Free Once Upon a River by Bonnie Jo. Campbell Page B

hands in his and exhaled hot breath on them. Earlier, when she had breathed on them herself, it had done little good, but Brian’s big body—even his lungs must be big—created real heat. Even as she felt wary, she wanted to lean her head against him.
    Paul said, “I hope you don’t mind me asking, Miss Maggie, but isn’t your family wondering where you are right now?”
    “Her family’s the Murrays, Pauly. Would you want to be with them Murray bastards?”
    “Still, her family’s got to want her,” Paul said. “What about her ma?”
    “Her ma run off and left her a year and a half ago, run off with a man from Heart of Pines. Maggie, is that who you’re trying to get to? Your ma?”
    Margo inhaled sharply. She hadn’t considered Brian might know her mother.
    “Give me two cards,” Paul said.
    Brian let go of Margo’s hands and gave Paul two cards, took two himself. Paul gripped his cards so tightly his fingertips whitened.
    “We’ll get you on your way tomorrow, wherever you want to go,” Brian said. “Don’t you worry. You’re fine here tonight.”
    “I understand a woman might leave her old man,” Paul said, anger coming quickly into his voice. “But what kind of woman would leave her kid? Her daughter especially? My wife would die before she’d leave one of my kids behind.”
    “Ours is not to judge,” Brian said and picked up Margo’s hands again. After he rubbed them on and off for a few minutes, the pink began to return. Margo wanted to go stand by the woodstove, but she knew if she did she would never want to leave its intense warmth. As if reading her mind, Brian stood up, surprising her again with his great size, and fed the stove some split logs from a pile behind it.
    Paul spoke up again. “There’s something else I heard rumor of. Brian heard it, too. Is it true, Maggie, that your papa shot Cal Murray’s dick off?” Paul’s voice was uneven. She was grateful to be sitting near Brian, who seemed steady and calm.
    “No need to be crude, Pauly,” Brian said, grinning to show that he appreciated this particular sort of crudeness. Then he frowned. “But maybe it’s good you know the kind of rumors that are flying, Maggie.”
    “Can I have some water?” Margo whispered.
    “So she does talk!” Brian said. “I never heard you talk before. Well, don’t you say anything you don’t want to say. We’ll figure it all out tomorrow.”
    “Brian don’t believe your daddy did what they said,” Paul said.
    “Never mind all that,” Brian said. “You stay here tonight. We’ll get you where you need to go. Or stay as long as you like. Will you have to get home for the funeral?”
    Margo shook her head. There would be no funeral, no fuss.
    Brian poured a glass of water from a kettle on the counter. “We boil the well water here just to be safe,” he said.
    Margo drank the glass down and accepted a refill.
    “Let’s get some food into you, Maggie,” Brian said. “We’ve got some leftover trout and a piece of venison steak from that deer of yours. I took it to do your daddy a favor, but now I’m glad, because I haven’t gotten a deer myself. Maybe beautiful girls are luring away all the bucks, leaving nothing for us big, ugly men.”
    Though Paul complained about another delay in the game, Brian lit the propane stove, and within a few minutes he presented her with an orange plate containing meat, a section of fish with the bone in, a couple of chunks of potato, and some greasy green beans with bits of bacon on them. While Paul and Brian played, she ate. When Brian handed her a piece of store-bought white bread, she wiped the plate clean with it.
    “You sure can eat,” Paul said, “for a little gal.”
    “She’s a good eater, all right,” Brian said.
    She stopped chewing the bread.
    “Don’t stop,” Brian said. “It’s good you have an appetite. You don’t live if you don’t eat. Some people give up and waste away in hard times.”
    With the last bite of bread,