Once We Had a Country (18 page)

“Let me do it.” She doesn’t want him to touch the equipment. After he hands her the cartridge, he flops back on the bed, posing like a model. He seems free of cares, of self-consciousness.

Retrieving the first cartridge from the dresser, she lifts its plastic tab, then begins to pull out film by the handful.

It’s amazing that so much can be contained in such a small space, her body and Fletcher’s connecting thousands of times over, destroyed in an instant as she yanks them into day. At some unseen level, chemicals are going crazy. On the bed, Fletcher vamps a while longer before he realizes what she’s doing.

“Hey, why are you—”

At that moment, she reaches the end of the strip. “I changed my mind,” she says, tugging hard and snapping the final length of film in two.

“What’s wrong? Didn’t you like it?” He sounds genuinely confused. “I must be pretty ugly if the idea of watching me is so horrible.”

“Don’t be silly. It’s just not my style.”

Going to him, she tries to smooth out the wrinkles from his forehead. Then his eyes widen as though he has just gained some deep and sobering knowledge.

“Maybe I understand,” he says. “I can’t take a leak when someone’s in the room. Is it the same kind of thing?”

Despite herself, she starts to laugh.

“What? What is it?” he asks, smiling too. “What did I say?”

“Yes, I think you’re right. It’s probably the same kind of thing.”

That night, she tells him it’s too hot and she’s going to sleep downstairs. It’s easier than saying she wants some time alone. When she arrives in the living room, it smells of weed but blessedly lies vacant. She collapses on the couch and tosses for an hour, snatched from the brink of sleep half a dozen times by creaking floorboards and noises from outside.

It’s after two when she hears someone come downstairs. Through the doorway, she glimpses the distinctive profile of Dimitri, his pot-belly overhanging his slim legs as he canters down the hall. At the sight of him she has a ludicrous, uncontrollable impulse. After listening for the sound of the mud room door opening and closing, she gets up to follow him.

From the back of the house, she can see a flashlight’s beam passing over the ground toward the orchard. She slips out to follow. The barracks is dark and silent. When she reaches the trees, there’s enough moonlight for her to make her way while keeping Dimitri well ahead of her. At the wrecking yard wall in the far corner, he comes to a halt. Taking a few more steps, she perceives his outline along with that of the thin girl from next door. They’re pressed together in a kiss.

For the first time, Maggie thinks she should have stayed inside. A second later she snaps a branch underfoot. The two bodies separate, and suddenly the flashlight’s beam is blinding her.

“What are you doing out here?” says Dimitri in an accusing tone.

“That’s the one I told you about,” Maggie hears the girl say. “The one who got heavy with me and Jacqueline.”

Feeling brave, Maggie steps toward them, shielding her face until Dimitri turns the flashlight away from her. “Hello again,” she says. The girl wraps her arms around herself and doesn’t reply. “Just you tonight?” Maggie asks her. “Where’s your friend?”

“Dead,” says the girl sourly. “From smoking that joint last month. It’s your fault for not stopping her. Thanks to you, my best friend is dead from a pot overdose.”

“Knock it off,” Dimitri tells her. To Maggie, he says, “It was her cousin, visiting for the summer. She went back home today.”

“Tell her everything, why don’t you,” mutters the girl.

“Lydia, maybe you should go home,” he says.

“What, because of her?” says the girl, gesturing to Maggie. “We just got here.” Dimitri stares at her until she gives a humph. “Fine, then.” Bending down, she picks up something that has been lying at her feet and hands it to him. Squinting through the night, Maggie realizes it’s an aerosol can. “You can explain this to her.” Before Dimitri has time to react, the girl kisses him on the lips, then turns and passes Maggie without looking at her.

“What does your father think of you coming over here?”
Maggie asks. “I thought he didn’t like hippies.” She’s determined not to let the girl have the last word.

“My father’s an idiot,” says the girl. “Tell him everything if you want, I don’t care.” She turns back to face Dimitri. “If you decide to stop being so square, let me know.”

She walks off, following the curve of the wrecking yard wall. Maggie waits for the sound of her footsteps to disappear before addressing Dimitri.

“So that’s what you call looking for your cat?”

“I’ve been doing that too,” he replies.

“Are you sleeping with her?”

“That what George Ray told you?”

“George Ray?” She does her best to sound confused, glad for once of the darkness. “I was on the couch tonight and heard you going out.”

“So you followed me.”

She isn’t going to let him make her feel guilty. “How old is Lydia?” she asks. “Fifteen?”

“Sixteen. So yeah, screwing her would be legal up here, if that’s where your mind’s at. But we’ve just been hanging out.”

A thirty-year-old man hanging out with a teenage girl. He must think Maggie’s an idiot.

“What’s in that?” she asks, gesturing to the can he’s holding.

“Spray paint,” he replies, throwing it to her feet. “She brought it. I don’t know why.” Maggie waits, until he heaves a sigh and says, “The other night I made a joke about writing something on the wall. Maybe she thought I was serious.”

“Kids are impressionable,” she agrees.

“Oh, fuck off.”

Then Maggie remembers her conversation with Rhea in the bathroom and grows angrier. “I can’t believe you’re doing this under Rhea’s nose.”

“She isn’t wife of the year, you know.”

“And trying to get George Ray sent home. You’re such an asshole.”

“He did tell you, didn’t he?”

She doesn’t reply. Instead, she says, “If someone found out about the girl and you’re still seeing her, you’re certifiable.” Then, although it would probably be better not to, she adds, “Are you back to sticking needles in your arms too?”

“Rhea told you, huh?” There’s a wistfulness in his voice.

“She’s worried about you.”

“Sure she is.” Maggie tries to imagine what he and Rhea have been through for him to speak the words with such sadness and incredulity.

“Does Lydia know you’re married?” Maggie asks, and he gives a bark of laughter. “You doing drugs with her?”

“Nothing hard.” In a softer tone, he says, “Listen, if you’ve talked to Rhea, you know things have been tough for us.”

“So now you’re making things tougher?”

“I know I’m messing up.” There’s an ache in his voice. “Maggie, I’m hanging by a thread.”

“Okay,” she murmurs.

“Promise you won’t tell anybody about tonight,” he says, and she hesitates. George Ray made the same vow, and what good did that do?

“You’ll stop seeing the girl?” she asks. It doesn’t feel right to bargain over such things. But Dimitri promises, and all at once there seems nothing else to say.

They start back toward the house together. As they go, she has an urge to extract something more from him, a promise to stop arguing with Fletcher, to drop the complaining about George Ray. It would practically be blackmail. Is that what’s necessary to keep this place together?

They’re almost out of the orchard when Dimitri stops and grabs her arm. “You smell that?”

She inhales and gets a whiff of something awful. “Smells like shit,” she replies.

“Cat shit. John-John. That little bugger’s around here somewhere.” He peers into the branches overhead.

“How do you know it’s him?”

“Because he’s a vegetarian cat. Their shit smells different.”

“A vegetarian cat,” repeats Maggie with dismay.

“Yeah, I know. It was Rhea’s idea.”

“I’m starting to understand why he ran off.”

As Dimitri goes through the trees whispering John-John’s name, she can hear his hopefulness. She joins him in the search, but they find nothing. When they take up their route back to the farmhouse, it occurs to her that all those times he skipped out on work claiming to look for John-John, he was actually doing it. Probably it’s how he came to meet the girl. Maggie has this apprehension and doesn’t know whether to think more or less of him for it.

The next morning, she finds George Ray alone in the barracks and tells him she has taken care of things, then provides a cursory account of the night’s happenings.
When she says she didn’t betray his confidence to Dimitri, he seems pleased. It’s only after she has returned to the house that she reflects on George Ray’s warm eyes, his grateful smile, and thinks again about the fact that he told her rather than Fletcher the story of his encounter. Probably it’s as simple as he said: he didn’t want Fletcher overreacting. Yes, that must be it. She barely lets herself consider that maybe she wasn’t the only one glad to share a secret between them.

W
hen Maggie enters the grocery store in Virgil, the checkout girl asks if she has brought more film to be developed. Obligingly, Maggie hands over a paper bag, then gets herself a cart and pulls out her shopping list. She has gone some distance along the first aisle before she looks up to find the way forward impeded by Wale, slouching in a leather jacket. Beside him is the priest from the stone church. He has a golf cap perched on his high forehead, and his eyebrows look thick enough to be painted on with grease.

“Miss Dunne,” he says, sounding genial and cautious at once. “Is good to see you again.”

“You two know each other?” she asks.

Wale and the priest exchange a glance, as if to confer about a proper reply.

“We just met,” says Wale.

“This friend of yours, he is telling me about your father’s work in Laos,” says the priest. “Your father sounds like a remarkable man.” His eyes narrow when he sees Maggie’s irritation, but he presses on. “I wish you to understand, at church you are welcome. I am happy for you to be there—” He stumbles for the words. “—in different arrangement from past time.”

“I’m apostate,” she says.

“But already you go to church once,” he observes. “Something draws you, no?”

“The rain,” she replies, and he smiles as if accustomed to recalcitrance.

“Rain is good beginning.” Looking at his watch, he announces he must depart, then raises the wire basket he’s holding, with its still life of bundled carrots and a single lemon, as if to prove the matter’s urgency.

Once he has disappeared down the aisle, Maggie turns on Wale. “Why were you telling him about my father?”

“Just small talk,” he replies.

She doesn’t believe him. “So this is what you do now? You gossip about my family in grocery stores?”

“Father Josef’s not so bad. I think you should give him a chance. He could help you with your hang-ups around your dad.”

She doesn’t need Wale telling her what her hang-ups are. “My father and I got along fine until he found God. Then we—” Abruptly she stops. An old woman in horn-rimmed glasses is pushing an empty cart toward them. “Look,” says Maggie more quietly. “There was something I wanted to ask you.”

She tells him about her conversation with Gran and the news of her father’s missed call. As she speaks, Wale’s face seems to freeze.

“What day was your father supposed to call?”

When she tells him, he falls silent. Finally she slaps the handle of her cart so hard her shopping list goes curlicueing to the floor. “I only told you about this so you’d say everything was all right.”

“Sorry. Yeah, of course. It’s probably fine.” He doesn’t even try to sound convincing.

“His ride must have run out of gas, right? Or the phone lines went down.”

He studies her face. “You really haven’t heard from him? Nothing at all?”

“Like I said, not since May.” But that sounds worse than it is. “It’s only because I asked him not to write. He’s talked with my grandmother plenty of times.”

“I’m going to call some people,” says Wale. “See if they’ve heard anything.” A look of unease hasn’t left him.

“Wale, when you met my father, was he in some kind of trouble?”

“All of Laos is trouble. The place is full of bad cats.”

“But my father wasn’t mixed up with any of them,” she insists.

“He didn’t strike me as the type.” He avoids her gaze as he says it. “Honestly, if I was worried, I’d go over myself and bring him back with me.”

She stares at him a moment, trying to discern if he’s serious. “You wouldn’t. Your heart’s made out of shit, remember? You only do things that are in your interest.”

“It would be in my interest,” he says with a glint in his eye.

Maggie blushes and looks away. “Don’t talk like that. Just call those people and tell me what you hear.”

She offers him a ride back to the farm, but he says he has things to do and heads off down the aisle. On her own she continues through the store, cursing when she realizes she’s lost her shopping list. She gathers ketchup, buns, and napkins. At the checkout counter, the girl working the till asks her if she’s stocking up for tonight’s party at the farm.

“You know about it?” Maggie asks.

“Sure,” says the girl. “That Fletcher guy you’re always with has been inviting everyone in town.”

Once the groceries are rung through, the girl reaches for the cigarette case, but Maggie declines the offered pack. She’s three weeks late. She still thinks it must be stress.

“Cold turkey?” the girl asks, and Maggie nods. “Yeah, I figured as much. To be honest, right now you don’t look so good.”

When she returns to the farmhouse, the sun hangs low in the sky and there are a dozen unfamiliar vehicles parked in the driveway. She should be glad of them; drawing new people was Fletcher’s whole reason for suggesting a party at the start of the Labour Day weekend. But there’s too much to do: groceries to deliver into Rhea’s hands, food to prepare, and the projector to set up so people can watch the film Maggie has put together. It’s a single movie, not
quite the one she has imagined but a version of it distilled from all the summer’s footage, a mammoth thing four reels long, each twenty minutes except the shorter final one. And thanks to the checkout girl, who remembered them at the last moment, now Maggie has three more spools of processed film to add, though she’d forgotten all about them. She worries they’ll spoil whatever shape and order she’s managed to give the thing, but the new footage will have shots of newcomers who aren’t in the rest, and people will want to see themselves.