Robert McGill - Once We Had a Country

In places the heat has grafted Brid’s clothing to her flesh. A layer of skin on her forearms has melted away, so that Maggie can see the vulnerable life below, red strings of tendon packed together, twitching and bleeding. It’s too intimate and awful to look at for long. Maggie wonders if she should wrap the burns with her own clothing, but she doesn’t know first aid. It could be the wrong thing to do. She can only look at her and caress her face.

A second later, amazingly, Brid is awake and calling Maggie’s name, convulsing as if she’s about to rise.

“I’m here,” says Maggie. “Don’t move. It’s better if you don’t.”

“Shit, it hurts,” says Brid through gritted teeth. She coughs up a bit of blood. Maggie tells her again to hold still. “It wasn’t on purpose,” Brid tells her. “I’m sorry. I swear, I wouldn’t do it on purpose.” Maggie tries to move closer and pain shoots up from her ruined foot. It takes her some effort to sit, but she takes Brid’s head in her lap and strokes her face, wiping the ash from her forehead. There’s a noise that tears the sky, and a section of the porch roof comes down, blasting them with sparks and smoke.

“I was only out for a walk,” says Brid. “I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

“Hush,” says Maggie through her coughing. “Hush, sweetheart, it will be all right.”

Smoke has blotted out the sun, red lights flash atop fire trucks, and torrents of flame gallop through the treetops. Then everything is still, and where the farmhouse once stood is a smouldering heap. All that remain are a few brick walls and window glass melted into lumpish sculptures. Nothing seems to be left of the orchard but charred stumps. There are flakes of ash falling softly on the acres of burnt trees, on the seared grass, and on the iron bed frame in the middle of the kitchen. The fire has scoured all colour from the earth, so that the television screen Maggie’s watching might as well be black-and-white.

Before the ruins stands the freckled policeman, testifying that he’s never seen anything like it. He witnessed a flock of birds, dizzy from the heat, fly into the wavering air above the trees and tumble like shooting stars into the fire. He says you could see the smoke from as far away as Buffalo. There’s a shot of Frank Dodd sitting on the back of a fire truck with an oxygen mask over his mouth. The policeman praises Mr. Dodd for his courage in rescuing two American women from the house. Then a reporter’s voice states that the women are now at the Hotel Dieu Hospital in St. Catharines with serious injuries. There’s a distant shot of someone being lifted into an ambulance, and it takes Maggie a moment to realize it’s her.

As the reporter continues to speak, there’s another shot of the rubble. Where the living room once stood, a man is kicking through the remains. The reporter’s voice identifies him as a friend of the tenants who was hoping to find something that survived intact. Finally the man leans down, pushes away a blackened piece of wood, and retrieves a small figure.

The statue doesn’t look the same. It’s glazed by the fire, a deeper, richer hue than before. The features on the face have burned away, leaving it without gender or expression.

The figure stays like that for only a second or two. Then, under the pressure of the man’s hands, it cracks in half. Maggie watches as he tips the thing and pours out a stream of fine grey dust. His face is out of focus, but she’s pretty sure the man is Josef.

Night has fallen outside the hospital. A candystriper in braids enters the room where Maggie lies, asks if she’s comfortable, and offers to change the channel. The girl smells of cigarettes and strawberry gum, a combination that nauseates Maggie and at the same time manages to make her crave both things.

The candystriper asks whether Maggie saw news about the fire on TV. The girl has already made it clear that not all patients get a television; it was a special favour on her part to wheel the set in here so Maggie could be entertained by the sight of her home’s destruction. The girl tells her that reporters appeared at the reception desk not long ago, but they were sent away. She adds that a priest turned up with his sister, too, and they were told to come back tomorrow during visiting hours. Maggie asks the candystriper how Brid’s doing, and the girl says it’s hard to know because they’re keeping her pretty doped up.

Once the girl leaves, Maggie regains an awareness of the patient who shares her room, an old woman hidden from her by a heavy curtain. She and the woman don’t speak to one another except in the form of moans and wheezes. Oddly, the suffering seems to shift between them, as if they’re taking turns with it. In certain moments, when the painkillers ebb and Maggie’s ankle maddens her, the old woman grows silent. Then, as the agony subsides, the woman begins to cry out. To hear her in this state is an ordeal, but it distracts Maggie from her own afflictions.

Later, the freckled policeman shows up to take down Maggie’s account of what happened. He tells her how lucky she is that Frank Dodd came over when he saw the smoke. He says Frank wanted to stop by and wish her well, but his daughter ran off to California yesterday and he’s busy working out how to get her back.

“Are you sure she left yesterday?” asks Maggie, picturing Lydia in the farmhouse with a can of gasoline. The policeman says he’s sure.

Upon his departure, her eye begins to throb beneath its bandage. The doctor has expressed optimism that it will heal, but he’s said they might need to operate on the ankle. The thing is wrapped up sufficiently that she doesn’t have to look at it, only feels it pulsing and aching. She can’t reflect for any length of time on the house, the trees, her film, her father’s belongings—all gone forever. The money, too. And Josef on television, searching for it. She thinks of calling him and Lenka, but she doesn’t have the energy. The drugs kick in again to carry her away on their dark, sweet current.

In the morning, she finds that the curtain separating her bed from the next has been pulled back, and the old woman is gone. Lenka and Josef are standing there instead. From the pitying way in which Lenka looks at her, Maggie gathers she must be quite a sight.

“It’s never a good sign,” Maggie says, trying to smile, “when a priest shows up in your hospital room.”

Josef and Lenka laugh. Then Lenka says how horrible it is and how sorry they are. She explains that after being turned back at the emergency room desk yesterday, the two of them drove out to the farm. She says only the barracks and a small section of the orchard have survived. They hoped there might be something to salvage, but they found nothing.

“I know,” says Maggie. “I saw Josef on TV.”

The priest picks up a brown paper bag at his feet and withdraws the clay figure of Saint Clare. Somehow the statue’s in one piece again, though the cement bottom is missing. When Maggie expresses her surprise, Josef says he glued the figure back together. He has done a better job of it than Maggie did, because this time the crack on the exterior is barely noticeable. When he lays the figure in her hands, it feels smoother than before, and it’s lighter now that its contents are turned to ash.

“I am glad the money is gone,” says Lenka. “For too long it is plaguing you.”

Her brother looks about to argue the point, but Lenka insists it won’t do to talk further of the matter. For now Maggie must simply get better, and the two of them will look after her affairs. Lenka has already called Morgan Sugar to let Fletcher know what happened; he’s on his way. So is Brid’s brother, who’s bringing Pauline. Lenka asks whether Maggie would like her to contact Gran and George Ray too.