Bonnie Campbell - Once Upon a River

Margo inhaled.

“Sweet Mother of Jesus,” he said and folded his cards into a stack. “Am I seeing a beautiful ghost, or has the maiden of the river come upstream to bless me? Come in out of the cold and shut the door.” He returned to the table, sat down, and leaned back in his chair to take a wider view of her. He seemed genuinely overwhelmed by Margo’s presence. Paul was sitting with his back to the door, looking over his shoulder. He squinted one eye. “Jesus, Brian. What’s a woman doing here with a gun? Is she going to shoot us?”

“Put on your glasses, Pauly. It’s Maggie Crane,” Brian said.

Margo might have cried in relief at being anywhere she could rest. She was grateful to be out of the elements, but the sheer size of the two men spooked her. Both of them were as tall as Cal and bigger around. She was at their mercy. If they didn’t feed her, she would starve; if they sent her away, she would probably freeze; if they wanted to force her to do anything with them, they might well succeed.

“Put down your rifle, Maggie, and come sit.” Brian pulled a chair away from the table and patted the seat with his hand. She rested the butt plate of the Marlin on the pine floor and leaned the barrel in a corner, next to a broom. She sat in the chair beside Bryan.

“You came just in time for my winning hand,” Paul said.

Margo didn’t know why she had earlier thought the two men seemed alike. They were the same size and their features were similar—black hair, beards, and blue eyes—but where Brian was broad-shouldered and solid in the middle, Paul was rounded in his shoulders and belly. Brian’s hair was too short to go into a ponytail like the one Paul wore. Paul’s face was thinner and paler and intensely focused on his cards, which he now put down reluctantly. He fished a pair of glasses from the pocket of his sheepskin-lined vest and put them on. One eye looked big through the glasses, and the other was half closed. Margo couldn’t stop looking at him.

“One hand isn’t going to drag you out of your five-year losing streak, you sorry bastard,” Brian said.

“I beat you last week.”

“Like hell you did.” Brian turned to Margo. “We heard the news about your daddy. We’re so sorry. I worked with him for a couple years in heat-treating. Old Man Murray said he was smart and very careful. That’s what he always said about him. Loved him like a son. I mean, he was his son, I guess. I never knew the story there.”

“I’m sorry, too,” Paul said. “I never met him, but that’s a rough business.”

Brian said, “Paul and I lost our daddy five years ago, and it wasn’t easy, not even for us grown men. Even though the son of a bitch used to beat the hell out of us.”

“He sure did,” Paul said. “That mean bastard beat us and made us tough.”

“Made us the mean bastards we are today,” Brian said.

Paul smiled and took off his glasses. One eye remained squinted.

“Why don’t you leave them on so you can see?” Brian said.

“The damned things give me a headache. Worry about your own eyes, Brian.”

“When we were kids, I shot my brother in the eye with a BB, blinded him in his right eye, so I have to take care of him now,” Brian said.

“You don’t take care of me, asshole.”

“Kept him out of Vietnam. Probably saved his goddamned life,” Brian said.

“Can we just finish the game?”

“The other eye went blind for the usual reason. Too much yanking his own chain.” Brian winked at Margo. “The priest warned us.”

“Will you shut the fuck up, Brian?”

Margo took off her leather gloves and laid them on the table. They remained in the shape of her curled hands.

“Oh, poor Maggie. Paul, this child is freezing. Look at her fingers.” Brian took both her hands in his and exhaled hot breath on them. Earlier, when she had breathed on them herself, it had done little good, but Brian’s big body—even his lungs must be big—created real heat. Even as she felt wary, she wanted to lean her head against him.

Paul said, “I hope you don’t mind me asking, Miss Maggie, but isn’t your family wondering where you are right now?”

“Her family’s the Murrays, Pauly. Would you want to be with them Murray bastards?”

“Still, her family’s got to want her,” Paul said. “What about her ma?”

“Her ma run off and left her a year and a half ago, run off with a man from Heart of Pines. Maggie, is that who you’re trying to get to? Your ma?”

Margo inhaled sharply. She hadn’t considered Brian might know her mother.

“Give me two cards,” Paul said.

Brian let go of Margo’s hands and gave Paul two cards, took two himself. Paul gripped his cards so tightly his fingertips whitened.

“We’ll get you on your way tomorrow, wherever you want to go,” Brian said. “Don’t you worry. You’re fine here tonight.”

“I understand a woman might leave her old man,” Paul said, anger coming quickly into his voice. “But what kind of woman would leave her kid? Her daughter especially? My wife would die before she’d leave one of my kids behind.”

“Ours is not to judge,” Brian said and picked up Margo’s hands again. After he rubbed them on and off for a few minutes, the pink began to return. Margo wanted to go stand by the woodstove, but she knew if she did she would never want to leave its intense warmth. As if reading her mind, Brian stood up, surprising her again with his great size, and fed the stove some split logs from a pile behind it.

Paul spoke up again. “There’s something else I heard rumor of. Brian heard it, too. Is it true, Maggie, that your papa shot Cal Murray’s dick off?” Paul’s voice was uneven. She was grateful to be sitting near Brian, who seemed steady and calm.

“No need to be crude, Pauly,” Brian said, grinning to show that he appreciated this particular sort of crudeness. Then he frowned. “But maybe it’s good you know the kind of rumors that are flying, Maggie.”

“Can I have some water?” Margo whispered.

“So she does talk!” Brian said. “I never heard you talk before. Well, don’t you say anything you don’t want to say. We’ll figure it all out tomorrow.”

“Brian don’t believe your daddy did what they said,” Paul said.

“Never mind all that,” Brian said. “You stay here tonight. We’ll get you where you need to go. Or stay as long as you like. Will you have to get home for the funeral?”

Margo shook her head. There would be no funeral, no fuss.

Brian poured a glass of water from a kettle on the counter. “We boil the well water here just to be safe,” he said.

Margo drank the glass down and accepted a refill.

“Let’s get some food into you, Maggie,” Brian said. “We’ve got some leftover trout and a piece of venison steak from that deer of yours. I took it to do your daddy a favor, but now I’m glad, because I haven’t gotten a deer myself. Maybe beautiful girls are luring away all the bucks, leaving nothing for us big, ugly men.”

Though Paul complained about another delay in the game, Brian lit the propane stove, and within a few minutes he presented her with an orange plate containing meat, a section of fish with the bone in, a couple of chunks of potato, and some greasy green beans with bits of bacon on them. While Paul and Brian played, she ate. When Brian handed her a piece of store-bought white bread, she wiped the plate clean with it.

“You sure can eat,” Paul said, “for a little gal.”

“She’s a good eater, all right,” Brian said.

She stopped chewing the bread.

“Don’t stop,” Brian said. “It’s good you have an appetite. You don’t live if you don’t eat. Some people give up and waste away in hard times.”