Once We Had a Country

by Robert Mcgill

  Once We Had a Country

  Robert Mcgill

  A richly textured novel of idealism and romance, Once We Had a Country re-imagines the impact of the Vietnam War by way of the women and children who fled with the draft dodgers.

  It’s the summer of 1972. Maggie, a young schoolteacher, leaves the United States to settle with her boyfriend, Fletcher, on a farm near Niagara Falls. Fletcher is avoiding the Vietnam draft, but they’ve also come to Harroway with a loftier aim: to start a commune, work the land and create a new model for society. Hopes are high for life at Harroway; equally so for Maggie and Fletcher’s budding relationship, heady as it is with passion, jealousy and uncertainty. As the summer passes, more people come to the farm—just not who Maggie and Fletcher expected. Then the US government announces the end of the draft, and Fletcher faces increasing pressure from his family to return home. At the same time, Maggie must deal with the recent disappearance of her father, a missionary, in the jungle of Laos. What happened in those days before her father vanished, and how will his life and actions affect Maggie’s future? Once We Had a Country is a literary work of the highest order, a novel that re-imagines an era we thought we knew, and that compels us to consider our own belief systems and levels of tolerance.

  Robert McGill

  ONCE WE HAD A COUNTRY

  For Reecia, who’s been there

  “Do you know,” said the youth, “that your eyes are closed and at rest, and that they see nothing?” “I know it,” he replied. “Then what,” said the youth, “are the eyes with which you see me?”

  — AUGUSTINE, LETTER 159

  They were reaching out their arms in love for the far shore.

  — GEORGE GRANT, Lament for a Nation

  part 1

  COME HOME, AMERICA

  IN THE JUNGLE, Gordon tends a fire beside Yia Pao, the young potter whose soul he hopes to save. It is 1972, the rainy season in Laos, and the two of them shouldn’t be here. Nobody should. Although they are barely a mile from the refugee camp, without knowing it they have crossed into a free-strike zone. The lines keep shifting because the Communists keep gaining ground, but the Royal Lao and American generals don’t bother making announcements when the boundaries are redrawn. Instead, they simply order their warplanes to treat anybody on the ground as the enemy. Everyone becomes a target.

  Nestled in the fire are three figures, each less than a foot high and made of clay, each one smiling. Gordon tells Yia Pao about the saints the little statues are meant to resemble, how this one was pierced by arrows, that one blinded with a rod. Through the heat and smoke, the little bodies glow red, seeming to be possessed of an inner light. Eventually Yia Pao shifts them with a branch to let them cool and says he hopes Gordon will be satisfied. The potter did his best to make the statues like the holy people his new friend has described, but Yia Pao has never seen a saint himself, and this method of firing them is more primitive than he’d like. In his village, before the bombing, he had a proper kiln. It’s another of the things he mourns.

  A crack comes from the firepit, and one of the little statues hops in place, then shudders. Cursing in his own language, Yia Pao kicks the saint with his boot, spraying ash and exposing a long fracture along the figure’s side. He says this can happen when there’s no way to control the temperature. Gordon murmurs his understanding and joins him in a vigil over the statues that remain, as if watching alone might keep them intact. Once the fire has died, Yia Pao says it should be all right to let them cool on their own, so the two men turn back for the camp.

  At first, Gordon follows Yia Pao down the muddy trail in silence, wearing a troubled look. Then he starts to speak of what it must be like for Yia Pao to be a widower and a father. Gordon says childbirth rather than a B-52 took his own wife from him, and the loss was over twenty years ago, but when it happened he wasn’t much older than Yia Pao is now, so he might understand something of how these last eight months have been. He knows about the grief and loneliness, the times when even the sight of your newborn child brings you no comfort but is only a reminder of the loss. He knows about wanting to join your loved one in that other world. Perhaps, he says, it isn’t a coincidence that he and Yia Pao met. Their friendship could be the work of God, a way to provide both of them with solace.

  At this, the younger man lets out a soft laugh. “Don’t look for God in Laos,” he says, “or soon you’ll lose your faith.”

  Thick grey clouds swirl lowly overhead, churning through the mountains like a spring flood. A dense canopy of leaves and branches absorbs most of the light so that it’s hard to make out the tattered grubbiness of Yia Pao’s shirt and pants. A red bandana around Gordon’s neck is the only vivid colour to be seen. He has a salt-and-pepper beard that contrasts with Yia Pao’s smooth cheeks, and he stands half a foot higher than his companion, outweighing him by perhaps a hundred pounds, labouring as they cross the uneven terrain. From somewhere in the distance comes a murmur that could be thunder or the sound of falling bombs.

  By the time the two of them reach the landing strip, a beam of sunlight has punched through the clouds to shine upon the camp on the far side, making the white tents shimmer. There are over sixty of them, and from half a mile away they seem immaculate. The airstrip is sodden, streaked with long ruts that vanish fifty yards before the treeline, as if the plane that left them was swallowed by a great beast. Enough time has passed since the last landing that the ruts are scabbing over with grass.

  The men have made it halfway across the field when they hear a gunshot. A water buffalo nearby stops its grazing to look up, while Yia Pao squints at the tents ahead, then raises a finger to his lips and points toward the jungle. The two men run for the treeline, Yia Pao crouching with his eyes down, Gordon still focused on the tents. He’s sweating and panting by the time they reach the forest.

  A moment later, three men emerge from the camp, two of them white, the other Lao, none in uniform but all with rifles slung over their backs. They look unhurried as they walk across the landing strip in the direction of the trail leading to the firepit. Yia Pao and Gordon wait until the group is out of sight, then make their way toward the camp without leaving the cover of the trees.

  When they reach the tents, there’s nobody in sight, but they can hear a woman screaming. They run toward her voice, scattering chickens underfoot. The screaming grows in volume and intensity until suddenly they’re upon her, an old Hmong woman lying in the mud. The French priest is kneeling by her side in his stained shirt and pristine collar, his hand cradling her head and his surplice wrapped around her arm, the blood already soaking through.

  “They were looking for you, Yia Pao,” says the priest in English. His tone is flat, his eyes accusing. “She wouldn’t tell them where you’d gone, so they shot her.”

  “And then she told,” says Yia Pao grimly. He speaks to her in the Hmong language, uttering words that could be an apology or a reproach.

  “If she didn’t tell, they would have killed us all,” says the priest. “I recognized their leader. Everyone knows that devil. He fights for nobody, he steals from the opium growers and murders for pleasure. He and his men ransacked your tent. What did you take from them to bring him upon us?”

  Yia Pao doesn’t reply. Instead, he thinks for a minute while the old woman moans.

  “I will leave before they return,” he says, surveying the camp. “Where is the girl who looks after my son?”

  “She took him to the river an hour ago,” says the priest. “There’s a group there washing clothes.” Yia Pao is about to set off when the priest’s voice pulls him up short. “Those men arrived by boat. There could be more of them near the water. Do they know you have a son?” Yia Pao shakes his head. “Then leave him with us.
He’ll be cared for.”

  “I have no other child.”

  “Don’t be a fool. I’ll tell them you have fled to Ban Den Muong. You must run, Yia Pao. You cannot take a baby with you.”

  The young man doesn’t move. After a few seconds, it’s Gordon who speaks.

  “Go to the waterfall,” he tells Yia Pao. “You know the one. Wait for me there, and I’ll bring Xang to you.” When the priest protests, Gordon says, “They aren’t looking for me. If they’re at the river, I’ll be all right.”

  “You think they won’t notice an American snatching a baby? They’ll kill you”—the priest snaps his fingers—“comme ça.”

  Gordon’s eyes are wild and shining.

  “I know you wish to give yourself to God,” says the priest, “but you have a child of your own. Think of her. You came to be a missionary, not a sacrifice.”

  “Maggie’s all grown up,” Gordon says. “She doesn’t need me anymore.” Clapping Yia Pao on the shoulder, he says, “I’ll get Xang to you.”

  “I’ll come too,” says Yia Pao, grabbing hold of Gordon’s sleeve, but the other man shrugs him off and starts away. By the time he has passed through the tents to the far side of the camp and reached the river trail, it has begun to rain.

  1

  Everything will be fine because they don’t have anything to hide. That’s what Fletcher has told her as they wait in line at the border. When he finally steers the camper van up to the booth, though, Maggie notices his hands trembling. The uniform of the guard who greets them is dark at the armpits, and the man looks miserable in the heat.

  “Where are you two headed?” he asks.

  “Virgil,” replies Fletcher. “Well, a farm near Virgil.” He passes their papers through the open window, but he lets go too soon and they tumble to the ground. “Sorry,” he says, reaching for the door handle.

  “Stay in the vehicle.” With a look of disgust, the guard bends to retrieve the documents, then steps back into the booth. Maggie sees sweat beading on Fletcher’s forehead.

  “You’re doing really well,” she whispers. He starts to laugh, covers his mouth, sits up straight when the guard steps out again.

  “Fletcher Morgan,” says the guard, reading from the page in his hand. He glances up to take in Fletcher’s shaggy blond hair, his tea-shade glasses, and his thin line of moustache. “You a draft dodger?”

  Maggie holds her breath. They’ve been told border guards aren’t supposed to ask that.

  Fletcher shakes his head. “We’re coming up here to work.”

  “For the Morgan Sugar Company,” says the guard, looking back at the page. “Your father own it or something?” He asks the question wryly but turns serious when Fletcher nods. “So he’s helping you avoid the draft, then.”

  “I haven’t been drafted. I was a student, and then—”

  “Park over there.” The guard points to a small concrete building nearby. “Stay in the vehicle. Someone will be with you.”

  “Officer, is anything wrong?” Maggie asks.

  “Just wait in the vehicle,” he replies.

  “I don’t get it,” says Fletcher when they’ve pulled away from the booth. “You think it’s because I dropped the papers?”

  “Don’t be silly,” she tells him. She’s thinking it probably is.

  For twenty minutes they wait in the parked camper while the radio plays Neil Young and Jefferson Airplane and songs by Canadian bands they’ve never heard of. Finally, Fletcher says he’s going to find out what’s happening, kisses her on the cheek, and leaves the van.

  As soon as he vanishes inside the building, she’s struck by the feeling that the whole thing is a mistake. What will happen when the immigration people start asking questions and Fletcher says his father has given him a cherry farm to run? What if he tells them that he’s a law school dropout and that Maggie quit teaching school before her first year even ended? What if he admits that his father isn’t much impressed by their plan to try communal living but he’s agreed to put them and a few friends on the payroll for a while if it means getting Fletcher clear of the draft? It will be the first commune in history to be underwritten by a corporation. No, the immigration people will never buy it.

  A knock at the window makes her jump. She turns to see two men in uniforms standing beside the camper.

  “Could you step out of the vehicle, miss?” says the taller one. He has pop eyes and a mouth that stays open like a fish. The other man’s features are doughy, his skin bright pink in the heat.

  Leaving the camper for the building’s shade, Maggie watches them open the side door and start removing boxes. It takes her a moment to realize they’re going to unpack everything.

  “Do you have to do that?” she calls out. “I have a list of what we’ve brought.” It took her hours to write it up. All this week, whenever she felt herself growing anxious about the unseen house in another country, checking over the list brought a certain comfort. She starts toward the camper to retrieve it.

  “We don’t need a list,” says the pop-eyed man. “Just stay where you are.”

  As he and his partner go on unloading and opening boxes, she finds herself anticipating what’s in each one and realizes she knows the contents almost by heart. There are clothes and boots and cleaning supplies, a tool box, a toaster, a hair dryer, a roll of toilet paper. There are three cartons of Lucky Strikes and five jars of Nescafé. There are two spoons, two knives, and two forks, a little ark of utensils, even though Fletcher thinks they could be feeding sixty people in a couple of years. There’s also the Super 8-millimetre camera her father gave her. She watches the pop-eyed man lift it from its shoulder bag and turn it over in his hands with a quizzical, chimp-like expression.

  “It makes movies,” she says, not meaning to sound as impertinent as she does. The man scowls at her and she doesn’t speak further, but she wants to warn him to be careful with the thing. She has decided that if she and Fletcher are really serious about the farm, if they’re going to turn it into a success, they should have a record of the proceedings. When she told Fletcher, she was embarrassed by her own enthusiasm for the idea, but he liked it so much he bought an editing machine and audio recorder too.

  From inside the camper comes a long, loud ripping sound. She looks over to see the man with the doughy face using a box cutter to slice into the vinyl of the driver’s seat.

  “What are you doing?” she shouts, stepping toward him.

  “Stay by the building, ma’am,” he says. “We’re authorized to do this when necessary.”

  “But it isn’t necessary. There’s nothing to find.”

  “Ma’am, you need to let us do our job.”

  There’s no sign of Fletcher. She should go and find him, let him know what’s happening to his van, but the doughy-faced man has resumed cutting into the seat and she feels obliged to bear witness to what he’s doing.

  As she watches, she remembers Fletcher’s trembling hands. What if there really is something hidden in the vehicle? She’s been with him six months. In some ways they still don’t know each other. When she tries to picture him sneaking out last night and stashing drugs in the spare tire, though, she can’t do it. He hates taking risks. It’s why leaving the States is a bigger deal for him than for her. He’s losing all the security of home.

  Thirty yards away, cars depart from the nearest guard booth one by one. A little boy in the back of a sedan presses his face to the window, watching the two men unload the camper. They must search vehicles out in the open like this to make it more humiliating, to let everyone see what can happen.

  When Fletcher exits the building, the man with the box cutters has finished tearing into the seats and is conferring with his partner.

  “What the hell’s going on?” says Fletcher.

  Before Maggie can speak, the pop-eyed man approaches them. “You’re free to go,” he says.

  “What about the seats?” says Fletcher.

  “You’ll have to talk with someone in the o
ffice.”

  Fletcher asks Maggie to wait and storms back inside while the two men walk off in the opposite direction, leaving the unpacked boxes on the asphalt. Maggie sighs and starts to reload them. Ten minutes pass before Fletcher returns, fuming.

  It isn’t the beginning she imagined. She thought crossing over would feel exhilarating. She imagined they might enter at Niagara Falls. Fifteen years have passed since the time her father took her there, but she still remembers the bellow and crash of the water, the jagged rocks and hovering rainbow. Today, when she woke up in the passenger seat and realized Fletcher had opted for the Lewiston bridge instead, she couldn’t help feeling disappointed. But then, she’d never voiced her preference, so how was he to know? He’s the first lover she has ever had. Sometimes she worries about putting too much faith in him.

  As they finish repacking the camper, she doesn’t ask what happened in the building and he doesn’t tell her; he only seems impatient to get on the road again. It’s enough to allow a shade of doubt back into her mind. No, she’s paranoid. But once they’re driving away, she turns to him and says in a breezy tone, “You didn’t actually hide anything in the camper, right?”

  He shoots her a look of disbelief.

  “It would have been funny if you had, that’s all,” she says, giving a little laugh. He doesn’t respond, and she feels the seat’s ripped vinyl digging into her back.

  “The man inside told me it could have been worse,” says Fletcher. “He said sometimes when they do inspections they take apart the engine too.”

  She decides not to ask him who’ll pay for the seats to be repaired. They drive on in silence. Then, a few miles down the road, he says, “When we get to the farm, don’t tell Brid what happened, all right?”

  Maggie frowns. “Why not?”