Once Upon a River Page 0,22

bites from the loaf of bread, the first thing she’d eaten all day. When she set out onto the water, she felt an urge to let herself go with the current, to slip effortlessly downstream. Her mother was upstream, though, so she began to row.

• Chapter Six •

When Margo heard three shotgun blasts in succession, the sound rattled her, made her want to shoot in response. It would still be deer hunting season for a few more days. When she saw the Slocum camping trailers on the north bank, she rowed as hard as she could to pass quickly and avoid being seen. A few hundred yards beyond that, the river curved, and Margo heard voices and laughter coming from outside the abandoned cabin that Junior called the marijuana house. She ran her boat onto the sandbar just below the place and decided to wait for full darkness, rather than risk being seen. She took off her leather work gloves and breathed onto her hands. The tiny cabin here was owned by the Murrays and until three years ago had been used by one of Grandpa’s brothers for weekend fishing. Margo listened to the teenage voices. A girl’s laughter exploded like automatic weapon fire and then was muffled by a closing door. When all was quiet for a while, Margo climbed up on the bank for a better look.

A white-tailed buck approached the river only twenty-five yards away, near the dock. Margo loaded six cartridges from her pocket into the magazine tube of the Marlin, chambered a round as quietly as she could, and cocked the hammer into the safety position. The loaded rifle felt good in her hands. When the buck stopped at the riverbank and turned to look in her direction, Margo slowed her breathing. With the rifle resting on one knee, she studied the creature, counted ten points, saw a raw V-shaped tear on his cheek, maybe a wound from fighting another male. Her hands stopped shaking. She could take it down with the .22 if she hit it in the eye or the temple. The deer lowered its head to drink from the river. The lever-action Marlin was slightly heavier than her daddy’s bolt-action rifle, but while she aimed the gun, she felt weightless and free from her exhaustion.

“Don’t shoot!” a female voice whispered loudly from behind her. The deer started at the sound, doubled up its legs, and bounded from the water’s edge.

Margo jumped back down the bank, climbed into her boat, and pushed off.

“Hey, are you Junior’s cousin? Come back and hang out with us!” the girl shouted. Margo kept rowing. The girl said to someone else, “I think that was Junior’s cousin.”

Margo recognized her voice. She was one of Junior’s friends, a girl Ricky had once referred to as a slut. She cleared her throat and managed to say, “I got no cousins. My name is Annie.”

Margo rowed upstream, warmed herself against the current. She was glad the girl had stopped her from shooting the buck. The meat would have gone to waste on the riverbank. Margo rowed harder when she realized she had left the Murray house unlocked in her hurry. She wondered if Joanna would make her family another loaf of swirled cinnamon bread to replace the one Margo had taken. After about two hours of hard pulling in the dark, she found a shallow stream, maneuvered herself a few yards up into it, out of view of river traffic, and tied her boat to the roots of a tree. She curled up in her sleeping bag on the back seat of her boat as she used to curl on the couch to wait for Crane to come home, and fell asleep. Rocked by the motion of the river, she slept hard and for a long time, until the sun was high the following day. She woke up cold, stiff, and confused about where she was, and also grateful no one had bothered her. She’d heard no one shouting her name, but she felt eyes on her. She moved her toes to warm them inside her boots and saw on shore a big buck. When she sat up and made a noise with the tarp, the buck turned to show a V-shaped gash and then walked a few yards deeper into the woods. She ate half the loaf of cinnamon bread and began rowing again.

In the middle of the afternoon, Margo sighted ahead a riverside gas station where boats refueled, and