margo spoke to the old man, she felt strangely aware of something being in her belly, and she worried that he might be aware of it, too.

“Go away,” he said. A coughing fit overtook him, and when he finally straightened up, there was blood on the corners of his mouth. He motioned to her to leave.

“Can I stay here and pet your dog?”

He shook his head. “Come back in the morning.”

Margo spent the night in her sleeping bag by her campfire, with the Indian’s pad and sleeping bag under her for comfort, the tarp over her to protect against the heavy dew. She dreamed she was lying with the Indian, and several times she awoke with a start, feeling as though her body were being pitched from rough waters onto land.

In the morning she made her way upstream, and as she reached the white house, she heard sounds that could have been crows. The sounds became voices, and she noticed two cars in the driveway where she’d seen none on her earlier visits. A little farther down the road was parked a two-toned Chevy pickup truck she had seen a few times. She crept closer. The old man was on the patio with two women. Both were about Margo’s height. One had long, dark hair, straighter than Margo’s; the other had shorter, lighter hair and looked younger, but otherwise they resembled each other.

“You’re supposed to use your oxygen all the time, but whenever we come over, you don’t have it hooked up,” the dark-haired woman said.

“I use it when I need it, Shelly. Don’t bother about it.”

“It’s getting cold, and the doctor said the cold can cause your lungs to seize. Let us help you back into the house.”

The old man wore nothing over his work shirt. Margo wished one of them would get a jacket from the house. Or maybe they hoped his being cold would make him go inside.

“What do you know about anything? You or your sister?”

“Well, I know we love you, Uncle Smoke, and we promised Mom we’d take care of you,” said the blonde niece. She knelt beside the chair to look him in the face, and he turned away from her. She said, “But you can’t stay here. You don’t weigh half what you used to.”

“I don’t try to run your goddamned lives.” His dark glasses made it hard to tell what direction he was actually looking, but Margo thought his attention was on something by the garage.

“It’s all about smoking, isn’t it?” said Shelly. “That’s why you don’t want to go, because they won’t let you smoke. You think you can’t give up smoking, but you can if you want to. They have ways to help you quit.”

“The Nazis had ways, too. I want to be right where I am.”

The blonde niece said, “If there was one thing in this world I could get rid of, it would be cigarettes. They hurt so many people.”

The man put his hands on his wheelchair wheels and moved them a few inches. The blonde stood up. The dog sat smiling on the patio beside the man, seeming to enjoy the company of the women.

“Will you drink a breakfast shake at least, so we know you’re getting some vitamins and protein?” Shelly said.

“Have you tasted that shit? And have you tasted any of that other so-called food they gave your mother in the All Saints home? Turkey bacon, margarine, sugar-free cookies, Sanka? And I won’t have a tube put in me.” He was becoming breathless. “I signed a paper with my doctor saying so. He sent a form to both hospitals.”

“I drink the Carnation breakfast, Uncle Smoke. I like it,” Shelly said.

“Well, you can have the damn stuff.”

“Can’t you let us talk to your doctor?” she asked. “Just tell us his name.”

“No.”

“You make me want to cry. I worry about you all the time,” said the blonde niece.

Tears were indeed running down her face, Margo noted.

“You’re acting plain crazy, Uncle Smoke.”

“Is that what you two wrote to the judge?” the old man asked.

“Why do you have to be so mean?”

“Mean? You want to lock me up at the All Saints home, and I’m mean?”

“It’s
Alsand’s Comfort Care
, not
All Saints
.” The younger woman sounded defeated. “Why do you keep saying
All Saints
? And Mom said they treated her good there. And if you would come live with me, then we would take care of you, and you wouldn’t have to go there.”

“In your apartment with your boyfriend and three cats? I’ve got my own house right here.”

“The township said they sent you a letter about that garage,” said Shelly, nodding toward the sagging building. “They’re going to take it down. You should tell that friend of yours to take out anything he wants to keep. Township says it’s going to collapse, and there’s probably rats in there.”

The old man held back a cough with what looked to Margo like a great effort. She saw the deer hide was still stretched on a pallet beside the garage, not visible from where the women were standing.

“And I know it’s him buying you cigarettes,” Shelly said.

The blonde said, “You would live longer if you got the right treatment. Don’t you want to live?”

The dog’s ears perked up. Margo heard rustling from near the fence beside the garage. She moved the barrel of her rifle toward the sound as if tracking a squirrel, all the way to a burning bush that was beginning to turn red. Behind the foliage, she made out a dark-skinned arm, leading to a short-sleeved blue shirt, and then a face half obscured by a fedora. Bluish smoke rose from under the hat’s brim. He was watching, same as she was, only more conspicuously if you considered he was smoking a little cigar. When she met his eyes, she registered an angry look and quickly dropped her muzzle.

“Well, I’ve got to go to work. Goodbye,” Shelly said and shuffled off the patio. The blonde kissed the old man’s head and followed her sister around the side of the house. The man in the fedora stood and moved to the patio, and Margo hesitantly did the same.

“Don’t you ever point a gun at a person, young lady!” the man said and shook his head in disapproval.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t even know you were there. I thought it was a squirrel making that sound in the bushes.”

The man was thin and wore a button-up shirt with a short collar, creased jeans, and polished black leather shoes. He could have been in his early sixties, but his figure was that of a younger man.

“Smoky, do you know anything about this girl here who’s sneaking around trying to kill a man?” he said calmly. “Is this another niece you haven’t told me about?”

“That’s nothing new to you, is it? A woman trying to kill you? Your wife’s been trying to kill you for—” The old man couldn’t finish his sentence before his words degenerated into a coughing fit. Both Margo and the man in the fedora moved a few steps closer and stood waiting for the coughing to subside.

Margo thought it was an interesting situation here, that two different people had been hiding behind this old man’s house.

“It’s been a while since a woman wanted to kill me,” the man said to Margo. His voice was reassuring. “Since my wife got her blood pressure, she tries to stay calm.”

“Fishbone, you got to—” The old man had momentarily seemed to recover, but now he coughed some more and pulled a bottle of medicine out of a pocket in his wheelchair. After he fumbled with it awhile, Fishbone took it, pushed down and unscrewed the cap, and handed it back. Smoke drank from the bottle.

“That dog sees me five days of the week. Why’s he going to growl at me?” Fishbone asked after Smoke recapped the bottle.