Once We Had a Country (6 page)

When Maggie has finished, she reads the letter once more and is astounded all over again by Gran’s flawless rectitude. Not a single typo. How many drafts did that take?

Until the envelope appeared in the mailbox, the outside world seemed on the brink of fading away. In their first week at the farm, the only people to turn up have been the man who installed the telephone and the locksmith who added deadbolts to the doors. Everyone else they expected has let them down. Fletcher’s old roommates Roman and
Tony both got jobs in Washington at the last minute, while his cousin Dean called to say he was sorry but he was flying to India; he’d decided the girl in Uttar Pradesh was his soulmate after all. Dimitri and Rhea are still with their boys in Cambridge, claiming a flu outbreak, although Fletcher says it’s more likely cold feet. The draft dodgers in Toronto were scheduled to arrive tomorrow for a tree-planting bee, but it’s been postponed until the repairman turns up to deal with the gas smell. Fletcher doesn’t know the dodgers personally, only through a friend, and he wants to avoid giving them a bad first impression of the farm.

As for Wale, Brid last talked to him in the middle of May when he was in Thailand, running from the army. He said he’d meet them on the farm in three weeks, never mentioning how he’d get there. At meals they agree he must be lying low until it’s safe to travel, but Brid eats little and complains of an upset stomach.

Eventually people will come. They mustn’t lose their faith in that. In the meantime, they have thrown themselves into cleaning, painting, and ripping up carpets. Fletcher talks about orchard longevity, yields per acre, and B.F. Skinner’s theories of community planning, while Maggie teases him about his high hopes, which are also hers. This year they’ll harvest the cherries and plant trees for other fruits. In three years they’ll have a windmill and solar panels to produce their electricity. Maggie likes thinking about such things. It keeps her from dwelling on her father. It’s only at night, cocooned in the silence of the countryside, that her mind drifts to him and she finds
herself listening for the presence of someone in the hallway.

Now there’s the swishing of feet through the grass. She looks up from the letter and sees Brid coming along the lane between the trees in flimsy sandals. She sits down beside Maggie and inquires about what she’s reading. When Maggie replies that it’s a letter from her grandmother, Brid asks to see it. Maggie can’t think of a good reason to say no, so she hands it over and sets about trying to interpret the expressions on Brid’s face as she reads. It’s hard to do, with those impenetrable sunglasses. There’s only the odd arched eyebrow and the quick passing of Brid’s tongue over her lips. Finally she passes the page back.

“Wow. I feel for you, sweetheart. Your granny sounds uptight.”

This is a surprise. In the six months Maggie has known Brid, compassion isn’t something she has learned to associate with her.

“The letter’s nothing,” Maggie replies. “You should have heard the names she called me on the phone.”

“So you’re not going to write her back? Not your dad either?”

“No.” But she says it without the conviction she’d like. She lies down and waits to be soothed by the world. There’s birdsong, shadows flickering, and the traffic of ants who arrive at her arm like commuters at a closed road. Eventually a calm begins to overtake her. Hard to imagine any harm coming to them here, only never-ending summer sunshine. She turns her head and sees Brid at ease too, lying with one hand beneath her neck, fingers stroking the skin there as a lover might.

“So you want to help Fletcher do great things, huh?” says Brid. Maggie has been sufficiently lulled that she’s slow to recognize her own words being echoed back at her. “Hey, I just thought of something. By coming up here, you’re walking in your old man’s footsteps, right? It’s some kind of missionary work.”

“That’s ridiculous,” says Maggie.

“So you aren’t here to save Fletcher from his parents?”

Maggie grits her teeth. Brid sounds too much like Gran. “I don’t think Fletcher needs saving.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” says Brid. “Fletcher’s all right. He isn’t as bad as your granny thinks, anyhow. He’s good with Pauline. You want kids?”

Maggie feels a sudden light-headedness. “We’re not even engaged.”

“Let me tell you a secret,” Brid replies sweetly. “A wedding ring isn’t a prerequisite.” Maggie blushes, and Brid gives a dismissive wave. “Well, I’m glad he’s your type.”

Maggie doesn’t know what to say. She should be reassured by the implication that Fletcher isn’t Brid’s type, but it offers no comfort. Brid and Fletcher are close enough that Maggie’s tempted to ask her about Gran’s reference to the young woman in Boston. Maggie’s pretty sure it’s Cybil, his previous girlfriend; she knows that relationship was a disaster. What if it wasn’t Cybil, though? What if it was Brid? She isn’t wealthy, is she? After all, she seems happy enough for Morgan Sugar to pay her way. Maggie ponders Brid’s earrings, her perfume, her makeup. Fletcher claims not to like such things on women. No, it’s stupid even to think it. Still, sometimes Maggie gets a glimmer of
something between them, a shared past to which neither has confessed. Maybe it was a fling, a boozy kiss, or only an advance and a rebuff. She’s pretty sure she could handle it if Brid was the one who did the advancing.

Sitting on the floor by her bedroom window with a pad of paper in her lap, Maggie stares at the empty sheet. She writes a sentence, looks off into space, writes another, then sets her pen aside to focus on pushing down her cuticles. Finally she crumples the page and begins afresh, this time with energetic strokes.

Sealing the page in an envelope, she tucks it into the waistline of her skirt. Then she grabs a sun hat from the post at the bottom of the staircase, tells Fletcher she’s going for a walk, and sets off for Virgil. It’s a couple of miles to the village, but the time outdoors might calm her down.

After a minute on the gravel road, she arrives at the gated driveway leading to the wrecking yard and takes in
the dilapidated mobile home in front of it, the hardscrabble lawn. The place looks so uncared for that it’s hard to say if anyone lives there. No neighbour has stopped by the farmhouse to welcome them, and neither Fletcher nor Brid has suggested going over to say hello. They have only agreed that it’s a shame the wrecking yard is there at all, and that at least it doesn’t seem to do much business.

Then she notices the girls at the far edge of the lawn, sitting under a maple tree. There’s a pair of them hidden there, each perched on a beach towel and wearing a swimsuit, each with skinny legs that look ghostly in the shade. Maggie’s on the verge of calling out to them when she sees what they’re doing. One of them, red-haired with broad shoulders, is smoking a joint. The other, thin with long black hair, holds a beer bottle. They can’t be more than sixteen.

Maggie thinks of carrying on, not saying anything, pretending not to see.

“Good afternoon!” she shouts instead.

The girls freeze. The thin one tries to hide the bottle behind her back. The other lets her hand drop casually to her side and puts on a toothy smile. Maggie walks up to the gate and leans on it, trying to affect an affable pose.

“My name’s Maggie,” she says, then points in the direction of the farmhouse. “I’m one of your new neighbours.”

“My dad’s not home,” says the thin girl.

“That’s all right. I just wanted to introduce myself.”

The girls look at each other. Without speaking, they seem to manage some communication between them, and they smile at one another before turning back to her.

“I’m Jane,” says the red-haired one.

“I’m June,” says the other. “We’re twins. But not identical. The other kind.”

“Jane and June,” repeats Maggie, unable to disguise her disbelief. “How old are you?”

“Ancient,” says the red-haired girl, and laughs.

“So you’re old enough to be smoking and drinking that stuff,” says Maggie. She feels stupid saying it.

“Smoking?” says the red-haired girl. “What’s that?”

“What’s drinking?” says the other one, pronouncing the word as if for the first time. Raising the beer bottle to her lips, she takes a long slug.

The red-haired girl regards Maggie with a severe expression. “You must be confused. Maybe it’s sunstroke. Maybe you’ve gone senile. How old are you, anyhow? Fifty?”

Maggie feels her face burn. She thinks of telling them she’s twenty-four, but she suspects that for them twenty-four might as well be fifty.

“My dad said you people are hippies,” says the thin girl.

“They can’t be,” says the red-haired one. “Hippies aren’t so square.”

“You going to rat us out?” says the thin one, and the red-haired girl shoots her a disapproving look, as if she has broken the rules by asking a straightforward question.

Maggie shakes her head. “That’s not my job.”

“Then quit staring and beat it, will you?” says the red-haired girl. She raises the joint to her mouth and puffs, looking Maggie straight in the eye.

Without another word, Maggie starts off toward Virgil again, furious with them and with herself. Bested by a
couple of teenagers. They must be the ones who got into the farmhouse, who spray-painted the peace sign on the wall. Maybe the first night it was one of them at the bottom of the stairs. She shouldn’t let them carry on like that. She should go back later and talk to the father.

Or maybe they’re right. Maybe she’s just square.

Curtains of grey sky are gathering on the horizon when she reaches the highway. The wind picks up; lilac bushes buck and toss by the roadside. A gust wrenches her hat from her head, lifts it over a fence, and sends it loping across the pasture beyond. Instead of chasing it, she presses onward.

Eventually she reaches a small church with a steeple and thick stone buttresses. The sign out front says it’s Catholic, and she thinks of going in but can’t fathom why she would. It begins to rain. Within seconds, torrents of it are bouncing on the asphalt so hard they seem to jet from the earth. With a hand shielding her face, she looks toward the distant roofs of the village, then back at the church. Lightning and thunder explode together. She runs toward the front doors.

Inside, a crucified Christ watches over the altar and a few rows of pews. A pale light penetrates the water streaming down the windows, while a stained glass Saint Francis preaches to the birds, his eyes childlike and angled toward heaven.

At first she remains near the entrance, wringing out her hair and tugging loose her top where it lies against her midriff. Then she passes into the sanctuary, her gaze
rising to the dusky ceiling with its rafters and arching ribs. Rumbles of thunder are the only sound. She walks up the aisle, slowly pausing at the altar to cross herself before proceeding past the baptismal font and back down along the far side. The wooden floor is neither painted nor varnished, but the upholstery on the kneelers looks newly plush, and someone has gone row by row through the pews to space the prayer books evenly.

At the confessional along the wall, she stops.

“Father?” she whispers, pushing aside the drape. There’s the barest of murmurs from the storm, along with the drip of water from her skirt. She steps inside and kneels. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. Father? Is there really no one there?” With her knuckles she raps on the panelled wall.

“Piss off,” she says quietly. “Goddamn,” she continues with more volume. “Shit-cunt-asshole,” she exclaims, then feels idiotic, no better than those girls.

From outside the booth, there’s a noise like a door closing. Cocking her head, she calls out a hello. When there’s no response, she pulls back the drape and scans the building. All is still. Beginning to shiver, she makes her way toward the front door, stopping at an alcove where a few votive candles stand beside a collection box. She bends over in search of something with which to light them. As she does, a voice booms out.

“You, girl! Get away from this!” A thin, balding man in a cassock is hurrying toward her. He looks almost forty, with thick, angry eyebrows. “You have no shame?” His accent is clipped, Eastern European. He turns and shouts,
“Lenka, call police station.” A woman with a beehive piled atop her head has appeared in a side door by the altar and gives the barest of nods.

The priest reaches for Maggie and grabs her by the arm. Instinctively, she tries to wrench loose of his grip.

“What did I do?” she cries.

“You know what you do.”

“I don’t know! I really don’t!” Her skin’s still wet and she slips away. Reaching to seize her, he fastens onto a strap of her top. It rips loudly, freezing them both. Then he lets go and steps back.

“I only came in here to pray,” she says, holding the strap in place with one hand. “It was raining!” But when she turns to go, he blocks the door.

“Where do you come from?” he asks. “You are one of the draft dodgers at Harroway.” He speaks these words carefully, whether out of some difficulty in pronouncing them or with a particular disdain for such people, it isn’t clear.

“Who told you that?” she demands.

“The man with you,” replies the priest with a tight smile. “He speaks to storekeepers in Virgil. This place is the same as everywhere, people like the gossip.”

“We’re not draft dodgers,” she says. “We’re working for the Morgan Sugar Company.”

The priest seems uninterested in this distinction.

“Stealing is serious thing.” He raises a handkerchief to wipe the sweat from his brow. “Authorities send you back to U.S.A.”

“Father, it’s a misunderstanding. I’m Catholic, really! My dad’s a missionary.” The priest’s face remains stern.
“Oh, never mind!” With her free arm she gestures toward the alcove. “Tell me what I was stealing. Candles?”