At Play in the Fields of the Lord (3 page)

“American!”
the bearded man called after her.
“So who’s American?
They slung us out!”

“Do you think he’s a pirate?”
Billy said to her.
“He was wearing an earring, did you see it, Mom?”

“Your countrymen,” a soft voice said.
“It is amusing, no?”

Glancing back, she saw the priest, who smiled at her as if he approved, not only of her joke, but of the general fact of her existence.
She hurried on.
Had she imagined it, or had this man winked at her, too?

Why were people
winking
at her?
She was close to tears.
Her heart was pounding, and the sawmill smell and the clinging heat, stoked by her anger and exertions, made her discomfort ever more acute.

The people in the street stared at them, pointing; the gringos were admired lavishly, aloud.
She tried to smile at them, and look with an interest at their town, but the repetitious litter of poor shacks, the beaten citizenry and scuttling children, the shop windows, few and filthy and filled with garish imitation goods, the mud and vultures and the smell reminded her of the slum outskirts in the southern towns which she had glimpsed from the bus to Fernandina, Florida, two months before.
The sad brown eyes, the gentle whispering enmeshed her; never had she felt herself so enormous, such a freak.
The swarming vultures with their naked heads and pale white ghostly legs filled her with loathing; the village whined with flies.
She thought, But
everything
is dirty; there is nothing clean here,
nothing
.
Her body was sweating more freely than she had thought possible; she was startled by her own plenteousness, and felt afraid.

Just as the hotel came in sight, the one car in Madre de Dios came up from behind, driven by a soldier in green uniform.
The car rolled and slid on the muddy ruts, and although El Comandante smiled at her in a courtly manner, no offer was made to rescue her from the open road.

Nor did solace await at the Gran Hotel Dolores, in which all of the heat and bad smell and corruption of Madre de Dios seemed to collect.
The toilet alcove—no real toilet, but a stand-up, or rather hunch-down, arrangement housed in a rickety courtyard shed—brought on the tears that she had held back all
morning, so that she cried unrelievedly even as she relieved herself.

Why have we come here?
she cried silently.
What am I doing in this awful place?

Jesus said:
In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world
.

Remembering this, she felt a little better.

“O
PEN LETTER FROM THE FIELDS OF THE
L
ORD
:

“The Martin Quarrier Family has arrived!
Pray much for His servants Martin and Hazel Quarrier, pray much for the Undersigned and his wife, Andy, who must try to take His Word to the savage Niaruna, for this work will surely be difficult and dangerous.
All your prayers are needed, for Satan is marshaling his forces and the Opposition is ever ready to take over at our first misstep.

“Since I last wrote, the Lord has heeded all our prayers, and work proceeds very well among the Tiro and Mintipo—all our jungle tribes, in fact, except the Niaruna, who, as you know, were first contacted by your correspondent and are therefore closest to his own heart.
These Indians are still wild and savage and go naked and drink intoxicants called Masato and Nipi, which is also known as Vine of Death, and live in a state of total barbarousness and filth and sin.
Less than a year ago, these same savages killed an agent of the Opposition, by name of Fuentes.
If you could see
these poor lost souls, you would realize how confidently Satan still walks among them, and meanwhile all the men still get disgustingly intoxicated, falling down finally in a stupor.

“On my first trip up the Espíritu, as I wrote before, I left Andy behind in Remate de Males, in case something went wrong, but now that Martin is here and the contact is made, we have decided to take the girls in with us, and Billy Quarrier, too, as there is no mission school this side of Cochabamba, in Bolivia.

“
Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid
(John 14:27).

“We surely thank the Lord for His new outboard motor, that He entered into your hearts and made you generous:
But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus
(Phil.
4:19).
We will pray for all of you here in
the uttermost part of the earth
(Acts 1:8), for now the Word may be speeded all the more rapidly into these dark rivers where the souls of the lost cry out to us: Come save us!
We are headed straight for Hell!

“Before we are through, we hope to have an airplane survey, so that we may hunt out the last lost soul in this great wilderness.
Not one will escape the great net of our Lord!
For some have not the knowledge of God: I speak this to your shame
(1 Cor.
15:34).

“The Lord has again impressed on us the great importance of the Niaruna work being built of God.
The Lord willing, when you hear from us again we will be able to report that all your prayers for the souls of the Niaruna and the work of His servants have been heeded.

After reading his letter aloud, Leslie led them in a hymn.
The two couples were seated facing one another on the twin beds in the Hubens’ room, where the arrival of the Quarriers had been celebrated with orange drinks called
gaseosas
and informal prayer.

Now Leslie cried out gleefully, “If you think this is bad, folks, wait till you see Remate.
Why, Madre is a paradise alongside
of Remate.”
Remate de Males, farther upriver, was the nearest trading post to the new mission.
“It’s like going,” Huben said, “from Purgatory straight to Hell.”

“My land!”
Hazel said.
When her husband glanced at her uneasily, she smiled a tremendous party smile at Andy Huben.

Andy Huben, smiling back, gazed at both Quarriers a moment before she raised her glass.
“Welcome to Madre de Dios,” she said.

Andy Huben’s voice was one of the loveliest that Martin had ever heard, low and gentle and a little hesitant, a little sad even, yet at the same time clear and peaceful; it had a quality of childlike wonder.
With that look of surprise and the two neat buck-teeth that just touched her lower lip, she reminded him slightly of an Easter rabbit; her clear face combined an air of innocence with something as saucy and irreverent as a hot cross bun.

“As I wrote in my last epistle,” Leslie said, “the Lord surely gave us the command to Go when He sent down the Mart Quarrier Family.”

“Well, the Mart Quarriers are here, and they mean
business!
” Hazel cried, with a wild look of suppressed laughter.

When Martin tried to smile, Andy smiled also, slipping her hand through her husband’s arm.
“We’re awful glad you Mart Quarriers have come,” she said, to warn them of her awareness of their joke.

“Not that Mart here and I are going to see eye to eye on every little thing!”
Leslie slapped Quarrier on the knee.
“But maybe until you kind of get the feel of things, Mart, maybe you’d better talk to me before you say anything like you did to the Comandante.”

Hazel said, “Oh Martin, we just
got
here.”

Andy Huben said, “Mr.
Quarrier was in the right.”

“Are you sure you know what we’re talking about, Andy?
And anyway, use Mart’s first name; we’re all going to have quite a beautiful Christian fellowship before we’re through.”

“Perhaps I was mistaken,” Quarrier muttered.
He explained to Hazel what he had learned from Huben: that the Comandante had become increasingly impatient about the Niaruna, due
to pressure put upon him from the capital to establish colonies and develop a lumber commerce in their lands, and to consolidate with garrisons the common frontier with Brazil; he felt that he had been patient to a fault with the missionaries’ attempts to make peaceful contact with the tribe, but since no real progress had been made, stronger measures had become necessary.
The Niaruna themselves had forced his hand, he said, with their raids upon the peaceful Tiro and on the settlement at Remate de Males.

“Now you have to admit, Martin,” Huben said, “that Rufino is in a tough position with the government.
And just remember that without his good will no Protestant mission would be allowed to work here.
After all”—he turned to Hazel—“Rufino is a Catholic.”

“My goodness,” Hazel said, “a Catholic!
Imagine a Catholic helping out in the Lord’s work!”

“He’s a very practical Catholic,” Andy Huben remarked.
“He thought that Leslie might open up that country faster than Padre Xantes, who is getting old and has no help.”

“Then he’s a
good
Catholic,” Hazel declared.
“I don’t know which is worse, a bad Catholic or a good one!”

Leslie Huben laughed with the rest, but at the first opportunity he said, “Whatever he is, he’s on our side.
I worked hard to get him there, and I intend to keep him there.”

“Oh Martin, really,” Hazel said, “why don’t you listen to Mr.
Huben—”

“Leslie,” Leslie said.

“—listen to Leslie!”
It seemed to her that his beard made Leslie look rather naïve.
She smiled unhappily toward the Hubens, taking Martin’s arm.
“He’s such a stubborn man,” she smiled.
“Yet you say, Mrs.… Andy … that he was in the right.”

“He can be morally in the right,” Andy Huben said mildly, “and still be mistaken.”

“Oh, I don’t understand how
that
can be, I’m sure!”
Hazel lifted both hands to her collarbones, begging the embarrassed Hubens to forgive her for her old-fashioned notions.
“Well, you
can’t teach an old dog to suck eggs,” she told them.

Martin broke in to remind her that she did not even know what he had done.
He told her that he had encountered the Comandante in the afternoon, and after an elaborate exchange of civilities had suggested to Guzmán that an armed attack on savages, except in self-defense, was against the national law.
The Comandante had taken this reminder as a threat and had become angry.

Hazel Quarrier groaned, and Huben shrugged hopelessly, trying to smile.
“What a fellow!”
he said.
“He hasn’t been here a single day, and he knows the law better than the Comandante!”

“It’s a well-known law,” Quarrier said.
“They even mention it in the tourist literature.”

“One of the first things you’ll have to learn, Martin,” Huben said, “is that here in the jungle, there
is
no law.”
He had jumped up and was pacing around the room.
“Why, slavery is against the law, and half the people in this town are slaves!
The good Lord knows that slavery is an abomination in my sight, but the fact is that slavery is very difficult to control when the Indians themselves practice it, not only with their captives, but by selling their own children to other tribes.
Why, Martin, there’s hardly an Indian in this settlement who isn’t enslaved by
somebody!
”

“And Guzmán?”

“What about him?”

“Your Mintipos say he profits from the slave trade.”

“Do you have proof?”
Huben placed his fingertips together.
“Now you be careful, Martin.
If we don’t have Rufino’s co-operation we’re going to be in trouble.”

“If we condone human slavery, we’ll be in worse trouble still.”

Huben shrugged him off.
“Look.
There’s a law here against holding an Indian to any debt he can’t work off in a week—that law is a local joke.
When you told Guzmán he is breaking the law, I’m surprised he didn’t laugh in your face!
The Comandante
is
the law here in the jungle, he takes the place of God Himself!”

Hazel gasped.
“Really, Mr.… Leslie,” she began.
“You
do
have a free-and-easy—”

Quarrier grasped her firmly by the arm and she subsided.
“Then what did he mean,” he said to Huben, “when he said he had no intention of breaking the national law?”

“I know exactly what he meant,” Huben said.
He paused.
“He has an old army plane out at the airstrip, but it doesn’t work, and its pilot has been transferred.
He can’t call in another one without drawing attention to what he wants to do.”

“There were two planes at the strip,” Quarrier said.

“That’s right.”
Huben sat down again.
“Remember when you asked out there about that other plane?”
He jerked his thumb, then narrowed his eyes and lowered his voice.
“Two Americans.
They live right down the hall.
They turned up about ten days ago, before we came up from Remate, and Andy says she thinks one of ’em might be pretty notorious; he looks like some feller that had his picture in the paper back home!”
Leslie smashed his fist into his palm.
“Anyway, they’re the blackest kind of sinners—drunkards, fornicators, killers.
Yes, they’re killers, mercenary killers, no better than those who nailed our Lord upon His cross!”

“Jumping Jehoshaphat!”
Hazel cried, placing her hand on her cheek; she winked at Martin in full view of Andy.
He knew that she was punishing him because Andy was pretty, and he tried to distract attention from her.
He said, “Where did they come from?”

“Bolivia, I think.
There’s been another revolution there.
Anyway, they’ve hired themselves out to Guzmán—this is just the chance he’s been waiting for.”

“But somebody will report this!”
Quarrier said.

“Who will?
Nobody will.
And even if they did, they would not be believed.
And even if they were believed, Guzmán might be embarrassed, but his action would be approved.
I tell you, Martin, the government wants those lands developed.
So who’s going to report him?
Nobody will.
Nobody gets in that man’s way!”