Once Upon a River Page 0,123

now, but only about Smoke, who seemed so weak. He also sounded more serious, spookier than ever before. If tonight’s storm dropped a lot of snow, Margo was afraid she wouldn’t be able to get through the field to his house in the morning to help him. She also wanted to tell Smoke that she was not giving up on her ma, not really, not the way he thought. After dark, when the winds started picking up, Margo let her wood stove burn all the way down, and she laid another fire with newspaper and sticks, got it all ready, but didn’t light it.

Margo locked up the Glutton and tramped back through the snow-covered cow pasture. The river sounded strange, as though glass were breaking all along its edges. Smoke’s patio door was not locked, so she went in. She took off her boots and parka and walked quietly to Smoke’s bedroom. Though the rest of the house was cluttered, his bedroom was sparely decorated and almost empty. She climbed into the double bed in her long underwear and lay beside Smoke. The housekeeping aide had changed the sheets the day before, and they felt clean. Margo had been putting off washing her own sheets, since she would either have to carry them down to Smoke’s or wash them in her canning kettle and freeze-dry them outside.

“I don’t want to lose you,” she said in a loud whisper. “I don’t want you to leave me.”

“I’m not your ma.”

“I know.”

“I’m a tired old man.” At first Smoke was rigid beside her, and then Margo felt him relax, as her grandpa had warmed and relaxed beside her on the sun porch. At the end, her grandpa had been weak and thin like Smoke, though he’d had lumps like tree knots on his armpits and neck and groin. Smoke’s lumps were inside his lungs. Margo moved her hands across his shoulder blades. He shivered and then sighed. She lightly caressed his shoulders, his ribs, the small of his back. Through his long underwear shirt, she felt the heat of his pressure sores.

She and Smoke lay that way for a few hours, neither of them quite falling asleep because of the strangeness and sweetness of being beside another person, until Smoke began to cough. He sat up on the edge of the bed and coughed for more than forty-five minutes according to the clock by the bed. The minute hand on the lighted clock face had moved slowly, but Margo didn’t dare shift or speak or touch Smoke, for fear of making it worse. She knew she could put her arm around Smoke’s neck and close his throat, stop his choking by stopping his breathing. Margo could bring Smoke peace, and if she pressed her thumbs over his windpipe, he would not struggle. She could end his pain right now, but she did not want to be his angel of death. Nightmare lay silent but awake on the floor. The dog’s brown eyes glistened in the dark as he watched his master.

Smoke tipped up a bottle of codeine syrup to get the last drops. He readjusted his tubes and folded himself so his body seemed like a leathery shell surrounding his brittle lungs. After the coughing subsided, he breathed sharply through pursed lips. He disconnected his oxygen and lit and smoked a cigarette. He lit a second cigarette from the first, and finally a third. Margo saw how cigarettes were Smoke’s slow-acting angels of death, the agonizingly slow hands of his strangulation. After putting out the third cigarette in the ashtray on the floor, Smoke lay back down, and Margo placed a hand on his shoulder. She leaned in and kissed his cheek.

“Smoke, you shaved. You’re so smooth.” She took his hand in hers, and they fell asleep.

Margo awoke alone to the sounds of Smoke’s wheelchair squeaking in the other room. She heard the door to the patio opening, wind roaring, and Nightmare whining. The door closed and she heard windowpanes rattling against the storm. These days she had a hard time pulling herself out of sleep, even to feed the woodstove, because the creature in her belly always tried to drag her back to dreams, sapping her consciousness until she’d gotten eight, nine, even ten hours of sleep. She shook off her exhaustion, dressed, and gathered together her things in order not to leave any evidence in case Smoke’s nieces stopped by. A long time ago, back in Murrayville, she had sometimes awakened