Once We Had a Country (2 page)

Maggie holds her breath. They’ve been told border guards aren’t supposed to ask that.

Fletcher shakes his head. “We’re coming up here to work.”

“For the Morgan Sugar Company,” says the guard, looking back at the page. “Your father own it or something?” He asks the question wryly but turns serious when Fletcher nods. “So he’s helping you avoid the draft, then.”

“I haven’t been drafted. I was a student, and then—”

“Park over there.” The guard points to a small concrete building nearby. “Stay in the vehicle. Someone will be with you.”

“Officer, is anything wrong?” Maggie asks.

“Just wait in the vehicle,” he replies.

“I don’t get it,” says Fletcher when they’ve pulled away from the booth. “You think it’s because I dropped the papers?”

“Don’t be silly,” she tells him. She’s thinking it probably is.

For twenty minutes they wait in the parked camper while the radio plays Neil Young and Jefferson Airplane and songs by Canadian bands they’ve never heard of. Finally, Fletcher says he’s going to find out what’s happening, kisses her on the cheek, and leaves the van.

As soon as he vanishes inside the building, she’s struck by the feeling that the whole thing is a mistake. What will happen when the immigration people start asking questions and Fletcher says his father has given him a cherry farm to run? What if he tells them that he’s a law school dropout and that Maggie quit teaching school before her first year even ended? What if he admits that his father isn’t much impressed by their plan to try communal living but he’s agreed to put them and a few friends on the payroll for a while if it means getting Fletcher clear of the draft? It will be the first commune in history to be underwritten by a corporation. No, the immigration people will never buy it.

A knock at the window makes her jump. She turns to see two men in uniforms standing beside the camper.

“Could you step out of the vehicle, miss?” says the taller one. He has pop eyes and a mouth that stays open like a fish. The other man’s features are doughy, his skin bright pink in the heat.

Leaving the camper for the building’s shade, Maggie watches them open the side door and start removing boxes. It takes her a moment to realize they’re going to unpack everything.

“Do you have to do that?” she calls out. “I have a list of what we’ve brought.” It took her hours to write it up. All this week, whenever she felt herself growing anxious about the unseen house in another country, checking over the list brought a certain comfort. She starts toward the camper to retrieve it.

“We don’t need a list,” says the pop-eyed man. “Just stay where you are.”

As he and his partner go on unloading and opening boxes, she finds herself anticipating what’s in each one and realizes she knows the contents almost by heart. There are clothes and boots and cleaning supplies, a tool box, a toaster, a hair dryer, a roll of toilet paper. There are three cartons of Lucky Strikes and five jars of Nescafé. There are two spoons, two knives, and two forks, a little ark of utensils, even though Fletcher thinks they could be feeding sixty people in a couple of years. There’s also the Super 8-millimetre camera her father gave her. She watches the pop-eyed man lift it from its shoulder bag and turn it over in his hands with a quizzical, chimp-like expression.

“It makes movies,” she says, not meaning to sound as impertinent as she does. The man scowls at her and she doesn’t speak further, but she wants to warn him to be careful with the thing. She has decided that if she and Fletcher are really serious about the farm, if they’re going to turn it into a success, they should have a record of the proceedings. When she told Fletcher, she was embarrassed by her own enthusiasm for the idea, but he liked it so much he bought an editing machine and audio recorder too.

From inside the camper comes a long, loud ripping sound. She looks over to see the man with the doughy face using a box cutter to slice into the vinyl of the driver’s seat.

“What are you doing?” she shouts, stepping toward him.

“Stay by the building, ma’am,” he says. “We’re authorized to do this when necessary.”

“But it isn’t necessary. There’s nothing to find.”

“Ma’am, you need to let us do our job.”

There’s no sign of Fletcher. She should go and find him, let him know what’s happening to his van, but the doughy-faced man has resumed cutting into the seat and she feels obliged to bear witness to what he’s doing.

As she watches, she remembers Fletcher’s trembling hands. What if there really is something hidden in the vehicle? She’s been with him six months. In some ways they still don’t know each other. When she tries to picture him sneaking out last night and stashing drugs in the spare tire, though, she can’t do it. He hates taking risks. It’s why leaving the States is a bigger deal for him than for her. He’s losing all the security of home.

Thirty yards away, cars depart from the nearest guard booth one by one. A little boy in the back of a sedan presses his face to the window, watching the two men unload the camper. They must search vehicles out in the open like this to make it more humiliating, to let everyone see what can happen.

When Fletcher exits the building, the man with the box cutters has finished tearing into the seats and is conferring with his partner.

“What the hell’s going on?” says Fletcher.

Before Maggie can speak, the pop-eyed man approaches them. “You’re free to go,” he says.

“What about the seats?” says Fletcher.

“You’ll have to talk with someone in the office.”

Fletcher asks Maggie to wait and storms back inside while the two men walk off in the opposite direction,
leaving the unpacked boxes on the asphalt. Maggie sighs and starts to reload them. Ten minutes pass before Fletcher returns, fuming.

It isn’t the beginning she imagined. She thought crossing over would feel exhilarating. She imagined they might enter at Niagara Falls. Fifteen years have passed since the time her father took her there, but she still remembers the bellow and crash of the water, the jagged rocks and hovering rainbow. Today, when she woke up in the passenger seat and realized Fletcher had opted for the Lewiston bridge instead, she couldn’t help feeling disappointed. But then, she’d never voiced her preference, so how was he to know? He’s the first lover she has ever had. Sometimes she worries about putting too much faith in him.

As they finish repacking the camper, she doesn’t ask what happened in the building and he doesn’t tell her; he only seems impatient to get on the road again. It’s enough to allow a shade of doubt back into her mind. No, she’s paranoid. But once they’re driving away, she turns to him and says in a breezy tone, “You didn’t actually hide anything in the camper, right?”

He shoots her a look of disbelief.

“It would have been funny if you had, that’s all,” she says, giving a little laugh. He doesn’t respond, and she feels the seat’s ripped vinyl digging into her back.

“The man inside told me it could have been worse,” says Fletcher. “He said sometimes when they do inspections they take apart the engine too.”

She decides not to ask him who’ll pay for the seats to be repaired. They drive on in silence. Then, a few miles down
the road, he says, “When we get to the farm, don’t tell Brid what happened, all right?”

Maggie frowns. “Why not?”

“It was a hard sell getting her to come up here. You know how she feels about cops. I don’t want her taking against the place.”

“But she’ll see what they did to the seats.”

“Oh. I guess that’s right.”

She dislikes seeming to correct him. His face always gains such a downhearted expression when she does. It happened one time after he pronounced “peony” the wrong way and she mentioned it didn’t rhyme with “macaroni.” In March, after he told his father about dropping out of law school, he wore the same chastened expression for a month. Now she studies the shape of his eyes, his mouth, willing him not to take things personally. He holds still, apparently aware of her gaze, until finally he starts to squirm and laugh as if her eyes are tickling him.

On a whim, she slides her fingers into his lap.

“Why hello there,” he murmurs. But she can tell he isn’t into it.

“You okay?” she says, drawing back her hand.

“Sure. Still a bit wound up, I guess.” He reaches over to squeeze her leg. “It’s only a few more miles. If Brid and Pauline aren’t there yet …” He flashes her a grin.

“Oh, really,” she says, brightening. “Tell me more.”

“Maggie, I’m a gentleman,” he says, feigning indignation.

“Then tell me what it will be like on the farm,” she says. She doesn’t want him stewing over what happened at the border.

“Aw, we’ve talked about things plenty, haven’t we?”

“I want to hear it again.”

He takes a breath and smiles. “Well, it’s going to be amazing. Up here, there won’t be any war or election, and we’ll get to make the rules ourselves. At first, we’ll help Brid and Wale look after Pauline—it’ll be four parents for one kid. Then, after Dimitri and Rhea turn up with their boys—” He breaks off. “You know all this. You really want to hear it?”

She nods, but she has a thought. “Wait a second. Let me get the movie camera and the tape recorder.”

He looks surprised. “Now? We aren’t even there yet.”

She’s thinking that the border wasn’t the right way to start, but maybe with the camera they can have a second chance.

“Pull over,” she says. “It won’t take more than a minute.”

“The turnoff’s only a mile away.”

“Yeah, but I want to get started right now.”

The first shot follows the camper van down a country road as its tires swim through the heat haze. Next, the camera gazes out from the passenger-side window, capturing clusters of bungalows, rows of grapevines and peach trees with the sun strobing between them. The scene is tranquil but the camera shaky. There’s the low thrum of the vehicle’s engine and, from outside the frame, the sound of Fletcher’s voice.

“America’s too far gone to save,” he says. “The land’s polluted and the politicians are corrupt. They send the
army to slaughter kids halfway around the world, then order up the National Guard when people protest. In this country we’ll do things differently. We’ll live peacefully and fairly. We’ll get people from all over, people who want to escape the city, who are sick of the crime, the rat race, who want their children to breathe clean air. The farm will let us provide for ourselves. We’ll grow our own food and sell what we don’t eat. Eventually we’ll make enough money to buy the place. It’ll be a life we could never have in Boston. We’ll be a model for everyone.”

The camera pans away from the landscape and across the dashboard before settling on his face. When he turns toward the lens, he crosses his eyes and blows a kiss. There’s the sound of some unseen object bumping against the microphone.

“How was that?” he says. “Hey, why don’t you drive and I’ll film you?”

“It’s okay,” says Maggie. “Let’s keep on the way we are. I’m just getting the hang of it.”

She films him until they leave the highway for a gravel road. Then she puts away the camera, wanting to see properly what’s ahead. There’s only one other house along the half-mile stretch, a mobile home with a gated lane. Soon afterward they reach a dead end and the driveway to the farmhouse. The building is red brick with gabled dormers and a broad porch. An overgrown lawn sprawls in all directions. Fifty yards behind the house, countless rows of cherry trees begin.

“Fletcher, it’s gorgeous,” she says, and he beams.

Once he has brought the camper to a stop, they exit on their separate sides, Fletcher stretching out his long legs, Maggie pulling her dress away from her body where it clings. For a time they stand there looking at the house. Then they exchange a loud, playful kiss and start up the porch stairs. At the door, he pats under the welcome mat, but there’s nothing to be found.

“Maybe Brid and Pauline got here ahead of us,” he says.

“There’s no car,” she points out. “Wale, maybe?”

He hollers Wale’s name. No one answers, so he goes around behind the house while Maggie lights a cigarette and retreats down the steps to take in the place again. The roof is missing a few shingles, and the eavestrough is held up at one end by a loop of wire. In the middle of the lawn, an old wooden sign reads
Harroway Orchards
. At the entrance to the driveway there’s a mailbox on a post, and beside it stands something obscured by the shadow of a tree. When she looks closer, she realizes it’s a man. Tentatively she waves at him, but he doesn’t seem to notice her, only starts along the gravel road toward the highway.

From behind the house, there’s the sound of breaking glass. Fletcher doesn’t respond to her calling, so she stamps out her cigarette and starts after him. A moment later the porch door rattles open and there he is, licking a cut on his hand.

“First order of business,” he announces, “replace the back window.”

When she goes to examine his wound, he dips and catches her just above the knees, lifts her off her feet, and heads for the door.

“It’s not like we got married,” she says, laughing. With a grunt, he carries her across the jamb and sets her down.

Inside, the foyer is dim and cramped. On the left, a wide staircase leads to the second floor; on the right, there’s a corridor with a few nails protruding from the walls. He starts searching for a light switch, but she takes his hand with a wink and leads him upstairs. Pink roses stare from the wallpaper as they ascend. At the top, Fletcher takes delight in pointing out the hardwood floor, the rectangles of natural light falling from open doorways.

As he pulls her into the first room, there’s the smell of stale booze and something burnt. Then she sees the mattress in the corner. It’s scorched in the middle and stained at the far end. A pile of sheets lies beside it, singed and streaked with ash. The only other furniture in the room is a dresser that has been emptied of its drawers, which sit on the floor filled with food wrappers, empty beer bottles, and cigarette butts.

“Was it like this when you checked out the place?” she asks. Maybe she should have taken the time off work to come up with him after all.