Robert McGill - Once We Had a Country

“Don’t go anywhere. I have so much to ask you.”

But the sober look on his face makes her fearful of what he has to tell her. If Wale isn’t here, what happened to him? The pain in her stomach grows worse than the one in her foot.

“Wale,” she begins, then is unable to say anything further.

“I don’t know what has happened,” says Yia Pao. “Did you not hear from him?” She replies that it’s been almost two weeks since he last called. “He was supposed to meet me at the airport in Vientiane,” Yia Pao tells her. He’s about to say more when the statue of Saint Clare on the bedside table catches his eye. His son has seen the figure too, and he reaches for it as though it’s a plaything, but Yia Pao doesn’t move to oblige him.

“The money’s gone,” Maggie says. “Burnt.”

Yia Pao nods, not betraying any emotion, and she finds herself close to tears, because at last here’s someone who knows about the money and might explain what happened.

“It was still in the statue during the fire,” she says. “I only knew about the money by accident. My father didn’t tell me anything.”

She wants to say that she meant to give the money to Yia Pao’s son, but what does it matter now? Yia Pao rounds the bed, picks up the statue in one hand, turns it over to examine its hollow core, then lets the baby grasp it for a while. A pained smile crosses Yia Pao’s face.

“Perhaps it’s for the best,” he says, setting down the statue. “It was the cause of such misery.”

“Will you tell me?” she asks.

Rather than responding, he drops his chin. “I’m ashamed of many things that happened.”

“Tell me anyway.”

As he starts to talk, she almost interrupts to say she’s changed her mind. She has no desire to hear that her father was a drug runner, a hypocrite, a thief. But she doesn’t want to be told of his innocence and purity either. It’s an imperfect man whom she loved; the fervent, holy one will always be a stranger. Settling back to listen, she can’t decide which of them she wants to emerge.

This is what Yia Pao tells her. He says that in the summer, he agreed to be Sal’s middleman. The job was hardly honourable, but he took it out of a desperation to leave Laos with his son. Yia Pao had no other family, no reason to stay. Eventually the Communists were going to win, and everyone knew what would happen to those with Western educations, to the Hmong who had worked for Americans. People like Yia Pao would be the first against the wall.

Even before the CIA pilot arrived at the refugee camp to hand him the money, though, Yia Pao regretted his decision. As soon as the plane took off, he thought ahead to the twenty-four hours before Sal’s arrival and was racked with paranoia, certain that others in the camp knew what was happening, that he’d be robbed in the night. Panicked, he placed the bills in one of the clay figures he’d made and sealed the thing. Even then he worried that somebody would divine what it contained. So, in his terror, he made a mistake. Thinking that no one would look for the money in a missionary’s tent, he took the statue to Gordon and said it was a gift, telling him nothing of what it contained. Yia Pao said he’d made the statue in the likeness of Saint Clare because he remembered Gordon saying she was his daughter’s favourite saint. Yia Pao shared this detail only to make the gift seem better planned. He didn’t realize the calamity it would bring.

That night, he didn’t sleep a wink. In the morning, when the time approached for Sal and his men to arrive, Yia Pao returned to Gordon’s tent, planning to steal back the statue if Gordon wasn’t there, but ready to say that it needed a coat of glaze if he was. When Yia Pao arrived, he discovered neither Gordon nor the statue was there. Alarmed, he scoured the camp and finally found his friend bandaging a little girl’s toe. Gordon didn’t understand why Yia Pao was demanding the statue’s return. He explained that he had put the statue in a parcel for his daughter and had just sent it on the supply plane with the rest of the mail.

Yia Pao raced to the landing strip, knowing even before he set eyes on the field that the supply plane was gone. By the time he returned to the camp, he was weeping uncontrollably. It would have been better if he thought Gordon had betrayed him, but he knew it was his own fault for being so stupid.

Sick with fear, he gathered a few things from his tent, preparing to flee into the jungle. He would have an easier time on his own, but he couldn’t leave his son to Sal, so he made his second mistake. With Gordon, he went to fetch Xang from the woman minding him near the river. When they arrived, Sal and his men had already landed on the bank.

Yia Pao couldn’t tell Sal the truth because the man would never believe it, so in his terror he offered the simplest lie he could imagine: he said the money hadn’t arrived. Sal didn’t believe that either. Before he led them away on his boat, Yia Pao tried to return Xang to the woman, but Sal said no, bring him along, we’ll take good care of the little guy.

During their captivity, Gordon never blamed Yia Pao. Often he went without food so Yia Pao and Xang might have more, and when the chance to escape presented itself, when they entered the jungle without supplies, already half starved, bruised, and bleeding, Gordon was the stronger of them, the one who insisted on carrying Xang. They moved slowly even so, and when they reached the river, Gordon suggested they split up, then meet again at a rock visible in the distance, so as to confuse Sal and his men should they be giving chase. Upon reaching the rock, Yia Pao found no sign of Gordon and Xang.

He waited an hour, backtracked, tried to follow Gordon’s path, became lost. Finally he found the river again and followed it downstream until he stumbled into a village, barely able to stand. It wasn’t until he was in Vientiane weeks later that he heard of Gordon’s death and his son’s survival. The rest of the autumn he lay low, searching for Xang, sheltered by old schoolmates and making inquiries through them, knowing that Sal had powerful friends.

It seemed both a miracle and a cruel joke when Yia Pao discovered that his son was also in Vientiane. He wanted to walk straight into the orphanage and claim him, but he knew that if he’d found Xang, Sal might have too. So Yia Pao entered the orphanage in the dead of night, lifted Xang from his crib, and stole out with him.

They were a block away when a man stepped from the shadows. Yia Pao didn’t recognize him until Wale reminded him of their meeting at Long Chieng in the spring. Wale said he wanted to keep him from Sal’s hands. Yia Pao worried it was a trick, but he knew that if it was, there was no point trying to escape; he’d be shot in the back before he got ten yards.

They ended up at a tiny flat in a rundown building with no electricity, the single room empty but for a roll-up mattress. Wale told him not to leave and promptly abandoned him, promising to come back soon.

An hour passed, then another. Yia Pao grew ever more certain that Wale would be returning with Sal. But if that were true, why would Wale have risked leaving Yia Pao by himself? Doubt and a lingering hope kept him from fleeing into the street.

It was the next morning before Wale returned with food, clothes, milk, and diapers. He said he had spoken with a friend, a former military man, who could arrange for Yia Pao and his son to go to Canada. Wale explained that Gordon’s daughter lived on a farm there, and that she wanted to help them begin a new life. When Yia Pao said he had no money for such a trip, Wale said the tickets would be taken care of, that in fact he’d be grateful to Yia Pao for accepting the offer. He smelled of alcohol, and he slurred his words as he spoke, but Yia Pao didn’t hesitate. He said yes.