Robert McGill - Once We Had a Country

The bedrooms take her over an hour. She has almost finished the last one when Brid appears with a duffle bag in hand.

“The toilet isn’t working,” she says. “It stinks to high heaven in there.”

“There’s an outhouse in the backyard,” Maggie replies.

“Fletcher better not expect me to tolerate this sort of thing just because I’m on the payroll.” Brid pushes her sunglasses up on her nose. “I didn’t come for the money. I came to raise Pauline in a nice place.”

“I thought you came because the army can’t arrest Wale up here.”

“Yeah, but I only want him around because Pauline will do better with her dad in the picture.”

Brid heads back downstairs, then comes and goes at intervals, carrying boxes and bags with Pauline in tow. Each time she passes, Maggie waits to hear some further grievance, but there’s little more said. Maggie has just started in on the dining room when Fletcher returns from Virgil with a box of doughnuts, a load of painting supplies, and the news that it will be two days before someone can drive out to investigate the gas smell.

May 14, 1972

Dear Maggie,

Only a week here and already we have had to relocate the mission. Our new home is a Hmong refugee camp south of Xieng Khouang. Nixon says there’s no war in Laos, but we live under the constant threat of Communist raids and American bombs. The rice rots in the paddies because people are too frightened to harvest it. Father Jean tells me to go about as if I’m not afraid, so that everyone will see our trust in the Lord. Standing among the tents with planes strafing nearby is hard on the nerves, but so far we

have been spared. With luck this is taken by the Hmong to bespeak the power of Christian faith, and I am hopeful it will draw more of them to Mass.

I have decided it’s a good thing you refused to come with me. The camp is crippled by dysentery and tuberculosis. There are children with goiters on their necks like goose eggs, and raw flesh on their scalps that doesn’t heal. Some people take opium, but there’s also pain of the kind that opium can’t treat. No family here is without loss. One of the Hmong who came from Long Chieng with us, a young man named Yia Pao, is working for the Church as a translator after losing his parents, his brothers, and his wife. All he has is a four-month-old son he must raise himself. He’s one of the few Hmong I have met who went to school, but what good can that do him here? Little girl, it’s worse than anything you and I ever saw on the news about Vietnam.

I am kept busy handing out Aspirin, bandaging wounds, and teaching the children how to pray. Two days ago another American flew in for a few hours to show movies about the free world. The people were spellbound, but the night came and went. Many talk as if their lives have already ended. A few ask if I will take them to the States when I go home. I smile and don’t have the heart to say it’s impossible. The war makes me more thankful for the Church, which serves no country, and for a God who doesn’t take sides.

You’ll be leaving Boston soon to cross the border. I hope this letter reaches you before the end of the month while you’re still in the States. I would send it to your

new address, but you didn’t give it to me. I hope you have changed your mind about not corresponding. I won’t write again until I have heard from you, as I don’t wish to impose.

You said you can’t understand my coming here, but if you saw this place you’d know. Despite everything, it can be beautiful. Fog covers the mountains at dawn, then is burnt up by the sun. There are mango and papaya trees, sugar cane, lotus blossoms in the fish ponds. The people are generous and hard-working. Their longing for home makes me think of my distance from America and from you.

Unfolded on the bedroom floor beside the mattress, the letter seems to glow in the moonlight. The mattress where she lies sags in the middle toward Fletcher’s snoring body. She can’t sleep. The room is hot as an oven and it’s only the first night of June. This can’t possibly be Canada.

It was a mistake to reread the letter so close to turning in. She’d found it waiting in her mailbox two days ago when she returned to give her landlord the keys for her emptied apartment. She was already late to help Fletcher load the camper, but she tore open the envelope right there in the lobby and read what was inside, marvelled at the way her father had tried to make it sound as if she was missing out.

Now her heart has softened. He sounds so lonely. Maybe she should write back, or at least she could send the new address. No, she swore she wouldn’t. If she writes, she’ll start thinking about him, and if she does that, she’ll just worry about him all the time. She spent the first eighteen years of her life putting him before herself, then another five feeling guilty about leaving him in Syracuse. All that time he didn’t shy away from insinuating that she’d committed a crime by going to Boston and, later, by leaving the Church. He’s no longer the man she remembers; he’s what Gran would call a nutter. But then, when it comes to religion, Gran is a nutter too.

Maggie has begun another attempt at sleep when a noise comes from the hallway. It sounds like footsteps. Brid going to the bathroom? But the toilet’s broken, and Brid’s sleeping in the camper with Pauline. Maggie thinks of waking Fletcher and doesn’t. What if she’s just hearing things? She rises and goes to the door. There are no lights on in the hall, only the moon coming through a window at the far end.

“Brid?” she whispers.

Trailing her hand against the wall, she makes her way to the next bedroom and fumbles for the light switch. A flood of yellow stabs her eyes. The room is empty. Returning to the dark hallway, she goes on to the next room, her ears pricking at every creak of the floorboards beneath her. Another light switch, another melting of shadows. Nothing there.

Then she hears footsteps, moving toward the stairs. She’s unable to call Fletcher’s name, can’t scream, afraid of revealing herself. Finally she edges into the hallway, which now seems even darker than before. Nobody there. At the top of the stairs, she peers down into blackness.

“Brid?” she says.

Someone is standing at the bottom. The figure doesn’t move or speak. Maggie can feel eyes on her. She should call out. She should find the nearest light switch. She turns to look for it, and when she turns back, the figure’s gone. For a long time she stares down until she’s sure.

In bed, she lies shaking, unsure whether she imagined it all. Eventually Fletcher stirs.

“You okay?” he murmurs.

“I thought I heard someone downstairs.” She doesn’t want to admit she saw someone too; it wouldn’t sound believable.

“Just now?” He starts out of bed, wearing nothing, and heads for the door.

“I looked,” she calls after him. “There’s nobody.” The thought of him going naked through the house in search of phantoms makes the whole thing seem ridiculous.

“It could have been Brid,” he says. “Shit, if someone’s down there—” He starts to pull on a pair of pants.

“I was probably imagining it.”

“Stay here, okay?”

“Okay.”

She listens as he descends the stairs. After a few minutes he returns, shaking his head, removes the pants, and slides back into bed.

“I don’t want you feeling creeped out,” he says, putting his arms around her. “Tomorrow we’ll buy a chain for the door. I’ll replace the window at the back.”

She kisses him, and in a few minutes he’s asleep again, snoring while she lies staring at the crack in the ceiling.