Robert McGill - Once We Had a Country

Gordon turns to see him being swept down the canyon by the current. Yia Pao’s head bobs and disappears, resurfaces. The river pins him against a rock, and Gordon can see his scrunched eyes as the water pounds him. Then he’s sucked back into the water and carried away.

On the bank, Gordon struggles for air even as he checks the silent baby. Xang is breathing but stupefied, too sickly to complain about his near drowning. He only stares into the treetops as if he has been waiting a long time for a decision to be made about his fate and is resigned to waiting for a long time still.

Gathering himself, Gordon discovers there’s no path on this side of the river either. The bank on which he sits is crowded by jungle. He couldn’t chase after Yia Pao even if he had the strength.

He sits until the mosquitoes begin to circle and he has to shoo them from Xang’s face. Finally he rises and starts into the jungle with the little boy in his arms.

When Maggie walks out to check the mail that afternoon, she sees an unfamiliar object at the end of the driveway: a placard not more than two feet across held up by thin metal poles. The sight of it sets her stomach grinding, but the sign is oriented toward the road, so she has to wait until the last moment before the words become plain.

FOR SALE .

The bastard. He didn’t even warn her.

To make sure it isn’t an error, she phones the realtor listed on the sign. Then she calls Fletcher at his parents’ house. It’s his father’s doing, it must be. If the man answers, she doesn’t know what she’ll say to him. But it’s Fletcher who picks up.

“How are you?” he asks. The line whispers overtop of silence. “What is it? Are you all right?” She hates the way he says it. He’s never coming back, she can tell just from his tone.

“Somebody put a For Sale sign out front today.” On the other end there’s an exclamation of surprise. “You didn’t know?”

“It must be a mistake.” He sounds genuinely upset. A month ago she would have taken him at his word. “I’ll talk to Dad. We’ll get it sorted out.”

“Why don’t you let me speak with him?”

“You mean right now? I don’t think he’s here.” He says it too hastily.

“You knew about this, didn’t you? Or was it your idea?”

“Really, he didn’t say anything.” He clears his throat before continuing. “All he told me was that if I couldn’t show him a viable plan, he wouldn’t be able to defend continued ownership.”

She hates the way he lapses into his father’s business-talk. “So you showed him a plan?”

“First I wanted to talk with you. I don’t know whether things are feasible.”

She hates words like “feasible.” He doesn’t call unless she badgers him. He lets her live on his father’s money to salve his conscience while he lounges in Boston, and all because he was crazy enough to think she’d be turned on by that film.

Maggie still hasn’t told him about being tested; she hasn’t even reminded him about her missing period. Until now she has thought it would be unbearable if he were to come back early for the sake of someone who isn’t born yet, a mere hypothesis, when he’s decided not to return for her.

“Fletcher, I got tested,” she says. “I’m pretty sure I’m pregnant.”

At first she wonders if he has hung up. Then his voice comes over the line again.

“Why only pretty sure?” He sounds anything but loving.

“It’s a long story. The results aren’t official yet.”

“Shouldn’t we wait until they are before we get worked up about it?” He says it as though the results are a credit card bill that doesn’t need paying until the end of the month.

“The doctor’s secretary said it was positive! I told you I was late three weeks ago, but you didn’t take me seriously. You just ran away.”

“It wasn’t like that,” he begins before cutting himself off. “All right,” he says in a clipped, low voice. “Tell me what you want to do.”

As the statement sits there between them, a buzzing starts in her brain.

“You think I should get rid of it.” Part of her is impressed that she can be so forthright. Fletcher seems surprised too.

“I didn’t say that, I just … It’s a bit of a shock, that’s all. We never talked about a baby.”

“What do you mean? We’ve both said we wanted a family.”

“Not this way.”

He doesn’t even ask her to come back to Boston anymore. He’d rather keep her hidden in this attic of a country. Suddenly she has never felt so dedicated to the place.

“I’m going to have the baby,” she tells him, “and I’m not leaving this house.” Before he can reply, she adds, “Thanks for the support.” After rushing the receiver back to its cradle, she goes to the living room and turns on the television.

It takes him an hour to call. When he does, he says he’s talked with his father and there’s good news: he and Maggie will be allowed to keep working the farm. He says he’ll be up in a week, as they planned. Sounding pleased with himself, he asks her when the results of the pregnancy test are going to be confirmed.

“They said maybe a week,” she mumbles.

“Okay.” He sounds unsure, as if it might be a point to argue. “Call me if you hear.”

She says of course she will. Then a thought occurs to her. “What if it’s negative? Will you still come?” He says he will, but she doesn’t believe him. “What did your father say about the baby?” He doesn’t answer. “Did you even tell him?” She isn’t playing this game right, slashing about when she should be conciliatory, but she seems impervious to her own good advice. “Fletcher, I swear, you leave me here, I’ll make this place such a success …”

“Jesus, you’re keeping the farm, you’re having the baby, I’ll be there soon. What else do you want?”

Isn’t it obvious? She wants him to want all these things too.

Afterward, she starts to see it in a better light. He’s coming back in a week, and if he wasn’t thrilled about the baby—well, she couldn’t expect that right away.

She imagines how it could be: the warm bundle in her arms, then eventually a walking, talking child. They’ll have a household of just three, with George Ray to help keep up the farm in the summers. She’ll paper the walls in the playroom to make a nursery but leave the white wall as it is, and one day she’ll screen her films again, this time for their child. Her father will return from Laos and visit them. Perhaps he’ll even stay for good. So taken is she by these thoughts that she almost doesn’t let it bother her when at dinner she and George Ray barely speak.

In the morning, she wakes up shivering and sees her breath in the cold air. Once dressed, she descends to the dirt-floor cellar and tries to start the boiler. There are minutes of silence, then a terrible clanking as if someone with a wrench is thrashing the pipes, before finally the radiators start to hiss.

Out among the cherry trees, she finds that overnight the landscape has transformed. The world is aflame with goldenrod in flower and bushes bearing red, poisonous-looking berries, while tiny butterflies swirl through the air like bits of paper and grasshoppers take wing to thwack against her leg. The earth seems sharper, more brittle than before, infested by burrs, thistle, and bone white twigs. The air is rank with the urine smell of rotting leaves. Abandoned ladders, scythes, and bushel baskets litter the ground, and a wagon lies covered in a black tarp that flaps in the wind like a sail. The creek is a trickle of water through scummed rocks and dried cress. She kicks through leaf drift worrying that when Fletcher returns he’ll expect her to have raked it all away. After lunch, driving past a yard sale on the way to Virgil, she spots an old-fashioned bassinet and buys it without bothering to haggle.