Once We Had a Country

by Robert Mcgill

“From under the mat,” Lydia says. Maggie takes it from her slowly. “Jacqui and I used to hang out here before you moved in. We didn’t know you were coming.”

  Maggie thinks of the peace sign on the wall, the cigarette butts and empty bottles. She remembers her first night in the house and the shadowy figure at the bottom of the stairs.

  “The night Fletcher and I got here …”

  “That was Jacqui. She’d left her stash in the living room.”

  “She got it back?”

  “Not that time. Dimitri grabbed it for us later.” After she has spoken, Lydia bends forward and starts to breathe quickly and shallowly.

  “Are you all right?” asks Maggie. “You need help?”

  Lydia sits up and puts her hands on her knees to brace herself, eyes closed tightly, leaking tears. “I’m sorry about the wall. I’m very sorry. It was Dimitri’s idea, in the summer. He wanted me to write those things.”

  Maggie feels her jaw clenching. “Lydia,” she says.

  “I thought he was back. It was supposed to be a joke.”

  “A joke,” says Maggie flatly.

  “I thought he was hiding from me,” the girl whispers. “I thought he was here with his wife.” Her face screws up into a mask of hatred. “He’s such an asshole!”

  Maggie doesn’t know what to say. “Your father told me you’d gone to Toronto.”

  “My father’s a moron.” Lydia wipes the tears from her cheeks and stares across the lawn with glistening eyes. “I moved back after Halloween.”

  “So he was lying. Did he tell you that I’d called?”

  “Yeah. I promised him I wouldn’t do it again.” Suddenly Lydia has taken on the contemptuous air that she shared with her cousin in the summer. “Mom’s right, he’s spineless. He’d let me get away with anything.”

  Maggie thinks back to her phone call with the man and wonders whether he’d have covered for his daughter if he knew what she had written. A joke, she claimed. Dimitri’s idea. How could they have been so stupid?

  “You wrote such hateful things,” Maggie says.

  The girl starts crying again, while Maggie remains motionless beside her.

  “He just wanted to stir things up,” says Lydia. “He wanted to rile your boyfriend.” She turns to Maggie with desperate eyes. “He’s messed up in the head. He’s a junkie.”

  “That didn’t bother you?” Maggie wonders whether Dimitri told Lydia or she found out some other way.

  The girl’s shoulders droop and she puts her head in her hands. “I guess I was in love with him.”

  Maggie doesn’t offer any consolation. She isn’t going to let herself feel sorry for this person, not after what she wrote. It doesn’t matter how young or infatuated she is.

  Eventually Lydia looks up with resignation. “If you’re going to call the cops on me, you should do it now. Otherwise I’m leaving on a bus tonight.” As if to underscore the point, she stands and makes her way to the bottom of the stairs. “Jacqui and I are meeting in Toronto. We’re moving to Los Angeles to live with her dad.” Then she adds, “It isn’t to get out of trouble for what I wrote. We’ve been planning it forever.”

  Maggie doesn’t believe her for a minute. It’s a silly schoolgirl fantasy.

  “Have you told your father?” she asks.

  Lydia glowers into the distance. “He doesn’t care. He wouldn’t even try to stop me.”

  Maggie feels an impulse to march the girl next door and make her tell her father everything. It isn’t her job to fix things between the two of them, though. It isn’t her job to make sure Lydia turns out all right. Better for the girl to go to California than stay here and force Maggie to keep dealing with her.

  “You do what you want,” Maggie tells her. “I’m not going to call the cops.”

  Instead of being relieved, the girl looks disappointed. “Why not? After what I wrote, I should be in jail.”

  “Sorry, I guess you’ll just have to live with it.” She can hear George Ray saying how she never wants a fuss. But right now Lydia’s practically daring her to make one, and she refuses to give her the satisfaction.

  The girl’s glower intensifies. She starts down the driveway, then stops. “This is your last chance,” she says.

  “Go. You’re home free.”

  “You’re being an idiot.” Lydia sounds almost frantic. “You can’t let people get away with things.”

  “Travel safely,” says Maggie. “I hope you have a good life.”

  The girl’s eyes sweep across the house. “I’m glad he sold it,” she declares. “I hated living here.”

  The pronouncement seems to free her, and she starts skipping down the drive as though without a care. Halfway along, she stops once more.

  “I really am sorry,” she calls out. “It was a stupid thing to do.”

  Maggie nods, worrying the gesture could be taken for a sign of forgiveness. She holds tight to the house key, feeling its tacky weight on her damp skin.

  Once the girl has gone, Maggie’s first thought is to phone George Ray and tell him what has happened. Instead, she goes upstairs and peeks into Brid’s room. Sleeping, after all. Maggie tiptoes to the bed and strokes her hair. It would be good to film her as she lies there so tranquilly, but lately Maggie hasn’t had much desire to use the camera.

  Brid stirs under her hand, opens her eyes, then lets them fall closed again. “Hey,” she says sleepily. “I love you.”

  Maggie starts at the words. Does Brid know to whom she’s spoken? Already she has returned to sleep, so there’s no way to ask. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Fletcher used to tell Maggie all the time that he loved her, and look where he is now. George Ray never said anything about love, nor Maggie to him, even though on more than one occasion the words were on her tongue. Then she thinks of Lydia saying she was in love with Dimitri. A stupid teenage crush, maybe, but Maggie isn’t about to deny that it was some kind of love. She gazes down at Brid and wonders at such variety.

  “I love you, too,” she says, continuing to stroke her hair, as if it’s only through the stroking that either of them might find any peace.

  The next day, when she arrives at Niagara Falls, there are plenty of places to park. It isn’t a surprise, for who besides her would think to visit the place on a frigid weekday morning in the middle of December? Only a few other souls stroll the promenade beside the falls. Sitting on a bench with the Super 8 camera in its case beside her, she watches a pair of teenagers walk past, the boy a few yards ahead, the girl dragging her feet, her swollen belly impossible to hide. They don’t even bother to look at the waterfall. When the girl catches Maggie staring at them, she gazes back scornfully, and Maggie realizes how abject she must appear, sitting there without even a companion. She wonders if George Ray has ever seen Niagara Falls, and she regrets never bringing him here.

  Once the teenagers have passed out of sight, Maggie goes to the railing above the falls. Lifting the camera from its case, she switches it on and zooms in until the frame is filled with cascading water. She tries to imagine how it will look projected on the wall, whiteness tumbling down whiteness, the whole thing silent because she left the tape recorder at home. Mist starts to collect on the lens. She remembers how, after her father brought her here as a girl, she had dreams where she was in the river being swept toward the brink. They always ended just before she reached the edge.

  On the drive home, she has turned off the highway onto the gravel road when the first snowflakes of the year begin to settle on the windshield, big fat ones swirling through the air and smearing the glass. It takes a moment before she realizes they’re not snow at all; they’re ash. Ahead of her, a long pillar of smoke rises toward the clouds. It must be someone burning brush. Only after she has passed Frank Dodd’s driveway and arrived at her own does she realize the smoke is coming from the farmhouse.

  The source of the plume is a second-storey window. Brid’s room. Occasionally a flame flicks its tongue through the broken glass. Otherwise the house has a strange
normalcy about it. As Maggie parks the van and starts up the porch stairs, she could almost believe everything is fine.

  She’s pretty sure that most people would tell her not to walk into a burning house, but it turns out to be a very easy thing to do. The knob of the front door isn’t even warm. There’s only a thin stream of smoke trickling down the stairs, pretty and harmless. The sounds from the second floor are of a large campfire before it has died down enough for marshmallows. Standing at the bottom of the staircase, she calls Brid’s name and hears nothing. There’s no one in the living room, just the day’s newspaper spread out on the coffee table. She’s almost tempted to go and straighten it. No one is in the kitchen. Then she hears a meowing from the mud room and finds Elliot clamouring to be let out. It’s odd to share none of his panic. She opens the door for him, and when he lopes away to safety, she wonders whether she can now be credited with having saved a life, whether sometimes it’s that simple and ordinary.

  Going back into the kitchen, she picks up the telephone, discovers it’s working, and is amazed and unsurprised at once. After dialing zero, she tells the operator that her house is on fire.

  “You aren’t in the building now, are you, ma’am?” The operator sounds concerned. Then the line cuts out, and Maggie decides she had better go upstairs.

  Perhaps I’m suicidal, she thinks as she climbs through the tumble of smoke. But she feels no desire to kill herself, only a detached lack of self-regard, a kind of disembodiment. From impossible angles she watches her own ascent, as if this is the climactic scene in a movie that has often been described to her, one she’s finally getting to view.

  At the top, it sounds like the house is talking to her, wakeful and chatty after years of dozing, keen to tell her all the dreams it’s had. Smoke billows from the open door to Brid’s room. This fact breaks her out of whatever trance has held her until now. Again she calls Brid’s name, hears nothing. After waiting in vain for the smoke to diminish so she can look into the room, she forces herself over the threshold. Her eyes water and a cinder scalds her tongue. The far wall is roiling and shimmering, the wall between the bed and bathroom has collapsed, and there’s no sign of Brid. Maggie coughs and retches with the smoke, then makes her way farther down the hall. No one in her room. No one in the playroom. The flames haven’t reached these places yet. She isn’t really thinking, only following some inner imperative, when she fetches the stepladder. It’s not until she begins to climb it that she realizes she’s doing it to save the money.

  The handle on the trap door to the attic is hot, and the air has thickened to the extent that it won’t let her sweat; moisture evaporates on her as soon as it forms. From above comes a high, multi-layered sound like a choir singing. She’s wondering how to proceed when the ceiling behind her falls away, throwing her off balance and toppling her from the stepladder to the floor. She lands in a heap with her left leg under her. Her ankle snaps and the pain shatters her, so woozily sickening that some time passes before she realizes the noises she hears are her own screams.

  She can’t breathe. There’s an agony in her rib cage. She can only gulp and heave. When she tries to put weight on her foot, the pain shrieks through her. The hallway is filling with smoke. Maggie looks down the corridor to the stairs and hopes to see the top of someone’s head appear, but no miracle is forthcoming. The flames grow higher, blocking her way out, even if she could move. They’re different from the coy, gentle flames in Brid’s room. These ones are restless, eager to explore the house. They slither up the wall, shattering a picture frame, then move toward her as though they have caught the scent of a curious new plaything.

  She starts to crawl along the floor in the direction of escape, which is also the direction of the flames. Every movement tortures her. A yard becomes a mile. When she reaches the playroom, the smoke’s so thick that she’s choking more than breathing, and the heat blisters her lips. There’s only one choice: she drags herself through the playroom door, then closes it behind her and sits against it, as if her weight might keep out the fire. Even while she rests there, though, smoke seeps into the room through the cracks. Taking off her sweater, she wraps it around her mouth. It’s a slight improvement. Finally she’s thinking of her survival, lame and cornered as she is.

  Across the room, the film canisters lie beside the projector on the card table. It’s not just the money that will be lost, then, nor only the house and her life, but the film as well. She should smash the window and throw the reels to the ground, then jump for it. God knows how she’ll land. But when she tries to cross the room, her ankle only lets her get halfway. From behind the door there’s a growing roar, and the air speaks a multitude of languages. Did someone call her name? A voice is shouting, barely audible. She calls back, feeling foolish and forlorn. Then there’s a bang behind her, and she turns to watch the door go flying open. Behind it is Brid, come to rescue her.

  Brid tries to lift her, but halfway up she loses her grip and sends her falling back toward the floor. Maggie lands on her bad foot and yelps in pain.

  “Sorry, sorry,” says Brid, grabbing hold again. She heaves her up and starts to drag her out the door with Maggie leaning on her shoulder.

  “Wait, the film—” says Maggie.

  “Fuck the film,” says Brid.

  In the hall, the air is filled with drops of liquid heat. The house burns well, as though stocked for that purpose, a furnace of books and wooden furniture. How does Brid think they’ll make it? Apparently the same way she made it here in the first place: daringly, and without much sense.

  As Brid leads her along the hall, Maggie looks back and sees there’s no floor behind them. She can look straight down into the kitchen, where her bed has fallen through and crashed onto the table. The mattress is aflame, yellow and blue. The house roars and puffs. Without warning, something stabs her in the eye. She puts her hand to it and feels hot wetness. Her other eye fills with smoke and tears.

  “I can’t see,” she says.

  The sensation in her feet is going; they might be on fire. Brid shouts at her to hurry, and there’s another groan from the house. The house is in pain. The house is dying.

  They pass under an arch of flame, and there’s the smell of burning hair. Hers? The visibility of things comes and goes as the blood runs down her face and smoke pushes its way through the house.

  Her hand alights on the staircase banister. The steps buckle, and Brid’s voice fills her ears: “Almost there, almost there.” Every moment Maggie’s curious to see if this is the point where they’ll die.

  Just when they have reached the bottom of the stairs, there’s a tremor that Maggie feels not only through her good leg but also through her teeth and fingertips. Light shears in through her half-open eye to suggest a wall has fallen away. Brid lets go of her, and Maggie crumples to the floor. Then Brid is yelling, “Help her!” Briefly through the blood and smoke, Maggie sees her leaning on the frame of the front door and another body passing by, a wraithlike shape as numinous as night, Maggie’s death come to collect her. It lifts her off the ground.

  The house seems to sway. As she’s carried through the door, the beam at the top splits a few inches from her head. It’s close to Brid’s head too, because Maggie can make her out still standing there, propping herself against the frame as if the building wants to fall on her. Brid’s clothes are on fire, but she doesn’t move. Maggie has a feeling of being released into cooler air, and at the same time the wraith shouts at Brid to come away. From his voice Maggie realizes it’s Frank Dodd. In the next second the door comes crashing down, followed by an avalanche of bricks.

  There’s a jolt as Maggie is lifted down the porch stairs in Frank’s arms, then another as he lays her on the grass. When she opens her good eye, she can’t see Brid, only Frank crouching on the porch and trying to lift beams out of the way. He grunts and throws bricks willy-nilly while the porch roof sags above him.

  Finally he pulls Brid free. The body he sets down beside Maggie is limp, and Brid�
�s face is pale, her forehead streaked with blood and ash. Frank hovers over them, blinking, red-faced, dripping with sweat.

  “I didn’t call for help yet,” he says. “I thought you were burning brush. Will you be all right if—”

  “Go!” shouts Maggie, as loudly as she can manage, and he rushes down the driveway. She watches to make sure he doesn’t turn around before she shifts her attention back to Brid.

  In places the heat has grafted Brid’s clothing to her flesh. A layer of skin on her forearms has melted away, so that Maggie can see the vulnerable life below, red strings of tendon packed together, twitching and bleeding. It’s too intimate and awful to look at for long. Maggie wonders if she should wrap the burns with her own clothing, but she doesn’t know first aid. It could be the wrong thing to do. She can only look at her and caress her face.

  A second later, amazingly, Brid is awake and calling Maggie’s name, convulsing as if she’s about to rise.

  “I’m here,” says Maggie. “Don’t move. It’s better if you don’t.”

  “Shit, it hurts,” says Brid through gritted teeth. She coughs up a bit of blood. Maggie tells her again to hold still. “It wasn’t on purpose,” Brid tells her. “I’m sorry. I swear, I wouldn’t do it on purpose.” Maggie tries to move closer and pain shoots up from her ruined foot. It takes her some effort to sit, but she takes Brid’s head in her lap and strokes her face, wiping the ash from her forehead. There’s a noise that tears the sky, and a section of the porch roof comes down, blasting them with sparks and smoke.

  “I was only out for a walk,” says Brid. “I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

  “Hush,” says Maggie through her coughing. “Hush, sweetheart, it will be all right.”

  12

  Smoke has blotted out the sun, red lights flash atop fire trucks, and torrents of flame gallop through the treetops. Then everything is still, and where the farmhouse once stood is a smouldering heap. All that remain are a few brick walls and window glass melted into lumpish sculptures. Nothing seems to be left of the orchard but charred stumps. There are flakes of ash falling softly on the acres of burnt trees, on the seared grass, and on the iron bed frame in the middle of the kitchen. The fire has scoured all colour from the earth, so that the television screen Maggie’s watching might as well be black-and-white.