Bonnie Campbell - Once Upon a River

With the last bite of bread, she scraped a last bit of fish off the comb of its bones.

“Pauly, can you believe this vision of loveliness has come to us for help?”

“I got to say, Brian, I’m not feeling good about that. How old do you think she is?” Paul spoke as though she weren’t sitting right there.

“Eighteen,” Margo said quietly.

“Are you coming to stay, then?” Brian asked and winked at her. “To cook me pancakes every morning and tell me I’m a handsome man? Because I’ve been looking for a girl like that.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Paul said. “How much have you had to drink? If she’s eighteen, she’s half your age. And I’m not so sure she’s eighteen. You got to watch out for my brother, Maggie. He finds trouble for himself.”

“Can we get you more food?” Brian asked. He took a slug of ginger brandy out of a pint bottle that was almost empty and held it toward her.

She shook her head no to the bottle and was less certain about saying no to more food.

“Poor lost lamb.” Brian screwed the cap back on the bottle.

“You should be with your mama right now,” Paul said, shaking his head, “not out here.”

“You said you know where she is,” Margo whispered. She fumbled in her pocket, opened her wallet, and got out the envelope with the address on the corner.

“More than a year ago she was around,” Brian said after studying the envelope. “I saw her a dozen times in Heart of Pines with a man named Carpinski. That could be his address. I never said so to your papa, but she was a real looker. She left here after a few months, I think. Somebody said she went to Florida. You’ve got to stop crying, honey.”

“Of course she’s crying,” Paul said. “She’s a little girl.”

Margo wiped at her eyes with the paper towel she’d been using as a napkin.

“We’ll find your ma for you. I’ll go talk to Carpinski. He’s an okay guy, lives in a little A-frame on Dog Leg Lake. You can stay here until we find her.”

“Brian, are you crazy? You’re going to get yourself arrested.”

“Eventually I’ll get arrested for one thing or another, and if I get it for helping a girl, well, that’s better than some other reason.”

Brian smelled like cigarette smoke and ginger brandy and the river, and his stoking the fire intensified the cabin’s food smells. It warmed the room so much that Paul took off his sheepskin-lined vest.

“Cal Murray is a son of a bitch,” Brian said again, shaking his head, “and his bad nature got bred right into the next generation in that boy Billy. Is he going to jail for what he did?”

“He’ll pay,” Margo said quietly.

“Did you hear that, Pauly? This girl’s going to get revenge. That’s how you make it through this, Maggie. Your daddy was a good man, and Cal Murray and his kid, neither one was fit to lick his boots.”

Margo let herself focus on Paul’s mismatched eyes one more time. When she sensed annoyance, she looked away and took comfort in Brian’s shoulder like a sturdy wall beside her.

“You telling us nobody’s looking for you right now?” Paul said.

She shook her head, though she couldn’t be sure.

“How old are you, really?” Paul said.

“Eighteen.”

“Contrary to my brother’s ideas, I haven’t fooled around with an underage girl since I was fifteen,” Brian said.

“Shit,” Paul said and shook his head.

“Pauly, what’s got into you? We were raised to take care of lost souls. Are you saying we can’t help her because she’s too pretty?”

“I’m just saying you ought to be careful in your situation.” Paul turned to look at Margo. “And she ought to be careful of you.”

“As long as you aren’t storing drugs here again, you’ve got nothing to worry about what I do, Pauly.” Brian put an arm around Margo and pulled her close for a moment.

“I’m telling you, Brian. She needs her ma or somebody like that,” Paul said.

“Don’t worry, Maggie, we’ll find your ma, wherever she went. It’s rare for people to just disappear,” Brian said.

“Try as they might.” Paul shook his head.

Margo shivered. Her blood was racing to her full belly. She flexed her fingers and wiggled her toes in her boots.

“Goddamn it, Brian. You’re looking for trouble. They’ll report her missing.”

“I’m not looking for trouble,” Brian said. He let loose of her to lay down his cards. “But trouble does find me somehow or other, little brother, doesn’t it?”

“You make your own trouble,” Paul said. “Ask any of them guys you picked a fight with lately. If they’re still breathing.”

Brian drew hard on his cigarette. Margo felt the air in the room change, fill with tension, until Brian shook his head. He laughed out a puff of smoke. “Listen, Paul, I’m not kicking this little girl out into the cold, so get used to her sitting here at this table for as long as she wants to stay.”

“Well, some of us have to work tomorrow,” Paul said. Before he left to go home, he brought in Margo’s backpack from The River Rose. Brian made up the couch with a slightly musty sheet and a heavy quilt he brought from the bedroom. As she got under the covers, he fed the fire again and put more wood on top of the stove to dry, and then he knelt on the floor beside her. He tucked the quilt around her to protect against drafts. When she finally closed her eyes from exhaustion, he kissed her mouth. She was too tired to be startled, and she let him kiss her.

“Don’t worry about anything, Maggie,” he said after he pulled away.

She knew that until she found her mother, she had nowhere else to go, and she wondered if she could make herself welcome here. She reached up and took hold of his beard, which was soft, and gently tugged him to her. Though only her and Brian’s mouths touched, she felt as though he were kissing her with his whole body, and it both frightened her and made her skin come alive. When his tongue slipped into her mouth, the hair on her arms and legs stood on end. He was still kissing her when she felt she was awakening from a long sleep, though surely only a minute or so had passed. The steady kissing quieted her sadness. She thought she could live and breathe inside this dampening kiss. When he finally pulled away, her lips felt swollen.

“Oh, Maggie,” he said, shaking his head. “You’d better get some sleep.” He pushed her hair back from her face, kissed her forehead, and went into the bedroom. She was grateful he left the door open. It made her feel less alone.

When Margo awoke, it was still dark outside. The room was lit by the kerosene lamp turned down low. She listened for an owl, but heard nothing. She realized all over again what it meant that her mother had left Heart of Pines. Of course her mother would want to go to Florida, a place where she could be warm year-round. Winters had been hard on Luanne.

Margo had shot Cal, and so Billy had killed Crane. By this middle-of-the-night reckoning, Margo had as good as shot her own father in the chest. She sat up on the couch. She did not want to be in her own skin right now, and she did not want to be alone. Though it must have been hours ago that she had kissed Brian, she was still feeling the force of his mouth. His scent permeated the quilt and the air around her. She could still taste the smoke and ginger-candy flavor of the liquor he had been drinking. She could still feel his beard on her neck.

She tucked the quilt around herself, but the wind coming through the windows was too much for the woodstove when it was damped down for the night. She would help Brian put plastic on the windows if he would let her stay here for a while. She would feed his fire and keep it going when he was away. She stood up from the couch, fed a log into the stove, and put another on top. She turned up the wick on the lantern. She draped the quilt over her shoulders and moved to the doorway of the cabin’s bedroom. She did not know if Brian would force a girl, but he couldn’t force her if she went to him on her own. She stood beside the bed until she saw Brian’s eyes glittering in the lamplight.