Robert McGill - Once We Had a Country

For the next few days, those times it isn’t raining, there’s a grey gloom that makes her wish it would. The house acquires a pervasive musty smell. When she tries to start a fire in the living room hearth, the room ends up filled with smoke, and there’s the sound of a bird panicking in the chimney. As she scrambles to open the windows, the creature flies into the room and darts about, leaving streaks of soot on the walls before escaping. In the kitchen cupboards she finds fresh mouse turds. She sets traps, and in the night the snap of their springing startles her awake. When she goes to check the next morning, she finds two tiny furred bodies pinned in the same mechanism, their necks broken and their noses touching.

There’s no more word from Gran, but every night Fletcher phones dutifully, and Maggie spends much of the days anticipating his calls, totting up the things she has done and seen, trying not to let it faze her that each night he asks about the test results. Finally she tells him about her father, and he reassures her it will turn out all right. He says he’ll see if his dad knows anybody over there who might be able to give them some answers. He tells her if she still hasn’t heard anything in a couple of weeks, he’ll fly over to Laos with her and they can go find her father together. It’s foolish bravado, and it makes her angry. Fletcher has spent all this time away, yet now he’s willing to travel across the world for her? He’s the same as Wale.

Each time she hangs up the phone, solitude hurtles in on her. After all the hours of keeping busy, the night undoes the work of the day. She retreats to the television and watches Truth or Consequences . She watches Search for Tomorrow and Mary Tyler Moore . She watches All in the Family . One afternoon, finding nothing on the Buffalo stations she can bear to sit through, she resorts to watching a hockey game on the Toronto channel. The Canadians are playing the Russians in Moscow, the last game of a series she hasn’t been following. It’s the final period and the game is tied. When one of the Canadian players scores, there’s jubilation among his teammates, but Maggie isn’t really paying attention to them. Her eyes are on the thousands of Russians in the stands, dressed in suits and ties or dark woollen jackets. The few times the camera shows them, their faces are unblinking and forlorn. They have the look of children at Christmas who were promised one thing and given another.

That evening, George Ray doesn’t appear in the kitchen to dine with her, and she doesn’t go to check on him. There’s a long list of things to do this weekend before Fletcher returns, but she can’t bring herself to start any of them. Instead, she watches TV and takes in the people on the local news crowing over the hockey win. One of them says God must be a Canadian. She shakes her head and watches late into the night, while the clay statue of Saint Clare stares back at her from the top of the set. The next morning, when Maggie passes by the living room, she glances in at the television with contempt, as if the two of them have shared an ill-advised tryst.

Rain falls hard on the jungle, striking the canopy and collecting into giant drops that crash down on Gordon and the baby. Gordon’s clothes are waterlogged, his hair plastered to his head, while Xang’s little hands are shrivelled from the damp and a stream of yellow mucus runs from his nostrils. He breathes in time with Gordon’s footsteps, the jolts producing wet little whispers of air. Below them, the river tumbles down the gorge, appearing and disappearing through the trees. Sometimes Gordon stops to stare in the direction of the water, but there’s no sign of Yia Pao and little evidence of any life, only a pair of rats at the trailside, both of them enormous with matted black fur, indifferent to him as they gnaw at the innards of a rotting monkey.

The trails Gordon follows are no more than the pathways of animals, criss-crossed with fallen trees and clogged by branches that tear at his skin. A few times he has to stop and set Xang down to clear a way forward. Finally he reaches a place where it seems that a while ago someone went through with a machete, and he’s able to walk more freely while resting Xang against his shoulder.

A hundred yards later, the path jogs. As he completes the turn, he stumbles over something, barely keeping his feet. At the same time there’s a lash of movement, quicker than the eye can follow, and a sound like the flight of an arrow. An unseen force propels him backward, pinning him against a tree.

He doesn’t move, only groans in agony. Slowly, his eyes travel down to his midriff. A long piece of bamboo presses against him there, the end of it neatly sawed off. A spike of metal sticking through it has pierced his body to an unknown depth.

“Oh God,” he says. “Oh Jesus.”

Raindrops stipple the surface of a puddle beneath him. When he tries to shift in place, blood spurts from his body and he stiffens. Xang starts crying, but Gordon doesn’t comfort him, can’t speak. For a long time he stands there, one arm around the wailing child while the other hangs at his side. The blood flows from him until it has soaked his shirt and begins to stain the puddle at his feet.

“Hush,” he whispers at last, then he tries to sing. “Hush, little baby …” He repeats the words before falling silent again.

Branches around him droop under the weight of the rain. After a few minutes Xang gives up his crying. A black rat crosses the path and sniffs the air, looks Gordon in the eye, sizes up the baby.

“I promise,” Gordon murmurs. “I promise, Xang, I won’t let go.”

It’s getting darker. Xang whimpers a little, falls into sleep. Eventually the puddle at Gordon’s feet overflows its edges, and a trickle of pinkish water starts making its way toward the river.

Monday morning, Maggie awakens at sunrise and goes straight to the kitchen for coffee. It’s the second day of October, and there are only twelve hours until Fletcher arrives. At nine she’s tempted to call the doctor’s office, but already she has made herself a nuisance there, and they’ve said they’ll contact her when they know. What else to do? In the orchard she finds George Ray mending the wire fence that keeps out deer, and she asks him if he has any jobs for her. He shakes his head but suggests they eat lunch together when it’s time. This is a surprise. They almost never have lunch together, and all week they’ve maintained their distance from each other. Perhaps he’s trying to distract her from the waiting, or maybe he’s realized it will be their last chance to share a meal on their own.

After she hears the mailman’s truck turn in the drive, she walks out to the box. There’s a letter there, the address written in a hand she doesn’t recognize, the stamp from Laos. Opening the envelope, she finds two sheets folded inside, coffee-stained and rumpled as though stuffed in a pocket for some time before they were mailed. The handwriting on them is cramped so as to get everything in.

Dear Maggie,

Yesterday I finally reached the mission. Traveling takes longer here now that Air America is pulling out. The mission’s a charming little place, with tents and fish ponds and a big fucking crater in the yard. The people aren’t much into talking, at least not to me or my loyal interpreter (sweet guy, one-armed, probably Pathet Lao), but I can be persuasive when I want to be.

That morning in the grocery store when you told me about not hearing from your dad, I got worried, so I called a friend in Laos, and it turned out I was right to be. Sorry for cutting out like I did, but I figured the sooner I got over here, the better.

See, there’s this guy I know named Sal. I mentioned him in that film of yours. Used to be in Special Forces with me—now he’s a drug runner. When the army caught up with me in Thailand, they accused me of being in his gang. They were wrong, but as luck would have it I’d just seen him in Laos.