Once Upon a River (38 page)

Her mother was sitting at a little table in the bathroom adjoining her bedroom, looking at herself in the mirror. Margo was leaning against the doorframe with her own worn jeans on, army knife and wallet in her pockets. Luanne wiped makeup over her face and rubbed it around until it became invisible.

“Does anybody ever row on the lake?” Margo asked.

“The neighbor has a canoe. We have a pontoon boat, but it’s in winter storage at the marina.” Luanne applied lipstick and blotted her lips on a tissue, then applied more and smiled at herself. “I can show you how to do all this to your face. That’s something I could do for you.”

Margo nodded vaguely and then went out to wait in the kitchen, and when her mother appeared, Margo thought she looked like somebody from TV. She wore a glossy black belt that accented her small waist. Her shirt was unbuttoned to show cleavage, and she wore a necklace, earrings, and rings with turquoise stones.

Margo walked behind her out to the car.

“What happened last night, Margo?” Luanne asked as she backed out into the road. “I just listened to a phone message from my neighbor, saying there was a vagabond tending a fire in my back yard last night.”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“You can’t really have a fire without a permit unless it’s in a fire pit. Mr. Smith was afraid you were going to burn down his fence.”

“I was eight feet away from the fence.”

“Why were you outside so late at night, anyway?”

“I like to be outside at night for a while, to hear what’s out there.” She had not heard any night bird sounds, only a raccoon scrambling on the neighbor’s porch. “I couldn’t get the window in my room to open more than an inch.”

“Those are security locks. It’s too cold to open a window.”

“Why don’t you have a dog?”

“Roger doesn’t want a dog.” Luanne sighed as she turned off the lake road and onto a two-lane highway. “And I certainly don’t want a dog. You know I never wanted a dog.”

Margo pressed a button that locked and then unlocked the door. She finally found the button that controlled the window, and she let it down a few inches. She didn’t mean to be annoying to her mother, but everything was happening too quickly. When the houses along the road were no longer so close together, Margo saw a sign that read M
APLE
S
YRUP 4
S
ALE
. Tied to the front porch of the house were two German shepherds. Margo watched them fall behind her.

“Are you glad you had me?” Margo asked. Her mother applied the brakes so that Margo was thrown forward slightly. She saw a car backing out of a driveway up ahead of them.

“Put on your seat belt,” Luanne said.

“Do you wish you hadn’t had me?” Margo pulled the belt down over her shoulder and fiddled to attach it.

“Of course I’m glad I had you. Look at you. But I had a husband at the time who could help. I wasn’t all alone like you are.”

“I’m not all alone.”

“Do you want to have a baby?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“Okay.” Luanne accelerated back up to speed.

Margo studied her mother’s apparently flawless face.

“Why are you looking at me that way?” her mother asked and smiled.

“Whatever happens, Mama, I’ll be all right.”

“Of course you will. It’s not a complicated procedure.”

“Did you have one?”

“It wasn’t terrible. Really. It was fine. It was a relief. Now, I’m going to have to run into the post office to drop something off. You go into the clinic and get the form and sit down, and I’ll be there in ten minutes to help you.”

“I’m glad I found you,” Margo said. She would have liked to have a little brother or a sister. Maybe a sister Julie Slocum’s age, someone whom Margo could have taught to fish and row and keep out of trouble. Maybe an older sister could have kept Margo out of trouble.

“I’m glad, too,” Luanne said and patted Margo’s thigh. “I’m glad I can finally help my girl.”

Luanne pulled up to the front door of the clinic and fished around in her purse. When a protester with a sign approached the car, Luanne rolled down both front windows and yelled, “Go to hell, you freaks. I’ll run your asses over. I’ve got mace.”

The protesters looked at one another and backed away.

“I appreciate everything you’re doing for me, Ma,” Margo said. She liked seeing her mother ferocious.

“Don’t think about all this too much. Just go in. Tell them you’re eighteen years old, you have no means of support. You don’t even know the guy’s name. They’ll just examine you today, but they might give you some Valium to get you through until the procedure. Tell them you don’t have to drive. You’ve got a ride.”

“Maybe I should wait another week.” Margo remembered the perfume smell of the clinic, the clipboard with page after page to be filled out, the small room with the high window. She would never have been able to explain to her mother, but she felt even more uneasy about it today than yesterday. She needed time to think.

“Trust your mama about this one thing.” Luanne turned to her with a resigned expression.

Margo nodded.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes to help you with the form. I’ll come into the exam room with you and talk to the doctor. We’ll get through this together. Roger will be gone for three more days, so we’ll see if they can’t get you in for the procedure on Friday morning. That way I can take you . . . home afterwards. To wherever you’re living.”

Margo leaned over and hugged her mother. Luanne’s arms were easy and loose now, and Margo didn’t want to pull away.

“Here’s three hundred dollars in case they ask for it up front,” Luanne said, tugging free. “It’ll be the best three hundred dollars you’ve ever spent.” She pressed six fifty-dollar bills into Margo’s hand.

“You did the best you could with me and Daddy. Don’t feel bad,” Margo said as she opened the car door.

“Why are you wearing that ratty jacket under the parka?” Luanne asked.

“I didn’t know if I’d be warm enough.” Margo had unzipped the parka because she’d been too hot in the car.

“I guess you feel sentimental about your daddy’s jacket. I don’t mean to suggest I didn’t love your daddy, Margaret. He was a good man. I should have told you that. Just because I had to get away from him doesn’t mean he wasn’t good. Maybe if he would have taken me out to eat once in a while or dancing or even to The Tap Room, things would have been different.”

“I know.” Margo got out and waved. She entered the building and stood just inside looking out.

When her mother turned onto the road, Margo walked back out and listened for the trickle of water behind the building, the storm drain she had noticed on her first visit.

She hid around the corner of the building for ten minutes until she saw the car pull back into the parking lot. Relief flooded her body at the sight of her mother getting out of her car, walking toward the clinic. Margo hadn’t known if her mother would really come back to help her.

She followed the flow of water in the storm drain down a shallow slope until it disappeared underground. She wandered around the area until she found the stream exposed again a hundred yards away. She followed that to a bigger storm drain that ran through a twenty-four-inch galvanized culvert and emptied into a brisk moving creek, which, after a few miles, emptied into the river. The edge of the Kalamazoo was strewn with trash—broken glass, rusted cans, plastic bottles filled with green slime, old bicycle frames, car tires. Margo couldn’t understand why people would let the river be treated so poorly. She walked along railroad tracks, around junkyards, past houses with small junkyards behind them. She walked past storefronts, small industrial buildings, a few bars with neon lights in their windows, through the edge of a golf course, until finally the houses were spaced farther apart. She walked miles along an undeveloped area on the south side of the river until she reached a road bridge in a small town that put her on the north side
of the river, where she belonged. Despite the cold wind, she sweated. In the afternoon, the sun shone hard on her, and she carried her parka on her arm. It was dark when she reached her boat, and she kept on going. She opened the riverside door to Smoke’s house without knocking, saw her rifle in his gun rack in the dimly lit kitchen. She entered and fell to her knees, exhausted, beside Smoke’s wheelchair and ran her hand over Nightmare’s ears. Then she laid her cheek against Smoke’s bony thigh as she had never done before, and she cried. Smoke petted Margo’s head in silence, stroked her hair the way a mother would stroke a daughter’s.

• Chapter Twenty-One •

Christmas Eve at dusk, Fishbone entered Smoke’s kitchen with-out knocking. He removed his fedora, brushed the snow from it, and hung it on a peg over the forced-air vent, where Smoke never hung anything else. Margo did not understand how Fishbone’s ears didn’t freeze. She wore a stocking cap in this weather, and now that she had the parka, she sometimes also pulled the hood up and tied it tightly.

Because the kitchen table lamp hurt Smoke’s eyes, the room was lit only by two Christmas candles. Nightmare growled gently at Fishbone and then relaxed.

“Merry Christmas,” Fishbone said and handed Margo four wooden stretching boards. Brand-new ones without bloodstains. “I made these out of basswood. They’ll be soft so you won’t tear the hides.”

She thanked him and wished she had something to give him. He brushed the snow off the shoulders of his leather jacket and sat on Smoke’s second kitchen chair, the one without any back. It occurred to Margo that in these last few months she had taken Fishbone’s chair. Margo showed what Smoke had given her, four muskrat-sized body traps and three wool blankets, one of which was military-issue and had M
ESSER
stenciled on it. Smoke had told her it was from his father’s time in the military. Fishbone accepted Margo’s offer of a piece of black walnut cake she’d made with dried apples. He ate it slowly and swore it tasted as good as anything he’d eaten all year. When he finished, he pushed the plate to the center of the table. “The farmer wants to speak to you, Margo,” he said.

Margo looked at Smoke.

Fishbone continued, “I told George Harland you were a young lady who could take care of herself and not cause him any trouble. He said you didn’t answer your door when he knocked on your cabin, after he saw you go inside.”

“You talk to him for her,” Smoke suggested.

“She’s capable of talking for herself, Smoky. She’s on his land. There’s no reason to be afraid of the man.” Fishbone picked up the leather bag of lead type Smoke kept on the table and moved it from hand to hand as they spoke. It weighed about ten pounds.

“I’m on the water,” she said, “not on his land.”

“And when you step off the boat, you’re on his land. And when the water gets low, you’ll be on his land. When you take drinking water from the hand pump in his barn like you do, you’re on his land. Talk to him and he’ll give you his permits next year.”

“I might not stay there. I might go somewhere else on the river.”

Fishbone shook his head. “This whole situation is odd, don’t you think, Smoky? A girl living out there alone is not normal.” He looked back at Margo. “If you were my kid, I’d want you to finish school. You ought to be with your rich ma on Lake Lynne.”

“Why do you care so much about normal?” Smoke said, sounding more forceful than Margo would have expected. “It’s hard enough to figure out how to live . . . without worrying about what the hell’s normal. You keep your goddamned normal life to yourself.”

Margo felt a catch in her throat. She didn’t want to be the source of more disagreement between them.

“This girl’s going to have a baby,” Fishbone said and put down the leather bag heavily. “It ain’t just about her.”

“Look at her, sitting there. Really look at her, Fishbone. Look at that kid’s beautiful face. She’s got strong arms, splits her own firewood. You got all kinds of kids, Fishbone. I got none. My life ain’t worth a shit, but I can help this girl live the way she wants to live.”

“Your life’s worth plenty, Smoky.”

“Sure as hell doesn’t feel like it these days.”

“Why do you have to swear all the time? You make every night a cuss fest.”

Margo was relieved when Smoke’s temper quickly subsided. She retied a rawhide bootlace that had come undone. She smoothed her hands over her soft, worn jeans, just washed in Smoke’s machine. She had left the top three buttons unbuttoned and wore the pants low because her belly was sticking out. She felt warm and clean and comfortable, despite the arguing, despite her uncertainty about the baby. She belonged with these men and Nightmare.

“Something doesn’t smell right in here, Smoky.”

“The candles are cinnamon,” Margo said, but she, too, had been smelling something, a skunky odor.

Fishbone leaned close to Smoke and smelled around the collar of his work shirt. “It’s you. You feeling okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“You need to take a bath.”

When he was leaving, Fishbone put on his hat and patted Smoke on the shoulder and let his hand linger there. Smoke reached up and pressed his hand until Fishbone pulled away.