Once Upon a River Page 0,73

of Billy’s rowing. She was slowing him down, almost stopping him, but then, with both feet, Billy kicked her pack off the back seat and onto her, and she had to let go to catch it. He rowed hard toward the center of the river.

“I’ll get it back,” she said, standing hip-deep in water, trying to hold her pack and sleeping bag out of the current. “There’s nowhere you can hide that boat, Billy. I know every hiding place on this river. If you lock it to a tree, I’ll chop the tree down.”

“You’ll never touch this boat again,” he shouted. “How dare you shoot at me with Dad’s rifle.”

“Uncle Cal will make you give that boat back, and you know it.” She didn’t feel as confident as she was trying to sound—Cal might not side with her against his own son this time. The other time, when Cal had made Billy return the boat, Billy had given it back with four snakes in it, including one orange-and-white milk snake that was halfway through devouring one of the three smaller garter snakes. At the time, Margo had simply lifted the mess of snake flesh out with an oar and flipped it into the shallow water, but that memory sickened her now.

Margo climbed onto the riverbank and threw down her damp pack with the folded tarp, sleeping bag, and little shovel attached. She picked up her rifle, cocked the hammer, and got Billy in her sights again. As she watched him, her rage doubled, tripled, and she had to shoot at something. She aimed and shot at the prow of her boat, between the words River and Rose.

“All I care is that you don’t have it, Nympho,” he shouted. “And if you shoot me, you won’t have your precious boat in prison, either.”

She had to admire Billy’s coolness. She could never have let herself be burned with cigarettes to prove a point. He slipped downstream, along with her fishing gear, the kerosene lantern, and her water jug.

“There’s nowhere you can hide The River Rose that I won’t find it!” Margo shouted, though Billy was too far away to hear. She wiped tears from her eyes and looked toward the big Murray house. If she walked up to that door, Joanna would greet her and cook something delicious for her, might even ask her to move in. Margo imagined Joanna welcoming her, embracing her, the way she’d always embraced her sons after their troubles. But Joanna was not her mother. In that house Margo could only be a ghost of herself, an overaged tenth-grader with no rifle, at the mercy of Billy’s temper, following the rules Cal and Joanna would set for her. Trying to make her life with the Murrays would be like trying to back up the current of the river, like gathering up the water that had already flowed over the dam, into the Kalamazoo, and out into Lake Michigan and bringing it back to the Stark. Margo couldn’t bear to see Joanna again, not even to say goodbye. She would never again help Joanna in the kitchen. Instead, she had helped Joanna one last time in a way Joanna would never know about. She had not shot Billy as a gift to Joanna and the family who had once cared for her.

Margo wanted to walk along the riverbank after Billy, but she reconsidered. If Margo didn’t show up at the house, Joanna might be worried enough to contact the police or to send somebody out looking for her. Margo dug a pen out of her pack and wrote on the back of her last paper target. Dear Joanna. You’re right. I need to go to my ma’s house. My friend will take me. Thank you for the bread and jam. Love, MLC. Margo pinned the note to the clothesline beside a row of little T-shirts.

With her wet pack and sleeping bag, her progress over land was slow. Billy had rowed out of sight, but she figured she would see the boat wherever he might park it or when he headed back upstream to the Murray house. Nobody was going to try to wrestle that heavy boat onto a trailer, so it had to pass her on the water.

In the nearly four years since Old Man Murray had gotten sick and given her the boat, Margo had not gone a day without seeing it. When the river had threatened to freeze, she and her father had winched the boat