Once Upon a River (40 page)

“His
Pride & Joy
. He worked on it for years. Told me and my little brother that if a man was going to live on the water, he ought to have a boat that suited him.”

Margo glanced back at the cabin. Her rifle stood on its butt in the corner by the stove.

“Leon said I ought to give you my crop-damage permits this year. I’m cautious about who I let shoot on my property.”

Margo had a delayed realization of who
Leon
was. She looked at the man’s hand again.

“I’ve given Leon the permits for years on Smoke’s advice, but he only took two deer last year. Both of them say you’re a regular sharpshooter.” The farmer nodded as though agreeing with Fishbone or agreeing with the universe. “You’re younger than I expected you’d be.”

She nodded along with him. She knew she should speak up, say something. The farmer’s eyes were gray like Johnny’s, but he did not have what his brother had, that raucous shine in his face, that dangerous scent.

“You must be about nineteen? Smoke says you’re trapping. You got your license?”

She nodded.

“The crop-damage permit is for June through October to keep the deer out of my corn and beans. The deer eat thirty percent of my crop if I don’t have somebody out here. And I’d like to have a few of the hides tanned. I can pay you for them if you’ll skin them and bring them to me.”

She nodded again. She did want to stay here, at least for now, and she wanted the permits. It felt good to know what she wanted.

“And I’d ask you to tell me if you find a weasel or a mink or an otter down here. As much as the river has gotten cleaned up these last years, I’d put money on it that weasels are coming back. I might have to take more care with my chickens.”

Margo knew there was a bit of money to be made from these. She would talk to Fishbone about how to trap ermine and mink.

“Can you speak at all?” he asked and tilted his head.

“I’m not going to sleep with you,” she said. She felt her throat go unsteady, but her voice stayed strong. “And not your brother Johnny, either.” She had not meant that to be the first thing she said to the farmer, but she had to make clear she would not take in every man who showed up.

“So you’ve met Johnny, then. I was going to warn you about him.” He smiled, and when he showed his teeth, he looked a bit more like his brother. He said, “I wondered if you were okay out here. I don’t want to find a frozen woman when I come out in the spring.”

“I won’t freeze.” She crossed her arms over her belly. There was no reason he would suspect her of being with child, no reason to think Fishbone or Smoke would have told him, though she was surprised he referred to her as a woman rather than a girl.

“What’re you doing for heat in there?”

“Wood. Smoke had Fishbone check the stove for leaks. And there’s a propane backup.”

He nodded. “You can take any dead wood around here, but I’d ask you, don’t cut any live trees out of my windbreaks.”

She’d already taken some dead wood.

“Go ahead and take any of that stuff behind the hay barn if you can split it. I let landscapers drop off extra wood there, but it’s mostly stumps with roots. You can borrow my wheelbarrow from the barn, but be sure to put it back where it is now, on the lower level.” He paused. “You really want to live out here on my land?”

“On the river. I might move somewhere else when I get a bigger outboard.”

“I’ll mention it to the neighbors, tell them not to be surprised if they see you. A few years ago, I took pity on a fellow, let him spend the winter in my chicken shed. My wife was furious. He rigged up an old kerosene heater, burned the shed down.”

Margo nodded. “I won’t burn anything down.”

“My wife may not be crazy about this situation when she figures it out, but Smoke says you’re a grown person. He thinks you know what you’re doing. Leon says you’re some kind of throwback. He admires you.”

Margo didn’t know what
throwback
meant apart from fish too small to bother eating. She thought about all the things the farmer and his wife must have in their kitchen, all the pans and ingredients, the utensils, the rolling pins for piecrusts, stoves with coils that glowed beneath pots, windows that let in the sunlight, big overhead light fixtures for when there wasn’t enough natural light. Those were the things Margo had given up for now, for her life on the river. She was sure the farmer’s wife, like Joanna, had all kinds of cotton cloths for cleaning up messes in the kitchen and a washing machine to wash them in, chairs that scraped against wood floors when they were pushed out from tables, a chest freezer that could hold a whole deer. Maybe Margo was giving up too much to live out here on a boat, giving up too much for the freedom to travel away from here if she had any trouble. But for now she knew she would be giving up more if she tried to live any other way.

“I don’t want to live in anybody else’s house,” she said. She had four cooking pans that she loved, one from the Indian and three from Smoke, and they were sufficient for any meal she’d wanted to make so far. She had two propane burners plus the top of the woodstove. She loved the small, white-painted kitchen drawers with elegant handles into which her few utensils fit. Her dining table folded up against the wall, and the seats folded down to become her bed. The curtains over the window were a pattern of leaping fish in different colors. She’d washed the curtains and hung them back up. She couldn’t imagine the fuel bills for a big house like the farmer’s, all that waste heating room after room, indoor space that a person like Margo, who had the whole river for her home, didn’t need.

“That’s good,” the farmer said. “I don’t think my wife would like some unknown young woman living in her house. But you’re right in thinking that if it got too cold, I’d feel I ought to invite you anyhow.”

“Thank you for the permits, sir, but please keep off my boat,” she said. “No men are welcome here.”

• Chapter Twenty-Two •

“Less than two weeks,” Smoke told Margo one morning in early February. His voice had become rougher, and sometimes Margo had to lean close to make out his words. His speech was often fractured by long wheezing breaths. A family court decision was pending, and Smoke was certain he would not be allowed to stay in his house. Margo was fearful about other things, that Smoke would fall down or that he would cough so hard he would simply stop breathing. She reached out and brushed a toast crumb from his whiskered cheek.

Fishbone, who rarely stayed more than a few minutes at a visit now, before or after taking out his boat, insisted the nieces were taking Smoke’s case before the judge because they cared about him and they couldn’t stand to see him killing himself. “They’re harsh ladies,” he said, “but they’re your family, and they love you.”

“Save me from their fucking love,” Smoke whispered to Margo as soon as he could do so without Fishbone hearing. But Margo understood how his nieces might think he was not taking care of himself. She felt lousy about Smoke’s deterioration, found that she could not stop worrying about him, whether she was with him or away from him. She felt helpless in the face of his pain and difficulty. She thought Nightmare, too, seemed haunted; for hours the dog would stare at his master, sometimes going most of the day without eating.

“I can stay with you, Smoke,” Margo said, as she poured him more coffee from the percolator, “and your nieces will see I’m taking care of you.”

She sat beside him at the kitchen table, so they were both looking out at the river. A thaw had melted the ice and compacted the snow. Margo had shoveled the patio a few days ago, and it was still clear.

“You can’t go back on a deal,” Smoke whispered.

“I won’t do it,” Margo said, more loudly than she wanted to. Smoke’s hearing seemed to be failing even as his voice grew more quiet.

“It hurts to breathe, kid.” The dog became agitated and stood up and went to the door. “I can’t even have real coffee in that place. They only got Sanka.”

“Maybe if they make you move, you could stay with one of your nieces.”

He shook his head. Margo, too, hated the thought. She let Nightmare out and sat back down. She spread on her toast some strawberry jam Smoke’s sister had made. He said his sister had had brain cancer and had died in the nursing home within a few months of arriving. Smoke said his sister “went off to that shithole like it was some goddamned party.” She had liked the nurses fussing over her, he said, treating her “like a damned baby.”

“My neck aches,” Smoke said. “From holding up my damned head.”

“It’s better to be alive, Smoke.” Margo bit into the toast and chewed, though her appetite was slipping away. “We have to think about the consequences.”

“What about the consequences to living?” Smoke reached in his shirt pocket and pulled something out, pushed it into Margo’s hand.

“What’s this?” she unfolded five twenty-dollar bills.

“For the boat. It’s what you gave me. And take my shotgun. It’s yours. Fishbone’s right. I need it like a hole in the head.”

“You already gave me too much, Smoke,” Margo said. She didn’t know how to explain to him how having killed someone made it more important that she never do it again.

“What the hell am I going to do with a shotgun?” he said. “You’ll keep it clean, won’t you?”

Margo arranged a piece of toast with jam, some scrambled egg, and a bite of sausage on her fork.

“I deserve to die, damn it,” he said. “You need to respect that.”

“But I haven’t figured out how to live yet.”

“You’ve figured it out as well as I ever did.”

“If you go, I’ve got no friends.” Margo heard Nightmare scratch on the outside door, and she got up and let him in, along with a blast of cold air. The weather was supposed to warm throughout the day because a storm was coming tonight. Nightmare lay down on a piece of rug between Margo and Smoke.

“Then you’d better start making friends,” he said. “Nothing wrong with being a hermit, so long as you have friends when you need them.”

“I just want you.”

“I don’t know if I would’ve made it without you these last few months, kid. Your company has almost made life worth living.”

Now that Smoke was getting sicker, it was harder for Margo to go home and leave him all alone. When she had come this morning at ten o’clock, Smoke had still been lying in bed. Margo had lifted him and helped him into his clothes and shoes.

“Fishbone will help,” Smoke said. “After I’m gone, he’s taking Nightmare. For protection for his wife.”

“Fishbone calls me
you people
. He thinks I should go live with my ma. He’s always talking about me having the dang baby.” Margo’s heart sank at the thought of Fishbone taking the dog away.

“Don’t give up on your ma,” Smoke whispered. “She might come around. And it doesn’t look to me like you’re putting any distance between yourself and that baby.”

Margo nodded. She went home that afternoon, checked her traps, and found them empty. She couldn’t think about the baby, who was safe inside her for now, but only about Smoke, who seemed so weak. He also sounded more serious, spookier than ever before. If tonight’s storm dropped a lot of snow, Margo was afraid she wouldn’t be able to get through the field to his house in the morning to help him. She also wanted to tell Smoke that she was not giving up on her ma, not really, not the way he thought. After dark, when the winds started picking up, Margo let her wood stove burn all the way down, and she laid another fire with newspaper and sticks, got it all ready, but didn’t light it.

Margo locked up the
Glutton
and tramped back through the snow-covered cow pasture. The river sounded strange, as though glass were breaking all along its edges. Smoke’s patio door was not locked, so she went in. She took off her boots and parka and walked quietly to Smoke’s bedroom. Though the rest of the house was cluttered, his bedroom was sparely decorated and almost empty. She climbed into the double bed in her long underwear and lay beside Smoke. The housekeeping aide had changed the sheets the day before, and they felt clean. Margo had been putting off washing her own sheets, since she would either have to carry them down to Smoke’s or wash them in her canning kettle and freeze-dry them outside.

“I don’t want to lose you,” she said in a loud whisper. “I don’t want you to leave me.”

“I’m not your ma.”

“I know.”

“I’m a tired old man.” At first Smoke was rigid beside her, and then Margo felt him relax, as her grandpa had warmed and relaxed beside her on the sun porch. At the end, her grandpa had been weak and thin like Smoke, though he’d had lumps like tree knots on his armpits and neck and groin. Smoke’s lumps were inside his lungs. Margo moved her hands across his shoulder blades. He shivered and then sighed. She lightly caressed his shoulders, his ribs, the small of his back. Through his long underwear shirt, she felt the heat of his pressure sores.

She and Smoke lay that way for a few hours, neither of them quite falling asleep because of the strangeness and sweetness of being beside another person, until Smoke began to cough. He sat up on the edge of the bed and coughed for more than forty-five minutes according to the clock by the bed. The minute hand on the lighted clock face had moved slowly, but Margo didn’t dare shift or speak or touch Smoke, for fear of making it worse. She knew she could put her arm around Smoke’s neck and close his throat, stop his choking by stopping his breathing. Margo could bring Smoke peace, and if she pressed her thumbs over his windpipe, he would not struggle. She could end his pain right now, but she did not want to be his angel of death. Nightmare lay silent but awake on the floor. The dog’s brown eyes glistened in the dark as he watched his master.