Robert McGill - Once We Had a Country

“How do you know it’s him?”

“Because he’s a vegetarian cat. Their shit smells different.”

“A vegetarian cat,” repeats Maggie with dismay.

“Yeah, I know. It was Rhea’s idea.”

“I’m starting to understand why he ran off.”

As Dimitri goes through the trees whispering John-John’s name, she can hear his hopefulness. She joins him in the search, but they find nothing. When they take up their route back to the farmhouse, it occurs to her that all those times he skipped out on work claiming to look for John-John, he was actually doing it. Probably it’s how he came to meet the girl. Maggie has this apprehension and doesn’t know whether to think more or less of him for it.

The next morning, she finds George Ray alone in the barracks and tells him she has taken care of things, then provides a cursory account of the night’s happenings. When she says she didn’t betray his confidence to Dimitri, he seems pleased. It’s only after she has returned to the house that she reflects on George Ray’s warm eyes, his grateful smile, and thinks again about the fact that he told her rather than Fletcher the story of his encounter. Probably it’s as simple as he said: he didn’t want Fletcher overreacting. Yes, that must be it. She barely lets herself consider that maybe she wasn’t the only one glad to share a secret between them.

When Maggie enters the grocery store in Virgil, the checkout girl asks if she has brought more film to be developed. Obligingly, Maggie hands over a paper bag, then gets herself a cart and pulls out her shopping list. She has gone some distance along the first aisle before she looks up to find the way forward impeded by Wale, slouching in a leather jacket. Beside him is the priest from the stone church. He has a golf cap perched on his high forehead, and his eyebrows look thick enough to be painted on with grease.

“Miss Dunne,” he says, sounding genial and cautious at once. “Is good to see you again.”

“You two know each other?” she asks.

Wale and the priest exchange a glance, as if to confer about a proper reply.

“We just met,” says Wale.

“This friend of yours, he is telling me about your father’s work in Laos,” says the priest. “Your father sounds like a remarkable man.” His eyes narrow when he sees Maggie’s irritation, but he presses on. “I wish you to understand, at church you are welcome. I am happy for you to be there—” He stumbles for the words. “—in different arrangement from past time.”

“I’m apostate,” she says.

“But already you go to church once,” he observes. “Something draws you, no?”

“The rain,” she replies, and he smiles as if accustomed to recalcitrance.

“Rain is good beginning.” Looking at his watch, he announces he must depart, then raises the wire basket he’s holding, with its still life of bundled carrots and a single lemon, as if to prove the matter’s urgency.

Once he has disappeared down the aisle, Maggie turns on Wale. “Why were you telling him about my father?”

“Just small talk,” he replies.

She doesn’t believe him. “So this is what you do now? You gossip about my family in grocery stores?”

“Father Josef’s not so bad. I think you should give him a chance. He could help you with your hang-ups around your dad.”

She doesn’t need Wale telling her what her hang-ups are. “My father and I got along fine until he found God. Then we—” Abruptly she stops. An old woman in horn-rimmed glasses is pushing an empty cart toward them. “Look,” says Maggie more quietly. “There was something I wanted to ask you.”

She tells him about her conversation with Gran and the news of her father’s missed call. As she speaks, Wale’s face seems to freeze.

“What day was your father supposed to call?”

When she tells him, he falls silent. Finally she slaps the handle of her cart so hard her shopping list goes curlicueing to the floor. “I only told you about this so you’d say everything was all right.”

“Sorry. Yeah, of course. It’s probably fine.” He doesn’t even try to sound convincing.

“His ride must have run out of gas, right? Or the phone lines went down.”

He studies her face. “You really haven’t heard from him? Nothing at all?”

“Like I said, not since May.” But that sounds worse than it is. “It’s only because I asked him not to write. He’s talked with my grandmother plenty of times.”

“I’m going to call some people,” says Wale. “See if they’ve heard anything.” A look of unease hasn’t left him.

“Wale, when you met my father, was he in some kind of trouble?”

“All of Laos is trouble. The place is full of bad cats.”

“But my father wasn’t mixed up with any of them,” she insists.

“He didn’t strike me as the type.” He avoids her gaze as he says it. “Honestly, if I was worried, I’d go over myself and bring him back with me.”

She stares at him a moment, trying to discern if he’s serious. “You wouldn’t. Your heart’s made out of shit, remember? You only do things that are in your interest.”

“It would be in my interest,” he says with a glint in his eye.

Maggie blushes and looks away. “Don’t talk like that. Just call those people and tell me what you hear.”

She offers him a ride back to the farm, but he says he has things to do and heads off down the aisle. On her own she continues through the store, cursing when she realizes she’s lost her shopping list. She gathers ketchup, buns, and napkins. At the checkout counter, the girl working the till asks her if she’s stocking up for tonight’s party at the farm.

“You know about it?” Maggie asks.

“Sure,” says the girl. “That Fletcher guy you’re always with has been inviting everyone in town.”

Once the groceries are rung through, the girl reaches for the cigarette case, but Maggie declines the offered pack. She’s three weeks late. She still thinks it must be stress.

“Cold turkey?” the girl asks, and Maggie nods. “Yeah, I figured as much. To be honest, right now you don’t look so good.”

When she returns to the farmhouse, the sun hangs low in the sky and there are a dozen unfamiliar vehicles parked in the driveway. She should be glad of them; drawing new people was Fletcher’s whole reason for suggesting a party at the start of the Labour Day weekend. But there’s too much to do: groceries to deliver into Rhea’s hands, food to prepare, and the projector to set up so people can watch the film Maggie has put together. It’s a single movie, not quite the one she has imagined but a version of it distilled from all the summer’s footage, a mammoth thing four reels long, each twenty minutes except the shorter final one. And thanks to the checkout girl, who remembered them at the last moment, now Maggie has three more spools of processed film to add, though she’d forgotten all about them. She worries they’ll spoil whatever shape and order she’s managed to give the thing, but the new footage will have shots of newcomers who aren’t in the rest, and people will want to see themselves.

As she carries the grocery bags past a group drinking beer on the front lawn, she sees Fletcher talking to a pair of men who sport aviator sunglasses and Robert Redford haircuts. She has met them before: Karl and Lambchop, friends from Fletcher’s boarding school days. Changing course to meet them, she realizes they’re in the middle of an argument. When Karl spots her, though, he breaks off to greet her as if she’s the surprise visitor and he’s the one long settled on the farm. It turns out he and Lambchop are only up for the weekend.

“Did you get the burgers?” Fletcher asks her. “Rhea’s waiting—”