Fieldwork: A Novel (14 page)

On the last evening of their visit, the Walkers presented their gifts to the Tigi. They gave him canned Del Monte fruit, which the Tigi had never before tasted—pineapples, pears, and peaches, all in heavy syrup. The Tigi had been fascinated by Raymond's field glasses, through which one could see things that were not yet visible, and those, too, were offered as a gift. From China, the Walkers had brought a red silk veil for the Tigi's wife, which she accepted with lavish compliments and, imitating Laura's occidental style, polite kisses.

The next morning, accompanied again by the Tigi's army, the Walkers set off in a fine rain to return to Bantang. The journey lasted almost a week, over the same mountain passes. The rain grew heavier, and the color washed out from the land and sky. As they approached Bantang, the roads became muddy and rutted, and a sense of dark gloom came over the couple. Raymond thought of the high stack of correspondence which awaited him, and Laura of the endless mild instruction which Mrs. Chester was sure to offer. Every evening when they stopped for the night, the Walkers renewed their prayers to be of greater service to His Kingdom and to be used by Him for His Glory.

They arrived at the Mission Station just after dark. A cold sleet had made the last of the journey difficult, and they thought of the mugs of hot tea which the Chesters would offer them after they had settled into their robes and slippers. They would put Thomas to bed and rock him gently until he fell asleep, then they would tell the Chesters every detail of their adventure.

But the Mission Station was deserted when they arrived. The house was cold and the servants missing. The Walkers prowled the house suspiciously. Raymond was in Dr. Chester's study, which was almost exactly as it was when he had left, when he heard Laura cry out from the garden. He dashed outside and found Laura in the garden, trying to usher Mrs. Chester back into the house. The older woman was dressed only in a soaking nightgown, and her long gray hair was down around her shoulders. The Walkers had never seen her before without her hair neatly in a bun, and her damp nightgown clung to her massive breasts, from which Raymond instinctively averted his eyes. How long had she been sitting in the garden, in the pouring rain? Raymond started a fire, and Laura rummaged through the old woman's cupboards to find her clean, dry clothes. Mrs. Chester sat by the fire, unmoving. Laura changed her clothes, and Raymond made tea. After an hour passed in the most unnerving, terrible silence, Mrs. Chester coughed slightly. "Dr. Chester has left me," she said.

For a second Raymond misunderstood. He could have imagined no more unlikely happening in all the universe than the voluntary uncoupling of this strong yoked pair. But Laura comprehended Mrs. Chester immediately. "Oh no, Mrs. Chester," she said. "Oh, no."

"He's left all of us," Mrs. Chester added.

They were able to get no more out of Mrs. Chester that night. Despite the Walkers' entreaties, she sat in silence for perhaps five minutes more, then laid herself down on the stone floor in front of the fire. Raymond covered her with a blanket, and she stared into the flames until, exhausted, she slept. Laura and Raymond stayed in their chairs all night long, dozing, praying, and tending the fire.

In the morning, Mrs. Chester was able to relate to the young Walkers the terrible events which had passed while the Walkers were off enjoying the hospitality of the Grand Tigi of Gartok.

Dr. Chester had left immediately to visit Père Antoine, traveling only with one Chinese helper. The journey had taken two days, and by the time they arrived, the Catholic evangelist was already starting to feel better. It was his servant who had sent off the urgent message which had summoned the doctor, and Père Antoine, a tough old soul, was vaguely embarrassed by all the commotion his illness had stirred. Dr. Chester spent a day in Père Antoine's mountain hut, then set off for Bantang.

He never arrived.

For almost a week Mrs. Chester had waited. Usually if he was to be away more than a few days, he would send a runner with a message. But poor communications were the norm here on the frontier: runners were often distracted by opium pipes, rice whiskey, or a mudslide washing out the solitary track which the Chinese called a road, and Mrs. Chester could do nothing but pray and wait. Then the message arrived—a letter, written in Chinese, from the leader of a notorious band of local brigands. Her husband had been taken prisoner and would be released only in exchange for gold.

Immediately Mrs. Chester set about amassing the ransom. From the local Christians, she borrowed on the credit of the Missionary Society in Kunming. By hook and by crook, she put together the extraordinary sum demanded, and was prepared to offer it to the thugs in exchange for her husband. Then, late that night, her husband's Chinese helper, who had accompanied him into the mountains, slipped into the Mission compound. The servant had escaped with an urgent message from the doctor. She was
absolutely
not to pay the ransom. He would not tolerate it! It would place every missionary in China in danger should word go out that missionaries could be kidnapped in exchange for easy cash. He would die or he would live—that, as always, was in his Master's hands—but he would not be ransomed. There would be victory in Jesus.

The next day, every Christian in Bantang beseeched God to spare the old scholar and evangelist's life. The kidnappers had proposed a complicated system to exchange messages, and by this system she sent back word: by her husband's own request, she would not pay the ransom. It was an excruciating decision, but she knew Dr. Chester. When Morris made up his mind on principle, he stood firm like a mighty rock. He would not waver, and neither would she. She would prove herself a wife worthy of his faith. Every hour now was spent on her aching knees in prayer. She would never have admitted it to anyone, but after a lifetime in His service, she felt that the Lord owed her and her husband this favor. But after three weeks, Dr. Chester's body was found by a shepherd in a cave less than five miles from Bantang. The old man had been dead no more than a day or two, and the kidnappers had evidently fled the cave immediately upon his death.

On receiving the news of her husband's death, Mrs. Chester built a small fire in the compound yard. There she placed her husband's nearly complete manuscript edition of the remaining unpublished books of the Tibetan Bible. These people, she decided, did not deserve Morris's gifts. They did not deserve the Lord's gifts. Then she lit the fire and watched the Bible burn. She had sat now in the garden under a raining sky for almost three days, bewailing the death of her husband.

Mrs. Chester told her story in a monotone, and then said hardly another word to the Walkers. Her red eyes accused the missionaries from Oklahoma: Raymond should have been the one visiting Père Antoine in the mountains, not Dr. Chester. What kind of people were these Walkers, who allowed a man of sixty-three to set out alone into the mountains, who had come to help the Chesters and instead destroyed them? Her sweet and tender Morris, the father of her children and the comfort of her old age! The Walkers offered an equally unspoken reply: it was the will of God.

Mrs. Chester remained in Bantang another week, until she joined a caravan of dealers in copper goods marching in the direction of Kunming. The Walkers begged her to stay a little longer and regain her health, but the woman was forceful as ever. She was returning to America, she said, to the leafy village in upstate New York where both her daughters lived, to inform them of their father's death. She would leave this hateful land forever. All the long week before Mrs. Chester quit the Mission, Thomas, aware of the tumult and sadness of the household, cried in his crib, and no matter how Laura bounced him on her knee the boy would not be comforted.

In this terrible way, God answered the prayers of the Walkers: they now were in charge of the Bantang Mission. Raymond swore never to submit his soul to the responsibility of another man but also never to forget the example of Dr. Chester's bravery, and he adopted as his own the other man's motto: "Jesus Wins All." The Walkers spent a year alone, preaching in their fashion and wandering the mountain valleys, then proposed to the United Missionary Society in Kunming that they quit the Bantang Station, in order to spread the Gospel to the tribal peoples along the Salween River, whom they had found were most receptive to the Word. When the Society refused their request, saying that the risks were too great in the tribal valleys, the Walkers resigned their commission entirely. Now the Walkers affiliated themselves with no one but God; Raymond and Laura now were truly alone in the Orient. Raymond's mother went from church to church in Tulsa, reading her son's letters from the tribal country, and the churches of Tulsa sent donations to support the work. These churches would continue to support the Walkers' work for the next eighty years, as the Walkers pursued with monomaniacal zeal their extraordinary goal of bringing an entire people, the Dyalo, into the Light.

Like so many occidentals in the Orient, the Walkers had swung to the pendulum-edges of their souls.

TOM RILEY WAS SWEET
on Judith Walker. Tom did not have a boy's face: when he didn't shave, he looked like something out of those old Marlboro ads, the ones showing a cowboy roping a steer and lighting a cigarette off the edge of a red-hot brand. It was wonderful to see this large, handsome man's shy face as he admitted that he had "feelings" for Judith, and wondered whether I thought she might reciprocate them. It occurred to me that Tom Riley, who must have been in his late twenties, might well have still been a virgin, given how seriously in all other respects Tom took his faith. I told him that I honestly didn't know what Judith was thinking, and Tom asked me—begged me, really—to find out. He seemed to think that because I was living in sin with Rachel I had some secret insight into the hearts of women.

Whenever I saw Judith in those weeks, I tried to steer the conversation toward Tom. I watched very carefully to see if she became embarrassed or shy when the subject of Tom came up—if she went red, or shifted in place, or rearranged her hair. The problem was, I kept getting false positives. Judith did all those things when I mentioned Tom,
yes
, but also when I mentioned John the Baptist.

"Tom Riley is
such
a nice man," I said to Judith one afternoon.

"Yes, he
really
is," she replied.

I reported this back to Tom faithfully, and for a minute he glowed. Then he said, "That's
all
she said?" It was hard to get anything else out of him that day. I wanted to tell Tom that he should go and talk to Judith himself. But I was afraid that if I did that, he wouldn't tell me anything more about the Walkers. Also, I thought to myself, maybe this is normal for them. Maybe this is how evangelical Christians mate.

We went back and forth like this for a good ten days. I was paying so much attention to Judith that if she'd had half a mind, she'd have figured
I
was sweet on her. Then one day Judith gave me a clear sign. "How long do you think Tom Riley's going to stay here?" she asked.

Thinking quickly, I said, "I'm not sure, but he said he might be going back soon."

"Oh," she said with a sad, dreamy, faraway air. "That's too bad. I hope he stays for a long time." Then she blushed, and to cover her tracks, she added: "Need
somebody
to carry those boxes!"

The next day I told Tom, "She's crazy about you, big guy. The ball is totally in your court."

Then we got back to talking about the Walkers: I think Tom felt he owed me at this point, and he coughed up the intimate materials which make up the bulk of this chapter. But Tom started spending more time with Judith. I'd come by the big pink house and see Tom and Judith huddled in fervent conversation at the kitchen table, leaning into each other's eyes, or sitting on the stoop, eating a juicy mango and laughing. When I'd walk by, they'd hush up quick. Seeing them together made me think I had done a good thing.

In 1935, the British adventurer John Hanbury-Tracy crossed very northern Burma on foot on a mission to find the origins of the Salween River. The man needed more than three weeks just to cover a hundred miles, on the way surviving a snowstorm, a sunburn, two poisonous snake attacks, countless leeches, a falling boulder and a falling tree, a tiger bite, a bear scratch, malarial fever,
and
diarrhea—a travelogue which leads one naturally to conclude that either John Hanbury-Tracy was a man who should not have walked under that bamboo ladder back in Mandalay
or
that the very north of Burma is no place for a pleasure jaunt. Yet just fifteen years after John Hanbury-Tracy staggered out from the wild, it is
precisely
in the middle of this thick and miserable jungle that the Walker family resettled when they were expelled at gunpoint from China after the Communist revolution. It was in this jungle that Thomas Walker's first son, David, was born.

When the revolution took China, the Walkers, like a flock of disturbed pigeons, disbanded and then regrouped, this time in northern Burma, so close to the Chinese border it was hard to tell the difference between where they had been and where they were now, but for the color of the missionary visas in their passports. The Walkers called the long green valley "Eden," and sent word to their Dyalo brothers and sisters in China and in Burma that Eden Valley would be a Christian paradise, a place where God ruled. When Samuel Walker, Thomas's younger brother, first arrived in Eden Valley, the place had been infested, just lousy, with spirits, which explained why the tribal peoples, poor things, had all left this beautiful fertile valley untouched, with its central plateau perfect for rice, and hills which could be terraced, and a freshwater stream. So Samuel and Raymond (Thomas was still in a Communist jail) came to Eden Valley to exorcise those demons. Sleeping only under Samuel's canvas army tent, they prayed night and day. They wandered from the big rock at the head of the valley to the little rook at the foot, praying until their throats were hoarse and their arms trembled. In this way, they spent six whole days and nights, and when they were done, the valley was theirs.

When the men had cleaned out the valley, the women arrived, and one by one the Walkers built homes, carved out fields for the rice, and planted fruit trees. In the Walkers' wake, long ropy streams of Dyalo followed, crossing single file over the mountains. They carried all their worldly goods in bamboo baskets: the crowing roosters and the squealing piglets, the sharply honed knives, and rice to last until the next crop was harvested. Exciting times, with friends old and new arriving daily, the villages going up, the whole valley a beehive of energy and industry! Helena Walker told me that the water had been
so
sweet in the river which meandered gently through the valley floor, and Sarah Walker told me that this was a place where she woke in the morning and could pull from trees three steps from her door and in bloom eight months a year peaches, mangoes, oranges, and jackfruit, which her children ate for breakfast, the juice dribbling down their little chins. It was as lonely and as isolated and as perfect a place as you could find on the face of this earth, the Walkers said, this valley of theirs—and of course they knew it wouldn't last. They, too, had read Genesis.

Raymond was a gardener, and when he was forced to leave China, having to leave behind his orchard at the Mission in Abaze had been a bitter blow. For almost thirty years, Raymond had included a brief note at the end of his reports to the churches back home asking for seeds and clippings from fruit trees. Every month the postman had brought him another bulky package, and whatever he received, he had planted behind the house in Abaze. A Chinese horticulturalist from the China Inland University had once visited the orchard and pronounced it certainly the widest variety of fruit trees anywhere in the Salween River valley: a half-dozen varieties of apples, some for eating straight off the tree, others for pies, green and red; four types of oranges and three lemons; peaches; pears; apricots; plums; guava; nectarines; mangoes; starfruit and jackfruit—and hybrids and crossbreeds too, including one which Raymond suspected was unique, a mango-guava cross. Visitors to the Mission in Abaze hardly had time to catch their breath before Raymond had them by the arm and was showing them the carefully tended acres. Whatever grew here, Raymond told his visitors, he clipped and gave to the Dyalo, so that now there were Dyalo villages on those high mountain slopes growing their own oranges and lemons where once for lack of vitamins there wasn't a man over forty with a tooth still in his head. Raymond had come to Eden Valley with a huge box of clippings from his most successful experiments. While the other Walkers loved the beauty and isolation of Eden Valley, Raymond was passionate about the dark, rich, loamy earth, from which was springing up a new orchard faster than he could have imagined, row after row of healthy, solid trees.

Eden also was the answer to Laura's prayers. The thirty years in China had seen the Walkers occupy a dozen houses, all of them drafty, dreary places, with dirt floors and sod walls; and Laura had lived in them prepared to leave at a moment's notice should the good Lord need the Walkers elsewhere. She had lived the last fifteen years in the Mission House in Abaze, which was filled with spiders and simply did not get clean no matter how she scrubbed it. Laura never complained about her choices in life, but for thirty years now she had read letters from her sister, who had married a large-animal veterinarian named Marvin and stayed in Kansas all her life, about wallpapering the parlor and sitting at night on the swing porch. Raymond and Laura almost never fought during those years, except over the subject of a home: Raymond maintained that to invest energy
now
in a house—energy which, he said, rightly ought to go toward saving the Dyalo while there was still time—was just plain silliness. "And
you
are not a woman, Raymond," said Laura. Faced with this incontrovertible truth, Raymond, who hated to see his wife unhappy, promised Laura when they left Abaze that wherever they went next, she would have the home she yearned for.

Laura never wanted a fancy house. She just wanted a large parlor with plenty of light where during the rainy season the grandchildren had space to play; and she wanted a good solid floor, so that if she woke up in the night and went downstairs, she didn't have to worry about snakes. She wanted two floors, even if she and Raymond would soon be getting older, because she had grown up in a house with two floors, and it just wasn't a home unless you went upstairs at night. The Dyalo, who used communal cooking areas in the center of the village, considered the idea crazy and a touch antisocial, but she wanted a kitchen of her own: for almost thirty years she'd had to walk outside every time she wanted an afternoon snack, and she'd had enough.

It was her son-in-law Paul, Sarah's husband, who built a home for Laura. Paul Kingston was a young missionary, originally from Texas, who had come to China just after the war to work in the Walkers' district with another of the hill tribes, the Lisu. Samuel Walker met Paul in Kunming—at the dentist's office, oddly enough, where both were having the same rear molar pulled, still odder—and invited Paul to the Walkers' annual Christmas conference. The tall, gangly Texan proposed to Sarah before the New Year. They were married a month later. Paul's grandfather in Austin had been an architect, and before Paul got the Calling, he himself had considered the profession: when he and Sarah got to Eden Valley, he took his mother-in-law aside and told her that he thought maybe he could help to build her a house to her liking, a pretty little place. No Walker man ever used phrases like "exposure to the morning light," and Laura, with real tears of gratitude in her eyes, accepted Paul's offer.

Paul had noticed a stand of teak only a half-day's trek from the valley, and the Dyalo were experienced woodworkers. They taught him how to cut teak and plane it into long boards, then how to temper the wood over smoky fires to protect the house from termites. But no Dyalo had ever thought to build a house with wooden walls—a Dyalo home had thin walls of thatch and woven bamboo—and organizing the labor in this wild country was a difficult job. Everything that came into the valley from Fort Hertz or Putao came by mule: the circular saw and band saw, the keg of iron nails, the stucco, the glazed tiles for the roof, the varnish, the enameling. During the rainy season, no caravan could pass in or out of the valley, but it was only during the rainy season that Dyalo men were at their leisure to help with the woodwork. The Dyalo wouldn't even consider the idea of working for wages; and if a man gives you his time as a gift, Laura felt, she really couldn't complain if he decided to take a week off. The Dyalo frequently decided to take a week off. As a result, Laura ended up learning a lot more about woodwork than she ever thought she could. She was more than fifty years old, and although everyone helped, in the end, Raymond, Paul, and Laura built most of that house themselves. It took them almost a year, in a country where homes went up in a matter of days.

Laura's house had two stories, just as she'd asked for, and six rooms, which she filled with flowers from her garden. She built a study for Raymond, so he could spread out his papers and read prophecy and help them all understand God's word, and she built that big living room, which was soon filled, just as she had hoped, with rowdy grandkids. From the windows, which were shuttered but of course did not have glass, there was a view over the whole valley; and if Laura woke up early, she could sit in the living room sipping a cup of tea—wild tea leaves grew not far from Eden Valley—which she had brewed in her own kitchen, and watch the sun coming up between the cleft rocks due east.

The house was on the slopes of a small hill, from whose summit the whole of Eden Valley was exposed. Seeing the valley always made Laura's heart beat fast: dark-green jungle nuzzled up against the silver-tipped fields; huge, huge clouds, the biggest she'd ever seen, floated serenely over the river, which flashed like liquefied lightning through the mossy rocks; and a family of hawks played on the thermal currents, riding high above the gorges. When she stood there watching Creation, her heart pounding away, Laura sometimes felt that as big as the whole world was, it could all fit into her palm. Laura and Raymond had agreed that if they died before the Rapture, this was the place where they would be buried, right here on the top of this hill.

Thomas, although the oldest, was the last of Laura's children to marry. Sarah had married Paul Kingston, and little Helena had married a Kachin preacher named Jesse Myang. It was the first time a Walker had married an Oriental, and Laura had been nervous about the match. But in truth, you couldn't ask for a better man than Jesse. You
certainly
couldn't ask for a harder worker or a more dedicated evangelist. The biggest surprise, though, had been Samuel, who to everyone's shock and delight had married two years after the family came to Eden Valley, winning the hand of a gloriously beautiful English nurse named Virginia whom he had met in Mandalay, where he had been shopping for books. Samuel was chubby and asthmatic and never had his big brother's charm—and look how God had taken care of him! When Samuel turned twenty-five, Laura had started to wonder if he would ever find a woman, as shy as he was, until Virginia came along, a statuesque blonde, buxom, with pale skin and bright-green eyes. Sometimes Laura wondered precisely what Virginia saw in Samuel, but this pale girl in her sundresses and floppy hats certainly saw
something
: she married Samuel after hardly more than a month of courting, and once she told Laura something about Samuel that Laura found terribly touching and, if she was honest with herself, a little improbable—that Samuel was the most interesting man Virginia had ever met, that she and Samuel could spend hours talking. The only thing that troubled Laura about Virginia was a certain lingering doubt about the intensity of Virginia's faith. Virginia ran a medical clinic for the Dyalo of the valley, and she went to the church services on Sunday, but Laura had the sensation occasionally that Virginia did not weep for the lost tribesmen as she and Raymond wept. Also, one time Laura had visited Samuel and Virginia unannounced, and on the veranda of the house which Samuel had built on an isolated bend of the river, she had seen her daughter-in-law lying quite naked in the tropical sun, her pubic hair the very same pretty blond as the curls which cascaded over her shoulders. Laura did not mention the incident to her husband, but she wondered in a letter to her sister whether lying in the sun like that was a Christian act or not. She just wasn't sure.