Once Upon a River Page 0,90

drink of whiskey and shivered.

“Was it Indian corn?” Margo asked. “My aunt grew Indian corn for decoration.”

“Yup. It was a big harvest, and the corn kept coming. Nobody understood how, but new ears sprouted on stalks that were already finished, and the new ears became ripe in weeks instead of months. But the girl knew that bits of her broken heart were generating the ears of corn, and the corn silk was made from the strands of her hair. She knew that soon her heart would be gone, and she would have to marry the man and leave her home.”

“And she’d be bald-headed,” Margo said.

“Yup,” said the Indian, apparently not registering what she’d said. He took another drink. “When her heart was finally gone, she threw herself into the river and drowned. An opossum dragged her body back up onto land, and her family buried her in her garden. And they say that corn continued to grow above her body, and even when the white people marched the Indians away to Kansas, the corn grew. Though the farmers tried to plant wheat for their cereal and oats for their horses, only corn would grow.”

“How did a possum drag her body onto the riverbank?” Margo stretched her legs in front of her, alongside the fire, and moved Crane’s ashes farther away. The sky was dark and starry.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “It just did.”

“I mean, a possum weighs like eight pounds,” Margo said. “And its hands are tiny. Like doll hands. I’ll shoot one and you can look at it.”

“Maybe he had help from his possum friends. Or maybe he was a really big possum. I don’t think you’re getting what’s important out of the story, focusing on the possum.” The Indian stretched his own legs out and nudged the toe of her boot with his loafer.

“Possums wouldn’t help anybody.” She felt strangely cheerful to be arguing with this drunken man in a way she never would have argued with her father or Brian. Even Michael had seemed distressed when she had disagreed with him. She said, “Possums have their own plans. They don’t even walk. They waddle. And they have three rows of sharp teeth.”

“Maybe I don’t have the story right, but you’re missing the point. The girl wanted to have her garden and not have any man. If she moved up north to marry, she’d have to give up gardening.”

“I’d rather hunt.” For the first time in her life, she was getting the idea that talking was as pleasurable as shooting. She thought of things she might like to tell the Indian if she got the chance, that a deer can eat a fish or a bird, that a heron can swallow a snake and the snake can still slither free. It warmed her to know she had things to say that he would argue with.

“If you were an Indian woman, you’d know it’s a heartbreaking story. That’s what a young woman can do in a community. That’s one of her powers, to break hearts.”

“Is your wife an Indian?”

“She’s a quarter Sioux. But let’s not talk about her now.”

“Sitting Bull used to tell Annie Oakley stories in the Wild West Show.”

“Sitting Bull was a great man. The Wild West Show was an insult to his sensibilities.” The Indian was slurring his words. He held up the bottle, which was two-thirds full. “I think there’s something funny in this whiskey. Jimson weed, maybe. I’m seeing things that aren’t there.”

“I wish I could live right on the river, like the old-time Indians did,” Margo said.

“Indians never lived on the river,” he said. “The river was their highway. They got up above it so they could keep an eye on who was coming and going. We had a lot of enemies in those days. The men were always fighting some other tribe.”

“I don’t have any enemies on this river.”

“Your hair looks just like my wife’s hair. Let me comb it for you,” the Indian said. He took another big drink and produced a comb from a small zippered bag. “I always brush my wife’s hair.”

Margo hadn’t had anyone comb her hair since she was little. The Indian worked gently, starting from the tangled ends, and he didn’t lose patience and pull as her mother and Joanna used to. And every time one of his hands brushed against her, her skin flushed and her body seemed to swell. When he declared his work finished, he put his arms around her and pulled her