Robert McGill - Once We Had a Country

Back in the house, Pauline stands behind another title card that reads OTHER THINGS THE LAST PEOPLE LEFT BEHIND. It’s followed by a series of shots in which she presents items to the camera: a furry vermilion slipper, a half-empty bottle of champagne, the box for a jigsaw puzzle of a Florentine villa. Lastly, she approaches with something in her palm. This time she’s crying for real. Maggie’s hand reaches from behind the camera, and into it Pauline drops the corpse of a small bird. The hand pulls away, reflexively letting the creature fall. The camera’s eye descends too, remaining focused on the body. Then it trails Pauline down the hall into an empty bedroom with boggish green walls. Still sobbing, the girl points to three more birds lying stiff on the windowsill, sparrows broken from beating themselves against the glass, two of them curled within themselves, the wings of the other extended as if in flight. There’s a shot of Pauline wiping her eyes, Maggie reaching with her free hand to stop her, then leading her to the bathroom. Pauline looks up to the camera as if taking instructions, steps onto a stool beside the sink, and begins to wash.

Hidden in the undergrowth, Gordon watches the riverbank. A rubber dinghy with an outboard motor lies pulled up on the shore, several sets of footprints leading away from it in the brown clay. Nearby stand a pair of men, both Lao, not much more than boys, rifles hanging from their necks. One of them keeps wiping his nose with the back of his hand while kicking a pebble back and forth between his feet. The other stares in all directions with hard eyes and snaps at his companion upon noticing his inattention. The man makes a show of standing alert, then takes up kicking another pebble. In the river, a dozen women have waded up to their waists and are washing clothes, laughing with one another as if the men’s presence is no more remarkable than the drops of rain spreading ripples on the water. The only suggestion of anything unusual is the jitter in the women’s voices.

A few feet from where Gordon crouches, a Hmong girl of sixteen or seventeen sits on the bank holding Yia Pao’s little boy. The baby is asleep, swaddled in a beige blanket. Gordon trembles as his eyes dart between the child and the guards by the boat.

After a time, the man with the hard eyes says something to the girl. His tone is jeering, and she looks up for a moment before dropping her gaze. He speaks to her again, louder this time. The girl sets the child down and stands, takes a hesitant step toward the guard. He speaks more sharply and she takes a few more steps, hands clutching the band of cloth tied around her hips. The women in the water have fallen silent and stopped their work. The other guard speaks to the girl now too, laughing and gesturing for her to come closer. When she doesn’t move, he barks at her impatiently. Then an old woman in the river, gaunt and hunched, calls out to rebuke him. The man smiles and turns. The women stiffen as he puts his hand on the butt of his rifle.

A second later, the girl shrieks. The women’s gaze shifts back to her, and the guards wheel. She points to the place where she was sitting. The baby is no longer there.

When the girl starts for the trees, the hard-eyed guard cries out an order and she halts. The men turn back to train their rifles on the women, as if they’re suspected of some ruse. The old woman pleads, but the hard-eyed guard shakes his head, and the women draw closer together. He fires once into the air, then sits down on the side of the dinghy to light a cigarette, and everyone waits for the return of the other armed men who arrived with him.

The first shot is of Brid on the couch. She’s wearing a bikini, the freckles pronounced across her tanned shoulders, while on the soundtrack Pauline can be heard having a conversation with her doll. She sits at her mother’s feet, and occasionally the top of her head appears in the frame. As Brid speaks, she keeps her eyes fixed upon her daughter.

“So what do you want me to say?”

“Start with why you came up here,” replies Maggie, off-screen.

“Hmm. Well, my family disowned me, and then the co-op shut down, so I was out of work. I thought it might be nice to take a ride on Fletcher’s tab awhile.”

“His father’s tab,” corrects Maggie’s voice.

“There was also Wale. If he ever gets here, it’ll be a safe place for him. Mostly, though, I did it for Pauline. I don’t want her living in the States. Before she came along, I was idealistic. I organized, I chanted, I threw bottles at cops. I even called my little kleptomaniac phase an anti-capitalist gesture. Then I turned into a mommy and realized that if some pig cracked my skull open, I was dying for two, you know? The question became, what’s best for my little girl?” The camera jounces and moves in on her face. “I used to say breeders are nuts, but now things that seemed corny to me, things like devotion and sacrifice, are just everyday facts.” She laughs. “Wait till you’ve had a kid latched onto those boobs, you’ll see. You’re not on the pill, are you? You know they invented it to let men fuck women whenever they want, right? Anyhow, I thought the pill was illegal for Catholics.”

“I know you don’t like Christians—” says Maggie.

“Oh, Catholics are different. You worship a chick. I dig that.” Brid laughs again, then grows sombre. “To be honest, I don’t think in terms of liking or disliking people. It’s more a matter of not letting their neuroses increase my craziness.”

In the next scene, Fletcher is lying on his back against the kitchen floor. The camera pulls away to reveal Pauline standing next to him in a pink swimsuit with a ruffle around the waist. At some unseen cue he lays his hands against his chest, palms up, and she steps onto them. His fingers curl around her little feet, her arms go out to balance, and slowly he lifts her until she’s suspended in the air, shrieking with pleasure at her ability to manage this feat. Brid sits at the table without her sunglasses, bleary-eyed, clapping duly, but afterward shifting her attention to an unseen place beyond the kitchen window. Finally she turns to confront the lens. A flash of irritation changes to something that could be taken for tenderness, before she resumes her vigil over the girl and man at play.

The letter is the sole piece of correspondence in the mailbox when Maggie checks. At the sight of her name on the envelope in the distinctive characters of her grandmother’s typewriter, a jangling current of anxiety starts through her. In the orchard, she lies down among the daisies and Queen Anne’s lace to read what’s inside.

June 2nd, 1972

Dear Maggie,

As I write this you have begun your life in the north country with that man of yours. Although you may not believe it, I worry about you by the hour. A woman can’t help but worry when her granddaughter departs for a foreign land.

I should tell you that recently your Uncle Morley spoke to a friend in Massachusetts familiar with your young man’s family. It seems Fletcher Morgan is the black sheep of his clan. Morley was made aware of a particularly distressing tale about certain relations with a wealthy Boston girl whose name you may recognize.

The last time we talked, before you hung up on me, you told me you wanted to help your young man achieve great things. I don’t know what great things are possible for someone who has abandoned his country in wartime.

As a girl you were so well behaved, always studying your missal and keeping your father’s house. It pains me to think you have been led astray. Although you will think you’re grown up now, I must remind you that this is your first steady boyfriend, and it is easy to be swept up by certain feelings. I have told you before that your father made a bad match with your mother—certainly she didn’t merit his refusal to remarry after she passed on—and I fear you are your father’s child. I must ask you, are you abetting Fletcher’s salvation or his debasement? We should