Robert McGill - Once We Had a Country

“It’s all right,” he says. “He isn’t going to shoot you, Gordon. He wants you to lower yourself in.”

Gordon sits down at the edge, slides his body forward until finally he drops. At the bottom it’s pitch-black except for a purple square of sky ten feet up. The silhouette of a head appears above them and whispers something before vanishing.

“What did he say?” asks Gordon.

“Tomorrow he will try to bring milk. He is Hmong, he will help us if he can.”

“I told them you didn’t take their money,” Gordon says, then adds, “I didn’t lie, did I?”

“I don’t have it,” Yia Pao replies. “I promise you.”

“They didn’t believe me.”

“Perhaps not. If they were certain I took it, though, they wouldn’t have brought us all this way. They may wish to ransom you now, but you weren’t part of their plan. These men are drug runners, not kidnappers.”

“How do you know?” Gordon asks, and Yia Pao doesn’t answer. “All right, then. Tell me why they brought you here. Why not kill you or let you go?”

“Because they think I might have their money after all.”

“What about Xang? Why haven’t they killed him? Could it be there’s some decency in them?”

“Perhaps they think that as long as he lives I will try to save him by revealing where the money is.”

“Is he all right?” asks Gordon. As if in response, the baby cries feebly. Gordon offers to hold him, and Yia Pao hands him over.

“We’ll get out of here,” says Gordon once the child is settled in his arms. “If it comes to it, I’ll give myself for both of you. I won’t hesitate.”

Yia Pao gives a low laugh, and Gordon’s voice turns gruff. “What is it? What’s so funny?”

“I think you have been waiting a long time for this moment.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You have wanted a chance to surrender yourself,” says Yia Pao. “Tell me, what crime did you commit to require this self-sacrifice?”

“It’s not what I did,” Gordon replies. “It’s what I never did.” Before he can say more, there’s the sound of something smacking against the wall of the pit between them.

“Climb the rope, Yia Pao,” says Sal’s voice. “Leave the kid with your friend. It’s your turn for a talk.”

After Yia Pao is gone, Gordon coos a lullaby to the child. A few minutes later, when Yia Pao starts screaming in the distance, Gordon breaks off from the song and begins to pray.

One evening in the middle of July, a sedan pulls into the driveway bringing unexpected visitors. Dimitri and Rhea are in the front seat, their two little boys asleep behind them. Maggie rises from where she has been sitting beside Fletcher on the porch step and calls into the house for Brid and Wale, then asks Fletcher in a whisper whether Dimitri told him they were coming. Fletcher shakes his head in wonder.

Dimitri climbs out of the vehicle in a pair of cut-off jeans that separate his pot-belly from slim, strong legs, the two halves of him so disparate that he looks like both a horse and its rider. Rhea, not more than five feet tall, has the same powerful thighs and high-bunched calves. Brid has referred to these two as the Centaurs, and she has made it clear she doesn’t much like them. But today she greets them with a smile before lifting Pauline to the car window and pointing out the boys, Judd and Jeffrey, as if they’re a rare species of animal. After Rhea rouses them, Pauline turns shy and buries her face in Brid’s chest, while Wale nods a hello from the porch.

When the vehicle’s back doors are opened, a flash of silver grey leaps out and tears across the drive on four legs, disappearing behind the house. Dimitri gallops after it, shouting, “John-John! John-John!” The two boys call out too, even while Rhea chastises them for opening the crate in the back seat. Over the next hour everyone helps in searching for the Centaurs’ cat, without success.

To Maggie, it’s a disquieting arrival, but in this feeling she’s apparently alone. That night after dinner, once the boys have been placated with candy bars, the adults talk and laugh with a celebratory air, even though Dimitri soon informs them that he and his family have come here only for the rest of the summer. He says rumours about Fletcher have been flying around Boston. Some people are saying he’s had a nervous breakdown; others swear he’s going to run for Congress. Last week Cybil called Dimitri to ask if Fletcher had really joined the Weathermen. Maggie watches Fletcher’s face as he hears this news and perceives no sign of displeasure. For his part, he gives a sanguine history of their settlement on the farm, even managing to mention George Ray without eliciting any comment, only a quick, dour look between Dimitri and Rhea that Maggie takes to mean trouble.

After dessert, there’s a rush to change the sleeping arrangements. The Centaurs and their boys are given Pauline’s room, while she’s moved in with her parents. The new configuration delights her but leaves Wale less than happy.

“So much for fucking,” he announces.

In the morning, the men go to work harvesting cherries with George Ray. The fruit they carry back from the orchard is blighted, and much of it is already starting to rot. Maggie stays in the house preparing lunch, then dinner, her interactions with Brid and Rhea limited to sightings from a distance as they watch over the children, looking bored and conspiratorial by turns.

A few days later, as if the Centaurs have begun a trend, a green Beetle full of teenagers and aromatic smoke appears in the drive. They have heard about Harroway from the draft dodgers in Toronto, and they wanted to check out the scene. Fletcher can’t believe the good fortune of it. When he puts them in the barracks with George Ray, Maggie worries they’ll make the place unbearable for the man, but for the most part they stick to the house, toking up, eating all the food, and doing no work at all.

After a week, they leave just as stoned as the day they appeared, but others begin to arrive. An earnest-looking couple named Sarah and Jim turn up from New Jersey speaking to each other in baby talk and offering to read people’s palms. A thick-bearded man calling himself Luther rides in on a motorbike with a low-slung saddle, his clothes too small for him and smelling as if they haven’t been washed in months. Someone named Ralph calls from the St. Catharines bus station asking to be picked up, though nobody has heard of him and they can’t imagine how he got the number. Upon his arrival he says he saw the farm in a dream.

Suddenly there are too many people to eat in the dining room all at once, so they migrate to picnic tables in the backyard, and when it rains, they carry their plates out to the barracks. Each day more people arrive, some driving cars, some hitching; others leave abruptly without even saying goodbye. It gets to the point that Maggie can’t remember all their names. Most of those who join in the cherry harvest spend more time eating the fruit than picking it, and by the end of the month Fletcher has delivered only a few dozen baskets to Morgan Sugar’s processing plant in Toronto. Instead of seeming disappointed, he orders more bunk beds for the barracks and devises sign-up lists for chores. When people complain that the bathroom is always occupied, he talks enthusiastically of building a washhouse.

Most of the new arrivals aren’t travelling from the States as he imagined. Rather, they’re on their way back there, Americans no longer afraid of the draft, young men and women who say they’re fed up with the cold winters, the lack of jobs, the complacency of this little country with its inferiority complex and superiority complex at once. More than a few want to campaign for McGovern, even though Eagleton has had to withdraw from the ticket and they agree it’s all over, Nixon will get back in for sure. Fletcher still gives them room and board, hoping to convince them of the good life they could have if they stayed. Those who help out for at least a week are put on the Morgan Sugar payroll. A group of them excavates a drainage ditch along the south fence, and another lays the foundations for a drive shed to hold the tractor Fletcher plans on buying. Some don’t help out at all, but Fletcher says it doesn’t bother him. Maggie’s the one who resents the dirty sheets and bare refrigerator shelves, the cooking and cleaning for people she doesn’t know, the absence of time with those she does. For the most part Brid and Rhea stick to minding their children, leaving Maggie to herself. Every time she visits the barracks, it seems Wale is there playing cards with someone. She worries about him and the newcomers out there taking George Ray from his solitude, keeping him awake at night with their idle talk and singalongs.