Once Upon a River Page 0,55
from the Secretary of State and contained the Michigan ID card she’d applied for three weeks earlier. She would use the card to get her hunting and fishing licenses.
When Michael got home that evening, he went into the house as usual. Then he came out the back door and approached Margo, who was skinning a bullhead catfish near the upstream edge of his property. Out of squeamishness and a dislike of mess, he usually avoided watching her prepare the fish and game she caught.
“Your ID says you were born in 1963.” He seemed to choke on his words. “I saw it sitting on the table.”
“So?”
“You just turned seventeen in November, after you moved in with me. Jesus, Margaret.”
The tail of the bullhead curled away from the tree. The fish arched its half-skinned body, kept pushing against the nail that held its head to the tree. On this pleasant afternoon, Margo had forgotten about how her age could matter.
“For Christ’s sake, Margaret, can’t you hit it on the head or something?”
“What?”
“Do you really want to skin something alive?” Michael said. “The damned fish. It’s in pain. Can’t you kill it first?”
“My grandpa taught me—”
“He taught you to skin a creature alive?”
“Told me, I mean . . . fish don’t feel pain.”
“Jesus, Margo, look at that thing writhe—if that’s not pain, I don’t know what is.”
Margo picked up her knife and slashed through the bullhead’s spinal cord. Its body fell to the ground.
“I’m sorry I said it like that,” Michael said. “I’ve just never seen one struggle that way. Really, it’s okay.”
“I do hit them on the head, but sometimes they wake up.”
He was holding her ID between his thumb and finger. “You even take a beautiful driver’s license photo. God, Margaret.”
She stood quietly, headless fish in one hand, knife in the other. Silence had so far been her best response when Michael was upset.
“You told me you were turning nineteen when we met. You were sixteen. I slept with a sixteen-year-old girl. And now I’m with a
seventeen-year-old girl. Stop looking at me that way. It’s maddening when you stare.”
Margo looked beyond him, at the river.
“What is the age of consent in this state? I didn’t think I would ever need to know.”
Margo watched him cross the lawn and disappear into the house. When Michael was upset, he didn’t usually stay that way for long. She didn’t know if this time would be different or what that might mean. She finished skinning the fish, stinging her hand only once.
The winter had dragged on too long, and now that spring was here, hundreds of daffodils bloomed alongside Michael’s house. Thirty-some miles downstream, Joanna had planted hundreds of daffodils around the Murray house and yard, ones she called jonquils and narcissus and paper flowers, some etched with orange, so that every April the Murray place looked like a fairyland. Occasionally Margo thought of shooting their blossom heads off with .22 shotshells, but it was only to see the petals spray like fireworks, to create a different kind of beauty. Shotshell was what Annie Oakley used to explode glass balls in the air at exhibitions.
Margo was enjoying living with Michael, but after all these months she still had not dared unpack. She washed her clothes in his machine and stuffed them back into her army bag. She felt restless whenever she spent too much time indoors, but knew she would have a hard time living without Michael’s household comforts again, without furnace heat, hot water, and store-bought food. She had reshaped her life around Michael’s routines and his sensible habits so thoroughly that she could go for hours without thinking about her daddy or her old life, or even about Brian or Paul, despite the cabin being right across the way. Michael worked patiently on his projects in the evenings with her assistance, finishing the floors and installing the baseboards in room after room, striving to master the skills he needed to make his house perfect. The thought that he might finish the remodeling made her uneasy—she feared that when the house was to his liking he might turn his attention to improving her. Fortunately, he was nowhere near finishing the boat, so that could occupy him awhile.
Margo had been learning more about Annie Oakley ever since Michael brought her a copy of Annie Oakley: Life and Legend. It said that Annie had been born Phoebe Ann Mosey and changed her name as an adult. After her father’s death, the girl’s mother sent thirteen-year-old Phoebe