At Play in the Fields of the Lord (43 page)

Then Tukanu brayed, a long loud sound of ultimate stupidity.

Aeore stopped short.
He turned slowly and ceremonially, as in a ritual, and fitted to his bow a fine long arrow with blue and yellow quills.
The people near Quarrier moaned and backed away; Quarrier, unable to see what was happening, faced Aeore on his knees.

Aeore stared at Tukanu, then snapped his head and spat.
He stared at Moon.
Then he raised his bow.

Moon called to him.
“My voice is the voice of Kisu.
You must not do this.”

Still on his knees, Quarrier asked what was happening.
Were they going to kill him after all?
He did not believe this, and his face was quizzical, almost cheerful.

In the silence of the clearing, a bird called.
It was answered by another, then another.
Aeore’s body trembled.
Moon thought he glimpsed, between the savage crisscrossings of color at the eyes, a sign of recognition and regret: If you come from Kisu, very well—then you will punish me.

Death and sunlight, sunlight and death.
The shimmering of day: the macaw quills, the bright sun on the forearm sinews, the clean paint on the clean brown of the body, the leaf-shifted morning light, the bird, the river—the very air was of such piercing cleanness that Moon sighed.

Aeore raised his bow again.
His fear-softened face, the face of a young boy, became the cold brave terrified face of the last heretic.

“Riri’an.”
Moon spoke the name quietly, and the Child-Star moaned; his eyes searched the frightened faces of the Indians to learn which had betrayed him.
He faltered, lowered his bow, then gave a screech and ran toward his canoe.
Behind Quarrier, the three men of the Yuri Maha were snaking for the river.
Moon switched the revolver toward the Ocelot, switched it back; he fought down an impulse toward annihilation.
He was going to burst.
The whole magnificent plan, just to spare this—!

Quarrier reared up off his knees.
“What did you—”

Moon brought the revolver around in a chopping backhand arc and smashed the barrel down across the missionary’s mouth, sending him sprawling.
He aimed the revolver at the blood-smeared head.
Quarrier lifted himself slowly, spitting bits of broken teeth.
Moon’s body was transfixed, all but one finger; the finger tightened.
He sighted carefully on a spot of dirt on the missionary’s huge forehead.
The tears poured down Quarrier’s broken face, to the bright red lips, the bleeding mouth; the face filled Moon with horror.
He got his breath again, and glanced about him.

Down at the river the men of Yuri Maha drifted free in their canoe, following Aeore.
The Ocelot shouted ferociously at Tukanu
and waved his bow.
Moon called out to Tukanu, “Tell them to stay!”

“No one will stop them,” Tukanu said.
“The Ocelot says that you are not Kisu-Mu, that you come from the white man.”

“Will they come back?”

“They will come back,” Tukanu said somberly, “but they will come back as our enemy.”
A moment later, apparently forgetting what he had just said, his round face parted in a smile, as if the enmity of Aeore and the Yuri Maha were of no consequence.
He was too innocent to conceal emotions; despite the threat to his band, he was chuckling with satisfaction at the prospect of his own leadership.
Already he wore upon his chest the green stone cylinder of Boronai.

Moon pointed the revolver at Tukanu, who jumped back in fear.
Moon hefted the metal object in his hand—well, so be it.
He jammed the gun into his belt as Tukanu watched him.

He will be headman of the tribe, Moon thought, and the tribe is doomed.
He cursed Tukanu, cursed every stupid greedy Indian on earth, and at the same time he cursed himself and he cursed Quarrier, and cursed the low thick stupid sky.

A
T
daylight Boronai’s canoe still stirred restlessly among the branches.
All agreed that the dead man’s spirit was unquiet, and they gazed resentfully at Kisu-Mu.
Who would revenge Boronai?
Could revenge be taken on Kisu-Mu?
They did not know.
They were unhappy that Aeore’s vision under nipi had been disregarded, that the missionary was still walking through their village; if the vision of the shaman was not truth, what faith could they have in anything?
Had Kisu-Mu come from Kisu or had he not?
They were disoriented and afraid.
Some were bold enough to mutter angrily at Kisu-Mu; they had heard what the Ocelot had said.

Tukanu stood on the bank of the river, supervising the departure from the village.
New Person was already in the canoe, waving his fat hands at flies.
After his birth, his parentage had reverted to Aeore, and Tukanu took no further notice of him;
now he was an orphan, tended with indifference by the Ugly One, who had grown lean and cranky.
When the Ugly One remembered, she would force her daughter to give the baby suck.
The Ugly One said everywhere that this New Person was the get of Kisu-Mu and was an evil omen; it had caused the death of Pindi.
All the Indians despised the baby, yet none dared touch it.
Moon longed to take the child from the Ugly One, and bounce him and say good-bye to him, but this would further weaken New Person’s poor position in the tribe; like Aeore, he would have to fight for a hand-to-mouth existence.
New Person peered about him at the world and laughed and bubbled; he had a big voice for a baby and he liked to shout.

The women waited by the river.
There was an atmosphere of nervousness and apprehension that expressed itself in general sullenness; few had faith in Tukanu to lead them to a new site, to see that the fields were planted and a good maloca built, to protect them from their enemies, both Indian and white.
Tukanu spoke too loudly and gave too many orders; the red shirt bobbed incongruously among brown skins.
At one point he cuffed Mutu, who had not moved rapidly enough about his business; this was another bad sign, and the people groaned.
Moon had never before seen a child of the Niaruna struck, and when the boy himself stared astonished at Tukanu the new headman pretended that he was only joking.

Tukanu proclaimed that the People would start eastward, then turn north into a tributary creek above the Monkey Rapids; this was the last high ground near the main river.
His people knew that this retreat from the main river was a sign of a dying clan; in the Falling River Time they would have to walk in their dry stream bed, which they considered an ultimate disgrace.
Under Aeore, they muttered, the People would have taken Tiro ground and worked it with Tiro slaves.
But now they were poor and fugitive, no better than Kori.

In his new role as headman, Tukanu was no longer the feckless Farter.
Pompous in his shirt of red, arms folded upon his chest, he addressed Kisu-Mu with ceremony from his canoe.
He asked the Spirit of the Rain to kill the white enemy and drive off
the Green Indians; he asked the Great Spirit to go far away once this was done, and leave the Niaruna in peace.

One by one, the canoes drew away in silence.
Moon called good-bye, but except from the children, he received no response.
Only Tukanu, at the stroke position in the large headman’s canoe, lifted his hand off the paddle in a listless wave.
Moon sat down on the bank and watched them go.
Tukanu skirted wide of the death canoe of Boronai, still stranded among the fallen branches, and then the red shirt was extinguished in the angles of the great green walls, the high dark canyons which led away into another world.

I
N HIS BAGGY PANTS
,
WITH THE STIFF POSTURE AND THE SHY EXPRESSION
of uncertain eyesight, Quarrier awaited Moon.
“It’s Yoyo,” he called across the empty clearing.
“Yoyo’s gone.”
Behind him, the Ugly One’s old yellow dog, abandoned in the haste of the tribe’s departure, appeared and disappeared along the forest edge, like a pariah.

They had forgotten all about the Tiro.
He had broken through the rear of the thatched hut, and he would go straight to Guzmán.
With Yoyo as guide, Guzmán would have no trouble finding the trail from the Espíritu to the Tuaremi.

A wave of lassitude came over Moon.
He grunted aloud and shrugged.
“I’ll take you to the mission,” he told Quarrier.
But Quarrier refused to go; he knew it was silly, but he was afraid of Yoyo.
He hesitated.
“What else?”
Moon said, regarding him.

“Well … I wanted to dissuade you … Are you going to murder Guzmán?”

Moon glanced at him in warning.
“Come on,” he said,
“let’s find some supper.”
They went to an eddy of the river, where Moon speared three small fish; they picked plantains and dug manioc.
Toward twilight, gathering firewood, they heard the hum of motors ascending the Espíritu.

They passed the evening peacefully, respecting each other’s chagrin.
Moon had built a fire inside the main door of the maloca:
This door faces east
, Boronai said,
because the sun’s first rays bring strength to us
.
When Quarrier repeated his question, Moon answered him quietly, “You heard me promise.”

Quarrier said.
“Go into the world unarmed.”

Quarrier said this naturally and simply, and yet Moon perceived that the missionary had seen into him; he felt his face grow hot with consternation.

“I thought you had given up preaching.”

“That’s right,” Quarrier said, paying no attention to the sarcasm.
“I have failed in the Lord’s work.”
When Moon grunted uncomfortably at the phrase, shrugging his shoulders, Quarrier said, “You see … a man like me, a cautious man, has his life all figured out according to a pattern, and then the pattern flies apart.
You run around for quite a while trying to repair it, until one day you straighten up again with an armful of broken pieces, and you see that the world has gone on without you and you can never catch up with your old life, and you must begin all over again.”
When Moon made no response, but simply stared into the night, Quarrier said, “I needed badly to talk to someone who didn’t refer each problem to the Lord.
But maybe we can’t talk after all.”

“Suit yourself,” Moon said.
But after a while he said, “How does it feel?
Are you afraid?”

“I’m not really afraid of anything that may happen.”
Quarrier raised his eyebrows, as if surprised by this realization.
“I’ve made such a disaster of my life that I’m not afraid of anything—that is, any change is welcome.
Maybe you’ve never reached that point.”

“I’ve been there, all right.
My trouble is, I never left it.
I even
like
it.”
He turned the manioc tubers in the embers.

•  •  •

I
N
the long night silence of the empty village, broken by fits of rain, the voice of the missionary rose and fell.
Moon half listened.
Quarrier told him of the moment his first doubt came: when Huben announced that Billy’s death was surely an expression of the Lord’s will, a means of converting the Niaruna.
He shook his head.
“What arrogance!”
he burst out angrily.
“And Yoyo!
For months I couldn’t bear even to think of Yoyo, he was such a reproach to me.
For every soul that has been truly saved we have made thousands of Yoyos, thousands of ‘rice Christians,’ thousands of beggars and hypocrites, with no place and no voice in a strange world which holds them in contempt, with neither hope nor grace!
And even the saved—” He stopped, out of breath.
“Well, I can’t be sure yet.
I can only be sure that Martin Quarrier is unqualified to be a servant of the Lord.”
He looked up, his face laid bare by pain.
Moon winced at the sight of the dried blood and broken teeth.

“You’d better give it some more thought,” Moon said.
He wished to comfort Quarrier, but any comfort in this moment seemed insulting.
And Quarrier’s defeat made him uneasy, like an argument which, having won, he then had doubts about.

“I’m coming back here, though.”
Quarrier looked eagerly at Moon.
“I’ll go back to see to my wife, and get a little stake together, and then I’m going to finish my study of the Niaruna.
As Huben says, I’ve been more of an ethnologist than a missionary right along.”
His face contorted; he was trying to eat hot manioc without hurting his broken teeth.
“That doesn’t mean I can’t still help them—you know, with medicine and food.
But with no strings attached.”

Moon laid more fuel across the fire.
Near-sighted, leaning forward, Quarrier was searching his face for encouragement; Moon kept his eyes averted.
“You better get another pair of glasses while you’re at it,” he said at last, “or you might wind up with the wrong tribe.”

Quarrier smiled in recognition of the joke; out of politeness, he waited a moment before speaking again.
But he was so lost in the future he was constructing that he could scarcely contain himself.
“If you’re still with the Niaruna, perhaps you would let me join you.
You could teach me a great deal.
What do
you think?”
Moon said nothing; he lay down in his hammock.
A little later Quarrier said, “It will be very interesting, don’t you think so?
I mean, to find out whether this tribe is really a lost group of Arawak, as I think it is, or whether it is Tupi-Guarani.
Things like that—the sib groupings and everything.
Don’t you think so?”

Moon rolled over on his back and sighed.
“The sib groupings, huh?”

“I don’t really know what I’m talking about,” Quarrier admitted.
Deprived of encouragement, he relapsed into silence once again.

Moon was thinking about how Andy Huben had looked at him the last time they had seen each other, the last time they would ever see each other.
But finally he said, “If I don’t kill the Comandante, I can’t return to the Niaruna.
And if I don’t go back to the Niaruna, then there’s no hope for them.”

Quarrier nodded.

“If I
do
kill the Comandante, and don’t get myself killed in the process, they’ll send the whole damn army in here, and the only Niaruna left for you to study will be Kori.”
He gazed at Quarrier, who was silent.
“As an ethnologist and ex-missionary, Mr.
Quarrier, maybe you’d care to suggest a solution to this problem.”

Quarrier said, “Come back with me.
I’ll testify on your behalf.
I’ll tell the Comandante that you crashed by accident, that the tribe held you prisoner.”

Moon shook his head.
“This is the jungle, remember?
By the time you gave your evidence, I’d be dead.”
He got to his feet and walked outside.
“I can’t go back.
And besides, I made that promise.”

“Yet keeping your promise, as you say yourself, will bring the whole army down upon the Niaruna.”

“The Indians are too scattered to wipe out!
And I can organize them for guerrilla war!”
Moon waved his arms toward the forest.
“We have a million square miles of jungle to retreat into!”

“Fighting with the other tribes all the way?”
Quarrier sighed.
“And at the end, what hope for them?”
He paused, then added coldly, “You haven’t helped these people as it is.”

“So you think I’m beaten.”

“Yes, I do.
I don’t even think you’re safe among them any more.”

“Misery loves company, eh, Quarrier?”

“You can look at it that way if you like.”

“Well, I think I’m beaten, too.
But I’m still going to kill Guzmán.”

“Because you promised?”

“Because I feel like it.”

M
OON
, running, stopped short in his tracks, caught by the sparkle of light and rain on the golden thatch of his village, by the clear ringing whistles of the birds, by the flower smell floating down from the high canopies, the pale gigantic trees—the painful beauty of the jungle daybreak.
He was both hunted animal and hunter.

The invisible plane was circling the mission; if they meant to follow up its raid, the soldiers must be on their way.
He stationed himself at the foot of a tree in the downstream jungle; from this point he could cover the whole clearing.
He checked the action of the revolver.

Quarrier wandered out across the clearing; Moon called to him, and the missionary came and crouched with him behind the tree.
Quarrier said, “What are you going to do?”

“I’ll try to make it out through Niaruna territory and down to the rivers in Brazil.
The Panoan tribes there are all right, or so I’ve heard.
If I can make it to the Amazon, I’m in the clear.”
When Quarrier started to speak again, Moon shook him off.
“Forget it, man,” he said, “it’s Guzmán’s problem.”

The airplane had stopped circling and was headed toward them.
Against the sky from which the plane would come, a light breeze stirred the canopy of trees.

Moon licked his lips.
“If he comes in low and on a line,” he muttered, “into that sun, I’ll know this mother has been here before.
I’ll know it’s Wolfie.”
He shook his head.
“The Old Wolf!”
he grinned.
“Sonofabitch!
It’s been a long time since I really laughed!”
Quarrier looked at him, bewildered, as if Moon
were a madman.
“When Wolfie’s finished,” Moon said, “go out and stand in the center of the clearing, where they can see you.
If you’re with me when the soldiers come, you’re liable to get shot.”
He looked at Quarrier.
“That’s some mouth I left you with—I’m sorry.”

His last words were lost in the roar of the plane, which broke the treetops, broke the sky wide-open; two dark eggs arched forward from its wing racks.
Moon threw himself behind the trunk, dragging Quarrier down with him, and clapped his hands across his ears.
But the roar of the plane diminished and no explosions followed, only the staggered vibration of the bombs striking the ground.
One of the bombs plowed a small crater in the clearing; the other bounded down the bank and spun into the river.
When no explosion came, he ran to the first bomb.
He was dizzy and feverish, his mouth was dry; at the same time he felt indestructible.
He hoisted it in his arms; his idea was to run with it to the river.
But as he staggered forth, the plane came in on a second run.
He dropped the bomb and fled toward the plane to get below the angle of its guns; behind him, the bare ground jumped and twitched, and the bullets thumped and caromed through the forest.
When the plane had passed, he ran back to the trees.

Wolfie roared down on the village twice again.
Though the thatch danced on the roofs, the maloca and outlying huts drank up the bullets like great sponges; when the plane flew off toward the west, no visible damage had been done.
Nevertheless, Wolfie’s aim was good: had there been Indians crouched inside, half might have been wiped out.
Moon lay on the ground, no longer laughing.
Quarrier had been shouting angrily from the start, “Oh you devils!
Oh you murdering devils!”