Once Upon a River (30 page)

“If you were an Indian woman, you’d know it’s a heartbreaking story. That’s what a young woman can do in a community. That’s one of her powers, to break hearts.”

“Is your wife an Indian?”

“She’s a quarter Sioux. But let’s not talk about her now.”

“Sitting Bull used to tell Annie Oakley stories in the Wild West Show.”

“Sitting Bull was a great man. The Wild West Show was an insult to his sensibilities.” The Indian was slurring his words. He held up the bottle, which was two-thirds full. “I think there’s something funny in this whiskey. Jimson weed, maybe. I’m seeing things that aren’t there.”

“I wish I could live right on the river, like the old-time Indians did,” Margo said.

“Indians never lived on the river,” he said. “The river was their highway. They got up above it so they could keep an eye on who was coming and going. We had a lot of enemies in those days. The men were always fighting some other tribe.”

“I don’t have any enemies on this river.”

“Your hair looks just like my wife’s hair. Let me comb it for you,” the Indian said. He took another big drink and produced a comb from a small zippered bag. “I always brush my wife’s hair.”

Margo hadn’t had anyone comb her hair since she was little. The Indian worked gently, starting from the tangled ends, and he didn’t lose patience and pull as her mother and Joanna used to. And every time one of his hands brushed against her, her skin flushed and her body seemed to swell. When he declared his work finished, he put his arms around her and pulled her back against his chest. She let herself relax there, as though she had dived into the river and was letting herself go with the current. He kissed her neck, and she twisted around and pressed her mouth to his. She had not meant for this to happen, but she wanted it now.

They made love for a long time, rolling over onto soft pine needles. She felt the minutes stretch into hours, as if the normal rules of time had been suspended. She had never made love with a man outdoors. The wind gave them something, as did the water flowing past. Every creature that scurried on the ground, or flew in the air nearby or swam or splashed in the river passed some energy to them. After a while, the river itself seemed to creep up over its banks to flow around them and the current pushed them closer to each other. When he finished, he said, “You know, there’s an idea that when a woman makes love to a man, she gives over the strength and power of the other men she’s been with.” When he realized her breathing was strained, he rolled off and propped himself on his elbow. He lay naked in the cool air. “Tell me what I get from you.”

She shrugged. “You look like an animal.”

“What animal?”

“I don’t know.” She brushed pine needles off his hip, studied his resting cock.

“A fox?” he suggested. “I always think if I could be an animal I’d be a fox.”

“Why a fox?”

“Because the fox is clever. What about you?”

She glanced around at the ancient landscape of trees and river. She didn’t want to choose any single animal.

“I need another drink.” He glanced around for the bottle, which Margo saw was leaning against one of the stones by the fire, half full.

“You said you didn’t want to drink more than half the bottle.” Margo got up and retrieved a few small chunks of wood she had split earlier with the Indian’s hatchet. She moved her soup aside and tossed them on the fire.

“That wasn’t the real me. This is the real me. Naked me.”

She handed him the bottle, and he took a long drink and replaced the cap. Margo sat at the foot of her sleeping bag near him. Though it was cool, she liked being naked under the stars. She thought maybe if the Indian was hungover he wouldn’t leave in the morning. He’d have to wait another day to drive, and she could put off being alone.

“You have to take a drink of this,” he said.

“I don’t like it. I already tasted it.”

“You can’t know this whiskey from a taste. You didn’t even open your mouth before. You have to take a swallow.” He sidled up close to her, so his naked shoulder was pressed against hers. She had hoped that his effect on her would have quieted, but she felt the electricity, stronger than before, and pressed back against him in an effort to subdue it. She listened for a clue from the river, but it had gone silent. “I don’t like to drink alcohol,” she said.

“Whiskey is a religion, a spirit in a bottle. Take a swallow, feel it move through your whole body. You know, Margo, I’ve never betrayed my wife up to now.” He leaned into her neck. “My wife uses that same shampoo. I know the smell. Your hair looks black like hers in the dark.”

“I’ll take a drink if you take a bite of puffball mushroom.”

“I don’t know.” He rested the bottle on her knee.

“You saw me eat it, and I’m not poisoned.”

“Okay, I’ll eat it for breakfast. If you’re still alive then,” the Indian said. “I promise.”

Margo took a deep breath, tipped the bottle up, and swallowed. Her mouth and throat burned. “God,” she said, when she could speak.

“That’s the first time I’ve heard you say
God
. Now what do you see? An animal?”

“I don’t know,” she said, choking. Her brain was short-circuiting as the whiskey moved through her. When the burning in her mouth subsided, she tasted more clearly the bitterness.

“Close your eyes,” the Indian said. “What do you see when you close your eyes?”

She did not close her eyes. “God, how can you drink that?”

“You have to tell what you see.”

“Just the river,” Margo said, though the animal was as real as life before her. She wanted to keep the vision of the wolverine to herself—it was just like the one in the Indian hunter book, just like the one her grandpa described, the glutton. For the Indian hunter, a wolverine hissing in his cave meant he should return to his tribe. But this animal was not threatening Margo. It regarded her calmly, seemed to accept her, and then it disappeared. Margo couldn’t shake how clearly she’d seen it standing before her, dog-sized, with skunk colors and long claws. She wished it had made a sound she could make in turn, but it had been silent.

The Indian put his face in her hair and said, “I think you’re a river spirit.”

“I’m not a river spirit. Why do guys always want to make a girl into something other than what she is?” Margo asked. She was not a wolf child, as Michael had called her. Even her grandpa’s naming her Sprite
and River Nymph
seemed odd now, as though he wanted her not to be a person, exactly.

“It makes a better story,” he said. “But there’s no story better than how you look naked, my dear, in this ancient place.” He lifted the hair off her neck and caressed her shoulders. When he finished the bottle, he kissed her. Once again, Margo could imagine no reason on this earth not to trust her body.

But this time, he was different. This time he rolled over her like floodwaters surging downstream. He sucked at her breasts as though he were feeding from her.

“What’s your name?” she whispered. She wanted this whole experience, whatever it was, but the change in the Indian scared her. “Who are you?” she asked.

“I don’t know my name. I swear I don’t know,” he whispered into her chest, and she felt his jaw grind against her breastbone. He took a deep breath and exhaled heat over her. “But we’ll never be here again in the land of my ancestors.”

“Now you sound like an Indian,” she said.

He climbed on top of her, and she rose to meet him. They moved their bodies on the sleeping bags and pine needles with such force that Margo felt her insides shaking. Her teeth rattled. She was too warm with his body on hers, and even when she straddled him, the night air couldn’t cool her. When the Indian pulled her down hard onto him, together they were a flood that rolled through the river valley, cleared the land, and swept away everything not tied down. The river noises and the slap of carp bodies on the surface filled the air around them, and above them the flying squirrels chittered and squeaked. Beneath them, the ground, which had been cool, now radiated heat.

By the time he rolled off her, they were slick with sweat. Margo could hardly breathe. She lay still, expecting to see steam rising off their bodies into the cool air. Even after a few minutes, she could not catch her breath. When he passed out, she curled beside him and calmed herself by listening to the gurgling sounds of the river.

She fell into a state that was not quite sleep, her body awake and wrestling with itself. Margo reached out to touch her daddy’s ashes, but found the box too hot. After a time she did sleep, and she dreamed of the wolverine, big as the black dog and with a weasel face, and then the wolverine became a fish coming up the river, big as Paul, and then, in the dream, she shot Paul and felt how it was a terrible thing to take a man’s life.

She awoke with the Indian pulling her close to him. She felt the cold zipper of his unzipped sleeping bag touch her naked belly. When she opened her eyes, she met his black eyes staring into hers. She told him she’d dreamed of a big fish, and he whispered, “I dreamed it, too. A sturgeon. They used to be in the river, big as cows.”

It wasn’t until later that Margo realized how crazy that sounded, that they’d both dreamed the same giant fish. In the morning she lay still, too exhausted to move or speak, while the Indian pulled away from her and stumbled up the path toward his car. He left behind his sleeping bag and camping pad, his frying pan and his hatchet. She didn’t try to stop him.

When she opened her eyes again, it was full daylight, and she was still exhausted. Her body ached. Everywhere she touched herself she found stones and pine needles and plants stuck to her skin. Tucked beneath her sleeping bag was a small cowskin bag with a drawstring and a simple bead design, and inside was a folded note and a roll of twenty-dollar bills.

Goodbye, Margo
, the note began.
I’ve never been unfaithful to my wife in the three years we’ve been married. I’m going to forget what happened between us. I hope you will do the same. Remember you have options in this life. Go back to school.
The note was dated
September 14, 1981
, but signed only
XXX
.

“Jerk,” she said. A big carp surfaced and a smaller carp did the same, and then both returned to the depths. She sat as still as a bird on a nest of eggs for hours that afternoon, clutching her rifle, but with no inclination to shoot anything, not even a squirrel when it scampered over her sleeping bag. She was drunk with the Indian’s scent, hungover with him, was half in love with him after just two days, but she thought she would be okay once she worked him out of her system. He had come to her for help, and she had helped him. She had fed him, and he had paid her for the food. Sex with him had been like nothing she had known, but if he had stayed any longer, they might have hurt each other. She needed to get some rest and think about how she would survive until her mother wrote to her. The Indian had left enough money for her to buy a boat. That evening she ate the soup she’d made from their leftovers.

PART

III

• Chapter Eighteen •

Two weeks after the Indian left, Margo didn’t start flowing as she should have, and one afternoon she realized what that meant, that she was with the Indian’s child. She had been foolish to trust her instincts when she was feeling lonesome. She had been foolish to follow her body’s desire and inclination in this strange new place. She did not stop crying for a long time, until she looked up on the ridge and saw a tall, thin man looking down at her.

The farmer owned the land where she had camped alone for two weeks. During this time, he and the men working for him were harvesting the nearby fields of soybeans. Upon spotting him, she stopped crying instantly, the way a baby bird stopped piping for food when a predator was near. Though her hands itched to lift her rifle, she sighted him only with her gaze. After a good long look, she turned away and set about combing out her loose hair with her fingers. She wound it up and twisted it against the back of her head and fixed it with her barrette. Her sleeping bags and camping pad were already rolled together into a thick bundle. She folded her tarp and collected her other things. The small amount of food at her campsite was piled into the big pot she’d gotten from the old man, and that was already hidden away in the windbreak, with the lid tied down against animal invasion. Her father’s ashes were in their metal box beside it. She was bothered that she could no longer pick up and carry everything she owned. Having the extra gear made her more self-sufficient, but less able or willing to run away from trouble, should there be any.