Once Upon a River Page 0,124

early like this from a dead sleep with a desire to hunt. Back then she had awakened fully with the abruptness of a light switched on. She’d dressed in silence, gotten her daddy’s shotgun from behind his truck seat or out of his closet, and set out into the woods. Now when that feeling came—and she felt a ghost of it even this morning—she found she could simply imagine shooting a buck and the feeling would subside, or she could go out and check her traps for muskrats or coons.

Margo went into the kitchen and did not see Smoke, but found Nightmare sniffing at the door. The lighted clock read six-twenty. Margo checked the bathroom, but Smoke was not there. She had earlier dreamed he had growled into the phone, or maybe it had not been a dream. The predawn sky was brightened by the blowing snow, but Margo did not turn on any lights in the house, did not spoil her night vision. She put on her fake-fur-lined parka, picked her rifle off the rack in the kitchen, and hung it over her shoulder. Though Smoke had given Margo his shotgun, Margo had left it in the rack, worrying that taking it away would make him feel diminished. She did not let Nightmare out because he would run down to the water and howl at the wind, and she would have to wait for him to return before she could go to sleep again. If Smoke was out there, Margo would get him back inside in a matter of seconds.

She stepped outside into the swirling snow and found him sitting in his wheelchair at the edge of the patio, looking down the steep hill toward the water. He wore only his glasses, his long underwear, and an unbuttoned work shirt with his name on it. Snow was accumulating on his shoulders and bare head, and the wind must have been biting his face, but he didn’t behave as if he were cold. Margo took one of his half-clenched hands in both of hers and warmed it.

“You shouldn’t be out here in a snowstorm, especially without your jacket. And without your oxygen,” Margo said. “Come back to bed.”

Nightmare barked.

“Sunrise in a few minutes,” Smoke whispered through puffs of breath, sounding stronger than he had the previous day. “I think the neighbors are out of town.”

“You want to see the sunrise in a snowstorm? Pink sky in the morning?”

Smoke sighed, and Margo felt his gaze move from the river, to her, and to the river again.

“Come sleep a little more. The sun rises every day.”

“My jacket. My smokes,” he finally said with those quick puffs of voice. “Don’t let the dog out.”

Margo went into the house and tried to calm Nightmare. “I’ll get Smoke back inside, and we’ll all go back to sleep,” Margo said. She grabbed the cigarettes from the bedroom, the jacket from the back of a kitchen chair. There on the table, she saw the note. She switched on the table lamp to read the heavy, neat print: To my busybody nieces. I cannot go to All Saints. I will not go. She stopped reading, dropped the cigarettes and the jacket, and after a brief struggle to keep Nightmare inside, she stepped outside into the storm. Smoke was gone.

Margo had not considered how close he had been to the edge of the patio. He must have pushed against the wheels with a burst of force strong enough to move him off the patio and to the edge of the hill. Once descending, it would have taken no strength to roll down the snow-covered hillside on the upstream side of the concrete steps and the dock. She followed the wheelchair tracks down the hill. In the pale light reflecting off the blowing snow, she thought she saw Smoke push his wheels once more. At the river’s edge, one wheel caught in the gap between the lawn and the retaining wall, stopping the chair abruptly. Smoke, however, continued moving forward through the blowing snow and onto the river, breaking through the slushy ice on the upstream side of the dock. Margo’s boots slipped out from under her as she was running down to help. She inadvertently kicked the chair forward, along with its oxygen tank, so it tumbled off the wall and into the water on top of Smoke’s legs. The oxygen slid away and disappeared. The current dragged Smoke’s body and the chair against some branches that had gotten