Once We Had a Country

by Robert Mcgill

  “You’re not going anywhere,” says Brid. “You think I’m cooking all this crap just for Fletcher?”

  “It’s the big reunion breakfast, we need everybody here,” adds Fletcher, nodding toward the camera as if it proves his point. He grins and reaches across the table to punch Wale on the shoulder. “It’s great you showed up. The hurricane was a setback, but now the cherries are growing and we’ve got the barracks almost ready. Plenty of other stuff we can start on too. We just need more people.” A strip of bacon flies past his face and lands on the floor. Pauline begins to laugh hysterically.

  “She isn’t usually so wild,” Brid says to Wale, taking Pauline’s plate from her. “She’s showing off for you.” Fletcher gives him another friendly punch on the arm and Brid sets a full plate in front of him, then stands with her arms crossed until he begins to eat.

  When the meal is over, Brid asks Fletcher to babysit while she and Wale go upstairs. Fletcher accepts the assignment, but after a few minutes of playing with Pauline on the living room floor he absconds to the couch, leaving Maggie to watch over her as he flips through a newspaper and casts glances toward the staircase.

  “You’re jealous,” Maggie says.

  “Don’t be silly. I wanted to start working on stuff with him, that’s all.”

  A few minutes later, Brid comes back down looking hastily dressed. She passes along the hall without a word or a glance into the living room, and soon Maggie hears the mud room door slam.

  “Trouble in paradise,” muses Fletcher with a trace of contentment before returning to his paper.

  Eventually he switches on the television to watch Face the Nation. As if it’s a signal, Wale comes downstairs too and takes a seat beside him on the couch. Pauline’s interest in her building blocks vanishes; she knocks them over in the course of running to her father. He offers her an indifferent horsey ride, bouncing her on his knee without letting his eyes leave the television even as she squeals in delight. Brid reappears soon after, sitting on the floor to watch the programme, the voices from the set rendered inaudible by Pauline’s cries.

  “Daddy’s tired, let him rest,” says Brid. When Pauline doesn’t respond, she adds, “Mommy needs a hug.” The girl hesitates, then dismounts and allows herself to be held against her mother’s breast.

  On Face the Nation, all the talk is about the Democratic National Convention later in July. Fletcher cheers when someone mentions how good things look for George McGovern to take the nomination, despite how left of centre he is, while each reference to Nixon brings on a stream of insults from Brid. It isn’t long before Maggie flees outside, then makes her way to the far corner of the backyard where the remnants of their garden lie. A week has passed since the hurricane, but puddles still stretch between the rows and there’s not a vegetable in sight. Drowned, all of them. Beyond the barracks, the cherry trees are spangled with tiny fruit, while dead limbs sit piled at the ends of the lanes. Towers of crushed vehicles gleam behind the auto wrecker’s fence like the skyline of some futuristic city.

  “TV not your scene?” says Wale. She turns to see him approaching barefoot through the muck.

  “Not the Sunday politics shows. All that arguing tires me out.”

  “You’d rather be making the pictures than watching them,” he ventures.

  “You mean the home-movie thing? I’m not really much of a filmmaker.”

  “Come on, I saw you in the kitchen. You love it. You like hiding behind the camera.”

  “I don’t know about that,” she says, hoping it will be the end of the conversation. Turning to the saturated ground, she shakes her head. “Poor garden. Pretty late to start over.”

  “Mm-hmm.” With his toe he traces a figure in the puddle between them. The water soughs and throws the light, the reflected sky vibrating on the surface.

  “What happened with you and Brid?” she asks.

  His foot halts for a moment before resuming its path. “You mean upstairs? That’s quite a question.”

  “I’m sorry, never mind—”

  “It’s okay.” He’s silent for a time. “Same thing happened that always does, I guess. Neither of us likes to be on the bottom.”

  Her eyes widen despite herself. She starts to say something, stops, then starts again. “She and Pauline are a lot happier now that you’re here.”

  “Is that important to you?”

  “Of course it is. Don’t you care about it?”

  “Sure,” he says unconvincingly.

  “Brid told me once,” she begins, glancing toward the farmhouse to make sure there’s no one in sight, “that you rejoined the army to get away from being a father.”

  “Bullshit.” His toe flicks the puddle and sluices water across the grass. “I signed on for another tour because a buddy of mine enlisted. I thought he needed protection.”

  “What about protecting Brid and your daughter?”

  “Nobody was shooting at them.” With his head tilted, he stares at her. “I didn’t realize you and Brid were such good friends.” She looks away and sights a hawk describing circles high above them.

  “I think the idea of this place,” she says, “is that we should all become good friends.” She shoves her hands deep into the pockets of her overalls.

  “How do I get to be your friend, Maggie?”

  “Oh, I’m easy to get along with.”

  “Sure you are. Just don’t look at you, right?”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Is it? I’m not sure. Want to hear what I think?”

  “You don’t even know me,” she says.

  “I think maybe for you, being looked at is like being on the bottom.”

  Before she can reply, Brid’s voice calls to them. “What are you two doing out here?” She’s crossing the lawn in their direction.

  Quickly, Maggie takes a step back from him. When Brid gets nearer, she flashes Maggie a frown of disapproval before extending her hand to Wale, smiling at him in a way that seems carnivorous and worn out at the same time. “Get back inside, will you, lover boy? I want another go at it.”

  Brid and Wale entered Maggie’s life in December, not long after Fletcher did. On the way to meeting them for the first time, Fletcher explained that he’d been friends with Brid since his freshman year, and that Wale was the father of her kid, though he’d been out of the picture until recently. The guy had served in the army, he’d killed people doing it, and he wasn’t much of a talker, but Brid was crazy about him.

  Maggie took in this information distractedly. She had just gotten off the phone with her father, who had called with the news that in the spring he was going to leave his job and join a mission in Laos. When Maggie had asked what Gran thought of the idea, he’d replied that she was delighted. Maggie shouldn’t have been surprised. Gran had been waiting twenty-three years for her widowed son to do something with his life.

  “It will save money for me to live over there,” Maggie’s father had told her. Then he’d admitted what she already knew from Gran: bad gambles on the stock market had put him on the edge of bankruptcy.

  “So you’re going over there to save money?” Maggie had asked him.

  “No,” he’d replied. “To save lives.”

  At the bar, she only half listened as the others talked. For the most part the conversation was about politics, Brid arguing with Fletcher while leaning against Wale and reaching beneath the table every few minutes to clasp his knee. It was as if Brid’s body had split completely from her brain, and each was given over to a different man. As for Wale, each time Maggie glanced toward him, he was staring at her, smiling like they were sharing a private joke, and each time she looked away.

  When Brid went off to the bathroom, Wale asked Maggie about teaching. It was the last thing she wanted to discuss, and Fletcher must have sensed it because he came to her rescue, jumping in to ask Wale in turn whether he’d found a job yet. Wale shrugged, then asked Maggie where she was from. Maggie tapped Fletcher on the leg to signal that
it was all right and started talking about Syracuse.

  Eventually, because there wasn’t really a way to avoid it, she came around to her father. It was easy enough to speak about the man she remembered from her childhood. Gliding through the story of her adolescence, though, she found herself running headlong toward describing his return to the Church. Instead of breaking off, she crashed right into it.

  “In college, I lost my faith,” she said. A funny expression, she thought, as if her faith were something she’d misplaced somewhere, when the experience was more like a wave rolling over a sandcastle. “I took a course in World Religions, and that was enough, just learning about all those creeds with their different gods. Suddenly it seemed arrogant to believe in one true Church.” She saw Fletcher nodding and realized it was her first time talking about this with him. “I didn’t tell my dad, though. He wasn’t a churchgoer, but I thought he’d take it hard. When I’d gone away to college—”

  She broke off, not wanting to tell Wale that her father had seemed lonely, that to make him feel better she’d often said how homesick and out of place she felt in Boston, even though in fact she’d liked her classes, liked the city, was happy knowing she could go out whenever she wanted without letting anyone down.

  “Then last year, while I was at teachers’ college,” she went on, “he called me to say he’d started going to Mass. At first I thought he was joking, but he wasn’t. I felt so bad, I finally told him about the World Religions class.”

  “How did he take it?” asked Fletcher.

  Maggie shook her head, still dismayed. “He wanted to have a theological debate. This guy who hadn’t gone to Mass since he was a boy, suddenly he was trying to argue me back into believing. He went on about Vatican II and all the reforms, the liturgies in English, the Masses at people’s houses. He even felt obliged to tell me they have Eucharists of milk and cookies now, because milk and cookies are more relevant.”

  By the time Brid returned to the table, Maggie was explaining about her father’s plans for Laos. Fletcher squeezed her hand in sympathy, while Brid said missionaries were just another kind of soldier. Wale wanted to know if Maggie was familiar with Laos, and she admitted she’d never even seen it on a map. He said it was a squiggly turd of territory between Vietnam and Thailand with its own special brand of Communists, the Pathet Lao, fighting against the royalists. He said officially it was a civil war, but everybody had their fingers in it. The North Vietnamese were backing the Pathet Lao; the Thais and U.S. were helping out the royalists. There weren’t any American troops on the ground, though. Instead, they had CIA agents train the local mountain people, the Hmong, to fight the bad guys. It hadn’t been going so well for the Hmong. Nowadays their typical soldier was a twelve-year-old with a machine gun. Wale said the only upside of Laos was that they’d legalized the opium trade, so you could make a lot of money if you didn’t mind being shot at.

  “Not that you’d know anything about it,” said Fletcher with a laugh, but Wale looked at him with a blank expression, and Brid seemed less than pleased by the comment too, because a second later she steered the conversation toward how well Wale was getting along with Pauline.

  The next evening after work, when Maggie stepped through the front doors of her school, Wale was waiting for her. At first she didn’t register him, because she was still suffering her daily wave of post-class recrimination, remembering the inanities she’d uttered, the moments when one second-grade delinquent or another had spoken back, refused to follow directions, or in some other way reduced her to a wheedler and a nag. The Christmas break was a week away and she still hadn’t wept in front of the students. It was her only success as a teacher.

  The prospect of a stiff drink was beckoning when she noticed Wale ahead of her. Though it was ten degrees, he had nothing on his head or hands, and he was stamping his feet to stay warm.

  “Thought I’d surprise you,” he called out.

  “Well, you did,” she said, trying to sound unflustered. She almost asked how he knew where she worked until she remembered telling him at the bar. It had just been small talk. Now she considered making some excuse and turning back into the school, but no, he was just an odd duck. She was grown-up enough to handle him.

  “Got time for a beer?” he asked. When she told him she was late to meet Fletcher downtown, he seemed undaunted and said he’d ride there with her. On the way to the subway station he asked about her day, as if the two of them walking along together were an ordinary thing. At the station he offered to pay her fare and she told him not to be silly, thinking it best to give no sign of encouragement.

  On the subway, she made a point of bringing up Fletcher, and there was relief in seeing how the mention of his name made Wale’s eyes lose their gleam. She said that without Fletcher she’d have quit her job already. She said how surprised she’d been to find herself dating him. Teaching had made her such a wreck, she couldn’t imagine being attractive to anybody. But that was the wrong comment to make.

  “There’s your problem,” said Wale, the gleam returning. “You don’t see yourself like other people do.” She didn’t know how to respond to that. “For example, the way you listen. Last night you asked me all those questions. Most people don’t bother doing that, especially with a vet. You pay attention, though. It’s a turn-on.”

  She wanted to point out that she’d barely asked him anything, and that asking questions didn’t mean she was into him; it only meant she found it easier than talking about herself.

  “You know, your dad will probably be okay in Laos,” said Wale out of the blue. It was disconcerting to have the matter raised so unexpectedly, and she had to shunt away a sudden feeling of despair.

  “Probably he won’t go,” she said. “He’s never even left the Northeast.”

  “If he does, will you join him?”

  “Why would I do that?” But as she said it, she knew why she would. Guilt about leaving him had already sent her back to Syracuse summer after summer. How could she let him go to Laos on his own?

  “Last night you made it sound like you two are close,” said Wale. “Or you used to be, at least. Maybe you’d want to look out for him.”

  Maggie didn’t reply.

  “Well, if you do go, tell me,” said Wale. “I might come over and look you up.” He grinned at her, and she decided he was probably insane.

  In silence they exited the train and rode the escalator to the surface, Maggie worrying the whole way up that he was going to say something else she’d have to deal with. It was a relief when they reached the cold air outside, but Fletcher was nowhere to be seen.

  “He said he’d be here,” she explained, unable to hide her unease, needing to be out of Wale’s company. He seemed to think she was only concerned about Fletcher’s welfare.

  “You’re really stuck on this guy. It’s not for his money, is it?”

  Even though he said it jokingly, Maggie scowled. She often worried about the Morgan family’s wealth, not because people like Wale would think she was a gold digger, but because her father might feel self-conscious about his own money problems.

  It was only another minute before Fletcher arrived. He seemed taken aback to see Wale with her, and she found herself saying that the two of them had run into each other on the subway. Wale winked at her, and immediately she regretted the lie. As he said goodbye and started away from them, she could imagine him growing ever bolder with her, not caring what Brid or Fletcher thought, until there was some confrontation and Maggie got blamed. The next time she and Fletcher met up with Brid, though, Wale wasn’t there. He’d re-enlisted and shipped out to Vietnam, beating her father to Indochina by a good four months.

  Between the hours of gardening, cleaning, and making dinners, Maggie retreats to her camera. She films George Ray atop a ladder as he tends the trees, a transistor radio in his shirt pocket piping music to him through an earphone. She captures Fletcher and Wale on the farmhouse roof with their hammers flashing. From the creek bank a mile downst
ream, she films them and Brid swimming in a shady pool beneath an old concrete dam, while water passes over the edge in a smooth, clear stream and an empty bird’s nest bobs in an eddy. Across the road, the church’s steeple pokes up from the horizon, scratching a human presence into the sky. Pauline sits cross-legged on the bank in her pink swimsuit, collecting pebbles for a tiny, slowly growing cairn.

  By now Maggie has recognized that when the others are conscious of the camera, they each have their reactions. For Brid, to be filmed is an affront, as though someone has called her a dirty name. Wale tries to escape, so that often there are only blurred glimpses of him quickening away like a sasquatch. George Ray is almost as elusive, cloistered in the barracks when he isn’t working. Those times she does catch him out, he acts embarrassed. By contrast, Pauline squirms her way into every shot she can, dancing and hamming. A camera appears and the world rearranges itself in response. Fletcher alone changes not a bit, as if he’s been exposed to cameras all his life.

  With each person, it’s the private moments Maggie’s after. She doesn’t want self-consciousness; she doesn’t want performance. In daydreams she imagines aerial shots that would let her study everyone at her leisure, unobserved, but in practice she’s limited to filming from ground level, so she stays on the periphery and wills herself to be part of the landscape, carrying the camera even when it’s turned off, hoping others will become less sensitive to its presence.

  It would be easier to blend into the scene if more people were around, but no one else arrives. Even Frank and the girls next door remain absent from the lawn in front of the mobile home when Maggie walks by. As the middle of July approaches, Fletcher’s optimism about the farm starts to dwindle.

  “A hundred thousand draft dodgers in this country and we can’t get one of them,” he complains. He stays up late watching television, feet on the coffee table, pulling at his moustache while twin quadrilaterals of light reflect in his eyeglasses. He has never drunk much beer, alcohol being long shunned by his family, but now as he watches he always has a bottle in hand. When the Democratic convention begins, he takes up near-permanent residence in the living room, and no one bothers to chastise him for not working. At the dinner table he speaks less often about his plans for Harroway and more about the failings of the party leadership. On the convention’s last night, they all sit together to watch McGovern take the nomination. By the time Eagleton’s declared the running mate, though, Brid and Wale have given up and gone to bed.