At Play in the Fields of the Lord (45 page)

“Your husband is a good God-fearing man,” Hazel accused her.
“You don’t honor Leslie Huben as you should!”

“Perhaps I don’t,” Andy said.
She went out the door.
She had never felt so cold and tough, so deeply angry.
She felt cheated.

“What if I tell him?”
Hazel shrieked after her, so loudly that her voice carried easily to the adjoining room.
“What if I tell Leslie what you said?”

Leslie already knows it, Andy thought.
He could never admit it, but he knows it.

“You said you’d have tea with me!
You
promised!
”

She went downstairs, with no idea of destination.
A fan, the slapping of bare feet, the musings of a hen beneath the courtyard window, a red flower … The man Wolfie was in the bar, and when she passed it he came running, glass in hand.
But on reaching Andy he seemed to forget what he wanted, and she saw that he had nothing to say.
She was shocked by his appearance.
He looked like a newspaper picture of some sort of addict.

“I just wanted to say ‘Hi,’ ” he said.
“You know?
I ain’t seen an American in a long, long time.”

“Hi,” she said.

“You don’t look so good,” he said, and grinned uneasily.
“Your name’s Andy, right?”

“That’s right.”

“I mean, a chick like you don’t never drink, I know.
But you look like you could
use
a drink.”

She gazed at him without expression, watching him withdraw in expectation of the rebuff.
But the tart remark which had started automatically to her tongue perished unspoken.
Tiredly she said, “Not here.”
A great inertia had come over her; she could not go back upstairs to those small rooms.

“Oh yeah.
Leslie, huh?”
He looked at her, astonished.
“Well,” he said, “well, well, well.”
Still uncertain of himself, of her intent, he said, “Well, look … I mean, can I buy you a drink?”

“Where?”
she said, and started walking.

He hastened along at her side, poking his head around in front of her each time he spoke; his fingers rose to her elbow, fell away, came back again and stayed.

“There’s only one other place—La Concepción.
La Concepción ain’t so nice, Andy, only we could sit outside.
They got tables outside, see?”
He hurried eagerly along beside her.

They went down the mud street, among the hogs and vultures.
“Did you see him?”
he said to her.

“Who?”

“Lewis.
Lewis Moon.”

“Lewis Moon.”

“What I mean is, did you
see
him?”

“Yes,” she said.
“I saw him.”

“How about that?”
Wolfie said.
“How about that?”
Shyly he said, “I don’t guess he sent no message, did he?
Lewis didn’t send no message?”

“No.”

“I mean, like, Tell the Old Wolf hello.
Somethin like that.
He didn’t send no message like that, huh?”

Andy stopped and faced him in the street.
She wanted to cry, not for Wolfie, but for both of them, for the way of the world.
She reached out and touched his arm.
“No,” she said, “no message.
There wasn’t time for messages.”

Wolfie licked his lips.
“I been waitin a long time,” he said.
“He shoulda sent a message.”
He looked into her face and sighed.
“So,” he said gently, “so’s how’s it goin with you, kid?”

On the way down the street to La Concepción, they held hands.
“Tell me about him,” she said at the table.
She ran her fingers over the cold glass, which she had not touched.

“That’s what everybody says t’me:
Tell
me about him.
How come they all wanna know about Lewis Moon?”
Wolfie laughed tiredly and she smiled.
“You know what I finely figured out?”
he said.
“I figured out that a guy like Moon, everybody wants to
change
him.
When they say, Tell me about him, they really mean, Tell me how I can get
at
him, get
with
him.
Like, he’s too far out there somewhere, we want him back where we can keep an eye on him, make him
care
about somethin.
Christ!”
he cried out sudddenly.
“I wish I was a talker.
I finely figured this out, see.
I could tell you …”

“Go ahead.
You’re doing just fine.”

“Well, Moon is kind of like a threat.
For most guys this guy is a kind of a threat.
He don’t seem to care about nothin nobody else cares about, not even his own life hardly; so as long as a guy like that’s around, the things you thought were so important, they begin to look kind of stupid.”

“And women?”

“That’s part of it too.
Women can’t stand a loner, you know
that—they feel like in
sulted
.
So long as a guy like this is on the loose, the whole game they been taught to play looks kind of stupid too.
But they all think they got the secret—about makin him
care
, I mean.
They feel sorry for him, see.
They want to mother him.
What this guy needs, they yell, is LOVE!
So they fall in love with him.
But what it
really
is, they want to ball him.
I mean … you know, excuse me, have
sexual intercourse
with him, because that way they got his number, at least for a few minutes.”
He looked up at her, out of breath, and laughed.
“This is hard work for me.
Only I finely figured this thing out.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” Andy said, “as far as you go.”

“That ain’t very far, huh?”
Wolfie shrugged.
“Maybe not.”
He turned away from her.
“You goin to drink that drink, or what?”
He signaled a woman on the porch and pointed to his glass.
Andy picked up hers and drank it off all at once, holding her breath.

“That’s not what I mean,” she said.
She felt a little odd.
“I meant, do you think he … Lewis Moon … I mean, a man like that, do you think he … Did he
ever
care?”

Wolfie gazed at her, nodding his head lugubriously.
“Don’t try it, kid,” he said, “don’t try it.
That Moon’ll kill you.
That is the hardest sonofabitch I ever seen.
Like him and me, we were buddies, for Christ sake.
I saved his life more’n one time.
And what does he do?
He splits without a word, just like
that
”—Wolfie snapped his fingers—“takin the aircraft which half of it is mine.
And after all this time, what does he do?
Does he send a message?
No, he don’t.”

Wolfie took his new drink off the tray and drank it even before the woman had left the table.
She observed his distress with sympathy and glared balefully at his companion.
Other women had come out onto the porch to look at Andy; they stood there barefoot in gingham dresses, their arms folded on their breasts.

“Rosita,” Wolfie muttered, waving the near one off.
“Go on,
vamos
.
Cut.
I mean it.
C’mon.
All you whores beat it.
Don’t look at her like that.”

“Do they understand English?”
Andy laughed; she felt shocked that she was not shocked.

“Only dirty words,” Wolfie said.
“Just like my Spanish.
Some conversation!
I done near two years in this stinkin hole and all I can say in polite company is
huevos fritos!
” He shook his head.
“So stay away from him.
He didn’t even send a message.”

“Why did you wait here for him all this time?”

“Wait for’m!
Who
waited
for’m?”
Wolfie glared at her.
“Well, whaddya want I should go and do, run
out
on him?
How’d I know what happened to him, he coulda come back any day!”
He shifted unhappily in his seat, and when he spoke again his voice was quiet.
“Well, I’ll tell ya.
At first, see, I thought it was only he had flipped out on that
ayahuasca
, that he never meant to cut out on me.
Lewis cut out on
you
, Wolf?—I says to myself—don’t be ree-
dic
alous!
Did you or didn’t you save his life, many’s and many’s the time?
No, Wolf, I says, you gotta
wait
for him, because Lewis never cut out on you, and you ain’t gonna cut out on
Lewis
, I says.
Very good.
So then I kept rememberin them diamonds he left on my pillow—he had these wild diamonds he picked up somewheres, up on the rivers—and I says, well, listen, man, like maybe Lewis didn’t exactly cut
out
on you, man, don’t be ree-dicalous, only, well, them diamonds, man, I mean, layin
diamonds
on you, man—well, it
looked
like the old payoff for the aircraft, ree-dicalous or
no
ree-dicalous.”
He raised his head.
“And after a while it didn’t look so ree-dicalous no more.”

“But why didn’t you leave when you realized that?”

“How could I
leave?
I tried it only lately.
I got so frantic I tried to give diamonds to Guzmán for my passport and a ticket out, but he only laughed into my face; this Guzmán is so smart he’s stupid.
He thought all diamonds looked like
diamonds
, see, he thought Moon’s diamonds were some nutty kind of
rocks
.
Wolf, I says finely, you are castin wild diamonds before swine.
So the diamonds wind up one by one”—he waved his hand—“at La Concepción.”
Wolfie sighed mightily.
“Leavin this jungle is like tryin to leave quicksand—you fight like hell, but you don’t
go
no place.”

“Do you know what he said that night he left here?
He said, If there is a jungle there, go
through
it, and come out on the other side.”

“Uh-huh.
Well, if he thinks Wolfie’s goin to plow through I don’t know how many million miles of that stuff”—he waved violently toward the jungle across the river—“he better think again, the stupid bastard.”
Wolfie laughed drunkenly, affectionately, sprawling back a little in his chair.
“That’s Moon, all right.
One night we was down to our last thirty-four pesos, and Lewis says, That thirty-four pesos, Wolf, that’s good for seventeen aguardientes each, right?
Right, I says.
Well, my capacity for tonight is seventeen, he says.
And I says, Seventeen of
them
things?
In one
night?
I says, Listen, Lewis, like even if we
survive
it is the end of our financial
solvency
.
And Lewis says, You want to go somewheres in life, then you got to commit yourself, you got to burn all the bridges behind you, man.”

“And how do you feel about him now?”

Wolfie stopped laughing.
“I’m gonna tell you somethin, I don’t care how this sounds to you, kid, but I admired that maniac, I really did.
I don’t know why, but I
loved
him.
Believe me, I ain’t a faggot or nothin, only I really
loved
him, more than I loved even my Ex.”

“Your ex-wife?”

“Yeah.
While I was sittin around here goin nuts, I wrote Azusa I was lonely for her and Dick the Infint, which this is our kid, and was sick and tired of the road and wanted to come on home.
Where was she
livin
at, I asked her.
And she wrote me back she was now my Ex and had changed Dick’s name to
Richard!
” Wolfie shook his head, incredulous.
“Richard, my Ex wrote me, jams all his toys down
toilets
; Richard, writes my Ex, is very hard on
toilets
.”
He grunted bitterly.
“Richard.
I mean, imagine it.
But now,” he said, “me and Moon ain’t friends no more.
If Lewis Moon come walkin down this street, I’d kill him.”