Robert McGill - Once We Had a Country

“Here,” she says, handing him all the grocery bags except the one with the film spools. “Tell her I’ll be there soon. I have to start up the projector.”

Approaching the porch door, she spies a piece of paper on it that at first she takes to be a new version of Fletcher’s principles for the pursuit of happiness. Steeling herself to be embarrassed, she draws closer and sees the words are different.

Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled asses. We accept dodgers, deserters, and dissidents. We also accept peaceniks, beatniks, cowlicks, and New York Knicks. We do not accept American Express.

It could be worse. Looking back, she finds Fletcher still on the lawn, waiting for her reaction, so she gives him a thumbs-up and he smiles with a relief that makes her ashamed of herself. Behind him, the sun has been swallowed by a cloud, the pink edges damming a great reservoir of light that looks on the edge of bursting. It would make a good shot, but for tonight she’s decided to leave the camera in its bag.

Upstairs, the playroom is empty of people though crammed with chairs, the rest of the house denuded of them earlier in the day by Fletcher, who said he wants her to have the biggest audience possible. Moving down the crooked space between the rows, she reaches the corner where the editing machine has been tucked away on its table. With a sloppy taping job she appends the new footage to the end of the final reel, doing it quickly because she’d rather not think about how inferior the unedited footage will seem after the rest. Then she winds it by hand from its old spool onto the new one. As she does, she remembers her interview with Wale. At first she thought she’d include it. She hasn’t finished synchronizing the sound, so tonight the film will run silently, and it struck her as innocuous enough to show a few minutes of Wale’s face at least. When she watched the interview with the volume down, though, it seemed even more exposing: the way he doesn’t look at the camera, the way his expression grows rigid like it’s all he can do to keep himself in check. No one who sees him in that footage could ever look at him again in quite the same way.

Then there’s the other clip, the one that has been bothering her awhile.

On an impulse, she goes to the closet in her and Fletcher’s bedroom, where she retrieves the curl of film with Pauline and the dead sparrows. Probably Fletcher’s right and Brid won’t find anything wrong with it. Maybe she won’t even see it. Hurriedly, Maggie adds the clip to the reel as well. It’s out of sequence, but as finales go, it should do fine.

Loading the first reel onto the projector, she starts up the machine, watches the camper van travelling along the road, and is tempted to linger. She remembers the day at the start of June when she filmed the shot, standing on the shoulder while Fletcher, indulging her, drove back a quarter mile to be recorded going by. There’s a comfort in viewing a scene watched many times before, one thing following another in an expected way. Next come the shots of the bedroom with its trash-filled drawers and the crack in the ceiling that still hasn’t been fixed. There are so many things to do before the cold weather sets in: insulation for the attic, new mats and coat hooks for the mud room. She ticks through the list in her head before assuring herself that every item is already on paper. Then she forces herself out of the room and downstairs.

In the kitchen, Rhea greets her without disguising her annoyance at Maggie’s lateness. There’s a handful of people drinking and chatting around the table, but apparently as far as Rhea is concerned their idleness is sacrosanct and only Maggie’s work is necessary. All week Maggie hasn’t spoken with the Centaurs. Dimitri has stopped making an issue of George Ray, so she has decided to leave things be, not wanting to play Dimitri’s chaperone. Lately he and Rhea always seem to be ill-tempered, though, and yesterday at dinner they just smiled coldly when Fletcher called tonight’s party a farewell bash for them. Now, as Maggie works alongside her, Rhea stays silent except to order her around. After fifteen minutes of it Maggie excuses herself to change the reels.

During her absence from the playroom, a number of people have discovered the film, some sitting on chairs, some leaning against the wall. Onscreen, there’s a row of neon signs she shot in Niagara Falls, which means only a few more seconds remain before the reel ends. When it does, she replaces it quickly to keep the audience from losing interest. Nobody speaks or moves, as if they’ve gone blank with the screen and will be reanimated when the projector starts again.

By the time she arrives downstairs, people are lining the hall, smoking and talking with one another. Usually by this time in the day the place smells of sweat and dirt, but tonight the air’s scented with perfume, beards have been trimmed and faces scrubbed. The living room shades are drawn, leaving the space patched with a darkness that would be hell to film. In the corner, the television sits unplugged, looking sad that no one’s watching it. Somebody has turned on the record player, and she can hear Joni Mitchell above the layers of conversation, singing about pieces of paper from the city hall. It seems just what Fletcher has envisioned, yet as Maggie pours herself a glass of lemonade from a pitcher on the coffee table, the fragments of speech she overhears make it doubtful the night will produce new residents as he hopes. They all seem to be talking about the election, going over the day’s Olympics results, or speculating about an amnesty for draft dodgers. From the dining room comes a high-pitched voice appealing for a ride across the border.

Passing through the kitchen to the mud room and onto the lawn, she finds the sun vanished. September has brought cooler weather, and most of the people outside are dressed in sweaters or jackets, seeming more adult, less profligate than before. Fletcher, overseeing the barbecue pit with Karl and Lambchop next to him, is the only one with bare arms. He grimaces in response to something Lambchop says, and when serving a hot dog to a little boy, he doesn’t even smile. It’s a shame for him to be unhappy, especially when the party was his idea. It must be Karl and Lambchop’s fault, whatever they’re laying on him. When Karl sees her heading their way, she could swear he elbows Lambchop and whispers something. Promptly the two of them sidle into darkness.

“Shouldn’t you be filming?” Fletcher asks as she draws near. The question grates on her. Why should he assume shooting movies is always what she wants to do? She doesn’t like his wilful innocence either, as if there isn’t a history between them with the camera now.

“What were you talking about with those two?” she asks.

“Nothing much.” The way he says it makes her worry, and she waits for more. “They just wanted to know how long we’re staying here.” He seems embarrassed by her puzzlement. “They’ve been talking to my father,” he adds with some reluctance. It takes a moment before it clicks.

“He sent them to talk you into coming home, didn’t he?”

Fletcher says of course not, but she’s having none of it. Then she remembers the film and checks her watch. Already another twenty minutes have elapsed. Telling Fletcher they’ll talk more about it, she hurries back inside. Upstairs, people are filing from the playroom.

“Wait, there’s more!” she exclaims, rushing to the projector and fumbling with the reels. Most of the chairs are still occupied, the audience content to chat during the intermission. A few more people whom she caught at the door return to positions along the wall.

The next reel begins with footage from her time-lapse experiments. The audience seems enthralled, and Maggie can’t help but be glad. She’d love to film their faces now, their preoccupation with the screen. She should go back to Fletcher, but she stays to watch a little longer, worried he’ll only impart bad news: that they’ve run out of money for good, or that his father has made a final decision to sell the farm. If he told her that, she’s not sure what she’d do. All she knows is she couldn’t leave now. It isn’t because of the people or the work they’ve done on the house. It isn’t because of some political principle. Foolishly and simply, she realizes, it’s because of the film. After all the energy and time she’s put into capturing the place, framing and editing it into shape, she can’t imagine bidding it farewell.