Robert McGill - Once We Had a Country

You might remember me saying I met your dad at Long Chieng in May. What I didn’t tell you is that I was there because of Sal. He and his buddies were running a good racket in Laos, stealing opium from farmers and selling to the CIA. After I went AWOL I bumped into him. He and I were on a bender in Long Chieng when we met your dad and his buddy Yia Pao.

I have to admit, right from the start I had a bad feeling. Your dad said where they were headed and Sal got this look in his eye. But we were pretty drunk and I figured nothing would come of it. Forgot about the whole thing until that morning in Virgil at the grocery store when you said your dad hadn’t been in touch. Then I got a hell of a jolt. I should have known. Sal doesn’t believe in coincidences, and he doesn’t let chances go to waste. He probably spent the whole summer wondering how he could make use of those two guys.

When I called my friend in Laos, he didn’t know anything about your dad or Yia Pao, but he knew Sal had a deal going down with a bagman at some refugee camp. Plan was for the CIA plane to drop off the money, then for Sal to pick it up the next day. The CIA doesn’t like dealing directly with the banditos, because it looks bad to the natives. Apparently when Sal turned up, though, the bagman said the money hadn’t come in. So Sal checks with the CIA, and of course they said the bagman’s story was bullshit. They didn’t ask Sal what he’d done about the bagman. That isn’t how things work over here.

I’m pretty sure your old man wasn’t wrapped up in it. The priest at the mission figures it was just Yia Pao. But he says that after Sal and his boys turned up, they took your dad along with Yia Pao and his baby.

Sal’s not stupid enough to go killing Americans. I bet he’s thinking he can cover his losses by getting a ransom for your father.

Anyhow, I’m sorry for breaking the news like this. There’s no phone here. Also, I don’t want you jumping on a plane or getting the State Department involved to fuck things up. I can handle it, Maggie, I swear. By the time you get this, everything will be sorted out. Hell, maybe your dad is there beside you. He can tell you how good old Wale saved his ass. I’ll find him, I promise.

Thought I was doing the right thing by going to the farm. Thought I could be a proper father and put this part of the world behind me. You can’t just move on, though, can you? You drag your shit with you like a parachute till it snags and you have to start sawing at the cords. I have my knife out now, Maggie. I’m hacking with all I’ve got.

Sorry for going on like this. There’s been too much time to think this week. Hardly anyone here speaks English, and the opium’s cheap. You spend a lot of the day in your own skull.

I keep dreaming about you, and it’s always the same dream. On the phone you said you didn’t want to hear about it, but it’s not dirty like you were probably thinking. In the dream we’re out in the garden behind the farmhouse again, only it’s full of fruit and vines. Then Brid comes looking for us like she really did that day, but this time we run into the orchard and hide from her. It’s a nice dream. The last few nights I’ve fallen asleep hoping I’ll have it again.

A couple more hours at the mission and then I’m going upriver. I know I told you not to come, but I wish you were here. Yeah, that’s right, I want you in this hellhole with me. I’d trade your comfort and well-being for a bit of company. Wouldn’t even hesitate. I told you I’m a bastard. Have you figured that out yet? You understand now the kinds of people there are in the world? Real nice folks who’ll break your arm before they say hello. Assholes who can’t even look in the mirror.

After that there’s a postscript, but it’s been scribbled out, hard enough to poke through the paper.

She checks the envelope again. The postmark is too blurred to discern the date. It must have taken the letter at least a couple of weeks to get here, yet in all that time there was no news about her father from anyone. If what Wale says is true, surely someone must have found out something by now. She has to call Gran and let her know what Wale has written.

Once more she reads the thing. He was probably high when he wrote it. Maybe he’s not even in Laos anymore but in Bangkok or Hong Kong—or Buffalo, for all she knows, sitting in a bar and having a good laugh.

As her outrage grows, she realizes she’s angry not just with Wale but with her father. Didn’t she tell him it wasn’t safe? All along she said that, yet he talked like the only protection he needed was her, like if she didn’t go with him, any worrying she did would be her fault. Now look where it has gotten him.

As she walks back up the driveway and steps onto the porch, the phone starts to ring. It’s Wale, she thinks. It’s the doctor’s office. It’s her father calling to say he’s all right. Rushing through the house, she snatches the receiver just at the dying of the bell and finds it isn’t any of them. It’s Fletcher. Maggie looks at the clock and frowns.

“Where are you?” she asks.

“Still in Boston.”

“What happened? You should be through Albany by now—”

“Something’s come up. We’re having problems with the Brookline voters list.”

If he’s joking, she doesn’t see the humour in it. “I thought you were done with the campaign.”

“I want to be, but I was assigned this thing a while back. I feel like I should get it finished.” He speaks as if everything he says is reasonable and has to be accepted.

“Fletcher, that’s crazy. Let someone else do it. I need you up here.” Then she hears a woman’s voice at the other end of the line. “Who’s that talking?”

“Nobody. Just someone at the campaign office.”

“Fletcher, what’s going on? You’re waiting to hear about the baby, aren’t you?”

“No, of course not.” But he goes silent.

“Fletcher, my dad’s been kidnapped. You hear me? Some drug dealer has taken my father.” Saying it aloud sends her into a panic, and she tries to control her breathing as she waits for his reaction. He doesn’t speak, though. There’s just the woman talking again in the background, then Fletcher replying to her, their voices muffled as if he has covered the receiver with his hand. Still, Maggie can hear his tone, supportive and slightly exasperated at once. She recognizes it well enough. All month on the phone he’s used the same one with her. “Sorry,” he says, his voice returning to full clarity. “Things at the campaign office are a bit hectic. I’ll call you back after lunch, okay?”

“Didn’t you hear what I said?” she cries.

“Look, I’ll make it up to you, I promise. I love you, baby,” he says. A moment later there’s the click of him hanging up.

The receiver in her hand feels insubstantial. It doesn’t matter, she tells herself. He was just distracted and didn’t hear her. She doesn’t need him anyhow. Maybe she doesn’t even love him. No, that isn’t right. It’s some kind of trespass to think like that. Love might inflate and shrivel, it may be impatient or unkind, but it keeps on going, doesn’t it?

When she calls Gran, the line’s busy. In a few minutes she’ll call again. To distract herself, she turns on the television and flops across the couch. Onscreen, a man in a suit is saying there are only five weeks until the election.

She doesn’t want to hear about the election. She’s sick of waiting, sick of politics, sick of television telling her that everything important is elsewhere, that her only role is to stay tuned and find out what happens next. From the kitchen, she fetches a pair of scissors.

By the time she returns to the living room, it’s as if the deed is already done, and she’s glad. In her mind the future’s no longer a maze of unexplored passages but a safe, well-lit corridor leading through the years to come: her father’s return, her baby a toddler, then growing into a little girl. But it could be a son. Why does she assume it will be a girl?