At Play in the Fields of the Lord (15 page)

A terrific wind blew, and his ears rang with the bells of blue-black space; the wind sealed his throat, his flesh turned cold, his screams were but squeaks snapped out and away by the passage of night spheres.
Nor could he hear, there was no one to hear, there was no one where he had gone—
what’s happening, what-is-happening
 …

He had flung himself away from life, from the very last realities, had strayed to the cold windy reaches of insanity.
This perception was so clear and final that he moaned; he would not find his way back.
You’ve gone too far this time,
you’ve gone too far
 …

As he whirled into oblivion, his body cooled and became numb, inert, like a log seized up and borne out skyward by a cyclone; he struggled to reach out, catch hold, grasp, grip, hang on, but he could not.
He could not, he was made of wood, and there was nothing to hang on to, not even his own thought—thought shredding, drifting out of reach, like blowing spider webs.
He was gone, g-o-n-e,
gone
, G-O-N-E, gone—and around again.
The howling was in his head, and all about lay depthless silence.
His screaming was ripped away before it left his mouth, and the mouth itself was far away, a huge papered hoop blown through and tattered by the gales.
The air rushed past, too fast to breathe; his lungs sucked tight, shriveled like prunes, collapsed.
He died.

Death came as a huge bounteous quiet, in the bosom of a high white cloud.
The wood of his body softened, the knots loosened; he opened up, lay back, exhausted, mouth slack, eyes wide like the bald eyes of a corpse.
He glimpsed a hard light lucid region of his mind like a lone comet, wandering far out across the long night of the universe.

T
OWARD DAWN
L
EWIS
M
OON CAME TO THE
Q
UARRIERS
’
ROOM
.
H
E
entered without knocking.
Quarrier awoke in time to find Moon going through the pockets of his pants hung on the chair.
Moon met his gaze calmly, still going through the pockets, and a moment later held up the Niaruna dictionary in the dim light.
Quarrier slipped quietly from his bed and trailed Moon into the corridor.

“What are you doing?”
he whispered angrily.
He was upset by his own nakedness.

“You haven’t any clothes on,” Moon remarked.
“Is that a sin?”
The pupils of his eyes were very large, and both his face and voice were gentle.

“Give me that dictionary!”

“No, not now.”
He was already moving off unsteadily; he disappeared into the stairwell.
Quarrier ran back for his bathrobe, then went to fetch Wolfie.
But Wolfie had found another place to sleep, for his bed was empty.

From the window Quarrier watched Moon drift down the center of the street to the edge of light and disappear into the darkness.
Then he saw Andy running in the same direction.
He started to call out to her, then stopped; he ran to the doorway, to the stairwell, then back to his room.

Quarrier was at his window when a climbing airplane roared over the hotel.
In the jungle no one flew at night, and in the echoes of the plane’s motor a tension swelled, a taut silence, cracked like glass by the sound of a first voice, which told him that the whole settlement had leaped awake.
From across the town, a moment later, he heard Wolfie howling.

By sunrise all of Madre de Dios had convened to stare at the spot where the airplane had been.
Guzmán himself came, in his private car, with driver.
Everyone had an ear cocked for an engine, but everyone also seemed to know that Moon would not come back.

Nevertheless, Huben went over to the radio shack to try to contact Moon.
Almost immediately the flyer’s voice resounded, but Leslie was unable to tell how long Moon had been talking.
Apparently the man had no audience in mind, for the monologue was in English.
Who was he talking to, then?
Leslie did not catch all of it, and in fact made no real contact; he was paid for his efforts in curses and strange maledictions.

It was now known that Moon was under the effects of
ayahuasca
, and the wonder was that on this rough mud strip, without lights of any kind, he had got into the air at all.
Some of the wiser heads told one another that he had feigned the
ayahuasca
, that he had made off with the plane, leaving the Bearded One to fend for himself.
Others stated flatly that under the spell of the Vine of Death, Moon had divined the location of Paititi, the legendary El Dorado, and had gone there, suicidally alone, to add his bones to those of all such jungle visionaries.

Wolfie, meanwhile, cornered Guzmán, and using Quarrier as his interpreter, demanded the use of the old army fighter as a search plane.
Guzmán said that it did not work, and when Wolfie said that he would fix it, the Comandante shrugged.
He jeered as Wolfie ran off with tools and gasoline toward the plane on the far
side of the strip; it sat in growth up to its fuselage.
But soon Wolfie was seen leaping up and down, cranking the prop by hand.
The plane did not respond, and the squat figure scrambled back under the cowling and dove down once again into the works.
Everyone now dismissed the possibility that the Bearded One could start the plane, which had been famous for its treacherous and ugly disposition, and had not left the ground in more than a year.
But an hour later the Bearded One was again swinging violently on the prop, and after a few dreadful coughs the airplane belched a cloud of smoke and came to life with a clatter of outraged metal.
Wolfie ran back across the strip, shouting wildly through the black grease on his face.
“Gas!”
he bellowed at the Comandante.
“Gimme some more gas!”

But Guzmán shook his head.
“Mecánico, sí,”
he grinned.
“Piloto, no.”
He could scarcely turn over the property of his government to someone who owed him money.

“You got my passport, don’t you?
Look, I’ll bomb them Indians myself!”
Wolfie made war whoops by patting his open mouth, then made violent bombing motions.

The Comandante was amused.
He laughed: “Ha, ha, ha, ha.”

“I’m goin to kill this guy,” Wolfie told Quarrier.
“I shoulda done it the other night.
You tell him to get that crate gassed up and oiled and do it quick, or I’m goin to knife him right here and now in front of all his friends.”
Speaking quietly, he kept his gaze on Guzmán’s face, and El Comandante did not wait for the translation.
“Pigs!”
he shouted at his soldiers, who were standing there half dressed and unarmed, scratching at dirty undershirts.
“You dare to come before me out of uniform!
You will be punished!”
He whirled in fury and singled out his driver.
“Mechanic!”
He spat violently in contempt.
“You saw?
The gringo fixed a motor faster than you can wipe my windshield!
Now prepare the plane for this true mechanic and do it quickly!”
He turned again to Wolfie and bowed slightly from the waist.

Wolfie grinned into his face, disdainfully.
“He’s chicken, ain’t he?”
he remarked to Quarrier.
“He’s chicken through and through.”
He watched as Guzmán’s driver, shouting violent orders
in his turn, directed the soldiers toward the drums of gasoline.

“Maybe he knows the plane isn’t safe,” Quarrier said.

“That’s what he thinks, all right; look at that miserable face!
But there ain’t nothin wrong with that old heap except only maintenance.
That’s like what I hate about this lousy continent—no maintenance.
Valves stuck, fouled plugs, and every other wire loose, but that’s a good old swingin, practically brand-new American engine.
And just as soon as I get rid of them bushmasters and tarantulas and all the other jungle crud which this is prolly layin around the cockpit, the Old Wolf is goin to be air-borne.”
He shook his head.
“That crazy Moon.
He’s pulled plenty of cute tricks, but this one—” He threw his arms wide apart and staggered back, as if stunned by the walls of green.
“Where does he want I should
start
, even, answer me that.
And not a lousy chart, even, and somewhere out there on a sand bar on one of them miserable rivers, prolly layin on his ass eatin mangoes, this stupid drugged-up bastard is waitin for his buddy Wolf to come and rescue him.
And I can’t even land when I
do
find him—” He barked with exasperation, but the sound had a slight ring of despair.
Wolfie blinked a little, shocked; his face turned red in consternation, as if he were facing the probability that his friend was dead.

“If I were you, I’d try the Niaruna country first,” Quarrier said.

“Sure, sure.
Like, where
is
it?”

“To the east.
You were there yesterday.”

Andy Huben was standing just behind them.
“That’s right,” she said.
“He was going eastward.”
She looked pale and tense.

“What is all this
eastward!
” Wolfie yelled.
He threw his big hands up and out, summoning the halfbreeds as his witnesses.
“The marks all know exactly where he went, and his own pal Wolf didn’t even know that he was
goin!
”

Huben hurried over.
“Are you cursing at my wife?”
he said.

“So who’s cursin!
What I’m tryna find out is how in sweet Christ does she know he headed
eastward!
”

Now all three stared at her.

“He told me.”

“When did he tell you?”
Huben said.

“Last night—I mean, this morning.
Just before he left.”

“Oy!”
Wolfie cried, delighted.
“Very good.
I musta been sheltered as a yout’ or somethin, I thought you people—” He jerked his thumb at Quarrier, then tossed his chin toward Andy.
“First him and that Indian chick, and now it’s her and Lewis—”

Andy slapped him hard across the face, and her husband came forward in a boxer’s stance, fists up, bobbing and weaving.
But the people, moaning, pressed so close that Leslie was restricted in his maneuvers and finally came to a halt.
He was red to the point of bursting, and when he spoke, his voice was high with rage.

“You take that back!”

“Or else?”
Grinning, a bad glint in his eye, Wolfie slowly withdrew his hand from inside his shirt; he raised the hand slowly and pinched at Huben’s face.
A moment later, when he withdrew it, there was blood between his thumb and forefinger.
Huben paled, and the people gasped.
“Big mos-
quito
,” Wolfie enunciated.
He grinned at Quarrier and winked.
To Huben he said, “I was only foolin wit’ you, Reverend.
Like maybe you’re kind of emotionally upset—I mean, you know,
neurotic possessiveness
, right, Reverend?
Only don’t come prancin around the Old Wolf again like that or you’re liable to get fractured.”

Andy said, “I heard him leave.
You were asleep.
I thought he was on his way to bomb and kill.
I ran after him and begged him not to attack the Niaruna.”
She turned toward her husband.
“He promised he wouldn’t.”

“Promised!”
Huben shook, in a fury of emotions.
“What were you
wearing?
”

Quarrier said quickly, “Did he say anything else?”

“He said some other things.
I’m not sure I understood them.”

Her husband seized her by the arm.
“Come on, Andy, we’re going back to the hotel.”

“Well, you accomplished what we couldn’t,” Quarrier called
after her.
Without turning, Andy raised her hand in a small fluttering wave, and both Quarrier and Wolfie laughed.
“She’s a swinger, ain’t she?”
Wolfie said.
But Leslie took their laughter as directed at himself, and glared over his shoulder.
At this, Wolfie snarled and cursed, but a moment later he had forgotten all about the Hubens and was worrying once more about his partner.

“Eastward, huh?”
He rolled his eyes.
“
East
ward, the man says,” He waved his arm in a half-circle.
“You can’t miss it, right?”
He slammed his big fist into his other hand.
“Well, nuts to that.
I’ll get him out all right, one way or another—all I gotta do is
find
him.
Lewis and me, we been in trouble worse than this, a lot worse.”

Wolfie flew out an hour later, after going back to the hotel for his pistol, which he wore strapped to his hip.
“So what’s it
to
ya,” he said to Huben, who, standing in the hotel doorway, had glanced at the weapon in disdain.
“You think it’s some kind of a
sex
symbol, or what?
Maybe I wanna shoot myself a vulture.”