Once Upon a River (26 page)

“Are you poaching?” the man asked.

Margo removed the tail and laid that beside the head on the bag with the guts. The man didn’t look dangerous, and if he grabbed her, she figured she would stab him or clunk him with the butt of the Marlin.

“That’s impressive, what you’re doing,” he said and pushed coarse black hair out of his eyes. “I’d like to know how to skin a rabbit.”

“I’d show you for five bucks,” she said. Five dollars would get her enough ammo to keep her going for a while. She fished through the intestines for the liver, ran her finger over it to assure herself it had no spots that could signal rabbit fever. The man followed her to the river’s edge, where she tossed the guts to the fish and turtles. She put the rabbit in a potato chip bag, mushed it around in the salt, tied it up with a string, and submerged all but the top of the bag in the water. She held it down with a rock.

“What if I asked to see your hunting license?” he asked. He was standing behind her, smiling. One front tooth lapped over the other.

She ignored him.

“My people used to live in this place, I’m pretty sure.” He clasped his soft, puffy hands in front of his chest. “Would you share your food with me?”

“You just go around asking people for food?” Margo watched four blue jays swoop in and screech in unison.

“When you’re in a strange land, you have to depend on the generosity of the local inhabitants.”

Margo thought about the rabbit and decided there was plenty for two people.

“I’ve been trying to eat Indian food while I’m out here,” he said.

“Why?”

“I’m an Indian, for starters. That’s what I mean that my people came from around here.”

Margo studied him more carefully. Ever since reading Michael’s book, she had been hoping to meet an Indian hunter. She had imagined he would be a strong, wolverine-hearted Indian with a bow and arrow, not some soft-looking guy with a weird way of talking and no weapons.

“That rabbit and those vegetables over there look good.”

“You don’t seem like an Indian,” Margo said, although when she studied him more closely, she saw that he did resemble the guy in the Indian hunter book, though he wore jeans and a sweatshirt instead of buckskin.

He squatted down so close to her she could feel his breath on her neck. “Why on earth is a young woman skinning a rabbit in a picnic park? I’ve seen some weird things since I’ve been in this state.”

“I shot a man’s pecker once,” she said. “Just so you know not to bother me.”

He stood up and moved to look at her from another angle. “Don’t worry about me. I’m a happily married man. Listen, if that meat’s safe, I will give you five dollars and some delicious dried papaya and pineapple in exchange for dinner,” the man said.

She held out her hand. She had never heard of papaya, wondered if it was Indian food.

“How old are you?” He dug in his wallet for a five-dollar bill and handed it to her.

“Twenty-one.”

The setting sun put a gold sheen in the man’s hair. His skin was golden, too, the same color Brian’s had been in summer after he’d worked outside. This Indian was pretty, she thought, much prettier than Sitting Bull, who looked in his photos like a man carved out of stone and not happy about it. And unless this man really intended to report her to the DNR, he posed no danger. When the potato chip bag in the water beside her floated up, she put another rock on it to keep it under. She knew if she left it even for a few minutes, one of the park’s fat, bold raccoons would grab it.

“Why do you chill the meat like that?”

She wished she had asked her grandpa or Brian the same question. Maybe it had something to do with parasites or bacteria. The Indian hunter had also cooled his game before eating it. “Seems like an Indian would know,” she said.

“I grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska. We didn’t cook rabbits. Closest I came was watching Elmer Fudd.” The man squatted again beside her at the water’s edge. “You aren’t twenty-one. You look seventeen, nineteen tops.”

“So why’d you ask me, if you think you know?”

“It’s hard to see you underneath all that dirt. Shouldn’t your parents be calling you home soon? Or are you out here waiting for some man your parents disapprove of?”

“I don’t like men,” she said.

He laughed and gave up on his squatting, let one knee fall to the ground. Margo didn’t shift her weight, though her legs were growing stiff. The man studied the river, but Margo knew she could study it longer.

“This place used to be called River of Three Herons, from what I can deduce. This part of it anyway,” he said.

“It’s the Stark River,” Margo said. “Named after the explorer Frederick Stark.”

“Well, there were folks here long before Mr. Stark wandered by with his cap and fife and tweed vest,” he said and eyed her. “I’m following the Potawatomi migration route. The whole tribe walked down from the Upper Peninsula, all the way to the Kalamazoo River, four or five hundred miles.”

“Why?”

“Why did they walk down? Or why am I following their route?”

“You’re not walking.”

“What’s your name?”

“Margaret,” she said. “Margo.”

“Names matter a lot. Do you want to know my name?” He asked this in what seemed to Margo an arrogant way, as if he imagined his name had some special importance.

“No. I don’t care about your name.”

“Then I won’t tell you. You’ll have to guess. It’ll be like Rumpel-
stiltskin.”

“You’re not from around here, are you?” Margo meant it as an insult, but the Indian just shook his head.

“I spent the summer teaching some kids math at a reservation in the Upper Peninsula. Now I’m on my way home. Unless eating that rabbit kills me.”

A while later, she skewered the rabbit on a sharpened hickory stick and cooked it over the fire. She tried to pay attention to the birds and water creatures near her camp, but the Indian was a distraction, and it took all her energy to remain quiet. When the rabbit was close to being done, she propped the ears of corn up at the edges of the fire and steamed them in their husks. Then they sat cross-legged on opposite sides of the fire, eating from paper plates the Indian had brought from his car.

“I like eating the food of my ancestors,” he said.

Margo thought it was an especially good rabbit, probably fattened on beans and cabbage from somebody’s garden.

By the time they finished, the sun was setting. They burned the plates in the fire, and the Indian went and got a pint of Wild Turkey from his car. He sat back down and held the bottle out to her. “Do you want a sip?”

“No. Is that what your ancestors drank?”

“Oh, I guess the Europeans brought us a few valuable things.” He cracked open the bottle and inhaled deeply. He seemed to relax even before he took a drink. He said, “I do have a bottle of whiskey from the reservation, but I’m saving it until I get to the Kalamazoo River.”

“There’s a dam between here and there.”

“In a car, that’s not a problem.” As he drank, he watched the darkening river. “The problem is that the Kalamazoo River is polluted all to heck, polluted beyond any possibility of rejuvenation. It’s the same all across the country. Everything’s poisoned,” he said. After only a few sips, his voice was different, deeper.

Margo took her gun-cleaning kit from where she kept it tied on her pack. Without breaking her rifle down, she cleaned the barrel, stinking up the air with her Hoppe’s #9 solvent. Then she disassembled her cleaning rod, wrapped it in an old T-shirt of Michael’s, and put it away. The air chilled and the sky went mad with stars. Margo wrapped herself more tightly in her father’s Carhartt jacket and watched the Indian get drunk. By the firelight, she saw his eyes grow red and his lids droop. She watched his shoulders relax until he was slumping. Finally he tipped over, still clutching the empty pint bottle in his right hand. With his left arm, he held his knees to his chest.

At this time of night, usually Margo would have raided a garden for more vegetables, but instead she stayed put. Letting herself look, really look, hard and long at somebody was a pleasure, almost as soothing to her as aiming and shooting. Margo had needed food and shelter from other people, but this was the first time somebody needed her; this guy had come to her, and she had fed him. She liked the idea of him paying her for the food. She was still too close to Murrayville to cash her mother’s money order. There was no expiration date on it, but the edges of the paper were starting to fray.

She folded the tarp over the Marlin to keep the dew off, thought of it as tucking the rifle in to sleep. Later in the night, the Indian stumbled to his car, peed in the dirt behind it, and went to sleep inside. Margo put the metal box of ashes between herself and the fire and listened for a barred owl that she’d heard a few nights ago. She softly called into the silence, “
Who-who, who cooks for you?
” again and again, but got no response.

The Indian paid her four one-dollar bills the following morning for a breakfast of tomatoes, tiny river clams she steamed in a frying pan the Indian had, and two eggs from the domestic ducks she’d been luring over. After they burned their paper plates, he announced he was heading south to the Kalamazoo River to have a look before returning to California.

She heard some goose honks and looked up to see a V of geese crossing the river high above. The thought of creatures migrating, moving effortlessly through the sky, made her miss her boat. Margo looked around her campsite, at her bag, which was all packed. Her sleeping bag was rolled up and attached to it.

“Can I go with you?” Margo asked. She tucked her jeans into her boots and retied them; she did this out of habit, though the mosquitoes weren’t bad today with the breeze blowing. “My ma lives near Kalamazoo.”

“I’m not taking a girl with me.” He stood and looked down at her. “I’m a married man.”

“My dad is dead, and I need to find my ma.”

“I’m sorry about your dad. But I’m not in the business of helping lost girls find their mothers.”

“I can show you some plants Indians ate. Watercress, wild onion, ramps, hickory nuts.” Of course, the ramps and onions were out of season already. Maybe she could get him some rose hips—that was something the Indian hunter ate—or crab apples or sweet, custardy pawpaws, which must be about ripe now if she could find a tree. Black walnuts were starting to fall. She stood up to look into his face. “As soon as there’s a rain we’ll have giant puffball mushrooms.”

“Let me think about this.” He squatted, and after a few minutes he gave up on squatting and sat down cross-legged. “Stop staring at me. A person can’t think with another person staring at him.”

“I’ll cook you a duck when we get there. Your ancestors probably ate duck.”

“I do love duck.”

“There’s tons of mallards.” She walked to the river and washed her hands and face, rubbed her skin with a little sand, and rinsed. Then she looked back at him across the distance.

“If you get there and change your mind, I can’t bring you back,” he shouted. “And if I take you, you’re not taking any guns. And don’t try to feed me any weird mushrooms.”

“I only got a rifle,” she shouted back.

“I’m against guns. And anyhow there’s laws about transporting guns.”

“You can carry a rifle in a car so long as it’s in the back, unloaded.” She walked over to him, took her rifle off her shoulder, and showed him the stock. “See, it’s got a squirrel carved in it. Annie Oakley had one like this, for trick shooting. This metal is chrome.”

“I don’t care if a gun is pretty. And you’re not a trick shooter.”

Margo wondered if practicing trick shots had made her into a trick shooter yet. “If I can shoot that fruit off that fence post from here, will you take me to the Kalamazoo?”

“What is that thing anyway?” He walked over with Margo and picked up the Osage orange she had put there. He put it back and wiped his hands on his jeans. “It looks like a green brain. Did my ancestors eat these?”

“No, but they keep bugs and spiders away. As kids we called them brain fruit.”

He picked it up again, this time with two fingers, sniffed it, and put it back. “It’s sticky.”

“If I can knock that off the post from twelve paces with one shot, can I come with you?” The sun was shining on the Osage orange, lighting it up.

“Even I could probably hit that,” the Indian said. He picked up a nut from the ground and held it out to her. “What’s this? It looks like a miniature one of those things.”

“It’s an acorn from a burr oak.”

He put it on top of the Osage orange. “How about this? If you can hit this acorn without hitting the ugly fruit here, you and your gun can come along for the ride, so long as you’re both unloaded.”

“That’s pretty small.” It was big for an acorn, really, an inch and a half in diameter. Before she’d run low on ammo, she’d been consistently hitting crab apples smaller than that off this same fence post eight out of ten times.

“So’s my car when it comes to girls and guns.” They counted out the paces, and he stood beside her. She rested the butt of the rifle on her bent knee, removed the magazine tube, dropped in one of her nine remaining cartridges, and secured it. She worked the lever to chamber the round. She never tired of that motion.