Robert McGill - Once We Had a Country

“No one’s looking for us, Gordon,” says Yia Pao.

“But we still might flag down a plane.”

“We need to keep going, or it will be Sal and his men who find us.”

The rain lessens, then stops, and a thick fog settles in, reducing visibility to a few feet. Eventually they arrive at a clearing where the trees are shattered, trunks snapped in two and branches flung everywhere, the ground pocked by craters filled with water. Tadpoles wriggle at the borders of the pools. Leading the way, Gordon trips over a jutting length of metal. It’s the tail of a jet. The wreckage is spread across the clearing and covered in vines.

“This is a bad place,” murmurs Yia Pao. “A ghost place.”

Gordon gazes into the fog. From somewhere in the jungle comes the deep-throated call of a bird.

“It isn’t Christian to believe in ghosts,” he says.

“Have you never seen your wife’s ghost?” asks Yia Pao. “Mine visits me often.” His tone suggests the visits aren’t happy ones.

Gordon takes a few more steps through the blasted clearing. “Not her ghost. She used to come in dreams. She’d plead with me to die too.”

“Gordon, I’m sorry.” They pause beside a crater, and Yia Pao soothes Xang in Hmong.

“I told her I couldn’t because we had a daughter,” says Gordon. “My wife wouldn’t give up, so I started to take sleeping pills at night. They made her go away for a while.”

“Did she bring you to Laos?” asks Yia Pao. “Did you come here to die?”

Gordon frowns and doesn’t respond. “I leaned too hard on Maggie,” he says after a time. “She went to college and it nearly finished me.” A few seconds later, he brightens. “That’s the thing about God. You can lean on Him as much as you want.”

Yia Pao turns to survey the plane’s wreckage, the shredded trees and torn earth. He passes Xang to Gordon and bends to massage his own calves. “Is God in this place? I would like to lean on Him now.”

As if in answer, there’s a low whine that grows louder, and the men raise their eyes. The jungle reveals only a small area of sky, so that the plane is almost right above them before they see it, bright white, propeller driven, flying low. Gordon shouts at it but is drowned out by the engines. A moment later the plane has passed out of sight. The men listen as its roar fades.

“He didn’t see us,” says Gordon dolefully.

“Wait,” says Yia Pao.

The noise from the engine grows louder again. Yia Pao pulls off his shirt and whirls it above his head. The baby is crying, but Gordon whoops.

When the plane reappears, it’s even lower than before. The men are yelling and waving for it. Then there’s a clap of thunder. The earth falls away. A tidal wave of mud carries them across the clearing, while a ball of flame roils over the treetops.

Lying on his side with Xang still in his hands, Gordon tries to shield him from the debris showering on them. The air fills with a dirty, suffocating smoke. The baby starts to cough, but when Gordon gains his feet, the smoke grows thicker and he falls to the ground again.

When he looks up, he sees Maggie striding out of the jungle. She wears an iridescent blue dress untouched by mud and rain. The smoke melts away as she approaches, even though the trees around her are on fire.

Smiling at her father, she spreads her arms wide. Gordon reaches to take her hand. She vanishes just as she’s about to touch him.

Xang coughs and cries against his chest. For a time Gordon weeps with him. Finally he struggles upright, looks himself over, examines the baby. They’re both filthy but seemingly unhurt. He turns in search of Yia Pao and sees him getting to his feet a few yards away.

“You all right?” he says, and Yia Pao nods. “So are we. It’s a miracle.”

“He had terrible aim,” says Yia Pao. He points toward the smoking crater on the other side of the clearing.

“Why did he bomb us?” says Gordon.

Yia Pao shrugs. “They do whatever they want.” He makes his way over to Gordon, takes Xang, and kisses him on the cheeks. Then he starts toward the trees and gestures for Gordon to follow. “We must hurry. Before he returns to finish us off.”

The doctor in Virgil is squat with buckteeth and tufts of white hair sprouting from his ears. In the examining room, as Maggie lies on her back, her feet in stirrups, he prods her without much interest.

“Five weeks late, you say? Temperature’s high.”

“I’ve been ill. I had a fever.”

The doctor tuts as if this fact is medically uninteresting. “Have there been mood swings, headaches? Cervix feels a little soft. No spotting, but morning sickness, you said. Well, the chances are pretty good. Don’t worry, we’ll sort it out soon enough.” He draws a vial of blood and dispatches her to the bathroom with a plastic cup, saying it will be a week before the results come in.

When she exits the office, there’s a cluster of people just outside beneath an awning, watching as rain pours down before them in a solid sheet. Few vehicles pass by, and no one speaks. They all stand and wait, their numbers swelling with more patients from inside. When a man in a suit rushes down the street into the awning’s sanctuary, drenched from head to toe, those already gathered smile in sympathy, and the newcomer smiles too as he wipes himself off. Above them, a swallow perches on a strut, silent and unmoving.

Eventually the rain abates. One by one, at some sign known only to themselves, people begin to depart and continue on their way. By the time Maggie leaves, a patch of sun is poking through the clouds.

When the little blue Volvo comes up the driveway, Maggie’s first thought is that it’s Fletcher. She’s on the porch beating out rugs and George Ray is working close by, humming tunelessly as he plants saplings along the edge of the lawn. She’s not expecting Fletcher for another ten days, but he must have bought another car and come back early. The silhouette behind the wheel doesn’t look like his, though, and when the driver exits the Volvo in his golf cap, she sees with a sinking heart that it’s the priest from the stone church.

“Pardon intrusion,” he says, ambling up the steps. “Lenka tells me I must call first, but telephone is its own intrusion, yes?”

Maggie agrees that it is.

As the priest reaches the top of the stairs, he hands her a brown paper bag. “ Buchty,” he says. “Lenka makes it for you.”

Maggie takes the bag and thanks him, worried about what kind of obligation she has just accepted.

“Is very quiet,” says the priest, turning to take in the property. On the lawn, George Ray’s hammering a stake into the ground, while the moon hangs just above the orchard, tiny and pale in the afternoon sky like an egg laid in the treetops. At first Maggie assumes the priest’s being sarcastic, given the hammering. Then she figures out his implication.

“Yes, most people have left,” she says. She can’t bring herself to admit that everyone has gone.

“Is nice man from grocery store still here?” asks the priest. He means Wale, she realizes, and she laughs at the idea of Wale as a nice man. The priest seems puzzled by her reaction.

“That man abandoned his girlfriend and his daughter,” she tells him. His expression falls, and he asks how the woman and the girl are doing. Maggie merely says they’re back in the States now. She doesn’t feel like talking about Brid and Pauline with him.

“I must tell you,” says the priest, “I come as courtesy to your grandmother.”

“My grandmother,” Maggie repeats.

“She writes nice letter to me asking how you are.” The priest sees her look of incomprehension and goes on. “You tell her you come to church, so she makes inquiry about this parish and discovers my address.”