Robert McGill - Once We Had a Country

“Don’t worry, it’s not for you,” he says, seeing her face. “Your dinner’s still to come. This is for him.” He gestures to the table. At first she doesn’t see anyone, but then there’s the flick of a tail and she perceives the slate-grey body sitting on one of the chairs. It watches the stove intently with two black and yellow eyes like blots of dark vinegar in oil.

“Is that John-John?” she says, amazed. The cat doesn’t move at the name’s utterance. She has only ever seen John-John streaking from the Centaurs’ car, and later among the grainy shadows of her film. This cat looks rougher for wear than the one she remembers; the tip of its tail is bald like a rat’s, and when it jumps down to rub against her, it favours one of its hind legs.

“Don’t know any John-John,” says George Ray. “I call him Elliot.”

“Where’d you find him?”

“He found me—scratched at the barracks door two nights ago.” George Ray gives the liver a stir.

“I doubt you need to cook that,” she points out. “He’d eat it raw.”

“He likes it better this way.” George Ray removes the skillet from the stove, cuts the liver into pieces, and deposits it on a plate. The cat meows loudly as it’s set before him. Maggie’s unable to take her eyes off the creature and resists an urge to pick him up. When she looks back to George Ray, he’s dicing an onion.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“Making your dinner.”

“I can do that,” she says weakly. She doesn’t have the energy to protest as she should.

“You’re sick. Sit and talk to me if you like.”

So she sits and they talk, although George Ray does most of the speaking, as if he knows it will be easier for her just to listen. He tells her of the skunk he saw scuttling around the corner of the barracks yesterday, the first one he has seen after seven summers working in this country, although he’s smelled the creatures often enough. He talks about how the knots in the trunks of cherry trees remind him of faces, so that he thinks of them as people living in the orchard, from the crone near the wrecker’s wall to the little boy in the back corner. Maggie’s still too lightheaded to take in properly what he’s saying, but it’s pleasant listening to him. He doesn’t make any allusions to Fletcher’s absence. He doesn’t lay bare his neuroses, demanding to be accepted. He doesn’t dump his troubles on her, whatever they may be with a wife and children a thousand miles away. She catches the scent of the garlic he’s frying and bursts into tears.

“I’m sorry,” she says, wiping at her eyes with her sleeve. “It’s just that you’re being so nice to me. I can’t remember the last time someone was so nice.” As she says this, she thinks of the day Fletcher presented her with the projection wall in the playroom. It seems like years ago.

George Ray offers her his handkerchief. “You should remember I’m getting paid,” he says. As far as she can tell, there’s no irony in the statement.

“Please don’t say that. You shouldn’t diminish it, especially when—when I know you prefer it on your own.”

He stays silent awhile, and for the first time with him today she feels awkward. It’s as if her words are floating between them, material things he’s inspecting for their stress points and defects. She doesn’t like it.

“Do I prefer it on my own?” he says. “I don’t know. It goes with living here.”

A motion across the kitchen catches her eye. The cat has licked its plate clean and lazily walks away, stretching its legs one by one.

“You told me you were learning to be alone,” she says to George Ray.

“Yes. It’s a long lesson.”

“Has it been so bad, all these years?”

He shrugs. “At the Beaudoin farm there were a dozen men. I was almost never on my own.”

“Wouldn’t you rather be with them?”

For this question he needs no time to consider the answer. “Sometimes on Saturday nights I still go with them to St. Catharines, watch them drink and get chatty-chatty with the girls. That’s enough for me. My wife worries about Canadian women, but it’s living with a lot of men that ruins you.” At the mention of his wife she thinks she detects an uneasiness, as if he has suddenly remembered where he’s standing.

From the other side of the room comes a retching sound. Elliot, né John-John, is hunched over, neck outstretched. He brings up a stream of undigested liver. George Ray makes a face like it’s to be expected.

“He did the same this morning.”

“Poor thing,” she says. “Maybe it’s because he’s vegetarian.”

George Ray gives her a quizzical look, then goes over to pick him up. Elliot seems unconcerned by what has just transpired, and he tolerates the attention only a few seconds before pushing himself away. George Ray sets him down and retrieves a rag from the sink to clean up the mess.

“Too much throwing up today,” he says.

He feeds her rice with peas, her stomach handling it better than she feared. After dinner he goes back to the barracks and the cat mews at the door to be let out. She’s tempted to keep him inside; what if he should disappear again? There’s no litter box in the house, though, so reluctantly she opens the door and watches him trot off, tracing the perimeter of the backyard by slinking next to hedges and fences until he reaches the barracks. Eventually the door opens, and perhaps it’s only her imagination, but as the cat’s admitted, it looks as though George Ray steals a glance to see if anyone else is there too.

Abandoned by both of them, she thinks of calling Gran. It’s too late in the evening for that now. When she tries to read, her mind keeps drifting to the barracks. What does he do out there with his evenings? For her own part, she’s still only halfway through Middlemarch , and she can barely keep her eyes focused. The lines turn to caravans stretched across the white desert of the page. What kind of marriage must it be for George Ray and his wife, sleeping so far apart for months every year? What would he say if Maggie told him she was pregnant? She forces her attention back to the page.

Finally she gives up and turns on the television to let the ions flow over her. The familiar intonations of reporters and news anchors on the U.S. channels are a solace, though all they have to tell her is bad news. No wonder the people up here have their little left-wing haven with its free health care and its pacifism; every night they can study the States on TV and learn what not to do.

She watches until they play the national anthem. When she turns off the set, its picture condenses into a white pearl occupying the centre of blackness. In contrast with the departed TV studios, the house seems shabby, a hodgepodge, poorly lit. She staggers upstairs but can’t sleep. The walls creak, and something scurries across the roof. Finally she decides the only thing left for her is to seduce herself. She thinks of Fletcher and, at the end, of George Ray.

In the morning, she has forgotten about it until Fletcher calls. Then it returns and shames her into silence. When he asks how she’s doing, she says she’s fine. Sounding tired, he explains that things have gotten complicated, that he needs another two weeks in Boston. Reluctantly she acquiesces, thinking it will serve as some kind of expiation for her. Before he hangs up, she says she loves him. It may just be the bad connection that produces a slight delay before he says he loves her too.

Yia Pao carries the baby as he and Gordon follow muddy paths up and down the side of the valley. Sawtoothed mountains loom on either side while monkeys scream from the trees. Rain drums on the foliage overhead, striking them in fat, heavy drops, and orange worms stretch across the trail, their spiny backs slick with slime. Gordon flicks them out of the way with a long stick. Whenever he and Yia Pao reach an open place, he searches the sky.