As if in answer, she hears a noise. Footsteps on the stairs. Imagined saviours and tormentors approach her bedroom door. Brid or Fletcher, or Lydia Dodd and her red-haired cousin. In the end, it’s George Ray who speaks her name.
“I’m sick,” she tells him.
He comes to the bedside and places a palm on her forehead. “How long have you been lying here?” he asks, but her throat is too parched for her to reply, and besides, she isn’t certain of the answer. When he goes to leave the room, she reaches for him, afraid he won’t come back. A minute later he returns with two Aspirins and a glass of water. He helps her to sit and feeds the tablets to her, tilting the glass carefully to her lips. Then, after another trip to the bathroom, he lays a wet face cloth over her brow and sits next to her until she falls asleep.
When she awakens, it’s the afternoon, the face cloth is newly cool and moistened, the water glass refilled, and the fever has broken. She thinks of God. She didn’t actually pray, she wants to tell Him. He can’t claim any credit for this. She can’t be held in hock for the mere invoking of a name.
Still too woozy to get up, she stays in bed. At some point she sees George Ray in the doorway, and with a heavy arm she beckons him. He enters with porridge and juice on a wicker tray.
“Sweet of you,” she croaks, trying to sit up.
“What else could I do?”
“I’m not very hungry,” she warns, but she manages a few bites. The cold juice stings and soothes her throat at once.
By the time it’s dark again, she feels well enough to be bored. He helps her to the living room, holding her elbow on the stairs, then brings down her bedding so she can lie on the couch and watch television. The Olympics are over. She ends up dozing on and off through an interview with the prime minister about the Canadian election. Every so often George Ray stops by to sit with her.
“Brid’s gone,” she says to him at one point. “You and I are the only ones.” He nods. “Fletcher will be back next week.” At this he nods again, if more slowly, and she wonders what he’s thinking, though she can’t bring herself to ask.
Eventually he leaves and television too grows dull. On unsteady legs, she enters the kitchen to find him bent over the cast iron skillet on the stove. The smell of frying liver turns her stomach.
“Don’t worry, it’s not for you,” he says, seeing her face. “Your dinner’s still to come. This is for him.” He gestures to the table. At first she doesn’t see anyone, but then there’s the flick of a tail and she perceives the slate-grey body sitting on one of the chairs. It watches the stove intently with two black and yellow eyes like blots of dark vinegar in oil.
“Is that John-John?” she says, amazed. The cat doesn’t move at the name’s utterance. She has only ever seen John-John streaking from the Centaurs’ car, and later among the grainy shadows of her film. This cat looks rougher for wear than the one she remembers; the tip of its tail is bald like a rat’s, and when it jumps down to rub against her, it favours one of its hind legs.
“Don’t know any John-John,” says George Ray. “I call him Elliot.”
“Where’d you find him?”
“He found me—scratched at the barracks door two nights ago.” George Ray gives the liver a stir.
“I doubt you need to cook that,” she points out. “He’d eat it raw.”
“He likes it better this way.” George Ray removes the skillet from the stove, cuts the liver into pieces, and deposits it on a plate. The cat meows loudly as it’s set before him. Maggie’s unable to take her eyes off the creature and resists an urge to pick him up. When she looks back to George Ray, he’s dicing an onion.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
“Making your dinner.”
“I can do that,” she says weakly. She doesn’t have the energy to protest as she should.
“You’re sick. Sit and talk to me if you like.”
So she sits and they talk, although George Ray does most of the speaking, as if he knows it will be easier for her just to listen. He tells her of the skunk he saw scuttling around the corner of the barracks yesterday, the first one he has seen after seven summers working in this country, although he’s smelled the creatures often enough. He talks about how the knots in the trunks of cherry trees remind him of faces, so that he thinks of them as people living in the orchard, from the crone near the wrecker’s wall to the little boy in the back corner. Maggie’s still too lightheaded to take in properly what he’s saying, but it’s pleasant listening to him. He doesn’t make any allusions to Fletcher’s absence. He doesn’t lay bare his neuroses, demanding to be accepted. He doesn’t dump his troubles on her, whatever they may be with a wife and children a thousand miles away. She catches the scent of the garlic he’s frying and bursts into tears.
“I’m sorry,” she says, wiping at her eyes with her sleeve. “It’s just that you’re being so nice to me. I can’t remember the last time someone was so nice.” As she says this, she thinks of the day Fletcher presented her with the projection wall in the playroom. It seems like years ago.
George Ray offers her his handkerchief. “You should remember I’m getting paid,” he says. As far as she can tell, there’s no irony in the statement.
“Please don’t say that. You shouldn’t diminish it, especially when—when I know you prefer it on your own.”
He stays silent awhile, and for the first time with him today she feels awkward. It’s as if her words are floating between them, material things he’s inspecting for their stress points and defects. She doesn’t like it.
“Do I prefer it on my own?” he says. “I don’t know. It goes with living here.”
A motion across the kitchen catches her eye. The cat has licked its plate clean and lazily walks away, stretching its legs one by one.
“You told me you were learning to be alone,” she says to George Ray.
“Yes. It’s a long lesson.”
“Has it been so bad, all these years?”
He shrugs. “At the Beaudoin farm there were a dozen men. I was almost never on my own.”
“Wouldn’t you rather be with them?”
For this question he needs no time to consider the answer. “Sometimes on Saturday nights I still go with them to St. Catharines, watch them drink and get chatty-chatty with the girls. That’s enough for me. My wife worries about Canadian women, but it’s living with a lot of men that ruins you.” At the mention of his wife she thinks she detects an uneasiness, as if he has suddenly remembered where he’s standing.
From the other side of the room comes a retching sound. Elliot, né John-John, is hunched over, neck outstretched. He brings up a stream of undigested liver. George Ray makes a face like it’s to be expected.
“He did the same this morning.”
“Poor thing,” she says. “Maybe it’s because he’s vegetarian.”
George Ray gives her a quizzical look, then goes over to pick him up. Elliot seems unconcerned by what has just transpired, and he tolerates the attention only a few seconds before pushing himself away. George Ray sets him down and retrieves a rag from the sink to clean up the mess.
“Too much throwing up today,” he says.
He feeds her rice with peas, her stomach handling it better than she feared. After dinner he goes back to the barracks and the cat mews at the door to be let out. She’s tempted to keep him inside; what if he should disappear again? There’s no litter box in the house, though, so reluctantly she opens the door and watches him trot off, tracing the perimeter of the backyard by slinking next to hedges and fences until he reaches the barracks. Eventually the door opens, and perhaps it’s only her imagination, but as the cat’s admitted, it looks as though George Ray steals a glance to see if anyone else is there too.
Abandoned by both of them, she thinks of calling Gran. It’s too late in the evening for that now. When she tries to read, her mind keeps drifting to the barracks. What does he do out there with his evenings? For her own part, she’s still only halfway throug
h Middlemarch, and she can barely keep her eyes focused. The lines turn to caravans stretched across the white desert of the page. What kind of marriage must it be for George Ray and his wife, sleeping so far apart for months every year? What would he say if Maggie told him she was pregnant? She forces her attention back to the page.
Finally she gives up and turns on the television to let the ions flow over her. The familiar intonations of reporters and news anchors on the U.S. channels are a solace, though all they have to tell her is bad news. No wonder the people up here have their little left-wing haven with its free health care and its pacifism; every night they can study the States on TV and learn what not to do.
She watches until they play the national anthem. When she turns off the set, its picture condenses into a white pearl occupying the centre of blackness. In contrast with the departed TV studios, the house seems shabby, a hodgepodge, poorly lit. She staggers upstairs but can’t sleep. The walls creak, and something scurries across the roof. Finally she decides the only thing left for her is to seduce herself. She thinks of Fletcher and, at the end, of George Ray.
In the morning, she has forgotten about it until Fletcher calls. Then it returns and shames her into silence. When he asks how she’s doing, she says she’s fine. Sounding tired, he explains that things have gotten complicated, that he needs another two weeks in Boston. Reluctantly she acquiesces, thinking it will serve as some kind of expiation for her. Before he hangs up, she says she loves him. It may just be the bad connection that produces a slight delay before he says he loves her too.
Yia Pao carries the baby as he and Gordon follow muddy paths up and down the side of the valley. Sawtoothed mountains loom on either side while monkeys scream from the trees. Rain drums on the foliage overhead, striking them in fat, heavy drops, and orange worms stretch across the trail, their spiny backs slick with slime. Gordon flicks them out of the way with a long stick. Whenever he and Yia Pao reach an open place, he searches the sky.
“No one’s looking for us, Gordon,” says Yia Pao.
“But we still might flag down a plane.”
“We need to keep going, or it will be Sal and his men who find us.”
The rain lessens, then stops, and a thick fog settles in, reducing visibility to a few feet. Eventually they arrive at a clearing where the trees are shattered, trunks snapped in two and branches flung everywhere, the ground pocked by craters filled with water. Tadpoles wriggle at the borders of the pools. Leading the way, Gordon trips over a jutting length of metal. It’s the tail of a jet. The wreckage is spread across the clearing and covered in vines.
“This is a bad place,” murmurs Yia Pao. “A ghost place.”
Gordon gazes into the fog. From somewhere in the jungle comes the deep-throated call of a bird.
“It isn’t Christian to believe in ghosts,” he says.
“Have you never seen your wife’s ghost?” asks Yia Pao. “Mine visits me often.” His tone suggests the visits aren’t happy ones.
Gordon takes a few more steps through the blasted clearing. “Not her ghost. She used to come in dreams. She’d plead with me to die too.”
“Gordon, I’m sorry.” They pause beside a crater, and Yia Pao soothes Xang in Hmong.
“I told her I couldn’t because we had a daughter,” says Gordon. “My wife wouldn’t give up, so I started to take sleeping pills at night. They made her go away for a while.”
“Did she bring you to Laos?” asks Yia Pao. “Did you come here to die?”
Gordon frowns and doesn’t respond. “I leaned too hard on Maggie,” he says after a time. “She went to college and it nearly finished me.” A few seconds later, he brightens. “That’s the thing about God. You can lean on Him as much as you want.”
Yia Pao turns to survey the plane’s wreckage, the shredded trees and torn earth. He passes Xang to Gordon and bends to massage his own calves. “Is God in this place? I would like to lean on Him now.”
As if in answer, there’s a low whine that grows louder, and the men raise their eyes. The jungle reveals only a small area of sky, so that the plane is almost right above them before they see it, bright white, propeller driven, flying low. Gordon shouts at it but is drowned out by the engines. A moment later the plane has passed out of sight. The men listen as its roar fades.
“He didn’t see us,” says Gordon dolefully.
“Wait,” says Yia Pao.
The noise from the engine grows louder again. Yia Pao pulls off his shirt and whirls it above his head. The baby is crying, but Gordon whoops.
When the plane reappears, it’s even lower than before. The men are yelling and waving for it. Then there’s a clap of thunder. The earth falls away. A tidal wave of mud carries them across the clearing, while a ball of flame roils over the treetops.
Lying on his side with Xang still in his hands, Gordon tries to shield him from the debris showering on them. The air fills with a dirty, suffocating smoke. The baby starts to cough, but when Gordon gains his feet, the smoke grows thicker and he falls to the ground again.
When he looks up, he sees Maggie striding out of the jungle. She wears an iridescent blue dress untouched by mud and rain. The smoke melts away as she approaches, even though the trees around her are on fire.
Smiling at her father, she spreads her arms wide. Gordon reaches to take her hand. She vanishes just as she’s about to touch him.
Xang coughs and cries against his chest. For a time Gordon weeps with him. Finally he struggles upright, looks himself over, examines the baby. They’re both filthy but seemingly unhurt. He turns in search of Yia Pao and sees him getting to his feet a few yards away.
“You all right?” he says, and Yia Pao nods. “So are we. It’s a miracle.”
“He had terrible aim,” says Yia Pao. He points toward the smoking crater on the other side of the clearing.
“Why did he bomb us?” says Gordon.
Yia Pao shrugs. “They do whatever they want.” He makes his way over to Gordon, takes Xang, and kisses him on the cheeks. Then he starts toward the trees and gestures for Gordon to follow. “We must hurry. Before he returns to finish us off.”
The doctor in Virgil is squat with buckteeth and tufts of white hair sprouting from his ears. In the examining room, as Maggie lies on her back, her feet in stirrups, he prods her without much interest.
“Five weeks late, you say? Temperature’s high.”
“I’ve been ill. I had a fever.”
The doctor tuts as if this fact is medically uninteresting. “Have there been mood swings, headaches? Cervix feels a little soft. No spotting, but morning sickness, you said. Well, the chances are pretty good. Don’t worry, we’ll sort it out soon enough.” He draws a vial of blood and dispatches her to the bathroom with a plastic cup, saying it will be a week before the results come in.
When she exits the office, there’s a cluster of people just outside beneath an awning, watching as rain pours down before them in a solid sheet. Few vehicles pass by, and no one speaks. They all stand and wait, their numbers swelling with more patients from inside. When a man in a suit rushes down the street into the awning’s sanctuary, drenched from head to toe, those already gathered smile in sympathy, and the newcomer smiles too as he wipes himself off. Above them, a swallow perches on a strut, silent and unmoving.
Eventually the rain abates. One by one, at some sign known only to themselves, people begin to depart and continue on their way. By the time Maggie leaves, a patch of sun is poking through the clouds.
7
When the little blue Volvo comes up the driveway, Maggie’s first thought is that it’s Fletcher. She’s on the porch beating out rugs and George Ray is working close by, humming tunelessly as he plants saplings along the edge of the lawn. She’s not expecting Fletcher for another ten days, but he must have bought another car and come back early. The silhouette behind the wheel doesn’t look like his, though, and when the driver exits the Volvo in his golf cap, she sees with a sinking heart that it’s the priest from
the stone church.
“Pardon intrusion,” he says, ambling up the steps. “Lenka tells me I must call first, but telephone is its own intrusion, yes?”
Maggie agrees that it is.
As the priest reaches the top of the stairs, he hands her a brown paper bag. “Buchty,” he says. “Lenka makes it for you.”
Maggie takes the bag and thanks him, worried about what kind of obligation she has just accepted.
“Is very quiet,” says the priest, turning to take in the property. On the lawn, George Ray’s hammering a stake into the ground, while the moon hangs just above the orchard, tiny and pale in the afternoon sky like an egg laid in the treetops. At first Maggie assumes the priest’s being sarcastic, given the hammering. Then she figures out his implication.
“Yes, most people have left,” she says. She can’t bring herself to admit that everyone has gone.
“Is nice man from grocery store still here?” asks the priest. He means Wale, she realizes, and she laughs at the idea of Wale as a nice man. The priest seems puzzled by her reaction.
“That man abandoned his girlfriend and his daughter,” she tells him. His expression falls, and he asks how the woman and the girl are doing. Maggie merely says they’re back in the States now. She doesn’t feel like talking about Brid and Pauline with him.
“I must tell you,” says the priest, “I come as courtesy to your grandmother.”
“My grandmother,” Maggie repeats.
“She writes nice letter to me asking how you are.” The priest sees her look of incomprehension and goes on. “You tell her you come to church, so she makes inquiry about this parish and discovers my address.”
“I didn’t tell her—” Then Maggie remembers what she said to Gran on the phone. She can imagine Gran’s excitement at the thought of her attending Mass.
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