Once Upon a River

by Bonnie Jo Campbell

  Paul took the fish from the bucket one by one, used his knife to slit the skin all the way around their necks, and nailed each head to the nearest oak; the three tails strained and curled against the bark. The men stood by while Margo stunned one with a hammer and began tearing off its skin with pliers.

  “Tell me what happened.” Though she knew better, Margo brushed against the catfish dorsal fin, and her middle finger burned.

  “Well, we left The Pub and was at The Tap Room in Murrayville having a few beers, and Brian and this guy he’s playing pool with get to arguing, and then Cal Murray comes in. It’s like my brother has been waiting for Cal Murray but Cal’s been keeping a low profile. So Brian says to him, ‘I heard a guy shot your dick off. Heard all you got now is a nasty little stub,’ which is funny, but everybody’s scared to laugh. Cal Murray asks Brian does he want to suck it, and Brian tells him there ain’t no forgiving what you done to that girl. Brian hits him a couple times, and Cal don’t hardly even defend himself, which seems odd. I don’t know if he was drunk or what. Brian pushes him down some stairs, don’t seem to notice Cal isn’t fighting back, so he stomps the shit out of him on the steps. He broke both Cal’s legs.”

  “What?” The fish skin split.

  “Broke bones in his legs. You heard me.”

  Margo took a deep breath and regripped the skin with her pliers. “Why’d you guys go to Murrayville?”

  “It’s a free country, that’s what Brian said. We can drink anywhere we want. But you know it’s been eating away at Brian what you said Cal done to you. He didn’t have any choice but to fight him.”

  Margo had never seen Brian hit anybody, but she could imagine him, drunk beyond talking to, slugging and kicking Cal. Margo’s finger trailed the pectoral fin of the catfish. The pain was so sharp this time she was surprised not to see blood on her knuckle. Brian was a weapon, all right, but more like a land mine or a grenade than a gun or a knife.

  “Next thing you know, the ambulance and the cops are there, and Brian’s going to jail. And now that they got him locked up, they’re getting him for killing that man.”

  “Cal’s not dead, is he?”

  “No. It’s the manslaughter charge.”

  “What manslaughter charge?”

  “Well, whatever the hell they’re calling it. Up in Rapid River, in the UP last summer. Brian must’ve told you. Why do you think he’s been out here in the woods laying low?”

  The trees became thicker and taller around her. She tugged on the second catfish skin, trying not to let it split, but she stung her wrist on the spine of a dorsal fin and jerked away, making a mess of it. As she worked, the half-skinned catfish woke up. It curled its tail out away from the tree, still trying to swim.

  “Hey, Charlie, toss me a beer,” Paul said. Margo looked up to see the can fly through the air with surprising speed and accuracy. Paul caught it with a smack, and when he opened it, foam poured onto his hand. “I thought you knew, Maggie.”

  She worked slowly with the pliers on the last catfish, tugging around the sides evenly, removing the skin in one piece down to the tail and slicing it free. If what Brian had done in the UP was an accident, why hadn’t he mentioned it?

  “All the police had on that trouble up north was a description, but it included them knife scars on the back of his hand. It was the same deal, Brian drunk and not knowing when to quit.”

  “Can I see him?”

  “It’d be better if you didn’t, honey. His wife isn’t going to like you.”

  “His ex-wife.”

  “He’s got an ex-wife, his first wife. He was planning on getting a divorce from his second wife soon, but the dumb son of a bitch hadn’t told her about it yet. He was hoping she’d take up with another guy, make it easier, get him better terms for the divorce. I’m not saying they were together exactly, but now she’s rallying ’round him. And she can do him more good now than you can.”

  Inside the cabin, Margo moved numbly. She filleted and fried the catfish the way she would have for Brian, with cornmeal and flour, in the last of the bacon grease, which was on the verge of going

  rancid. When they finished eating, Paul turned on a brand-new

  battery-powered lantern with a humming fluorescent bulb. Margo was distressed at how bug-stained the walls were, how ratty the rug looked in the cold bluish light, and how grimy she had let herself become. She pulled her braid over her shoulder and looked at how frayed it was. Paul and Charlie took the lantern outside and started digging a hole with round-end shovels, and Margo was grateful to be out of the harsh light. She undid her braid and brushed her hair. When Paul came inside to get another beer, she asked him to tell her more.

  “There ain’t nothing more to it.”

  “Does Brian own this cabin?” she asked.

  “Me and Brian own it together. You can stay here as long as you want, Maggie. Don’t you worry your pretty head about that. But I’m going to be storing a few things here, and I got to warn you, don’t touch any of them. You’d better take me seriously when I say that.”

  “What’s in that barrel?” Margo noticed that Paul’s hiking boots looked brand-new, as did his watch.

  “Don’t you worry about what it is, Maggie. I’ve got a drum full of a very valuable substance, and you’re just going to have to leave it alone.”

  She nodded. “Do you know if Brian checked his PO box?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Paul said.

  “Maybe my ma wrote a letter saying she wants me to come.”

  “He didn’t say nothing about a letter. I can ask him next time I visit him.”

  When Paul went back out to dig more, Margo washed the dishes with water she’d lugged in and heated on the propane stove.

  Margo didn’t usually drink, but she needed to do something different as a kind of protest against this new situation. She opened a beer and, though the first few sips sickened her, she drank it down. She folded up the letter she’d been writing to her mother—in it she’d asked what Luanne thought about being loyal to a man, what it was worth. All these questions she was asking her ma added up to one question: how should Margo live? She had chosen this life for now, and she had chosen Brian to be her anchor, keeping her steady and in place. Now she was adrift. She opened a second beer and found she didn’t mind the taste so much. After finishing the dishes, while the men were still working outside, she reread her mother’s old letter on the yellow stationery with the bumblebees—the flower scent had faded—and she drank a third beer. Afterward, she stumbled to the bedroom and passed out.

  Just before sunrise, she awoke with a parched mouth and a headache, and with a man’s heavy arm over her in the bed. She gasped when she realized it was Paul beside her. She extricated herself with difficulty. After more than a week without Brian, Margo had almost forgotten how a big man generated heat around him. The bedroom was stifling. She was grateful he was dead asleep, more grateful to find herself still fully clothed. She heated water for instant coffee. There wasn’t much propane left; Brian had intended to get some in town the day he disappeared. Charlie was curled in a strange position, half on, half off the narrow couch.

  She carried her coffee outside, and from the dock she watched the Jeep pull away from the yellow house downstream. She admired the straight diagonal lines the man had mowed into his lawn, all the way down to the river, where he trimmed with a weed whip he swung like a golf club. In contrast to the rangy wild bushes on her side, the hedges around his house were trimmed flat as tabletops. She looked forward to this evening, after Paul and Charlie were gone, when the man would come home and let his dog out to hunker at the river’s edge. The dog was able to catch fish in its jaws; she’d seen it do so a half dozen times.

  Margo found her siphon hose and sucked gas out of the Playbuoy’s tank into a milk jug, enough to mix with two-stroke oil for a trip up to Heart of Pines with the small outboard motor, or two trips maybe, if she rowed back down without power. Or maybe she would take a fishing trip to Willow Isl
and, where one time she had seen a heron carry a snake up to its chicks in the trees.

  Margo had never given Brian any details about her and Cal, had never suggested he should punish Cal.

  She rinsed the fuel taste from her mouth with coffee, spat it into the river. She thought she might be okay living alone here, having the bed to herself, making the breakfast she wanted at the time she wanted, not worrying about what state Brian would be in when he got home from work or the bar. She would have to cash the money order and lay in supplies for the winter, including bacon, flour, and powdered milk. Maybe she would make bread, something she hadn’t gotten around to doing. She would miss Brian, but if she could stay here, she could survive on her own. She would get ammo and sleep with her rifle beside her.

  Charlie was stirring on the couch. Margo sifted meal-moth larvae out of the last of the flour for pancakes. Paul and Charlie would appreciate a cooked breakfast. She opened a beer, poured half of it into her dry ingredients, and then handed the open can to Charlie, who sat up to accept it. He tipped it up and drank the remainder in one long slug.

  “Are you hungry, Charlie?” she asked. “Did you sleep good?”

  “You’s got a toilet around here?” he asked. She led him outside and directed him along the path that led to the outhouse.

  Paul called her name from the bedroom. She pushed open the door and stepped inside, where she smelled smoke that wasn’t from cigarettes. She saw a glass pipe on the windowsill by the bed, alongside a pack of matches. He turned to favor his bad eye.

  “I’m mixing pancakes,” she said. “Charlie went to the outhouse.”

  “Come here, river princess.” He grabbed her before she’d even realized she was within reach of him. He pulled her down onto the bed.

  “Paul, what?”

  “Kiss me,” he said.

  “No, Paul. What if Brian . . . ?”

  “Brian’s not here. He’s not going to be here.”

  “No. Don’t,” she said, but he pulled her against him.

  He seemed not to notice her complaints. He pulled down her loose jeans without unzipping them—she had grown thinner in these last months—and pushed her T-shirt up around her shoulders. She bent her knees and tried to sit up, but he held her down with one hand and ran the other along her stomach and over her right breast. In school she had wrenched away from boys who had grabbed her in the stairwell, but she had never fought a big man. She tried to push Paul away, tried to get her feet up to kick. As her leg came up, he pushed her knee out to the side and heaved himself onto her. When she continued to push at him, he flipped her over with an ease that shocked her. His fingers held her down like straps. She had always thought of herself as strong, but compared to Paul she was nothing. She yelled and tried to push him off.

  While her arms were trapped beneath her, he forced her onto her stomach and worked his way into her. She cried out loudly enough that Charlie would have heard her if he’d returned from the outhouse, but there was no sound from the next room. She couldn’t take in a full breath, crushed as she was against the mattress, and she feared she was suffocating. The time she had crawled beneath the buck’s carcass back in Murrayville, she had been able to calm herself, but there was no way to be calm with Paul on her. She tried to lift herself to throw Paul off, but he was heavier than the buck. She smelled Brian’s musk in the sheets and Paul’s sweat and rotten breath. She wished for him to be as dead as that buck. When she croaked his name and begged him to stop again, he responded, “Oh, Maggie,” as though she had said something sweet. She struggled to free her arms until she felt too weak to struggle anymore. Paul was on her for a long time.

  After he rolled away to the other side of the bed, he looked at her and smiled. She wanted to punch him and kick him, but she feared he would grab her fist or foot if she did, and more than anything she wanted to get away from him. She picked her clothes up off the floor and carried them into the other room. She dressed with shaking hands and wished she had more clothes to put on. Her rifle and shotgun were in the rack beside her, useless without ammunition, though the shotgun might work as a club until Paul could wrestle it out of her hands. She had wasted her cartridges on target practice, expecting Brian to bring her more. From now on, she knew better. She would count on no one to help or protect her.

  She tied her boots, buttoned her shirt. She thought about running into the woods in order not to face Paul, but she did not want to leave her boat behind. She could get in her boat and row away from the cabin, but in the pontoon boat he could chase her down if he wanted. And there was no point of leaving now that he had already done what he had wanted to do with her. Once she was dressed, she picked up the butcher knife and moved to the bedroom doorway. While she stood there, she tested the sharpness by puncturing her skin near her wrist. A drop of blood formed there. If he came after her again, she would protect herself with it.

  “I ain’t used an outhouse in years,” said Charlie, as he entered the cabin from the screen porch. “It’s mighty relaxing.”

  Margo returned to her pancake batter and put down the knife.

  “You making us breakfast?” Charlie asked. “You’re a nice girl.”

  “Charlie, do you do drugs?”

  “Nosirree,” he said. “But Paul says that shit out there’s going to make us some serious money.”

  “How about Paul? Brian said he was off the drugs.”

  Charlie shrugged. When he looked away, Margo spat into the pancake batter. She saw the dozen meal-moth larvae were still in the sifter, so she dumped those in and stirred.

  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 an
d 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?”