Once Upon a River

by Bonnie Jo Campbell

  “You sure can eat,” Paul said, “for a little gal.”

  “She’s a good eater, all right,” Brian said.

  She stopped chewing the bread.

  “Don’t stop,” Brian said. “It’s good you have an appetite. You don’t live if you don’t eat. Some people give up and waste away in hard times.”

  With the last bite of bread, she scraped a last bit of fish off the comb of its bones.

  “Pauly, can you believe this vision of loveliness has come to us for help?”

  “I got to say, Brian, I’m not feeling good about that. How old

  do you think she is?” Paul spoke as though she weren’t sitting right there.

  “Eighteen,” Margo said quietly.

  “Are you coming to stay, then?” Brian asked and winked at her. “To cook me pancakes every morning and tell me I’m a handsome man? Because I’ve been looking for a girl like that.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Paul said. “How much have you had to drink? If she’s eighteen, she’s half your age. And I’m not so sure she’s eighteen. You got to watch out for my brother, Maggie. He finds trouble for himself.”

  “Can we get you more food?” Brian asked. He took a slug of ginger brandy out of a pint bottle that was almost empty and held it toward her.

  She shook her head no to the bottle and was less certain about saying no to more food.

  “Poor lost lamb.” Brian screwed the cap back on the bottle.

  “You should be with your mama right now,” Paul said, shaking his head, “not out here.”

  “You said you know where she is,” Margo whispered. She fumbled in her pocket, opened her wallet, and got out the envelope with the address on the corner.

  “More than a year ago she was around,” Brian said after studying the envelope. “I saw her a dozen times in Heart of Pines with a man named Carpinski. That could be his address. I never said so to your papa, but she was a real looker. She left here after a few months, I think. Somebody said she went to Florida. You’ve got to stop crying, honey.”

  “Of course she’s crying,” Paul said. “She’s a little girl.”

  Margo wiped at her eyes with the paper towel she’d been using as a napkin.

  “We’ll find your ma for you. I’ll go talk to Carpinski. He’s an okay guy, lives in a little A-frame on Dog Leg Lake. You can stay here until we find her.”

  “Brian, are you crazy? You’re going to get yourself arrested.”

  “Eventually I’ll get arrested for one thing or another, and if I get it for helping a girl, well, that’s better than some other reason.”

  Brian smelled like cigarette smoke and ginger brandy and the river, and his stoking the fire intensified the cabin’s food smells. It warmed the room so much that Paul took off his sheepskin-lined vest.

  “Cal Murray is a son of a bitch,” Brian said again, shaking his head, “and his bad nature got bred right into the next generation in that boy Billy. Is he going to jail for what he did?”

  “He’ll pay,” Margo said quietly.

  “Did you hear that, Pauly? This girl’s going to get revenge. That’s how you make it through this, Maggie. Your daddy was a good man, and Cal Murray and his kid, neither one was fit to lick his boots.”

  Margo let herself focus on Paul’s mismatched eyes one more time. When she sensed annoyance, she looked away and took comfort in Brian’s shoulder like a sturdy wall beside her.

  “You telling us nobody’s looking for you right now?” Paul said.

  She shook her head, though she couldn’t be sure.

  “How old are you, really?” Paul said.

  “Eighteen.”

  “Contrary to my brother’s ideas, I haven’t fooled around with an underage girl since I was fifteen,” Brian said.

  “Shit,” Paul said and shook his head.

  “Pauly, what’s got into you? We were raised to take care of lost souls. Are you saying we can’t help her because she’s too pretty?”

  “I’m just saying you ought to be careful in your situation.” Paul turned to look at Margo. “And she ought to be careful of you.”

  “As long as you aren’t storing drugs here again, you’ve got nothing to worry about what I do, Pauly.” Brian put an arm around Margo and pulled her close for a moment.

  “I’m telling you, Brian. She needs her ma or somebody like that,” Paul said.

  “Don’t worry, Maggie, we’ll find your ma, wherever she went. It’s rare for people to just disappear,” Brian said.

  “Try as they might.” Paul shook his head.

  Margo shivered. Her blood was racing to her full belly. She flexed her fingers and wiggled her toes in her boots.

  “Goddamn it, Brian. You’re looking for trouble. They’ll report her missing.”

  “I’m not looking for trouble,” Brian said. He let loose of her to lay down his cards. “But trouble does find me somehow or other, little brother, doesn’t it?”

  “You make your own trouble,” Paul said. “Ask any of them guys you picked a fight with lately. If they’re still breathing.”

  Brian drew hard on his cigarette. Margo felt the air in the room change, fill with tension, until Brian shook his head. He laughed out a puff of smoke. “Listen, Paul, I’m not kicking this little girl out into the cold, so get used to her sitting here at this table for as long as she wants to stay.”

  “Well, some of us have to work tomorrow,” Paul said. Before he left to go home, he brought in Margo’s backpack from The River Rose. Brian made up the couch with a slightly musty sheet and a heavy quilt he brought from the bedroom. As she got under the covers, he fed the fire again and put more wood on top of the stove to dry, and then he knelt on the floor beside her. He tucked the quilt around her to protect against drafts. When she finally closed her eyes from exhaustion, he kissed her mouth. She was too tired to be startled, and she let him kiss her.

  “Don’t worry about anything, Maggie,” he said after he pulled away.

  She knew that until she found her mother, she had nowhere else to go, and she wondered if she could make herself welcome here. She reached up and took hold of his beard, which was soft, and gently tugged him to her. Though only her and Brian’s mouths touched, she felt as though he were kissing her with his whole body, and it both frightened her and made her skin come alive. When his tongue slipped into her mouth, the hair on her arms and legs stood on end. He was still kissing her when she felt she was awakening from a long sleep, though surely only a minute or so had passed. The steady kissing quieted her sadness. She thought she could live and breathe inside this dampening kiss. When he finally pulled away, her lips felt swollen.

  “Oh, Maggie,” he said, shaking his head. “You’d better get some sleep.” He pushed her hair back from her face, kissed her forehead, and went into the bedroom. She was grateful he left the door open. It made her feel less alone.

  When Margo awoke, it was still dark outside. The room was lit by the kerosene lamp turned down low. She listened for an owl, but heard nothing. She realized all over again what it meant that her mother had left Heart of Pines. Of course her mother would want to go to Florida, a place where she could be warm year-round. Winters had been hard on Luanne.

  Margo had shot Cal, and so Billy had killed Crane. By this middle-of-the-night reckoning, Margo had as good as shot her own father in the chest. She sat up on the couch. She did not want to be in her own skin right now, and she did not want to be alone. Though it must have been hours ago that she had kissed Brian, she was still feeling the force of his mouth. His scent permeated the quilt and the air around her. She could still taste the smoke and ginger-candy flavor of the liquor he had been drinking. She could still feel his beard on her neck.

  She tucked the quilt around herself, but the wind coming through the windows was too much for the woodstove when it was damped down for the night. She would help Brian put plastic on the windows if he would let her stay here for a while. She would feed his fire and keep it going when he was away. She
stood up from the couch, fed a log into the stove, and put another on top. She turned up the wick on the lantern. She draped the quilt over her shoulders and moved to the doorway of the cabin’s bedroom. She did not know if Brian would force a girl, but he couldn’t force her if she went to him on her own. She stood beside the bed until she saw Brian’s eyes glittering in the lamplight.

  Brian pulled back the covers—a sleeping bag and a sheet—to open up a place in his double bed, and she moved across the floor of the little room. She let her jeans fall from her hips, and climbed into his bed in her underwear and T-shirt. She pulled the quilt over them both.

  “Sweet Mother of Jesus,” Brian whispered. “Look what you’ve brung me. Are you sure about this, Maggie?”

  She nodded.

  “Say it,” he breathed, “and I won’t send you away.”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” she whispered. She was sure this was the best defense against the cold of winter, the best way to make sure she wouldn’t get sent back to Cal and Joanna or to social services. The best thing for her right now when she could not endure lying alone. Her body was already warming to Brian’s, flushing wherever he touched her.

  “Have you been with a man before?”

  She nodded and then whispered, “Yes.”

  He ran his hands up her arms and down her rump and her thighs, and she let herself be reshaped and warmed. She watched Brian, and he watched her. When she had been with Junior’s friend, she’d felt clumsy, but Brian was easy to follow. When her muscles stiffened, Brian’s hands continued to move over her, and a memory of Cal fell away. When Brian’s hands moved underneath her T-shirt, the cotton fabric seemed to dissolve, and when he pushed her underwear down by her knees, it seemed she had willed them away. His hand was between her legs, his mouth was on her mouth and then on her belly, and then his body was on top of hers. Despite his size, he was not heavy on her. Margo gripped his arms, and she saw how he formed a house around her, how his big body became a dwelling in which she could live and be safe. His eyes were open, still watching her, reflecting orange from the light of the kerosene lantern in the other room. She noted the way he studied each part of her, and this made her admire each part of herself. While she was touching him, her arms seemed as powerful as his arms, her small, blistered hands as capable as his big hands.

  Her body tensed as he entered her, but then she relaxed and moved with him. She ran her swollen hands up and down his arms. She touched the spaghetti-ridged scars on the back of his hand with her fingertips. She wanted to feel the scars against her face. When the pleasure got to be too much, she closed her eyes.

  • Chapter Seven •

  In the morning, Margo faked sleep while Brian got up and fussed around in the main room of the cabin. A while later, he brought a bucket of warm water into the bedroom and placed it on the floor beside the little table with the mirror. He also brought in her army backpack and leaned it against the wall. Once he left the room and closed the door, she sat up and looked through the window at the milky light on the water. The cabin was on the south side of the river, as was her father’s house in Murrayville. She moved to sit before the dim mirror. Her face seemed old, not as though she herself had aged, but as though she were a person from another time in history. Even after she had washed her face, her reflection reminded her of the sepia-toned photographs of Annie Oakley.

  Margo didn’t regret what she had done with Brian. Her body felt different, as though she had been taken apart, piece by piece, and put back together in a new way. She washed her arms, which were swollen, and between her legs. Her shoulders hurt when she lifted her arms and hurt again when she released them. Her hands curled as though still gripping the oar handles. Just a few days ago she had been eating breakfast in her kitchen with her father, surrounded by familiar dishes and furniture, and now she was in a stranger’s house, and her future was uncertain. She brushed her dark hair and let it fall loose over her back, and then she took aim at herself in the mirror with her own double-barreled gaze.

  She used to like being naked or mostly naked around the river, at least when the weather was warm, but now she wanted to cover every part of herself as Annie Oakley had. Margo had the feeling that her newly shaped body had a power that she needed to keep secret. She put on clean underwear, a turtleneck shirt, and her fresh pair of jeans.

  With the door closed, the bedroom grew gradually cooler, until finally Margo was starved for the stove’s warmth.

  “Good morning, beautiful,” Brian said when she stepped into the main room.

  When she saw her rifle in the corner, her heart pounded. “I dropped my rifle in the mud. I have to clean it.”

  “We’ll eat first,” Brian said, “and then we’ll clean and oil your rifle. Everything will be okay.” He held out his arms until she sat on his lap and let herself be kissed. Despite all she had eaten the night before, she was ravenous.

  She followed Brian outside to a hand pump, where he began to refill the galvanized bucket. The iron pipe was wrapped in insulation to keep it from freezing. He pointed the way to an outhouse a few yards farther on.

  When she returned to the kitchen, she watched how Brian battered and fried the fish fillets he took from a cooler, so that she could cook them next time. The smell of frying fish and bacon was so powerful that she felt light-headed. For as long as she needed to stay, she would make herself handy, helpful to Brian, and not take anything for granted. Brian placed the plate of fish, bacon, potatoes, and toast in front of her. He sat beside her rather than across from her, as though they were sitting at the drugstore lunch counter in Murrayville, and he ran his scarred hand along her arm. Her muscles were loosening up, but she couldn’t eat with him touching her, so she reluctantly put down her fork.

  “I’m sorry,” he said and let go of her. “Eat!”

  While they drank their second cups of instant coffee, he kept reaching out and touching her shoulder or her face or petting her hair. He told her again how he’d been fired from Murray Metal Fabricating in the last round of layoffs, how he’d fought with Cal and knocked out his teeth. She didn’t mind hearing the story again, because it meant that, already, something was familiar between them.

  They washed the dishes in a big aluminum roasting pan full of water they heated on both burners of the propane stove, and finally Margo and Brian sat down with her rifle. Margo showed him how removing one screw revealed all the moving parts of the Marlin, as Cal had shown her.

  Upon studying the chrome and the carving of the squirrel on the stock, Brian said, “I think this is a limited edition. It’s probably worth something. Was it your papa’s?”

  “Cal’s.”

  “Good girl.” He laughed.

  She let Brian separate the stock from the barrel. They spent the morning disassembling the Marlin and reassembling it, drenching the air in the room with the heavy scent of solvent and then gun oil. When Brian wasn’t explaining something or telling stories, he often was humming popular songs from the last decades, Beatles songs especially. For a long time, he was humming “Norwegian Wood.” They found a few drops of water in the barrel, but no harm had been done. They put the rifle back together, well oiled. Then she and Brian went out in the pontoon boat, parked at a snag, and caught bluegills for dinner.

  “So why would your papa have shot Cal’s dick? Did Cal Murray mess with you?” Brian asked, while Margo was cleaning the fish in the sink.

  Margo said nothing, even when Brian turned and looked right

  at her.

  “He did, didn’t he? Cal raped you.” It wasn’t a question by the time he finished asking. “Holy shit. That’s why you took the man’s gun.”

  She grimaced. She still didn’t think that word made sense in relation to what had happened.

  “Your papa was revenging you. Well, it’s not enough. If I see Cal, I’ll knock another tooth out of the son of a bitch’s head. I’ll knock them all out.”

  While Brian was frying the fish, Margo stood at the window and searched the ri
ver until she saw a shadow fly across—a red-tailed hawk, maybe, or at least a crow—and she was able to imagine following its flight path with the barrel of the Marlin. She figured that whatever Brian wanted to do to Cal, it had only a little to do with herself. She might be the spark that got Brian riled up, but any fire would be all about Brian and Cal and whatever was already between them.

  “All right, Maggie, let’s test your rifle, make sure it still works,” Brian said after breakfast the following morning. Margo carried the Marlin, wishing again it had a sling, and Brian carried a bigger rifle, an M1, something from World War II. While they were cleaning the Marlin, he had mentioned that he’d been in Vietnam, but volunteered only that his “damn M16 jammed about every fucking day.” Knowing how Crane had not wanted to talk about his Vietnam experience, Margo didn’t consider asking Brian about his. Brian set up a couple dozen empty beer cans and plastic bottles on a railroad tie twenty-five paces farther down the river and handed Margo the pair of ear protectors he had on his arm. He loaded the big rifle and fired eight rounds. He went through two more clips, and when he was done, after twenty-four shots, he’d hit about half of the targets. He replaced the cans and bottles he’d destroyed with new ones, including two sardine cans he propped up. “I think I’m out of practice,” he said. “Maybe my sights need adjusting.”

  Margo lifted her .22 with some difficulty. Her arm muscles were still strained from rowing. She experienced some kind of electrical shock when she first pulled the trigger, and she missed the first can. She focused and dinged it on the second shot, and then caught the top on the third, sent it flying. She inhaled the faint smell of gunpowder. She reloaded the Marlin with fifteen of the long-rifle cartridges she’d carried from Cal’s gun cupboard and listened for a moment to the river. Holding the rifle steady would have been easier with a sling, but she held her arm up until her body remembered it as a natural position. She hit the next can and each can after that, and she reloaded and knocked all the bottles from their perches. And in that several minutes of intense focusing, she felt peaceful. Margo lowered the gun, pressed the barrel against her face to feel its heat.