Robert McGill - Once We Had a Country

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.

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 office.”

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.