Once Upon a River Page 0,56
away to live with a couple who had no children. They worked her hard, beat her, and didn’t feed her enough. She called them the Wolves. As soon as she could escape from the attic where they locked her, she ran home to her mother’s. Only then did she take the old family rifle off the mantel and start hunting, as a way to earn her keep.
Twenty minutes later when Michael returned, he was still agitated. Margo wiped her hands on her jeans.
“The age of consent is seventeen in this state,” Michael said. “But seventeen. It’s so young. Should we go talk to your relations in Murrayville? Maybe it’s time we track down your mother. What the hell is the matter with her, anyhow?”
Margo shook her head. She wasn’t desperate enough to go where she wasn’t wanted.
“Will you swim with me when it gets warmer?” she asked in a quiet voice. She wanted to change the subject.
“I’m not much of a swimmer. Maybe we should get married,” he said. He looked into her face.
“Why?” she asked.
“Why? For all the normal reasons. Love. I love you, Margaret Louise,” Michael said, “and maybe I’m a little afraid that if I don’t marry you, what we’re doing is wrong.”
“Would I have to go to church?” she asked. “Or school?”
Every Sunday Michael tried to get her to come with him to his hippie church. She had gone once, had listened to the minister. The man meant well, she could tell, but he was as dull as a schoolteacher. She had enjoyed the guitar music, but she didn’t like the way people wanted to shake her hand and talk afterward. She didn’t dislike people, she told Michael, but at church there were too many all at once. He said it was okay that she didn’t go, but he was disappointed she didn’t want to be part of his community. He was also disappointed that she didn’t show any interest in school. He thought Margo needed to set personal goals, that it was not enough to live a beautiful life on the river, fishing, shooting, and collecting berries, nuts, and mushrooms.
“You wouldn’t have to do anything you didn’t want to do. Okay, forget I asked.” He moved away from her. Then he said, “This wasn’t the right way to ask you. Or the right time, when I’m all riled up.”
Margo looked off downstream. People said Joanna and Cal had a solid marriage, and Margo was sure Joanna would say she was glad she had married Cal. Her own ma and pa were a different story.
“But if I did ask you, what would you say?” Michael knelt in the grass and took her hand, which was still sticky with fish guts. “This is a little better. Will you marry me?”
She looked down at him. He was still wearing his creased work pants. He had taken off his tie in the house, but his white shirt was still buttoned up to the neck.
Since she had been living with Michael, she talked more, said things even when she wasn’t certain she should, about her father and mother and some of the Murrays, but she hadn’t told him about Cal or Paul or Brian.
Usually Michael seemed happy to listen to her. Their life together was easy. They made love most nights, with no worry about getting pregnant. Despite the way she knew and loved Michael, marriage had never occurred to her.
“Why are you looking at me so strangely?” Michael asked. “Don’t people get married where you come from?”
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay what?”
“I’ll marry you.”
“The answer is yes or no,” Michael said and grinned. “Okay is a little less enthusiastic than I was hoping for.”
“Okay, yes.”
“Are you sure? I shouldn’t have asked this way. And I don’t even have a ring, Margaret. A man can’t propose without a ring.”
“Annie Oakley married Frank Butler when she was seventeen,” Margo said. “He was twenty-eight. Same as us. They spent the rest of their lives together. With dogs.”
“No kids?”
“Nope.”
“All right, then, if it’s good enough for Annie Oakley, it’s good enough for us. Now, what can we use for a ring around here?”
From what she had read, Margo knew there was some uncertainty about Annie Oakley’s real age. The Wild West Show had an interest in making her seem as young as possible. She also knew that Annie longed to have children, but was unable to.
Michael said, “God, a few minutes ago I was miserable with guilt, and now I’m the happiest person I know.”
He