At Play in the Fields of the Lord (38 page)

His mind refused to concentrate; though he was no more than a quarter-mile from the station, he was soon lost.
He touched a tree, dismayed anew by these dark twisted amphitheaters, the hanging ropes, the quaking rot beneath his feet that breathed its reek with every step.
He was a hundred feet below
the leaves and flowers, a soft blind denizen of caves.
He stumbled around in small half-circles.
A strange explosive
pop
made him lunge with fright; it was only a small manakin snapping its wings.
The bird sat perched in silhouette, in a long lonely shaft of sallow light.

In the dark tunnels of the rain forest the dim light was greenish.
Strange shapes caught at his feet, and creepers scraped him; putrescent smells choked his nostrils with the density of sprayed liquid.
He fell to his knees on the rank ground and began to pray, but instantly jumped up again.
He had wandered into a cathedral of Satan where all prayer was abomination, a place without a sky, a stench of death, vast somber naves and clerestories, the lost cries of savage birds—he whooped and called, but no voice answered.

The jungle pinned him in.
Hadn’t he heard that even an Indian careless enough not to mark his departure from a trail might lose himself forever in this forest?
It was growing dark.
His best course was to remain where he was until the others missed him, and came out and called.
But he was not a woodsman, and he was terrified of the jungle creatures; standing there, he turned his head every few seconds in response to sounds—the chewing of insects, a twig fallen from above, the mindless peep of distant tree frogs.
He was so taut that at a small noise behind him he jumped sideways and backward, tripped and fell.
Expecting the leap of a jaguar or the big probing head of an anaconda, he was astonished to see two Indians, one on each side of a huge pale tree.
In the dim light, they were little more than shadows.
They seemed to wait for him; he was surrounded.

“Welcome,” he begged; he could not rise.
“Welcome!”

Fear shook him without mercy.
He tried to pray, but no prayer came.

One Indian raised his hand, palm outward.
“Redskins all day all day be good.
Fire Place no go.”

“I was lost,” Quarrier said.
“I came out to look for you.”

“How much medicine can you spare?
My people are sick.”
Moon came closer.
He was wearing ragged pants.
“I gave them
flu.”
He glanced at his companion, who looked astonished at Kisu-Mu’s conversation with the white man.
He shrugged and continued, “They’re very sick.
The girl Pindi, and now Boronai, and some of the children; they’re all going to get it.”

“Flu!”
Quarrier said.
“She didn’t come that close to you!”

With his spear Moon pierced a leaf.
“So how much medicine do you have?”

“Enough.
I’ll have to ask Huben.”

“Very good.
Let’s do it.”
Moon started away, followed by the Indian; they headed in the last direction Quarrier would have thought to go.

He plunged along behind them.
“Listen,” he called.
“Huben’s pretty upset.”

“I know,” Moon said.

“I don’t blame him.”
Quarrier was rushing to keep up; he felt irritable and out of breath.
“I’d be upset too.
You have no business—”

“I didn’t think you’d recognize me, Quarrier.”

“I don’t mean that time.
Andy told me about what you did, down by the river.”

Moon stopped short.
“She spotted me too, then?”
He laughed angrily, shaking his head.
“Some Indian!”

“She said you didn’t molest her.”

“No,” Moon snapped.
“I didn’t
molest
her.
I came just close enough to get her goddamn flu from her.
You had no business letting her walk around—”

“We didn’t know,” Quarrier said.
“She brought it back from Madre de Dios.”

When they reached the clearing, Quarrier told Moon to wait where he was.
“If Huben sees you,” he said, “he might get upset again.”

Moon said, “I’m wearing pants—what more does he want?”

Huben was sitting at the table in the cooking shed, staring at his radio.
The instrument stared back at him, like a boxed oracle.
More and more these days, Leslie lost himself in world news and the latest tunes.
“I have a special message,”
the radio addressed Leslie,
“for all you friends out there—”
But when Leslie heard
what Quarrier had to say, he turned it off.
“So he’s come to us on his knees, has he?
I knew it!”
He slapped his hands down on his thighs and rose.
“All right, where is he?”

“He’s not on his knees, Leslie.”

“Where is he?”
Huben said.
They went outside.

At the clearing edge the missionary confronted Moon.
Hands in the hip pockets of his shorts, he rocked back and forth on his heels.

“Big Chief Crazy Horse,” Huben said at last.
“Now tell us exactly what you want.”

“You know what I want.”

“First you come here and tell us we have eight days to get out, and now you have the nerve to come back here and ask us for our medicine.”
Huben laughed aloud while the others watched him.
Moon said nothing.
Finally Huben stopped his laughter, sighing a little, as if it was all too much for him.
“And what do we get in return?”
he said.

“You brought that medicine for the Indians, right?
Well, now they need it.”

“How badly?”
Huben said.
“Badly enough so that unless they get it, they’ll be too weak to drive us out?
Do you really expect us to help you undo the Lord’s work with this tribe, to aid and abet the work of Satan?”
He shook his head.
“My goodness!”

“In other words,” Moon said calmly, “you’re willing to let the whole tribe die.
In Jesus’ name, of course.”

Huben yelped in disbelief.
“In Jesus’ name!
How filthy those words are in the foul mouth of the blasphemer!”
The missionary’s teeth were bared, and he was panting.
“A devil!
An obscene drunkard and fornicator, a sinner too shameless to cover up his shame”—he glanced with hatred at Moon’s body—“who would come here naked before the eyes of good Christian women!
And now you have the nerve to tell me that it is the servants of the Lord Almighty who are willing to let these people die!”

Moon was gazing at the huge rolls of barbed wire.
“That’s right,” he said.
“Let’s have that medicine.”

“I will not!”
Huben shouted.
“As God is my witness, I will not!
Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for
what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness?
and what communion hath light with darkness?”

Moon turned to Quarrier.
“You go along with that?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t mean the Scriptures,” Moon said irritably.
“I mean about the medicine.”

Quarrier said, “Leslie, we cannot save these souls for Christ if they are dead.”

“I tell you, I will not put into the hands of this painted demon the healing provided in all His mercy by our Lord!
Can’t you see that?
Are you too stupid even to see
that?
” Huben shook both fists in Quarrier’s face.

“What he wishes to do now is a Christian act.”

“It is a
selfish
act!
For his own demonic purposes!
To lead those people into darkness and corruption!”

Moon said, “You’re saying it again: if these people don’t play it your way, you’d just as soon see them dead.”

Huben glared at Moon.
“You’re with
them
, aren’t you?
The men in black!
The Opposition!”

Moon said to Quarrier, “What’s all
that
about?”

“Don’t try to slip around me,” Huben said, nodding his head.
“I saw you plotting with that priest in Madre de Dios.”

“Listen,” Moon said to Huben, “you’re a very stupid man, believe me.
Go in and lie down.
Take a vacation, maybe.”
He looked thin and tired; he was in a hurry.
“Now look,” he said to Quarrier, “you people make up your minds.”

“He can’t have it!”
Huben shouted.
“I’m your superior, Martin Quarrier, and don’t you forget it!”

“Please be quiet,” Quarrier said.
“This is my mission, Leslie.
You said so yourself.”
When Moon nodded at him in approval, he took a deep breath, saying harshly, “I am not on your side, Moon.
I agree with everything that Leslie here has said about you.
You are committing a terrible sin among these people.
And you’re not going to get this medicine for nothing.”

“Oh, shit,” Moon said, losing his temper.
“Your hypocrisy stinks worse than his, and you haven’t got the excuse of being stupid!
At least he admits it’s not the Indians’ lives he cares about,
only their souls.”
He pointed at his Indian companion, who was urinating.
“Do you love
him?
” He spat angrily on the ground.
“The hell you do!
Beneath all this phony love you people preach, you have no respect for Indian ways.
You tell him his superstitions are ridiculous, and when he has nothing left, you ask him to believe instead that Jesus walked on water.
You buy his dignity with beads.
You—ah, Christ, just hand over that medicine!”

“You are going to send the sick ones here,” Quarrier said, “and we will treat them ourselves.”

Moon nodded his head, while Huben folded his arms upon his chest and cackled triumphantly, as if it were he, not Quarrier, who had dealt Moon the coup de grâce.

“Yes, you are,” Huben cried, “unless you’re willing to admit that it is you, not us, who don’t care about the Indians’ lives, who are more concerned with personal ambitions.”
He laughed ferociously.
“And when we tell the Niaruna that you are a white man, and how you have misled them, you’ll be very glad of our protection, Mr.
Lewis Moon.”

“Very good,” Moon said, “very good.”
He bowed abruptly to Quarrier.
“I underestimated you.”
He said something in Niaruna that Quarrier did not catch, and the Indian stepped forward.
The savage had watched the whole performance without uttering a sound, or rather, had watched Moon, frowning; Moon must be desperate, Quarrier thought, to expose himself this way.
Moon said to Quarrier, “Pindi is already dead.
Boronai may die.
He is too sick to come here to be treated.”

“The Indians can bring him in,” Huben said.

Moon swung his arm back, slamming Huben in the stomach; as the man sank, Moon grasped him by the shirt front and twisted the collar tight upon his throat.
Quarrier started forward as Leslie fought for air, but the Niaruna stepped in front of him, drawing an arrow.

“Would you really go that far?”
Quarrier said quietly.
“Would you kill your own kind to get your way?”

“You’ll have the answer in a minute,” Moon remarked, as clinically as if he were taking Huben’s pulse.

Huben, the breath knocked out of him, was turning a bad
color.
When Quarrier ran off toward the shed, Moon dropped the man, and Leslie crouched there on hands and knees, his head down, coughing.
The Niaruna turned his bow and aimed his arrow at the missionary’s neck.
When Quarrier returned with the medicine box, Leslie got to his feet and pitched away across the yard, in tears.
Andy, who had followed Quarrier, met her husband halfway across the yard and took him in her arms.
Over his shoulder the girl looked at Moon so coldly that he could not face her, and turned away.

Quarrier did not want to look at Moon; he busied himself with the medicine chest.
That open mouth, that mouth forced open by bewilderment and need—on this face, among all the faces he had ever known, he had never thought to see it.
Both glad and saddened, he said quietly, “You didn’t have to hit him.”