Then Wolfie shuffled in, swollen and sobered, one hand scratching his chin bristles, the other still fumbling with his trousers. Behind him marched Mercedes, looking put upon; haughtily, arms still straight at her sides, she went on out the door into the street, like a huge toy. Wolfie glared sheepishly at Moon. “Lousy,” he said, and coughed and spat. “I mean, that was really a nowhere hump. Nowhere at all.” To Quarrier he said, “You got a wife upstairs here, right? You people screw at least, I hope. So keep your eyes to yourself.”
Quarrier rose without expression and went out toward the latrine.
“Well, I’m glad you got one, anyway,” Wolfie called. When Quarrier was gone, he said to Moon, “You dig that guy, huh?”
“He’s all right,” Moon said. “He’s better than most of them; at least he’s not stupid.”
“He’s not, huh? You mean he just looks stupid. He just acts stupid.” Wolfie, scratching, sounded like a pig on a dry fence. “So where’s the treacherous greaser?” But even as he spoke the door opened and the Comandante appeared. He too looked angry, and he yelled violently at his son Fausto, “Son of a cow! Close the doors, close the shutters, before the Gran Hotel Dolores is stolen out from under you!” And the boy, jolted from his sleep, dropped down behind the bar in case something was hurled at him, then darted out at the far end and scurried to close the doors.
The Comandante pitched over to the table, where he drank down a half-bottle of beer at a single draught. When he came up for air he was breathing hoarsely. His color was bad and his fly was open. “We arr es-spik Ingliss,” he gasped finally at Moon, then nodded craftily toward the room in the rear. “Piloto, you wan focks woo-man, no? La chica Suzie—drunk! Ferry drunk!” He raised both hands to the side of his head to indicate that the girl was unconscious. “Ahora”—he pointed at the door—“you focks Indio gurl, vamos, no pay nada.” He raised two fingers, grinning triumphantly at Moon, his gold tooth gleaming. “Indio boy,” he said, “fock Indio gurl, no pay nada.”
Moon grinned back at him. In a flat voice he said, “The Comandante is a dirty pig. Un maricón sin vergüenza.”
A moment later, he lay flat upon the floor. Guzmán had taken a large beer bottle by the neck and whipped him a backhand blow along the skull; he stood over Moon, holding the bottle by the neck. Quick as a snake, Moon thought, quick as a snake. The bottle was not broken, so at least he was not cut. A fractured skull, maybe. He gazed peacefully at Sheriff Guzmán from the floor. If you don’t kill me now while you have the chance, he thought, you’re going to regret it.
An arm appeared around the Sheriff’s neck, and a wild hairy face over his shoulder; both disappeared from view. A woeful crash, a roar of animals, and the light on the ceiling spun; the end of the world has come at last, he thought, we have collided with the moon. And he sank away into oblivion. When he came to again, there was a kind of silence, the only sound a breathing and a scrape of feet; he sat up, hauling at the table leg, and stared at the scene before him. Wolfie and Guzmán were each using one hand to hold their pants up. They were circling in the center of the room, and in the free hand of each of them was a knife. Behind Wolfie, also circling, was the wretched Fausto, clutching a bottle.
Moon said, “Hey, Wolf—”
“I see him,” Wolfie said, his eyes fastened on Guzmán. “I see the little lad. And the little lad gets one step closer, he’s gonna get his throat cut.” Wolfie had now secured his pants, and his free hand was extended out behind him toward the boy. He did not stop moving, but kept circling, circling, knees bent, in a kind of squat; as he passed the table he seized a bottle by the neck and broke it in half—crack—on the table edge, and kept moving. Now he had a weapon in each hand. Passing, he said to Moon, “How you doin, kid?”
“Give me your knife.”
“No, no,” Wolfie called back over his shoulder, “no, no. This one is mine. He pulled the knife on me, not you.” The next time around he said, “And anyway, you ain’t no knife fighter, baby—he’d take you.” Moon struggled to his feet, hanging on to the table, then crashed back clumsily off the bench against the wall. “No, no,” Wolfie murmured next time around. “This one is mine, baby, this one would take you.”
Though Moon’s eyes had cleared, his body was still paralyzed. He watched Wolfie with a vague dispassionate admiration for something done professionally, with grace: the flowing movements of the man, the sure feet flat to the floor for balance and silent as on tiptoe, the swift strong gliding legs, the big delicate hairy hands loose at the wrists, the long knife held out like an offering, blade flat, to pass more easily between ribs …
Guzmán bellowed at his son, “Fausto, Fausto! El otro! Mátalo!” Moon sat with his feet straight out and his palms on the bench and watched the frightened boy coming to kill him. In his daze he was struck by the wide dark eyes, the wide agonized mouth like a hole—crash—a spot on the wall and falling glass and the boy broke away with a little screech, dropping his upraised weapon, for Wolfie had whirled and whipped his jagged bottle at the boy’s head. Guzmán broke to lunge and slash at Wolfie, who turned under and out and away so easily that Guzmán stopped short and dropped his arm in surprise and—yes, Moon thought, yes, there it is, the good old fear.
He had seen Wolfie’s knife come out before and he was sorry he had missed the moment this time, for it was one of the prettiest things that he had ever seen. It was like the first electric movement of a dance: the draw from inside the shirt was too fast for the eye, so that the forward and outward motion of the blade as the hand unfolded seemed slow-motion by comparison, and lethal because it was so graceful and unhurried, like a ritual performed many times over. Guzmán could not have watched this movement closely or he would have quit right then and there.
The boy whimpered, coming up again with his bottle, but he was no longer in the fight.
Wolfie sensed all of this and grinned, moving in closer, for Guzmán’s step had straightened. The big man, until now as quick as Wolfie, was moving slowly, his legs stiffening; in a moment he would lose his nerve and freeze—and then, Moon thought, your only chance is to make your move or run before you freeze. Moon watched the pale unshaven face with distaste for what now must happen, but without pity.
Wolfie had not yet made a pass, though he had feinted once in play and laughed when his foe leaped back; the intense happy grin on Wolfie’s face parted his beard. That was the terrifying thing. Moon knew now what Wolfie had known from the beginning: that the outcome had never been in question, not even when there had been two against him. It was the big man’s sudden awareness, not of Wolfie’s awesome skill but of his still more awesome and implacable assurance, that had shaken his nerve beyond repair.
“Villains!”
Well, Moon thought, did I say that? He turned his head. Quarrier stood there in the door leading to the latrine, the near-naked body of the small Indian girl in his arms and on his face the ultimate outrage of Jehovah. Quarrier, mouth open, glared at the shambles of the room in disbelief: the knife fighters and broken bottles, the cringing boy, the torpid Moon.
Wolfie had halted in mid-stride to stare at Quarrier. Moon yelled a warning and struggled to his feet. In the same second Wolfie ducked so low that his fingertips grazed the floor, and came out and up again, knife erect. Guzmán tried too late to stop his lunge; as he fell, he rolled sideways with a grunt, casting away his knife, and when he struck the floor, yanked his knees up to his stomach and his arms up to his face: “Misericordia!”
Wolfie stared at him, his own knife shivering; then he whirled and rushed at Quarrier, shoving the knife point at his face. “You stinkin bitch! Didn’t I tell you keep your nose out? Did I or didn’t I? You spoiled it, you gone and spoiled it.” He actually stamped his foot. “Jesus!” he shouted. And he drove his knife so hard into the table that the wood split.
Sensing that Wolfie had lost interest in him, Guzmán scrambled for his weapon, then leaped to his feet in fighting posture, bounding and circling and bellowing with rage. In
terror of his father’s ferocity Fausto screeched, “Papá, Papá!” But Guzmán had the wit not to catch Wolfie’s eye, addressing himself instead to Quarrier.
“Hah, evangélico! Hah, estúpido!” And he pointed his knife at the girl. Quarrier tried clumsily to pull her skirt down—she was naked underneath—but since the cloth was bunched against his waist, he failed. He lowered her feet to the ground and the skirt fell. “Hah,” Guzmán cried again, smiting his palm to his forehead, “evangélico! Evangélico fock Indio gurl!”
“Yeah, how about that?” Wolfie murmured. “How about that?”
“No,” Moon said, “he didn’t do that.” He remembered how the missionary had stared down the girl’s dress. “Don’t be stupid, Wolf.”
“Stupid!” Wolfie grunted, nodding his head. “And this to the guy that only just saved his life.” He slumped angrily into a chair.
The Indian girl had come around. She sat alone against the wall under a yellow bulb, as if in wait for someone to come and tell her where she must go. Hands pressed like fig leaves to her crotch, she stared dully at the men, uncomprehending. With her lipstick and earrings gone, she was no more than a child.
Quarrier stood at the table. The girl had been sick on his sleeve and he smelled bad. He said to Moon, “Do you realize what these evil brutes have done? Do you care? I don’t know what to say to you—”
“Don’t say nothin then,” Wolfie told him. He shouted suddenly at Guzmán, “You want us to fly tomorrow, prick? Because if you do, you better get our papers set.”
Guzmán, once he had understood, roared angrily in acquiescence. He drove the Indian girl out the door into the dawn and his son after her, fetching the latter a slap across the head. “Son of a cow,” he bawled, “go home to your poor mother, Doña Dolores, and tell her that her husband, El Comandante Don Rufino Guzmán, has set out on his journey to the casa!”
Quarrier spread his arms in a gesture toward the room which, with the shutters closed, had become dense with smoke, and stank of sweat and spilled cheap beer and breathing. “How did I get myself in such a place …” He shook his head.
Moon took his bottle of ayahuasca and moved toward the stairs. “I told you, friend,” he said, “you’re a born loser.”
“Ain’t we all,” snarled Wolfie, “ain’t we all.”
6
IT HAD BEEN THE CONFRONTATION WITH THE PADRE, HE DECIDED, that had set in motion that series of grotesque events. And though the episodes had been the fault of Guzmán and Wolfie, the man who had upset him most was Lewis Moon. She’s got nice tits, wouldn’t you say: Aow, how that phrase still twisted him! Moon had faced him with his own perfidy, his longing for another man’s wife, and even worse, a sinful lust for women in general, including the poor little Indian believer. He could not excuse this on the grounds that Hazel had been cold to him, for to his astonishment her growing terror of this place, her disapproval of his every action, had been accompanied by wild, sobbing desire which had shocked him mightily, not only because it was so unlike her, but because of its greedy and insatiable nature. Perhaps he should send her home from this jungle that deranged her so. But she had no memory of her night fevers and refused to discuss what she considered his false concern for her. Except to accuse him of consorting with killers and harlots, she had scarcely said a word to him since they came to Madre de Dios. She had become so dogmatic since leaving home, so frightened! Yet even back in North Dakota, it had been difficult to persuade her to learn a little Spanish, for wasn’t Spanish a Catholic language? Had Hazel been reared far away from the Protestant heartland of the Great Plains, she would have made a redoubtable Catholic or even Communist; it was the dogma that attracted her, the security of righteousness, for she felt no need to understand her faith.
Yours is the big girl, with black hair. How careless that had been, and yet how mortally insulting, not only to himself and to Hazel but to all women. What sort of man was this?
He had almost given up on Moon as a cold sinful killer, a man who thought and spoke, when he spoke at all, in short quiet starts of violence. And it was just after he had asked if attacking the Indians was going to pacify them, and Moon had said, No, but killing them is—and to think that, startled by such dreadful cynicism, he had almost laughed! He had to get hold of himself!—that Moon, blaspheming, seeking to corrupt, had nonetheless spoken to him with passion, and in warning. Why did moral judgment of this man seem beside the point; could it be that Moon was fatally damned, beyond redemption? He had never heard of such a thing.
You’re a devil—a true devil! To try to corrupt—
If I can corrupt your faith, it smells already to high heaven, right? Moon had leaned forward, feeling drunkenly for his words. You look frightened, Mr. Quarrier. But you warned us a while ago that we would go to hell, so I am warning you—he laughed—that you are there already. You’re in the jungle now, up to your fat God-fearing ass, and in the jungle the game gets a little rougher.
You’re very drunk. Why, you’re not even making sense!
Perhaps I’m not. But I see that you understand me.
When Moon had gone off to bed, he and Wolfie were left staring at each other across the wreckage of the evening.
“Moon? So how do I know about Moon—I mean, he’s only my friend and I still don’t know’m!” Wolfie waved Quarrier away. “Like, don’t bug me, Reverend. You don’t get to know guys like Moon, for Christ sake, they don’t stand still long enough. You either swing with’m or you don’t, that’s all.”
But in a little while, more quietly, Wolfie began to talk again. “I don’t know why I even tolerate this madman, you know it?” He shook his head. “There’s this kind of very way-out cat—like you run inta him all over the world, and each time he looks different and each time he disappears, but always I know I’m goin to run inta him again, because the guy is on the road, he’s always on the road, and he’s got nine lives and nine names and nine faces. Only this one, this Moon, he’s different. I run inta him in Israel, and since then we been to Cuba and all over. Like in some way which I am too stupid to figure it out, he’s beautiful, see, and also he’s mean as catshit. They don’t come no meaner than Lewis Moon, and you never know when he’s goin to be mean or when he’s goin to be beautiful. He always cons you; sometimes I think—in his mind, understand?—there ain’t no difference.”
Wolfie glanced up. “I mean, you seen how quiet he is? Well, that quiet sonofabitch is also the angriest sonofabitch I ever knew. He’d give you his last dime one second and break your neck the next, and you’d never know why he done either one.”
According to Wolfie, they had lost their American citizenship for fighting in the armies of foreign countries; their plane they had stolen in Cuba, and they had come with it to South America via Hispaniola, Barbados, the Windwards and Venezuela. Lacking visas, they stayed away from the big towns on the coast and worked the back country. In Cuba, Wolfie had taught Moon to fly; Wolfie was also a mechanic. They had banged down the continent to Tierra del Fuego, where they had made big money bombing out a rash of oil-well fires.
It was on the strength of this feat that Wolfie had painted on the fuselage Wolfie & Moon, Inc.—Small Wars & Demolition. In Paraguay they had operated two new bulldozers that no Paraguayan could run, and had torn up the landscape near Asunción more or less at will until the day when Wolfie was slapped in the face by a low branch of a huge tree; he had battered the giant to the ground, demolishing the new bulldozer in the process. He was freed from an ancient jail by Moon, who destroyed it with the remaining bulldozer—“I wake up and there he is, right next to me, yankin on the controls!”—but they were caught immediately. They were on the point of being shot, Wolfie was certain, when Moon handed over to the guards some river diamonds he had once picked up in Venezuela; they took off in their plane that night and crossed the border into Bolivia.
In Bolivia they had settled for a while, flying for the new revolutionary government, and then for the still newer revolutionaries who took over
in Santa Cruz de la Sierra. With the defeat of the latter, their luck ran out; in haste they had flown to Riberalta in the Beni, where their last money had gone for a tank of gas. That same day they had crossed the border.
“Moon’s been all over this lousy continent, you know, on foot, for Christ sake. Took him three years, and all he’s got to show for it is malaria.” Wolfie shook his head. “Like I says to him, Lewis, like what are you, some kind of a mas-o-chist or what? Like, there’re jag-you-ars here! Not to mention all them serpents, Lewis, and tarantulas and crocs and vampires and poison arrows. Whatta you got, I says to him, some kind of a hang-up about this place? I says, Gimme Frisco or the Village any time, that’s the Old Wolf’s kind of jungle!”
Wolfie looked restless; he needed to talk and was prepared to talk too much. Quarrier noticed how careful the man was to establish his expertise in regard to Moon—a kind of possessiveness, a proprietary interest, as if Moon were some easily recognized and very valuable phenomenon that others might try to steal.
“Oh, I don’t mean I ain’t heard things,” Wolfie confided. “Like, in Cuba, I ran inta some guy who knew a guy that said he done time with Moon, you know, in stir; if you wanna know what for, don’t ask me. And once I seen he had some kind of a union card, and it turns out he worked over in New York with them Mohawks or Mohicans or whatever the hell they are that work on the high girders in them new buildings. After that, he was in the merchant marine, and one year he jumped ship in Maracaibo. He got up in them rivers and got hold of a big haul of them river diamonds some way, and that was all the stake he needed. He bummed around this continent on foot—like one little knapsack. Even the handle of his razor is sawed-off; it fits inta a match box, for Christ sake!” Wolfie laughed. “He learned long ago to travel light, and he never give up the habit; he don’t own nothin and he don’t want to. Once I asked him what the hell he thought he was doin down here, and he told me he was huntin for wild Indians. He said there was horse Indians in Patagonia that fought with the goyims just like on the Plains, but they was all on reservations, and the Indians down there in Tierra del Fuego were all gone. The mountain Indians, he said, were nothin but tame diggers, and from what he heard about the jungle tribes they were nothins—little rats, like, sneakin around in swamps. Right about then, he got bad dysentery and malaria, so he grabbed a ship out of Callao, west for Hong Kong.”
At Play in the Fields of the Lord Page 7