At Play in the Fields of the Lord (46 page)

“I hate him too,” she said.

“Do ya?”
Wolfie grunted bitterly again.
He nodded his head for a little while.
“I known all along he wasn’t dead; not
him
.
I seen guys like that before.
I don’t mean them reckless guys—them
ones don’t last.
I mean the guys like Moon who
really
don’t care—you can’t kill
them
guys with a
flame
thrower, for Christ sake!”
When Andy said nothing, he said, “How in hell was I to
go
anywhere?
No money, no papers, nothin.
Maybe if Lewis hadn’t split on me like that, he coulda figured somethin out.
And Guzmán tellin me every other day if I didn’t like, you know, plight my
troth
to this Mercedes, I’d get shipped back across the border and get shot.”
He sighed.
“So I play along with him, like I tell him my intentions are
honorable
, you dig, and he give me drinkin money, waitin for the day.
Meanwhile I done what he told me—kept that old car runnin, and maintenance at the hotel—I done everythin except clean spittoons.
Considerin what he give me, he got his money’s worth.
And now I done the big job for him, and tomorrow I’m goin out on the commercial plane, over the Andes.
Like, the best years of my
life!
Imagine!
And Lewis Moon can screw himself.”

“What was the big job?”
Andy said.

Wolfie lifted his eyes.
“You mean you really don’t know?”

She shook her head.

“Well, Andy, ol’ kid, I’m gonna level with you: I hopped in that old Mustang that’s out there at the field, and I bombed and strafed them Indians of yours.
The bombs was all duds”—here he shook his head, laughing a shrill, brief laugh—“but the guns worked.
The guns worked.”

“You couldn’t help it,” she said after a while.
“Oh!
When you think of the conscience
he
must have!”

“Don’t count on it, baby.”
He was surprised that she had not left the table.

Wolfie put his hand on hers.
He did this without thinking, but once it was there he remembered that she was a missionary’s wife, and felt uneasy; he took his hand away.
She said in a strange voice, “Are you afraid of me?”
and he put his hand back, more uneasy still.
Her hand was tight and cold, and his felt numb.
He opened her hand to interlock their fingers, and the diamond dropped onto the table.
They both looked at it; it gave off faint reflections.
With her other hand she put the diamond back into her pocket.

“So you thought maybe you could change him, too,” he said, to distract attention from their hands.

“I don’t know what I thought,” Andy said.
“It’s been a long time since I let myself think at all.”

“That’s what keeps you out of sin,” he said, and laughed.

“Maybe everybody has to sin once,” she said.
“I don’t even know what a sin is any more.”

“I’d be glad to show you,” Wolfie said.
He laughed again, squeezing her hand.
“I’m goin away tomorrow, kid, so you wouldn’t have no reminders.
What you need is the love of a good Jewish boy.”
He grinned at her, expecting her to bridle at his teasing, but she only gazed at him.
He could not fathom her expression.
His heart was pounding, and he removed his hand.
“Well, I’m only kiddin,” he said.
“You already sinned once when you drunk that drink.
I mean, a girl like you don’t want to fool with nobody like me.”

“Would it be a sin for you?”
she said.

“Whaddya mean?
Look, it ain’t the same thing.”
He stood up, unable to suffer her expression.
“For you a sin is different.
You’d only be sorry after.
Look, kid,” he said, when she still gazed at him, “in a town like this, there’s no place we can go.
We got no place to go.”

He was going to ask her if he could walk her home, but he did not want to be with her a moment longer.
“I’ll see ya, kid,” he said.
He wanted her badly in the way that he supposed she wanted him: less to make love to than to be warm with.
But he was afraid of the look in that open face, and because he was afraid, he repeated angrily, “There’s no place we can go.”

Jesus, he told himself, these Christer broads are tougher’n any whores alive.
She oughta be ashamed of herself—first she’s got hot pants for Lewis, and now me!
And her a missionary—she oughta be ashamed!

“So long, Andy,” he called out, but she did not answer.
And he cursed her again for making him feel weak and guilty, just when he had been strong enough not to take advantage of her.
He backed away from the table into the darkness of the street.
The girl sat there in the yellow light, under the hostile eyes of
the women along the porch, her hand on her empty glass.
She was still gazing after him, her face sallow and without expression.

“
Como puedo decir
—no, no, you must not be too—outraged?—about this thing our good Comandante has said to you.
Perhaps it is true, perhaps it is not.
If it is true, I think he will punish you, for our Comandante is not merciful.”

“He already punished me,” Wolfie said.
“He said that shootin down that missionary is going to cause him a lot of embarrassment, so he’s holdin out on me.
He’s gonna let me get on the plane, but he ain’t gonna give me the bread.”
Too restless to go to bed, he had offered the priest a drink; Padre Xantes, awaiting his supper in the salon, had accepted cheerfully.

“The bread?
Dinero
, yes?”
The padre sighed.
“
Claro
.
No payment for poor Lobo.
But permit me to remind you that the Comandante is somewhat emotional about money; if he did not have this reason, he would find another.
Besides, he has told me that poor Quarrier was killed by the Niaruna.
You see, señor, if you had killed Quarrier with your airplane, or if Señor Moon had killed him, as Guzmán claimed when he came back, the Comandante would not have such a good excuse to attack these Indians.
So whether you killed him or not is of no importance; in the official report, the unfortunate evangelist was killed by bloodthirsty savages.”
The priest drank off his glass in one neat gulp.

“Maybe it’s important to me,” Wolfie said resentfully.
“All I’m sayin is, I never saw no white man, not a sign of one.
All I saw was one miserable Indian.”
He stood up, jamming his hands into his pockets.
“I do his dirty work for him, and he screws me.”

“So,” the padre murmured diplomatically.
“You leave us tomorrow, on the way out to the west.
And we will not see you back here in the jungle with us soon again, is this correct?”

“This is correct.
I ain’t
never
comin back!”

Padre Xantes smiled.
Though he might have wished another drink, he had detected the long-familiar sounds which signaled the approach of his evening egg, and he was already shifting his
attention to his dinner.
He extended his hand, and Wolfie got to his feet and took it.

“I’m surprised you holy people talk to me,” Wolfie said suddenly, “after what I done.”
He swayed there a moment, frowning.

“As a Catholic priest, I must accept men’s frailty.
And as a European I am too old and tired to expend emotion upon matters I can do nothing about.”
Xantes smiled again, anxious to bring the conversation to an end.

“Yeah,” Wolfie said, “I guess so.
Well, so long, Padre.
Maybe”—he stood shyly in the doorway—“maybe you’d like to come and see me off?”

“Encantado,”
said Padre Xantes.
When one has been in a place for a long time, he thought sympathetically, and nobody sees one off, the feeling comes that one has never been there.
He smiled briefly at the American, then turned his head away and placed his folded hands upon the table.
Wolfie swayed in the doorway for a minute more until, finding no way to express himself, he flexed both hands in a sudden spasm of frustration, banged one palm against the wall, and disappeared.

Fausto came in with the soft-boiled egg and toast, and the priest thanked the boy politely.
Fausto avoided the padre’s gaze, sliding quickly back into the kitchen.
Xantes smiled ever so slightly; at his last confession Fausto had finally brought himself to seek forgiveness from the Lord for his several years of remorseless self-abuse.

Very carefully, using a small sharp spoon that he carried with him, Padre Xantes cracked the egg and slid its contents into a small bowl.
Using the sharp spoon and a knife, he separated the albumen from the yolk, taking great pains, for the egg was so little cooked that its white was scarcely clouded.
During the performance of this operation, he thought vaguely of the day’s events.
It was sad, of course, but the poor savages would now be persecuted until such time, the Comandante said, as they submitted, or turned the outlaw over to the soldiers, preferably dead.
It could have been worse, of course—that is, Guzmán could have been angrier than he had been about Xantes’ voyage to the
evangelists—but all the same, his own chance of contacting the Niaruna when the Americans were defeated was now gone.
This relieved him very much, although he would have liked to test a theory that if one broke up the village structure, changed the shape and juxtaposition of the buildings, the Indians would be totally disoriented, and thus laid open to the first strong faith they were exposed to.

He had coaxed the intact yolk into the spoon, holding his breath at the last moment lest he cut its tender sac; carefully he placed the utensil to one side while he addressed himself with spirit to the albumen, sponging it up with bits of toast and popping it into his mouth.

Smiling, he recalled Guzmán’s cheerful mien; Rufino was nothing if not transparent, like a child.
Of course, in the great rubber days of a half-century before, not to speak of the long colonial period, the Indians had fared much worse; it was certainly a sign of progress that a present-day prefect such as Guzmán would be held accountable by the government for massacring Indians—unless, of course, the government had sponsored the massacre in the first place.
On the other hand, the government need never have become so progressive as to admit Protestant missionaries into a Catholic land; had not the country’s Indians belonged to Rome for nearly three hundred years?
One trouble with social progress was that it was so impractical.

He would have to write that down, the priest thought.
Or better, perhaps: “The flaw of social progress lies in its impracticality.”
He smiled.

Now Padre Xantes put his knife aside.
He cleared his throat, gazing at the soft yolk with intent pleasure.
As usual, he began salivating, and he was obliged to swallow several times before daring to pick up the elegant spoon.
He wiped his lips with his napkin, then wiped his palms, which had begun to sweat again in the humidity of the evening.

With ceremony, he took up the spoon and lifted it with utmost care into his mouth.
First placing the bowl of the spoon upon his tongue, he managed to slide the yolk into his mouth undamaged; holding his breath, he replaced the faithful spoon
upon the table.
He then sat back gently in his chair and folded his hands upon his stomach.
After a moment, satisfied that he was alone in the room and that no invasion was imminent from either street or kitchen, he tested the yolk with a slight, thrilling pressure which, fluttering slightly, it withstood.

Thus Padre Xantes dealt with his brave egg, breathing ever more rapidly in and out until, unable to restrain himself a moment longer, he clamped it savagely twixt tongue and palate, uttering as he did so a tiny squeak of pleasure; the yolk exploded in abandon, mounting deliriously toward his sinuses, then sliding down past the roots of his tongue into his throat.
Just at this moment Fausto kicked the door open, banging it hard against the wall.

Fausto cried out, “Does the padre require nothing more?”

And he shook his head.
“No, gracias,”
he answered thickly.
“Nothing more.”