Once Upon a River Page 0,26
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.”
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