After a week, they leave just as stoned as the day they appeared, but others begin to arrive. An earnest-looking couple named Sarah and Jim turn up from New Jersey speaking to each other in baby talk and offering to read people’s palms. A thick-bearded man calling himself Luther rides in on a motorbike with a low-slung saddle, his clothes too small for him and smelling as if they haven’t been washed in months. Someone named Ralph calls from the St. Catharines bus station asking to be picked up, though nobody has heard of him and they can’t imagine how he got the number. Upon his arrival he says he saw the farm in a dream.
Suddenly there are too many people to eat in the dining room all at once, so they migrate to picnic tables in the backyard, and when it rains, they carry their plates out to the barracks. Each day more people arrive, some driving cars, some hitching; others leave abruptly without even saying goodbye. It gets to the point that Maggie can’t remember all their names. Most of those who join in the cherry harvest spend more time eating the fruit than picking it, and by the end of the month Fletcher has delivered only a few dozen baskets to Morgan Sugar’s processing plant in Toronto. Instead of seeming disappointed, he orders more bunk beds for the barracks and devises sign-up lists for chores. When people complain that the bathroom is always occupied, he talks enthusiastically of building a washhouse.
Most of the new arrivals aren’t travelling from the States as he imagined. Rather, they’re on their way back there, Americans no longer afraid of the draft, young men and women who say they’re fed up with the cold winters, the lack of jobs, the complacency of this little country with its inferiority complex and superiority complex at once. More than a few want to campaign for McGovern, even though Eagleton has had to withdraw from the ticket and they agree it’s all over, Nixon will get back in for sure. Fletcher still gives them room and board, hoping to convince them of the good life they could have if they stayed. Those who help out for at least a week are put on the Morgan Sugar payroll. A group of them excavates a drainage ditch along the south fence, and another lays the foundations for a drive shed to hold the tractor Fletcher plans on buying. Some don’t help out at all, but Fletcher says it doesn’t bother him. Maggie’s the one who resents the dirty sheets and bare refrigerator shelves, the cooking and cleaning for people she doesn’t know, the absence of time with those she does. For the most part Brid and Rhea stick to minding their children, leaving Maggie to herself. Every time she visits the barracks, it seems Wale is there playing cards with someone. She worries about him and the newcomers out there taking George Ray from his solitude, keeping him awake at night with their idle talk and singalongs.
She doesn’t see that much of Fletcher, either. He stays up long hours reading books with titles like Tender Fruit Husbandry and preparing financial reports for Morgan Sugar. Late one night, looking over his shoulder at the kitchen table, she sees a blank form for the migrant labour programme.
“Still going to apply?” she asks, and he says he isn’t sure. After all, they have people now, right?
“Not a very reliable bunch,” she replies, surprised at her own sourness. It occurs to her how much she wants this whole venture to succeed. “What about getting locals?”
“I’ve talked with some of them in town. People around here don’t think much of what we’re doing. To them we’re cowards for leaving the States, or we’re imperialists taking over their country.”
“Maybe send in the form just in case,” she says.
“Maybe.” He looks at her with beseeching eyes. “Don’t tell anyone, okay?”
In bed, he sleeps peacefully, like a baby, and it’s Maggie who’s insomnious. Why should she be offended by all the comers-and-goers? Maybe it would be better if her friends, not Fletcher’s, were the mainstays. But she doesn’t really have any friends. Through college she had classmates and roommates, acquaintances who came and went with the changing of majors and dormitories. Then, as she slogged through teaching, there was simply Fletcher.
Now half their nights are taken up by meetings in the living room to discuss the future. Sarah and Jim from New Jersey suggest a meditation circle, while Dimitri expounds on the need for study groups. Fletcher responds that it’s a farm, not a seminary, and what they need are dedicated work hours. Maggie sits smoking one cigarette after another, fearing she might be called upon to speak. Other times she makes herself unassailable by bringing the camera. As the others discuss their hopes and ideas, she records the play of light through a wine bottle or a baby asleep in its mother’s arms.
One night after the meeting has ended, she finds Fletcher by himself at the kitchen table, writing something on a piece of foolscap he’s too embarrassed to show her. The next morning she wakes up to discover he’s stapled it to the porch door.
1. We are all human beings.
2. Technology is not an end in itself.
3. True happiness requires company.
4. We must not mortgage the future of Spaceship Earth.
It goes on in the same vein, most of the lines recognizable from the previous evening’s discussion. That afternoon she finds Brid by the door, eyeing the page skeptically.
“‘We are all human beings’?” Brid reads. “What else could we be—wombats?”
“I think he means we each deserve dignity and respect,” replies Maggie. “Anyhow, he included the one about the planet’s future. That was your idea.”
Brid glowers at her. “You’re just smug because he used ‘God is not an American.’ Which, as I pointed out last night, is Judeo-Christian propaganda. It makes it sound like God exists in the first place.”
“Like I explained,” Maggie begins, careful in choosing her words, “it doesn’t have to be a Christian God. Most people agree there could be some higher power—” But she can tell Brid isn’t listening, so she tries another tack. “Brid, are you okay? How are things with Wale?”
“Why, hasn’t he told you?” says Brid. The bitterness in her voice makes Maggie pause.
“We haven’t talked for a while.” She thinks of their interview and his coolness toward her since. There’s been little more than strange looks from him in passing and half smiles that could be leers. “I don’t think Wale gets close to anyone,” she says. Realizing how that might sound, she quickly adds, “Except you, of course.”
“Yeah, well, next time you see him, remind him of that.” A certain resignation has entered her voice.
“I know things have been chaotic,” Maggie says. “There isn’t as much time for being alone together. But this is what we wanted, right? People working as a community.”
“To be honest, I liked it better when it was just us and Wale.” Brid returns her attention to the piece of paper on the door. Without another word, she rips the sheet from its nail.
Involuntarily, Maggie’s hands curl into fists. But she doesn’t mention the incident to Fletcher, and at dinner, when he asks if anyone knows what happened to the page, she and Brid only exchange a long glance.
At the end of the day, drained of all energy, Maggie watches television on the couch with half a dozen others in the living room. A body passes before the screen, and she realizes it’s Brid coming to sit down next to her. There’s meaning in this, she suspects, but she’s too tired to grasp it, she’s almost asleep, and a few minutes later she discovers she’s no longer watching television, she’s just dreaming of it. When she wakes up, an old Bette Davis movie is playing and Brid’s head is heavy against her shoulder. Maggie can hear her breathing; she can feel the hitch at the end of each exhalation that summons another ream of air.