Robert McGill - Once We Had a Country

Once a week, everyone gathers in the playroom to watch the latest developed film. A hush rises as the lights go down, and Maggie thrills at the whoosh of the projector’s fan ploughing air past the lamp, at the chatter of the machine taking hold of perforations in the strip. She’s less enamoured of the grainy Super 8 film stock, which is easily marred by scratches, spots of dust, and eyelashes jigging onscreen, but no one else appears to mind. They don’t even seem to notice the imbalances of composition, the shadows intruding where she wanted light. They clap and catcall, laughing at the showboats and the camera-shy alike, demanding certain reels be played again. There are gasps over the footage of the hurricane and hooting at Pauline’s antics during the staged tour of the house. When these latter scenes play, Pauline hides her face in Brid’s lap, overcome by all the staring adult eyes, though whether she’s embarrassed by their attention to her or to her image, Maggie can’t tell.

One night they watch a sequence Maggie shot in the orchard just after dawn. Sunbeams splay through the branches almost horizontally, while the trunks are split by light and shadow, their bark silvery purple in the main but turning lichenous green toward the roots. There’s no movement, no human presence, and Dimitri makes a crack about artistic pretension that Maggie decides not to hear. Then Jeffrey calls out, “It’s John-John!” Maggie has viewed this clip several times before, admiring the hues and textures, but until now she has never noticed that perched up in a fork is the outline of a cat. Although she shot the footage a week ago, the Centaurs’ boys want to see right away if John-John’s still in the tree. A search party is dispatched, returning without success. At each subsequent screening Maggie’s obliged to replay the clip, every projection eliciting new tears from Judd and Jeffrey, until Rhea complains that they show more attention to the cat now than they did when it was around.

Another much-requested sequence begins with a shot of an inflatable wading pool. Pauline leans forward to dip her fingers in the water and shrieks at the sight of a daddy-long-legs floating on the surface. Judd and Jeffrey run past in their underwear to jump over a lawn sprinkler, Judd kicking up his feet as he goes, Jeffrey doing his best to follow suit. At the barbecue pit, Fletcher presides over the sizzle of hamburger patties while people sit nearby eating and slapping at mosquitoes. Two teenage girls in halter tops pass a Frisbee back and forth across the lawn, seemingly unaware of the young men watching from the picnic tables. The shot pans back to Fletcher.

“Thirty people,” he says, smiling into the lens. “Can you believe it? Two months and already we have thirty people. Just today we planted half an acre of trees. We’re doing something incredible here.” His voice is declamatory, his enunciation precise, as if he’s speaking to a bigger audience than just the person behind the camera. “With our sweat we’re making a living for ourselves. There’s a wholesomeness in it, a sense of well-being—” He pauses as though trying to remember a line. “There’s a decency here. We’re new to this place, but somehow it feels like it’s always been ours. It’s a young country; we’re going to help make it grow.”

A second later, Wale appears from nowhere, a flash of sinew and tattoos, grabs Fletcher by the waist, and carries him to the wading pool, Fletcher struggling and laughing at once. When Brid spots them coming, she pulls Pauline from the water. Wale plants his feet behind Fletcher’s and in one smooth motion twists and falls, dragging him down. Water flies in all directions; there’s a pop like a gunshot. The two men are a tangle of drenched limbs engulfed by sagging plastic.

At this moment during screenings, the residents of Harroway cheer. Afterward, when Fletcher makes unsubtle hints about Maggie excising the clip, she tells him she needs to keep a comprehensive record. Privately, she has her own concerns about why the clip should be so popular, but still, she’s pleased with the reaction it gets. Some proud, reckless part of her thinks everyone is more together while watching her footage than at any other time. The only person never in attendance is George Ray, whom she imagines stretched out on his bunk as the reels are playing, glad to have the barracks to himself. She can almost imagine joining him out there, sitting at the table and sharing the silence, but she takes too much pleasure from the screenings to abandon them.

The films are still more rudimentary than she would like. The camera always trembles. Shadows turn faces into blots of darkness, or lens flares splash them with light. In one sequence she has too many close-ups, while in another she has stood too far away. And there are many things she can’t properly capture: the porch step always on the verge of snapping underfoot; the air near the wrecking yard after a rain, heavy with the smell of motor oil; the screeching of raccoons at night as they fight and fornicate on the roof.

Maggie decides that what people are seeing at her movie nights is merely the rough draft for something else. After screenings she stays up late selecting the sequences that garnered the best reactions, and she starts to edit them together. The card table in the playroom grows littered with egg cartons holding rolled-up bits of film. Sometimes the cutting and splicing seem like the wilful destruction of what gained life on the screen, but in her mind there’s a greater film waiting to be realized, along with someone waiting to watch the thing. When she tries to apprehend who it is, she realizes it’s her father. Strange to find him still abiding there after so much distraction. Three months have passed since he wrote. By now anything could have happened to him. But surely Gran would call if something was wrong; Gran wouldn’t pass up a chance to make Maggie feel guilty.

What would her father say if he saw the film? No doubt the believer of the last few years would condemn it, accuse them all of worshipping false idols. But she can imagine the younger man, the one done in by a desk job and his mother’s sanctimony, being attracted by the promise of their life. She can even picture him joining them up here.

It was at Christmas that he gave her the Super 8 camera. She had gone back to Syracuse and told him how much she hated teaching, how she couldn’t get over her stage fright and the daily humiliations at the hands of eight-year-olds. Admitting such things seemed easier than talking about his plans to become a missionary. Before she knew it, though, he was telling her he had the answer to her problems. She should come with him to Laos and work at the mission.

His enthusiasm for the idea was so heartbreaking that she didn’t say no right away. She didn’t mention Fletcher, either, because they’d only been dating a few weeks and somehow she sensed her father wouldn’t be glad to hear she had a boyfriend.

Christmas morning she sat with him in the living room and unwrapped the box he handed her, discovering the camera within. She should have said thank you right away, but there was no gratitude in her, only confusion. She had never expressed the slightest interest in such a thing.

“How much did it cost?” she asked. Had he borrowed from Gran? He always hated doing that.

“It shoots in colour,” he said, ignoring her question. “And it has a zoom.”

“It’s too much,” she told him, but that wasn’t the response he wanted.

“You remember your Brownie Starflash? You loved taking pictures.”

“I was a little girl then.”

“You could bring it to Laos. You could film our work there, show people back home what it’s like.”

Suddenly she realized what was inside her along with the confusion. It was anger, a white-hot rage she’d never felt before. The camera wasn’t a gift, it was a bribe. Did he think she could be swayed so easily? Did he think she had nothing better to do than take pictures of him?