Once Upon a River

by Bonnie Jo Campbell

  “A-cr-cr-cross the river. I live over there.” She glanced behind her at the dog sitting on the prow seat. The dog’s mouth was open in what looked like a smile. She barked happily.

  “I know where you live, but why are you taking my dog?” His biceps strained against his bones. Tendons stood out on one side of his neck, and he was losing his balance as Margo continued rowing in place. “You’re just plain not going to answer me.”

  Mosquitoes landed on Margo’s legs and arms, and they bothered the man, too. When he let go of her boat with one hand to swat at them, Margo broke free. The man folded his arms and stood in the water watching her, looking more perplexed than angry as she rowed away.

  “Cleo, you and I probably need to have a talk,” the man said in a loud but conversational voice. To Margo’s relief, he did not call the dog right away. His figure grew smaller as she rowed upstream and approached the cabin. She parked at the dock, and King jumped over the side of the boat and swam to shallower water to sniff along the muskrat holes and twisted roots. The man across the river disappeared and returned with binoculars. A while later he called, “Cleo!” and the dog dove into the water and headed home.

  A few days later, Margo motored to the gas station at Heart of Pines to buy food, ammo, toilet paper, and bottled gas with the money Paul had left. She had not dared bring her rifle. She couldn’t carry it into the store for fear someone might recognize it as Cal’s, but she didn’t want to leave it in the boat and risk it being stolen. She tied her boat a ways from the other boats and draped her tarp over it. Inside the store, she added up prices, calculated tax in her head, and managed to put together a purchase totaling $33.82. She had planned to buy gasoline, but there was a line at the single pump and she didn’t want to wait around with the dozen men who were hanging out there. She figured she would get gas next time.

  Halfway back, just above Willow Island, she cut the engine and floated downstream with the current to save gas, rowing only to fix her direction, keeping an eye out for dogs, birds, and kids—any sign of life—along the water’s edge. The miles of dark, empty river belonged to her. She drifted near the riverbank and imagined some people inviting her to a meal or just to sit and listen to stories. Instead, as she rounded the last bend above her cabin, she saw Brian’s boat parked at the dock. A bright, cold light shone from inside the cabin—Paul’s fluorescent lantern. She steered herself toward the opposite bank and hoped Paul would not be watching the river as she floated past. She pulled over at a snag just below the yellow house and watched the cabin until she saw Paul and Johnny go outside. A few minutes later, they returned to the cabin, carrying a jug of something. She wished she had taken her chances with her rifle and hadn’t left it under the bed with her backpack. The night grew darker, and she waited for the men to leave, but they did not. A half-moon appeared and disappeared behind the trees. The night grew cool. When their light went out, she unfolded her canvas tarp and curled atop it on the boat’s back seat. She pulled the rest of the tarp over her like a blanket and used her orange life vest as a pillow.

  Margo awoke shivering to the sound of barking. The light of the rising sun was diffuse behind a haze of clouds. She was no longer in the boat, but was wrapped in her tarp in the sand. And then King was beside her, licking her face. Margo studied the beautiful eyes and perfect dark nose. She pushed her fingers into the dog’s fur, but when she saw a man standing over her, she stood up, stepped into her boat, and fumbled with her oars. “I’m sorry,” Margo said.

  “Sorry for what?”

  “For taking your dog.”

  He shrugged. “Dogs are loyal. You feed them, and they come back to you.” He nodded upstream toward her cabin. “If you’re hiding from this guy, you can come to my house. Once the sun rises, he might see you if you stay out here.”

  With the sun rising behind him, the man’s face was in shadow, but he seemed harmless. He hadn’t bothered her about his dog, even. Unsure what else to do, but sure she did not want to be seen by Paul, she decided to trust him. She checked the rope and knot she’d tied around a fallen maple, a clove hitch, according to Brian’s book. She had also learned the name of the knot on the ring at her boat’s prow: round turn and two half hitches. The spray of leaves along the branch would camouflage the boat so long as no one was looking right at it. So long as Paul hadn’t replaced his glasses, there was nothing to worry about. She carried her oars and the bag from the store and followed the man along the river path. The dew that coated the weeds and grass soaked the bottom of her pant legs. Where the poison ivy had climbed to the tops of trees for sunlight, she saw those triple leaves had already turned blood-red. Autumn was coming.

  Margo put down her oars, food, and ammunition before they entered the yellow house by the side door. She found herself in a kitchen with white walls, yellow countertops flecked with black and white, and a glossy wooden floor. But the baseboards were missing, revealing an uneven gap at the bottom of the wall around the room. Though the kitchen counters were clean and orderly and the floor was swept, the table was comfortably messy with newspapers and books. “Bathroom’s through there if you need it. Do you drink coffee?” the man asked.

  She nodded and ventured through the kitchen, into what should have been a living room but contained a big bed with an unwrinkled bedspread. She walked around it and looked through the sliding glass door. Upstream, parked at the dilapidated green cabin on stilts, was the Playbuoy. She unlocked the glass door and tugged it open a few inches, to assure herself she could leave that way if she needed to.

  The top drawer of a dresser at the foot of the bed was open a few inches, exposing a cache of white bras and underwear. She traced her finger along the scalloped lace edge of a bra. These were the kinds of fancy underthings her mother used to like to wear, and now probably wore all the time in Lake Lynne. Luanne had complained about how the iron in the water stained her white clothes, just as she had complained about the green mold that crept over her leather shoes in the closet.

  When the man appeared in the doorway, Margo hurriedly shut the drawer.

  “Oh, don’t worry. She’s long gone. I guess she left those for my next girlfriend.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  The man handed Margo a mug of coffee, light with cream. She and Brian drank their coffee strong and black, and what they had at the cabin was instant. She inhaled the aroma from the cup so deeply that she had to touch the dresser to steady herself. She had eaten potato chips from the gas station in Heart of Pines yesterday, but nothing else.

  “Do you want to take a shower?” he asked.

  “No, thank you.”

  “You can’t wear those wet clothes. Take something of Danielle’s.”

  Margo looked at the dresser and back at him.

  He laughed. “I was going to throw all her clothes in the river, anyway, let them float downstream. Go ahead and take anything you want out of there.”

  Margo kept her eyes on the fishing dog lying on a rug at the foot of the bed, and after a minute the man went back into the kitchen. She took a long draw of the coffee, which tasted so good she didn’t want to swallow.

  She looked for a place to rest her cup, but she didn’t want to leave a ring on the dresser top. In fact, she didn’t want to leave any trace of herself. Finally, she set the cup on the unfinished plywood floor. In the middle dresser drawer she found neatly folded blouses in pink, white, and mint green. The other dresser contained the man’s blue jeans. She put on a faded pair and cinched the waist with the most worn of his belts and cuffed the legs. In the same drawer, she found a T-shirt and a dark blue sweatshirt. She draped her muddy clothes over the side of the tub in the adjoining bathroom.

  She retrieved her coffee from the plywood floor. Another room opened off this one and was probably supposed to be the bedroom, when it wasn’t torn down to wall studs. In the middle of the room, balanced on sawhorses, was the curved wooden skeleton of a rowboat, bigger and deeper than her flat-bottomed boat. Back in the kitchen, she found
the man cooking, and she might have felt at ease if only her gun and her backpack were leaning in the corner by that corn broom rather than lying under the bed wrapped in rabbit skins at the cabin with Paul. The man apologized for what he called “this mess” and placed items on the round table one at a time. Each thing glowed as it passed through a shaft of sunlight: plates, forks, two glistening jars of preserves, and a stick of yellow-white butter in a glass dish. She wondered if she was losing her grip; otherwise why did butter and jelly seem like otherworldly miracles?

  “Sorry this place is such a construction zone,” he said. “I’m determined to do all the work myself, save money. I want to learn how to fix and build everything. That’s one of my goals in life.”

  She nodded.

  “You’ve got to be hungry.” He held out his hand, and she shook it. “I’m Michael. Mike Appel.” The stress was on the second syllable, like the word repel. “I’ve lived here all alone for four months, and you’re the first person from the neighborhood who’s been in my house. You’d think on a river people would always be socializing.” He gestured with the spatula. “You haven’t told me your name.”

  She almost said Maggie. “I’m Margaret,” she said, and when he didn’t seem entirely satisfied, she added, “Louise.”

  “That’s a pretty name.” He repeated it wistfully. “Margaret Louise.”

  That was what her mother had called her, as if one name weren’t enough.

  “People don’t use two names so much these days.” He laughed.

  “Or just Margo,” she offered.

  “What’s your last name?”

  “Crane.”

  “Margaret Louise Crane. Very nice.” He pushed aside several books

  that lay open on the table and set a glass of orange juice and half an omelet in front of her. One book with a library sticker was called Building Bookshelves.

  “Thank you,” Margo said.

  “I shouldn’t let this table get so cluttered,” Michael said. “So what do you do over there at that little house?”

  “I fish.” The omelet was buttery and cheesy.

  “I’ve never fished,” he said. “Don’t even know how to fish, but I’m building a boat. I’d like to be more self-sufficient, like you.”

  “Fishing is easy,” Margo said. She lifted the edge of the omelet and admired the tiny, uniform cubes of green pepper, onion, and mushroom inside. “Mostly you just have to sit there and wait.”

  “Maybe you can give me a lesson, tell me what tastes good out of this river. Hell, I don’t even know what to put on a hook.”

  “I use worms and minnows. Sometimes crayfish.” She moved her feet so the dog could lie under the table, next to a neat stack of newspapers.

  He said, “I work for the power company, so I know you’ve got no power over there. Have you got a generator? A two-way radio of some kind?”

  She shook her head. Margo worked her bare feet beneath the heavy body of the fishing dog. Her boots and socks sat beside her chair.

  “It’s incredible you live like that. And you don’t have a job or go to school?”

  “I’m nineteen,” Margo said, as if that would explain it. She looked across the river at the cabin. She was eager to open the brick of ammo and load her Marlin. She hoped Paul would have no reason to look under the bed.

  “Your place looks like a hideout, you know, like a place in a movie where criminals get away from the cops. Would you be the gangster’s daughter?” He lifted his eyebrows. “Or his girlfriend, maybe?”

  A knot began to form in Margo’s stomach. He probably meant to be playful, but she feared answering his questions could get her into trouble somehow.

  “You don’t talk much. Now, Danielle, she could talk.” He pointed a fork at Margo. “And yet she never thought to mention she was sleeping with a very good friend of mine. Funny. Of course, he didn’t mention it, either. But they’re in love now, so everything’s swell.”

  Margo clung to her silence. She looked into his face, into his clear eyes, for as long as she dared. He was lonely, she saw, maybe as lonely as she was. She pulled her feet out from under the fishing dog and put on her damp socks and then her boots. She tucked Michael’s jeans into the boots before tying them, in case she had to sit outside and fend off mosquitoes. She glanced around for her gun again, though of course it was back at the cabin.

  “I moved up here from Indiana three years ago for my job,” he said. “With Danielle. That was before I realized how materialistic she was. Where are you from?”

  She saw he was going to wait for an answer. “Murrayville,” she said.

  “That’s thirty-some miles down the river, halfway to the dam.”

  She nodded and watched out the window. Paul was messing around on the dock.

  “When Danielle was here, I hardly noticed the river as a backdrop. Now it’s all I think about. I watch it going by for hours.”

  By the time Margo finished her omelet, Paul had gotten into his boat and pulled away, heading upstream. When he was out of sight, she let her fork drop onto her plate, and the sound startled her. “I’ve got to go,” she said.

  “Can’t you stay a few minutes longer? I promise to stop complaining about women. Here, I’ll make you another piece of toast.”

  She sat back down, but kept her weight on the balls of her feet.

  “You seem like a girl who was raised by wolves or something.” He dropped two slices of bread into the shiny toaster.

  She squinted at him.

  “I guess I didn’t say that right. I don’t mean you seem like an animal.” He pushed down the knob, and right away she smelled toast. It made her miss the way Joanna’s kitchen smelled in the mornings, like fried ham slices and toasted cinnamon bread. Michael went on, “There’ve been lost kids who were taken in by wolves. Even after the kids were rescued, they never could stand being in enclosed spaces. They wanted to spend all their time outdoors. That’s what I meant.”

  Margo didn’t have to pay attention. She’d only come here to be safe from Paul.

  “Thank you for the food.” She stood and hurried out the kitchen door, leaving the toast to pop up behind her. She picked up her things and made her way downstream to her boat. Out in the middle of the river she felt a momentary sense of freedom, but upon reaching her dock the first thing she noticed were the rotting catfish heads still nailed to the big oak. She unlocked the padlock with her key, squatted beside the bed, and retrieved her rifle and pack. Both were undisturbed. Then she realized she had forgotten to buy matches—she had only two left in the box.

  She balled up the last few letters she had written to her mother on the backs of used targets and put them in the woodstove. On top of those she assembled a pile of chipped kindling. She started a fire in order to drive the dampness from the cabin and dozed off. When she woke up, the fire was out, and she didn’t want to use her last match to try again. The sky was fully lit, so she moved to the dock for the sun’s warmth. She looked down and was surprised to be wearing Michael’s clothes. After his Jeep rolled away across the river, she pressed her face into the clean sweatshirt.

  • Chapter Ten •

  When night muscled in, Margo used her last match to light the lamp. There wasn’t much kerosene left, and the flicker of light only seemed to intensify the darkness. She heard rain on the roof, and it occurred to her, as if for the first time, that Brian really would not be coming back and that Paul surely would. She thought of the Murray farm, of the shoulder-high stacks of wood Uncle Cal and the boys must have already cut, split, and stacked for the winter. Her own supply was a sled full of split oak and two armloads of broken branches. Last winter, Brian had kept the cabin well stocked with food and fuel, but Margo didn’t have the resources. She didn’t even have a chainsaw, since Brian had taken it to town the day he was arrested. Maybe she ought to get out while she could, row across and hide her boat somewhere, and then hitchhike to Lake Lynne. If only her mother wanted her to come.

  All evening Margo sat o
n Brian’s bed with blankets around her and watched the lights in Michael’s house. She imagined she could make out his silhouette hunched over the table, where he was probably reading. She wondered if he had to clean house every night in order to keep things as tidy as they were, and she wondered if there were really girls who had been raised by wolves.

  She had no matches left; if the woodstove and lantern went out during the night, she wouldn’t be able to relight them or the propane cooking stove. And Paul could show up at any minute. Though it was late, she had to get out of the cabin, at least until she was certain Paul wouldn’t come that night. The gas station was open until ten o’clock. She pulled one of Brian’s wool sweaters over Michael’s clean sweatshirt and carried the sleeping bag to the boat in case she had to sleep outside. She wrapped her Marlin in the sleeping bag and put it on the rear seat beside her. She couldn’t put anything under the seat because she hadn’t bailed the water after the recent rains. Past Willow Island, her engine sputtered out of gas and died. She took up her oars and rowed for a few hundred yards, before she paused. She patted her front pants pocket where she’d put her bills and change yesterday, and she found it empty. The pants were Michael’s. She had her wallet, but it contained no money. She had left her bills and change in her own jeans on the edge of Michael’s bathtub. She lifted her oars out of the water and let herself be pulled back down the river. No stars shone tonight, and cold rain began to pour down.

  Rainwater pooled around her feet. Instead of going to her own side of the river when she rounded the last bend, she pulled up at Michael’s oil-barrel float. She could get her money back, and surely he had some matches she could borrow. He probably even had lawn mower gas she could use in her motor to get back upstream. She tied up her boat, checked the shed door, and found it padlocked. With her rifle in one hand, the sleeping bag held around her with the other, she approached the house and looked in through the sliding glass door. At first she could see only the glowing numbers on a digital clock. As her eyes adjusted, she saw King rise from the floor at the foot of the bed.