Robert McGill - Once We Had a Country

Going back into the kitchen, she picks up the telephone, discovers it’s working, and is amazed and unsurprised at once. After dialing zero, she tells the operator that her house is on fire.

“You aren’t in the building now, are you, ma’am?” The operator sounds concerned. Then the line cuts out, and Maggie decides she had better go upstairs.

Perhaps I’m suicidal, she thinks as she climbs through the tumble of smoke. But she feels no desire to kill herself, only a detached lack of self-regard, a kind of disembodiment. From impossible angles she watches her own ascent, as if this is the climactic scene in a movie that has often been described to her, one she’s finally getting to view.

At the top, it sounds like the house is talking to her, wakeful and chatty after years of dozing, keen to tell her all the dreams it’s had. Smoke billows from the open door to Brid’s room. This fact breaks her out of whatever trance has held her until now. Again she calls Brid’s name, hears nothing. After waiting in vain for the smoke to diminish so she can look into the room, she forces herself over the threshold. Her eyes water and a cinder scalds her tongue. The far wall is roiling and shimmering, the wall between the bed and bathroom has collapsed, and there’s no sign of Brid. Maggie coughs and retches with the smoke, then makes her way farther down the hall. No one in her room. No one in the playroom. The flames haven’t reached these places yet. She isn’t really thinking, only following some inner imperative, when she fetches the stepladder. It’s not until she begins to climb it that she realizes she’s doing it to save the money.

The handle on the trap door to the attic is hot, and the air has thickened to the extent that it won’t let her sweat; moisture evaporates on her as soon as it forms. From above comes a high, multi-layered sound like a choir singing. She’s wondering how to proceed when the ceiling behind her falls away, throwing her off balance and toppling her from the stepladder to the floor. She lands in a heap with her left leg under her. Her ankle snaps and the pain shatters her, so woozily sickening that some time passes before she realizes the noises she hears are her own screams.

She can’t breathe. There’s an agony in her rib cage. She can only gulp and heave. When she tries to put weight on her foot, the pain shrieks through her. The hallway is filling with smoke. Maggie looks down the corridor to the stairs and hopes to see the top of someone’s head appear, but no miracle is forthcoming. The flames grow higher, blocking her way out, even if she could move. They’re different from the coy, gentle flames in Brid’s room. These ones are restless, eager to explore the house. They slither up the wall, shattering a picture frame, then move toward her as though they have caught the scent of a curious new plaything.

She starts to crawl along the floor in the direction of escape, which is also the direction of the flames. Every movement tortures her. A yard becomes a mile. When she reaches the playroom, the smoke’s so thick that she’s choking more than breathing, and the heat blisters her lips. There’s only one choice: she drags herself through the playroom door, then closes it behind her and sits against it, as if her weight might keep out the fire. Even while she rests there, though, smoke seeps into the room through the cracks. Taking off her sweater, she wraps it around her mouth. It’s a slight improvement. Finally she’s thinking of her survival, lame and cornered as she is.

Across the room, the film canisters lie beside the projector on the card table. It’s not just the money that will be lost, then, nor only the house and her life, but the film as well. She should smash the window and throw the reels to the ground, then jump for it. God knows how she’ll land. But when she tries to cross the room, her ankle only lets her get halfway. From behind the door there’s a growing roar, and the air speaks a multitude of languages. Did someone call her name? A voice is shouting, barely audible. She calls back, feeling foolish and forlorn. Then there’s a bang behind her, and she turns to watch the door go flying open. Behind it is Brid, come to rescue her.

Brid tries to lift her, but halfway up she loses her grip and sends her falling back toward the floor. Maggie lands on her bad foot and yelps in pain.

“Sorry, sorry,” says Brid, grabbing hold again. She heaves her up and starts to drag her out the door with Maggie leaning on her shoulder.

“Wait, the film—” says Maggie.

“Fuck the film,” says Brid.

In the hall, the air is filled with drops of liquid heat. The house burns well, as though stocked for that purpose, a furnace of books and wooden furniture. How does Brid think they’ll make it? Apparently the same way she made it here in the first place: daringly, and without much sense.

As Brid leads her along the hall, Maggie looks back and sees there’s no floor behind them. She can look straight down into the kitchen, where her bed has fallen through and crashed onto the table. The mattress is aflame, yellow and blue. The house roars and puffs. Without warning, something stabs her in the eye. She puts her hand to it and feels hot wetness. Her other eye fills with smoke and tears.

“I can’t see,” she says.

The sensation in her feet is going; they might be on fire. Brid shouts at her to hurry, and there’s another groan from the house. The house is in pain. The house is dying.

They pass under an arch of flame, and there’s the smell of burning hair. Hers? The visibility of things comes and goes as the blood runs down her face and smoke pushes its way through the house.

Her hand alights on the staircase banister. The steps buckle, and Brid’s voice fills her ears: “Almost there, almost there.” Every moment Maggie’s curious to see if this is the point where they’ll die.

Just when they have reached the bottom of the stairs, there’s a tremor that Maggie feels not only through her good leg but also through her teeth and fingertips. Light shears in through her half-open eye to suggest a wall has fallen away. Brid lets go of her, and Maggie crumples to the floor. Then Brid is yelling, “Help her!” Briefly through the blood and smoke, Maggie sees her leaning on the frame of the front door and another body passing by, a wraithlike shape as numinous as night, Maggie’s death come to collect her. It lifts her off the ground.

The house seems to sway. As she’s carried through the door, the beam at the top splits a few inches from her head. It’s close to Brid’s head too, because Maggie can make her out still standing there, propping herself against the frame as if the building wants to fall on her. Brid’s clothes are on fire, but she doesn’t move. Maggie has a feeling of being released into cooler air, and at the same time the wraith shouts at Brid to come away. From his voice Maggie realizes it’s Frank Dodd. In the next second the door comes crashing down, followed by an avalanche of bricks.

There’s a jolt as Maggie is lifted down the porch stairs in Frank’s arms, then another as he lays her on the grass. When she opens her good eye, she can’t see Brid, only Frank crouching on the porch and trying to lift beams out of the way. He grunts and throws bricks willy-nilly while the porch roof sags above him.

Finally he pulls Brid free. The body he sets down beside Maggie is limp, and Brid’s face is pale, her forehead streaked with blood and ash. Frank hovers over them, blinking, red-faced, dripping with sweat.

“I didn’t call for help yet,” he says. “I thought you were burning brush. Will you be all right if—”

“Go!” shouts Maggie, as loudly as she can manage, and he rushes down the driveway. She watches to make sure he doesn’t turn around before she shifts her attention back to Brid.