Once Upon a River Page 0,92

one her grandpa described, the glutton. For the Indian hunter, a wolverine hissing in his cave meant he should return to his tribe. But this animal was not threatening Margo. It regarded her calmly, seemed to accept her, and then it disappeared. Margo couldn’t shake how clearly she’d seen it standing before her, dog-sized, with skunk colors and long claws. She wished it had made a sound she could make in turn, but it had been silent.

The Indian put his face in her hair and said, “I think you’re a river spirit.”

“I’m not a river spirit. Why do guys always want to make a girl into something other than what she is?” Margo asked. She was not a wolf child, as Michael had called her. Even her grandpa’s naming her Sprite and River Nymph seemed odd now, as though he wanted her not to be a person, exactly.

“It makes a better story,” he said. “But there’s no story better than how you look naked, my dear, in this ancient place.” He lifted the hair off her neck and caressed her shoulders. When he finished the bottle, he kissed her. Once again, Margo could imagine no reason on this earth not to trust her body.

But this time, he was different. This time he rolled over her like floodwaters surging downstream. He sucked at her breasts as though he were feeding from her.

“What’s your name?” she whispered. She wanted this whole experience, whatever it was, but the change in the Indian scared her. “Who are you?” she asked.

“I don’t know my name. I swear I don’t know,” he whispered into her chest, and she felt his jaw grind against her breastbone. He took a deep breath and exhaled heat over her. “But we’ll never be here again in the land of my ancestors.”

“Now you sound like an Indian,” she said.

He climbed on top of her, and she rose to meet him. They moved their bodies on the sleeping bags and pine needles with such force that Margo felt her insides shaking. Her teeth rattled. She was too warm with his body on hers, and even when she straddled him, the night air couldn’t cool her. When the Indian pulled her down hard onto him, together they were a flood that rolled through the river valley, cleared the land, and swept away everything not tied down. The river noises and the slap of carp bodies on the surface filled the air around them, and above them the flying squirrels chittered and squeaked. Beneath them, the ground, which had been cool, now radiated heat.

By the time he rolled off her, they were slick with sweat. Margo could hardly breathe. She lay still, expecting to see steam rising off their bodies into the cool air. Even after a few minutes, she could not catch her breath. When he passed out, she curled beside him and calmed herself by listening to the gurgling sounds of the river.

She fell into a state that was not quite sleep, her body awake and wrestling with itself. Margo reached out to touch her daddy’s ashes, but found the box too hot. After a time she did sleep, and she dreamed of the wolverine, big as the black dog and with a weasel face, and then the wolverine became a fish coming up the river, big as Paul, and then, in the dream, she shot Paul and felt how it was a terrible thing to take a man’s life.

She awoke with the Indian pulling her close to him. She felt the cold zipper of his unzipped sleeping bag touch her naked belly. When she opened her eyes, she met his black eyes staring into hers. She told him she’d dreamed of a big fish, and he whispered, “I dreamed it, too. A sturgeon. They used to be in the river, big as cows.”

It wasn’t until later that Margo realized how crazy that sounded, that they’d both dreamed the same giant fish. In the morning she lay still, too exhausted to move or speak, while the Indian pulled away from her and stumbled up the path toward his car. He left behind his sleeping bag and camping pad, his frying pan and his hatchet. She didn’t try to stop him.

When she opened her eyes again, it was full daylight, and she was still exhausted. Her body ached. Everywhere she touched herself she found stones and pine needles and plants stuck to her skin. Tucked beneath her sleeping bag was a small cowskin