Once Upon a River Page 0,79

down? Or why am I following their route?”

“You’re not walking.”

“What’s your name?”

“Margaret,” she said. “Margo.”

“Names matter a lot. Do you want to know my name?” He asked this in what seemed to Margo an arrogant way, as if he imagined his name had some special importance.

“No. I don’t care about your name.”

“Then I won’t tell you. You’ll have to guess. It’ll be like Rumpel-

stiltskin.”

“You’re not from around here, are you?” Margo meant it as an insult, but the Indian just shook his head.

“I spent the summer teaching some kids math at a reservation in the Upper Peninsula. Now I’m on my way home. Unless eating that rabbit kills me.”

A while later, she skewered the rabbit on a sharpened hickory stick and cooked it over the fire. She tried to pay attention to the birds and water creatures near her camp, but the Indian was a distraction, and it took all her energy to remain quiet. When the rabbit was close to being done, she propped the ears of corn up at the edges of the fire and steamed them in their husks. Then they sat cross-legged on opposite sides of the fire, eating from paper plates the Indian had brought from his car.

“I like eating the food of my ancestors,” he said.

Margo thought it was an especially good rabbit, probably fattened on beans and cabbage from somebody’s garden.

By the time they finished, the sun was setting. They burned the plates in the fire, and the Indian went and got a pint of Wild Turkey from his car. He sat back down and held the bottle out to her. “Do you want a sip?”

“No. Is that what your ancestors drank?”

“Oh, I guess the Europeans brought us a few valuable things.” He cracked open the bottle and inhaled deeply. He seemed to relax even before he took a drink. He said, “I do have a bottle of whiskey from the reservation, but I’m saving it until I get to the Kalamazoo River.”

“There’s a dam between here and there.”

“In a car, that’s not a problem.” As he drank, he watched the darkening river. “The problem is that the Kalamazoo River is polluted all to heck, polluted beyond any possibility of rejuvenation. It’s the same all across the country. Everything’s poisoned,” he said. After only a few sips, his voice was different, deeper.

Margo took her gun-cleaning kit from where she kept it tied on her pack. Without breaking her rifle down, she cleaned the barrel, stinking up the air with her Hoppe’s #9 solvent. Then she disassembled her cleaning rod, wrapped it in an old T-shirt of Michael’s, and put it away. The air chilled and the sky went mad with stars. Margo wrapped herself more tightly in her father’s Carhartt jacket and watched the Indian get drunk. By the firelight, she saw his eyes grow red and his lids droop. She watched his shoulders relax until he was slumping. Finally he tipped over, still clutching the empty pint bottle in his right hand. With his left arm, he held his knees to his chest.

At this time of night, usually Margo would have raided a garden for more vegetables, but instead she stayed put. Letting herself look, really look, hard and long at somebody was a pleasure, almost as soothing to her as aiming and shooting. Margo had needed food and shelter from other people, but this was the first time somebody needed her; this guy had come to her, and she had fed him. She liked the idea of him paying her for the food. She was still too close to Murrayville to cash her mother’s money order. There was no expiration date on it, but the edges of the paper were starting to fray.

She folded the tarp over the Marlin to keep the dew off, thought of it as tucking the rifle in to sleep. Later in the night, the Indian stumbled to his car, peed in the dirt behind it, and went to sleep inside. Margo put the metal box of ashes between herself and the fire and listened for a barred owl that she’d heard a few nights ago. She softly called into the silence, “Who-who, who cooks for you?” again and again, but got no response.

The Indian paid her four one-dollar bills the following morning for a breakfast of tomatoes, tiny river clams she steamed in a frying pan the Indian had, and two eggs from the domestic ducks she’d been luring over. After they burned their paper plates,