Once We Had a Country (10 page)

“I came out because I thought I heard a girl’s voice,” she admits. Somehow it’s easier confessing this to his reflection than directly to his face, but still it’s embarrassing.

He frowns, then gestures toward the counter by the sink. There’s a portable radio sitting on it. “I was listening to that a minute ago. Perhaps—”

Of course. Ridiculous. She’s an idiot to have made such a mistake.

“I’m sorry,” she tells him. “It’s just because there are a couple of teenage girls next door. A while back they gave me a hard time. I thought they might be …” But she doesn’t know how to finish the sentence.

“Bothering me?” he suggests, and she nods.

“Paranoid, I know. I guess they rattled me more than I thought.”

“No girls here. I’m a married man.”

She remembers Brid’s interest in him the first time he visited the farm. “Is that why you wanted to be out here by yourself? Because you’re married?”

“Perhaps,” he says. She can tell from his voice that she’s
right. It seems a shame for him to keep them at a distance for such a reason.

“Would you join us for dinner sometime?” she says. “Or to watch TV? Fletcher said he invited you to one of our home-movie nights—”

“Thank you,” says George Ray. His tone is polite, unpromising.

“You don’t get lonely out here?” When he doesn’t answer, she worries it’s too personal a question. “Sorry. I should go.” She retreats to the door. “You’re welcome any time.”

Once she’s a few yards across the lawn, he calls to her from the doorway.

“Maybe it was the fulfillment of a wish,” he says. She has to ask him what he means. “I mean, you thought you heard those teenagers because you worried about my loneliness. You imagined company for me.”

The idea only makes her feel worse.

“You mustn’t worry,” he says. “It’s nice out here. I’m learning.”

“What are you learning?”

“I’m learning how to be alone.”

She goes back to the house feeling ashamed. From now on she’ll leave him to himself. But he didn’t seem upset by her presence. Why does she feel so guilty? Ahead of her in the house, a bedroom light turns on, and she sees Fletcher’s silhouette sail across the blinds.

Maggie has almost reached the patch of grass illuminated by the mud room floodlight when something moves toward her from the darkness. It says her name and she gives a yelp, but it’s a voice she recognizes.

“Wale,” she says. “You scared me to death.”

“Who’s that guy you were visiting?” His voice is a low drawl. Though he stands only a few feet away, she can make out no more than his outline.

“Long story,” she replies. Then she wonders how he knew there was a man out there at all. “Were you spying on us?”

“Give me a break. I saw him through the window, that’s all.”

“Have you been in the house yet?” she asks, and he shakes his head. “Where have you been the last three weeks?”

“I had some trouble from the army.”

“They caught you?” He starts to reply, but she interrupts him. “Wait, let’s get you inside. I know some people who are keen to see you.”

As they walk toward the door, he grows more visible to her: his spark-plug frame, the nose that looks like it was broken long ago. On one wrist he wears a silver watch that he holds to his ear, shakes vigorously, then holds up once more. It takes her a moment to realize his T-shirt and jeans are soaked through.

“How’d you get so wet?”

“I swam over from the States.”

“Across the river?” She can’t believe it, but he nods.

Holding open the mud room door for him, she tells him to go ahead. As he passes through the kitchen and down the hallway, she lingers, listening for what’s about to happen. A moment later she hears Brid’s shout of surprise from the living room, then Fletcher’s elated greeting
from upstairs. On the other side of the mud room window, moths patter out their lives against the floodlight. Maggie switches it off just as the house is filled with the wailing of a bewildered, suddenly awoken little girl.

The kitchen in morning light. Brid wears an apron over her bikini as she cooks bacon and pancakes, while Pauline sulks in her booster seat. She says she wants cereal like always, but Brid laughs and ignores her as if it’s a joke. Fletcher hunches over the table swallowing mouthfuls of food drenched in maple syrup, and Wale sits across from him with raccoon eyes of fatigue, wearing a tank top that reveals a scimitar tattooed on one arm and a coiled snake on the other. He seems less interested in his meal than in Maggie, who hovers around the table with the Super 8 camera clicking and humming in her hands.

“You with the CIA?” he asks her.

“Shush,” she says. “Pretend I’m not here.”

“Yeah, don’t look at her,” Fletcher tells him. “It turns out more natural that way.”

Brid leans over the table with the coffee pot in hand. “Come on, babe,” she urges when Wale declines a refill. “You didn’t get any more sleep than the rest of us.” Topping up his mug, she kisses him on the cheek.

“You have to tell your story again for the camera,” Fletcher says to him, but he demurs. When his gaze returns to Maggie, she gestures for him to look away. Resignedly, he stares into his coffee. Pauline is still clamouring for cereal; Brid reminds her that bacon is one of her favourites. Then Wale
says he’s not hungry and he wants to go sleep some more.

“You’re not going anywhere,” says Brid. “You think I’m cooking all this crap just for Fletcher?”

“It’s the big reunion breakfast, we need everybody here,” adds Fletcher, nodding toward the camera as if it proves his point. He grins and reaches across the table to punch Wale on the shoulder. “It’s great you showed up. The hurricane was a setback, but now the cherries are growing and we’ve got the barracks almost ready. Plenty of other stuff we can start on too. We just need more people.” A strip of bacon flies past his face and lands on the floor. Pauline begins to laugh hysterically.

“She isn’t usually so wild,” Brid says to Wale, taking Pauline’s plate from her. “She’s showing off for you.” Fletcher gives him another friendly punch on the arm and Brid sets a full plate in front of him, then stands with her arms crossed until he begins to eat.

When the meal is over, Brid asks Fletcher to babysit while she and Wale go upstairs. Fletcher accepts the assignment, but after a few minutes of playing with Pauline on the living room floor he absconds to the couch, leaving Maggie to watch over her as he flips through a newspaper and casts glances toward the staircase.

“You’re jealous,” Maggie says.

“Don’t be silly. I wanted to start working on stuff with him, that’s all.”

A few minutes later, Brid comes back down looking hastily dressed. She passes along the hall without a word or a glance into the living room, and soon Maggie hears the mud room door slam.

“Trouble in paradise,” muses Fletcher with a trace of contentment before returning to his paper.

Eventually he switches on the television to watch
Face the Nation
. As if it’s a signal, Wale comes downstairs too and takes a seat beside him on the couch. Pauline’s interest in her building blocks vanishes; she knocks them over in the course of running to her father. He offers her an indifferent horsey ride, bouncing her on his knee without letting his eyes leave the television even as she squeals in delight. Brid reappears soon after, sitting on the floor to watch the programme, the voices from the set rendered inaudible by Pauline’s cries.

“Daddy’s tired, let him rest,” says Brid. When Pauline doesn’t respond, she adds, “Mommy needs a hug.” The girl hesitates, then dismounts and allows herself to be held against her mother’s breast.

On
Face the Nation
, all the talk is about the Democratic National Convention later in July. Fletcher cheers when someone mentions how good things look for George McGovern to take the nomination, despite how left of centre he is, while each reference to Nixon brings on a stream of insults from Brid. It isn’t long before Maggie flees outside, then makes her way to the far corner of the backyard where the remnants of their garden lie. A week has passed since the hurricane, but puddles still stretch between the rows and there’s not a vegetable in sight. Drowned, all of them. Beyond the barracks, the cherry trees are spangled with tiny fruit, while dead limbs sit piled at the ends of the lanes. Towers of crushed vehicles gleam behind the auto wrecker’s fence like the skyline of some futuristic city.

“TV not your scene?” says Wale. She turns to see him approaching barefoot through the muck.

“Not the Sunday politics shows. All that arguing tires me out.”

“You’d rather be making the pictures than watching them,” he ventures.

“You mean the home-movie thing? I’m not really much of a filmmaker.”

“Come on, I saw you in the kitchen. You love it. You like hiding behind the camera.”

“I don’t know about that,” she says, hoping it will be the end of the conversation. Turning to the saturated ground, she shakes her head. “Poor garden. Pretty late to start over.”

“Mm-hmm.” With his toe he traces a figure in the puddle between them. The water soughs and throws the light, the reflected sky vibrating on the surface.

“What happened with you and Brid?” she asks.

His foot halts for a moment before resuming its path. “You mean upstairs? That’s quite a question.”

“I’m sorry, never mind—”

“It’s okay.” He’s silent for a time. “Same thing happened that always does, I guess. Neither of us likes to be on the bottom.”

Her eyes widen despite herself. She starts to say something, stops, then starts again. “She and Pauline are a lot happier now that you’re here.”

“Is that important to you?”

“Of course it is. Don’t you care about it?”

“Sure,” he says unconvincingly.

“Brid told me once,” she begins, glancing toward the
farmhouse to make sure there’s no one in sight, “that you rejoined the army to get away from being a father.”

“Bullshit.” His toe flicks the puddle and sluices water across the grass. “I signed on for another tour because a buddy of mine enlisted. I thought he needed protection.”

“What about protecting Brid and your daughter?”

“Nobody was shooting at them.” With his head tilted, he stares at her. “I didn’t realize you and Brid were such good friends.” She looks away and sights a hawk describing circles high above them.

“I think the idea of this place,” she says, “is that we should all become good friends.” She shoves her hands deep into the pockets of her overalls.

“How do I get to be your friend, Maggie?”

“Oh, I’m easy to get along with.”

“Sure you are. Just don’t look at you, right?”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it? I’m not sure. Want to hear what I think?”

“You don’t even know me,” she says.

“I think maybe for you, being looked at is like being on the bottom.”

Before she can reply, Brid’s voice calls to them. “What are you two doing out here?” She’s crossing the lawn in their direction.

Quickly, Maggie takes a step back from him. When Brid gets nearer, she flashes Maggie a frown of disapproval before extending her hand to Wale, smiling at him in a way that seems carnivorous and worn out at the same time. “Get back inside, will you, lover boy? I want another go at it.”

Brid and Wale entered Maggie’s life in December, not long after Fletcher did. On the way to meeting them for the first time, Fletcher explained that he’d been friends with Brid since his freshman year, and that Wale was the father of her kid, though he’d been out of the picture until recently. The guy had served in the army, he’d killed people doing it, and he wasn’t much of a talker, but Brid was crazy about him.

Maggie took in this information distractedly. She had just gotten off the phone with her father, who had called with the news that in the spring he was going to leave his job and join a mission in Laos. When Maggie had asked what Gran thought of the idea, he’d replied that she was delighted. Maggie shouldn’t have been surprised. Gran had been waiting twenty-three years for her widowed son to do something with his life.

“It will save money for me to live over there,” Maggie’s father had told her. Then he’d admitted what she already knew from Gran: bad gambles on the stock market had put him on the edge of bankruptcy.

“So you’re going over there to save money?” Maggie had asked him.

“No,” he’d replied. “To save lives.”

At the bar, she only half listened as the others talked. For the most part the conversation was about politics, Brid arguing with Fletcher while leaning against Wale and reaching beneath the table every few minutes to clasp his knee. It was as if Brid’s body had split completely from her brain, and each was given over to a different man. As for Wale, each time Maggie glanced toward him, he was
staring at her, smiling like they were sharing a private joke, and each time she looked away.

When Brid went off to the bathroom, Wale asked Maggie about teaching. It was the last thing she wanted to discuss, and Fletcher must have sensed it because he came to her rescue, jumping in to ask Wale in turn whether he’d found a job yet. Wale shrugged, then asked Maggie where she was from. Maggie tapped Fletcher on the leg to signal that it was all right and started talking about Syracuse.