Robert McGill - Once We Had a Country

Crouching behind the silver orb of the TV set, Maggie unplugs it and with one snip of the blades cuts the power cord in two. Immediately she feels the world dwindling. Not for her the Cold War, the hijackings, and the price of oil. Already her life is growing smooth as a stone in a river. Time flows around her. Nothing sticks.

As she stands again, she brushes against the set and her elbow catches the clay statue of Saint Clare perched on top. Before she can do anything, the figure goes tumbling from its place. It lands face up and stares at her accusingly with its black eyes.

“What are you looking at?” Maggie says. She snatches it up and throws it against the wall. Falling to the floor, it cracks in two, the legs neatly separating from the torso.

For a moment it feels like a triumph. Then she thinks the statue could be the last thing her father ever gave her. No, she can’t think like that. She can’t start feeling sorry for herself or him. Probably he sent the statue less as a gift than a provocation, another way to make her feel guilty.

Crossing the room, she bends to retrieve the pieces. When she touches the top half, she feels its cool surface on her skin, then the rough white line of the fracture.

“Doesn’t matter,” she says. “Doesn’t mean anything.”

As she picks it up, an object dislodges from inside. It drops through the air, takes a soft bounce on the floor, and comes to rest by the statue’s feet. At first Maggie registers only sheets of paper, greenish-grey, then the rubber band that holds them together. Finally they resolve into a thick wad of bills. She takes them in hand and thumbs through them. They all seem to be hundreds.

The telephone’s ringing from the kitchen. Maggie looks from the cracked torso in one hand to the roll of money in the other. Setting the statue down again, she turns, still holding the bills, and hurries out of the room to answer.

Her last night at Gran’s, the night before the funeral, she’s already eager to be back on the farm. The house next door calls to her dolefully, but so far she has managed to avoid it, instead only looking through the boxes carried over by the auction people and choosing a few things to take with her. She doesn’t need physical reminders of him. She isn’t like Gran, who has framed photos of him everywhere now. All week Gran has kept referring to his martyrdom, talking about it like something to celebrate, not bothering to ask Maggie a single question about her life. It makes what Gran says over dessert all the more surprising.

“That Fletcher Morgan left you, didn’t he?”

Apple crumble lodges in Maggie’s throat. Gran doesn’t wait for her reply.

“It doesn’t matter. You stick it out up there. Show him what a woman can do.”

Maggie can’t believe what she’s hearing. Out of the blue, like a blast of grace, she has finally been granted the grandmother she always wanted. In her astonishment, she blurts out her plans to purchase the farm and work the place herself. Gran shocks her again by approving.

It doesn’t last. The next morning Gran is tetchy and caustic, back to her usual self, unable to stop talking about the miracle of her son’s death.

At the cemetery, fallen leaves rustle around the headstones while an American flag twists and snaps against the sky. Maggie stands with Gran and a few dozen others near the open grave, keeping her chin tucked low so the brim of her hat obscures her face. While the elderly priest speaks and Gran dabs away tears with a handkerchief, Maggie sneaks glances at those around her. Finally she spots Fletcher near the back in his trench coat. His hair has been cropped, and he’s reaching up to tug at a moustache no longer there.

The priest makes the sign of the cross. Soon most of the mourners disperse, but a few stay behind to converse in hushed voices. Maggie doesn’t speak much, just accepts the words of others. She’s remembering how her father used to call her Opie and announce his return from work by whistling the theme song from The Andy Griffith Show . She remembers the two of them pretending to be Topo Gigio and Ed Sullivan, Maggie saying to him in a high-pitched voice, “Eddie, keesa me good night!”

Fletcher waits until everyone but she and Gran has gone before he draws near. He gives Maggie a tentative hug.

“You didn’t have to come,” she tells him. “I said that on the phone, right?”

Gran glares at him, then says she’ll see Maggie at Aunt Harriet’s and starts away. Once she’s gone, they begin to walk together across the grass.

“It was a nice funeral,” says Fletcher.

“It should have been weeks ago,” she replies. “There was a lot of red tape getting him back.” She grimaces at her own words. Her father isn’t back. He’ll never be back. “The Church has been making a big deal about him, you know. Reporters keep turning up at Gran’s doorstep.”

Fletcher says he heard about it on the news. He says it must be hard for Gran.

“Oh, she’s loving every minute,” Maggie replies. “She and the bishop are thick as thieves. Today she bent over backwards to avoid introducing me to him. She doesn’t want the hippie daughter spoiling things.”

Fletcher gives her a startled look, and she realizes she doesn’t sound like herself. She doesn’t care. He can’t expect her to be the same as always.

“Gran blames me for his death,” she says. “She thinks he wouldn’t have been so reckless if I’d written him like he wanted.”

“She said that?” asks Fletcher. “Don’t listen to her. She’s projecting, probably.”

They leave the grass and start along a path of crushed stones. After a few steps, he turns and asks if she’s still going back to Canada tonight. “Long drive on your own. Maybe wait until tomorrow?”

She shakes her head. “If I have to stay at her place one more night, I’ll go insane.”

“You’ve been through a lot,” he says, and she wonders what he’s thinking of exactly. Then he asks, “Did you tell her about the pregnancy?”

Maggie cringes and pulls up short. “Phantom pregnancy, you mean.” She doesn’t want to talk about it. “No, I didn’t tell her. Why would I? There was nothing to tell.” A part of her still worries that he thinks she tried to trick him. She didn’t read the symptoms right, that’s all. The doctor said anyone could have made the mistake. She still hasn’t fully forgiven Lenka for mishearing what the secretary told her.

Fletcher reaches to put his hand on her shoulder, but she shies at his touch. “You’re a strange one,” she says. “Two months in Boston refusing to come back, only visiting that once after I found out he was dead”—Fletcher starts to object, but she cuts him off—“and then, without me asking, you drive all the way here for this.”

He keeps his eyes on the ground and doesn’t reply.

“You know, I prayed for McGovern to lose,” she finds herself saying. “Back in October, when I still thought we might work things out. I worried that if the Democrats got in, you’d take a job in Washington. I figured if Nixon was re-elected, you’d move back to the farm.”

Fletcher stops in the middle of the path, looking dazed. “Why are you telling me this now?”

She doesn’t know. It was the first thing that came to mind, and the part of her that censors speech seems broken. She watches a man and woman in blue rain slickers pass by hand in hand, while a little boy wearing a baseball cap skips ahead.