At Play in the Fields of the Lord (44 page)

“Finish your hollering out there, where they can see you,” Moon said; he took Quarrier’s hand.

Quarrier hesitated.
“I don’t suppose you’d want a partner, would you?”

Moon pretended that he had not understood.
After a pause he said, “You tell Wolfie I sent regards, and tell him to go home.
Tell him maybe I’ll see him again sometime, up in Barbados.”

Quarrier nodded.
“Good luck to you, Lewis.”
He struggled
to speak, then turned away.
He crossed the clearing, hands slightly in front of him, like a child playing blind man’s buff.
“Here I am!”
he called in Spanish.
Moon nodded; how trusting that was—that assumption that someone might care.

“Here I am,” the missionary called again.
“Don’t shoot.”
With his tatters and great gory head and giant feet, he looked like some sort of mountebank.
“Yoo hoo,
mi comandante!
” he called out for Moon’s benefit.
“It’s me!”
Turning in a circle, addressing the jungle like an audience, he waved and waddled, making fun of his own presence.

An Indian appeared and disappeared again on the far side of the clearing.
At first Moon did not recognize Yoyo, but then the Indian glided out into the open, and the sun fastened on his bright blue shorts and on the crucifix on his breast.

Yoyo glanced back over his shoulder, seeming to listen, then ran forward to meet Quarrier, who revolved, still clowning.
Moon never saw the machete until the missionary had fallen; the Indian’s arm rose and fell across Quarrier’s neck, over and over.
By the time Moon got Yoyo in the sights of the revolver it was too late; he held his fire.

Now Yoyo straightened.
His breathing was audible across the clearing.
He drew a pair of glasses from the pocket of his shorts, and snapping them in half, tossed them on Quarrier’s face.
Then he turned his head again to listen.
A flock of parakeets screeched down the walls of trees, and in their wake the jungle stirred, a murmur, a faint rumble.

In Yoyo’s face fear was replacing rage, as if he had just awakened to his surroundings.
His head turned slowly, like a cat’s; he studied the river bank, the maloca, the huts and the ragged jungle edge.
When his eyes met Moon’s, he gave a start, and whined with surprise and pain.
His body crouched, he glanced again over his shoulder in the direction of the oncoming Guzmán, then back at Moon, repeating this several times, faster and faster; then he scowled horribly and came for Moon, the blade extended.

Moon set himself to kill him.
But at the last moment, though he raised the revolver to show Yoyo he was armed, he did not fire.

At the sight of the revolver the Tiro stopped; his face burst with hatred and, at the same time, with a remarkable expression of hurt feelings, as if Moon had misconstrued his actions.
Again he whined, in wordless agony.
Watching the bright beady eyes, the quick head and teeth, the febrile twitching, Moon was startled by so much hate, and his finger tightened on the trigger.

“Drop the machete,” he said.

The weapon fell.
It must have come originally from the missions, for it had a cross carved in its haft.

Yoyo seemed to decide that all was lost, that, being an Indian, his word would never be believed by Guzmán, even against that of the outlaw Moon.
He glanced once again over his shoulder, then wrenched the chain and crucifix from his neck and hurled them violently to the ground.
He ripped off the ragged shorts, threw them down in front of Moon and spat on them.
He was trembling so that his skin danced.
When Moon only stood there quietly and did not shoot, the Indian whined again in pure frustration.
He still believed that Moon would shoot him, and when, a moment later, he sprang sideways and leaped for the cover of the bushes, making away into the forest on all fours, he howled in frenzy from his hiding place.
He was still uncertain of his triumph, or whether, in failing to take his life, the white man had not insulted him once again.

Moon glanced about, then ran toward the body.
From the forest came a muffled commotion; Guzmán and his men, abandoned by Yoyo, were struggling toward the light.

Quarrier lay sprawled upon the earth as if he had fallen from the sky, and he gazed skyward as he bled to death.
The whole side of his neck had been laid open; he was bleeding everywhere.
When Moon crossed his line of sight, he spoke.

“I’m dying, aren’t I?”
He looked shy.

“Yes,” Moon said.

Quarrier raised his eyebrows, as if to try them out.
When Moon lifted his head, a near smile came to his lips; he actually gave a bubbly cough of laughter.
“Martin Quarrier, evangelist,” he said, “martyred by savages in the service of the Lord.”
He looked pleadingly at Moon.

“Yes,” Moon said, turning his head away.

“No.”
The missionary took Moon’s wrist in his big hand.
“It was Yoyo, wasn’t it?”
When Moon nodded, Quarrier stared at the sky, unblinking.
He coughed again and muttered sadly, “All my life I wanted …” His voice trailed off, then said distinctly, “Didn’t you?”
He tried to speak again, and died with his mouth wide open.

“Listen,”
Moon called after him; he actually shook him.
“Listen to me!”
He sat back on his heels in pain and shock.
He was smeared with blood.

The green wall stirred, about to burst.
Moon ran back across the clearing.

Guzmán called, “Uyuyu!”
and then cursed.

A ragged burst of rifle fire: the bullets sang across the clearing, piercing the empty huts.
There came a solitary shot, then a loud curse, as if the gun had been discharged by accident; seconds later a squad of Quechuas, twenty or more, pushed and milled into the clearing.
Another gun went off.

If Aeore were here with three good men, Moon thought, no Green Indian would ever have reached the Tuaremi.

Huge and pale, Guzmán plowed through his soldiers.
He lined them up like a firing squad, and on command they poured successive volleys into the village.
The soldiers were nervous, clumping awkwardly in their heavy boots, and talking so loudly that Guzmán could scarcely be heard.

Guzmán came forward cautiously, almost on tiptoe, and overturned Quarrier’s body with his boot tip; his soldiers prodded at it with their gun butts.
Moon lay in wait while Guzmán burned the village, while Guzmán sent his men into the plantations to hack down the Indian crops, while Guzmán howled for Yoyo.
The Comandante appeared nervous about starting back to the Espíritu without a guide, despite the trail that had been made by twenty pairs of heavy boots.
“
Oye tú!
Uyuyu!”
Yoyo must be crouched near by, but not understanding how things worked, he had made himself a fugitive.

Moon sighted Guzmán’s confused, brutal face with the revolver, but already he knew that he would not kill him.
He lay back in the jungle gloom, waiting to see if they would bury
Quarrier.
In the sun’s glare, he was seeing spots; he felt dizzy, then cold, in the dark shadows.
He was overcome by a sense of unreality: Is this me and who am I and where in hell am I going.
Well … this was no time for malaria.

They started away without burying the body, and Moon stood up and watched them go.
But in a moment a soldier scurried back into the clearing.
Squatting, he rifled the old, torn pants.
Quarrier’s pocketknife turned in his hand, like a bit of fruit in the hand of a marmoset.
The sun caught the wet rolling eye in the Quechua’s purple face, and Moon blotted out the addled eye with the sights of the revolver; filth could be wiped away so quickly, coldly, without emotion: cleanness through death.

But again he did not fire.
He watched the man strip off the missionary’s sneakers and tuck them into his bulky green pants, watched him probe the missionary’s mouth for gold and silver.

The Quechua stood up again, and started after his companions.
But then he stopped, as if awe-struck by the silence.
He glanced at the body and started to run; then he stopped and came running back.
Without troubling to remove the clip, he used his rifle butt as digging stick, chopping away at the soft ground in a crude paddling motion.
As he worked he glanced fearfully after his fellows, who were calling to him.
When his small Indian grave was dug, he rolled the large white body into it—or onto it, for the body still remained high above ground.
Perplexed, then desperate, the man dug, kicked, scratched, flung dirt at Quarrier, but still the missionary lay there, mountainous.

The soldier whimpered, scratched his groin, then drew the old sneakers from his pants.
Kneeling, he returned them carefully to Quarrier’s pale feet.
He had tied the laces and straightened up again when he caught sight of the solitary man at the edge of the clearing.
His mouth made a black hole.
He crossed himself, shouted for aid and ran; holding his rifle by the barrel, he dragged it behind him over the ground.
As he disappeared into the undergrowth, the rifle’s trigger snagged and the weapon fired.

Having no idea where the enemy lay, the soldier’s companions commenced firing at random, undeterred by the hoarse
shoutings of their Comandante.
Bullets flew in all directions.
In the pause for reloading, the shattering scream of a man wounded rent the air.

Guzmán’s voice boomed from the trees: “
Ay, piloto!
You are
aquí?
”

Moon did not answer.

“I es-spik you Ingliss,” yelled Comandante Guzmán.
“You are prisoner to me!”
Abandoning English, he yelled in Spanish, “Tell your savages to lay down their weapons!
Tell them we will not harm them, even though they have sorely wounded one of my brave soldiers!
But if you do not give yourself up, then we will fall upon them without mercy!”

In the ringing silence, Moon’s harsh laugh resounded; it continued as Guzmán bellowed, as his men loosed a tremendous volley at their surroundings.
Then came a loud thrashing all along the clearing edge; the soldiers were fanning out.

Still whooping and coughing, Moon scrambled on all fours toward the river.
Some soldiers had reached the river bank upstream; they glimpsed him as he skinned down along the bank.
He plunged into the water, and the bullets sang over his head; a lucky shot made a thin splash a yard ahead of him.
He ducked his head under, fighting his panic, and angled clumsily across the river, holding the revolver clear; the current helped him.
He dropped the revolver into Boronai’s canoe and swam under it, to the other side; while the soldiers were lining up along the bank in their best firing-squad formation, he hauled it loose.
Holding his breath against the corpse’s stench, he shoved the canoe toward the middle of the stream, swimming beside it.
The dugout, heavy with rain water, was sluggish; bullets smacked into the wood.
Already he was drifting clear; the canoe had picked up speed.

“Come back!”
El Comandante yelled.
“You are surrounded!”

Moon waved his hand, and the soldiers on the bank responded with another burst of fire.
In the burned village, from the shroud of smoke, the Ugly One’s old dog howled.

“A
NOTHER
C
HRISTIAN MARTYR
!

“Since my last epistle to
Mission Fields
, reporting on the work among the Niaruna, the Devil has inflicted a heavy defeat on the forces of God.
Pray much for the soul of Martin Quarrier, slain by the savages; pray much for the soul of our young ambassador-in-Jesus, Billy Quarrier, deceased only a short span before his dad.
And pray for His childless servant, Hazel Quarrier, in her time of awful sorrow.

“
He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it
(Matt.
10:39).

“Now, at the same time that we contacted the Niaruna, Satan also got to work, for as you know, Satan never sleeps but always fights the hardest just when it seems that the forces of the Lord are moving ahead to victory.
Now Satan sent an emissary to another band of Niaruna, a North American soldier of fortune, a terrible sinner, dope fiend and drunkard.
All the time we thought this man had crashed his airplane and died, he was working on the innocent minds of the Indians, going around naked like an Indian,
actually encouraging them to remain forever in blackest sin and darkness!
And during the absence of the Undersigned in Madre de Dios this outlaw struck the first blow for Satan, sending four of his corrupted Indians among those at the mission.
Unfortunately, Mart was too upstanding to suspect anything, but still and all he began to feel that the Niaruna were hostile to him; they were even
afraid
of him.
Meanwhile the situation deteriorated.
By the time I went in to check on things, our Niaruna were all naked again, which just goes to show you how bad it was!

“Now double disaster struck: along about this time little Billy was taken sick and died.
As the Lord giveth, so doth he take away, but we were very upset.
Billy was promoted to Glory on the ninth day of last month, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
But I saw right off that the Niaruna liked little Billy a whole lot, and, as I said to Mart to comfort him, Maybe little Billy’s death is the Lord’s way of opening up this Niaruna work, and calling them to the communion of Jesus Christ!
Of course Mart was too upset to understand how this could be, and maybe I ought to tell you that he was very nervous and upset right along after that, and so was Hazel—which didn’t make the Lord’s work any easier for the Undersigned and Andy.
Then the black day came when the emissary of Satan actually told us we had to leave or they would kill us!

“Well, a lot of worse things happened which I can’t even put down.
The Lord led us to send the girls out; and then Mart Quarrier, against the advice of the Undersigned, decided to take Uyuyu and go to the Niaruna village and warn them that their devilish behavior was actually leading to an attack upon them by our local Comandante and the soldiers!

“I was left alone to guard the station.
When they didn’t appear again by the next day I knew there was trouble, and headed downriver to get help (and by the way, I want to thank all of my friends in Christ for that fine new outboard motor—it’s a beaut!).
The Comandante was already on his way.
Though I pleaded with him to show Christian mercy, Uyuyu, who had escaped, led him back to that village, and they drove away the Indians in a fierce fight, in which one of his own soldiers was killed, and also burned the village, which surely goes to show what happens to people
who consort with Satan, just like Sodom and Gomorrah.
But anyway, Uyuyu, who went ahead as scout, was taken prisoner or worse, and at the village the Comandante found the body of poor Mart Quarrier, killed savagely by savages.

“
In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world
(John 16:33).

“Mart died like a Christian martyr, and we shall certainly miss him here in the Lord’s work.
But it thrills us to talk to Hazel Quarrier, whose faith is stronger than ever, and who is actually cheerful in the face of all her tragedies.
Hazel intends to go back in with us, to continue as her husband would have wanted, although when this will be I wouldn’t know.
The Comandante says that the outlaw may have survived the attack, and may still be at large among the Niaruna, and until he is captured and the Niaruna subdued and civilized, no further mission work will be permitted.
So it looks like the Niaruna are to be punished, the good ones as well as the evil.

“Well, that’s the story on these savages whom we have come to love in Jesus in spite of the way that they have treated us.
The Undersigned certainly hopes there is some better news for the next epistle: one of these days our folks will win these souls and claim the victory which is in our Lord Jesus Christ!

When he had read out his own name, Huben glanced at his wife.
“What do you think of it?”
he said defensively.
Instead of praising God for his escape, she kept looking at him in a way that made him nervous, as if she were trying to see right through his head.
When she did not take the letter, he dropped it in her lap.
“It should bring in all kinds of new contributions to the work, the way I look at it.”

When Andy got up, the letter fell to the floor.
But she had scarcely reached the corridor when Hazel’s door opened; the woman lay in wait for her these days like one of the huge trapdoor spiders that she and Billy had watched so often at the mission.
Andy stopped short, out of breath.

“Andy, will you take a cup of tea with me?
I get so lonely, you know, without Martin, on these long tropical afternoons—but there, I’m sure you have your own troubles …”

She trailed Hazel into her room.

“Oh Andy, you’re so
sweet
, dear—”

“Hazel, why don’t you go home?
There’s nothing for you here.”

“Carrying the Word of God among the Niaruna—you call
that
nothing?
Carrying on the work of that brave man whose widow I am proud to be!”
Hazel Quarrier giggled.
“Why, I’d call
that
something, Andy dear, yes, I surely, surely would.
Each of us must serve our Lord according to our abilities …”

Andy thought, Why, she’s nothing but a huge crafty child: she’s playing a game.
Her pity was tainted with revulsion, and during the days since they left the mission, since Hazel became her responsibility, the revulsion had come to dominate.
Hazel no longer troubled to keep herself very clean.
Her hair looked dead, and on the thin pallor of her face her mustache, heretofore scarcely apparent, had become prominent.
Andy had not noticed this new appearance until she glimpsed the creature hid behind it; Hazel’s candor, so appealing in the past, had become a front for unctuous wheedling and overblown statements of faith.
Even worse, Hazel seemed aware that she was not fooling Andy for a moment; she exploited the loss of her husband and son in compelling Andy to hear out her deceits.

But now she spoke honestly.
In a harsh voice, staring at the wall, she said, “Isn’t it strange?
Martin and I were both such ugly people, and that is why we found each other, yet we never really forgave the ugliness in the other.
And do you know why?
Because we were both lecherous, and our love was a sin in the eyes of God!”
Hazel silenced her with an imperious wave.
“Do you know something else?
Our families were ugly too, and lecherous—
both
parents, on both sides!
And from
way
back!”
This was the big, sporty, roadhouse Hazel who had no business in a mission; she laughed so heartily that Andy laughed as well, delighted with her.

And then Hazel said, in a clear quiet voice, “Out of all that lechery and ugliness—generations of it, I mean—how was it
possible to bring something so beautiful as my little baby into the world?
How was that
possible?
” She gazed at Andy.
“Do you know something?
The only time in my whole life I didn’t hate this big lecherous ugly body of mine was when I remembered that somewhere inside, it must be clean and beautiful, or my beautiful Billy could not have come from it.”

In this moment a great peace touched Hazel’s face.
Andy, undone, was seeking a way to speak, to embrace her and help her.
Perhaps the hatred of one’s God-given body was the ultimate sin—but Hazel’s face shrank back to slyness, and the cute voice of the past days said, “My sin was the sin of pride, of course, and may our Father in Heaven forgive me!
He alone made my beautiful little Billy, and caused him to walk this cruel earth so that one glorious day his death might be, as Leslie says, the instrument of the savages’ salvation!”
With a sweet smile of goodness and infinite mercy, Hazel folded her hands primly in her lap, and bent her head.
“Our Father which art in heaven—”

“Hazel!”

“Excuse me, honey?”
Hazel’s tone was lightly reproving.

“I was just going to say … you have every right to be proud of Billy—”

“You were very jealous of me,” Hazel said, “weren’t you, honey?
I mean, being barren before God?”
When Andy only stared at her, she said, “Of course, you are pretty and I am not.
And you were content that Martin lusted after you, I suppose?”

“Hazel, why do you say such things!”

“A little while ago, my dear, you laughed at me when I told you how lecherous Martin was, how ugly.
Oh, it’s easy enough to
laugh
at my poor Martin, goodness knows!”
She humph-ed and sniffed elaborately, to express injury, at the same time biting her lips to restrain her mirth.

“I wasn’t laughing
at
anything, I never
thought
about his looks,” Andy exclaimed.
She stood up, fighting for breath again.
“I liked Martin.
I admired him as a man.
He never once did or said anything suggestive or improper.”
She longed to say, I admired him most because he had lost his faith and did nothing, even under duress, to weaken mine.

“You deny being aware that he lusted after you?”

“Why do you use that awful expression?
Martin liked me, and I am glad he did.
We could
talk
together, for goodness’ sake!”

“Talk together!”
Hazel snorted.
Then she smiled again, with infinite understanding, lowering her voice.
“Perhaps you and Leslie have had … well, difficulties.
I mean,
you
know.
You can speak honestly to me—” And she actually shifted herself closer to Andy, chin out, cheek half turned against the blow, adopting a resigned expression which proclaimed the strength to bear all manner of revelation, never mind how terrible or disgusting.
Andy was furious that once again she had made herself a party to the woman’s games.
She said, “I don’t like you, Hazel.
I just don’t like you, not when you’re like this.”

The big woman cringed grotesquely, bringing her hands up toward her face.
“No, of course, how could anyone like me?
I’m so upset these days, so strange.
Oh, you needn’t spare me, I know how strangely I’ve been acting!”

“You’re strange, all right, but not the way you pretend to be.”
Andy went to the door.
“You’ve found a good excuse for spitting up all that unhappiness of yours, and then afterwards you can say, ‘I didn’t know what I was doing.’ ” Hazel cringed again.
Andy said, “I’m sorry, Hazel.
I wish you would go home.
There’s not going to
be
any Niaruna work, not for a long time, maybe never.
But if you
do
stay here, I’m not going along with your game any more, do you hear me?
Do you hear me, Hazel?
Maybe Leslie will play along, but I won’t.”