Robert McGill - Once We Had a Country

“You with the CIA?” he asks her.

“Shush,” she says. “Pretend I’m not here.”

“Yeah, don’t look at her,” Fletcher tells him. “It turns out more natural that way.”

Brid leans over the table with the coffee pot in hand. “Come on, babe,” she urges when Wale declines a refill. “You didn’t get any more sleep than the rest of us.” Topping up his mug, she kisses him on the cheek.

“You have to tell your story again for the camera,” Fletcher says to him, but he demurs. When his gaze returns to Maggie, she gestures for him to look away. Resignedly, he stares into his coffee. Pauline is still clamouring for cereal; Brid reminds her that bacon is one of her favourites. Then Wale says he’s not hungry and he wants to go sleep some more.

“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.