This old man’s son, named James Mad Raven, after years of apathy and sullen silence, had performed the outlawed Sun Dance all alone. Leaning back at the end of a lariat run through his breast skin with a harness awl, he circled a dead tree by the trading post, a whiskey bottle in his hand. Then the skin tore and he fainted. At the request of the missionaries, he was seized and jailed, and he died in jail of the shock and pneumonia brought on by his ritual wounds. Lewis Moon had watched the Sun Dance of James Mad Raven, had seen him lying stunned beneath the sky in greasy dungarees and sateen cowboy shirt with fake pearl studs, and old black broken street shoes, without socks.
The old men had known something that their heirs would never know ever again. Because they were pleased by the boy’s interest, they talked in front of him for hours on end about the last great Councils of the Chis-Chis-Chash, as the Cheyennes called themselves, when Two Moons and Dull Knife had joined forces with Gall’s Uncapappas and the Oglallah Lakotas of Chief Crazy Horse against the troopers. Before the great victory at the Greasy Grass Creek, they had numbered fifteen hundred lodges, and the smoke of their fires had shrouded the blue sky of the high plains. That was the boy’s regret: the loss of this vast triumphant sight, the thousands of campfires and ponies galloping and colors and buffalo meat and smoky smells and wolf howls and wild yelling.
There were wild tribes in Paraguay and in Bolivia and on the rivers south of the Guianas, but he had never reached them. And once there had been wild horse Indians—the Araucanians and Tehuelches—in Patagonia, but he had arrived there a half-century too late; as in the case of the Plains tribes, the few thousand remnants had been penned up on reservations. He had wandered down to Tierra del Fuego and stared into the face of the last Yahgan left on earth.
The bright shimmer of the arrow, the lone naked figure howling at the sky—it had been years since he had grinned like that, with all his lungs and heart; he actually yipped in sheer delight. Now he had sensed something unnamable and always known, something glimpsed, hinted at, withheld by sun and wind, by the enormous sky …
“What are you, airsick? You got this awful look on your face, you’re makin noises!” Wolfie shrugged, and clasped his hands behind his head. “Anyway, Old Azusa knew that I meant business, see, like she grown wary. And I was gonna give up hope on her, and was kickin myself for gettin hung-up on a chick that was sexually disturbed, when one night we was sittin in this art film, eatin popcorn outa the same box, and she says, Did you find the prize yet? This popcorn got these little prizes, see. Well, like instantly I get this beautiful idea from this joke that I heard it once, but beautiful, the answer to a maiden’s prayer. As usual I had, you know, this erection, so quick as a mink I work a hole through the bottom of the box, with my fingers, I mean, and insert it, you know, all sweet and innocent, nestlin right up amongst these popcorns, dig? Then I whispers, No, Zoose, dear, I didn’t find it yet, I’ll race you. Well, Old Azusa digs right in—she’s still watchin this art film, see—and whammo! What the hell kind of corn d’you call this? she yells. It’s livin! That’s the prize, I says to her, that them popcorn people laid on you, like maybe it’s some nutty kind of a pet. Well, you know, man, that crazy chick—once she got hold of it she never let go for a week, and it was exactly nine months after this art film that we gave birt’ to this infint which we named it Dick …”
The lone man was still leaping in the clearing. Three more Indians ran forward as Moon banked around, but they did not raise their bows. Crossing again, he saw them struggling with the bowman, trying to drag him back into the forest. They succeeded, for a moment later the clearing was as empty as before. On the next pass he went into a dive, so low that he had to yank back on the stick to clear the trees again. This time, glancing back as he banked away, he saw the Indians, a band of thirty or more, appear at the edge of the clearing, running and gesticulating at one another; several men tossed their bows to the ground. When he passed again, they fell to their knees, staring straight up at him, and clasped their hands upon their breasts. He came in lower to make certain, the shadow of the plane like a black hammer on the clearing; when the shadow crossed them, they broke and scattered off into the forest.
Wolfie, who had reared up when the plane dived, missed what Moon had seen; he had heaved joyfully around and wrestled a bomb out of its nest, and by the time he turned back again and set to work removing the panel on his side window, he saw only the Niaruna’s final flight.
“Now you’re swingin, man,” he said. “Anyway, they ain’t nothin but a bunch of Jews.” Taking Moon’s silence for surprise, he laughed. “What are you, ignorant? This is the Lost Tribe of Israel, man, ain’t you heard that?” He hooted gleefully. “And now is their turn to get persecuted, just in case they forgot how it was back there in Tel Aviv.”
Moon laughed. “Put that stuff back,” he said.
“Don’t put me on now, Lewis.” Still struggling with the window, Wolfie gazed at him suspiciously. “Bombs away, man, if I can get this mother open long enough—some bombin plane, that’s all I gotta say. Why in Christ did we steal this for?” He paused a minute, wheezing. “Where you goin? Come on, man!”
Moon said, “I didn’t see you getting set, or I would have told you we didn’t need it.” He had swung wide of the village, and was headed back downriver.
“Didn’t see me? Like, man, I am seated next to you, man, in the adjoinin seat. What are you, far-sighted?” Wolfie returned the bombs to their crate; he was grunting angrily. “You woulda thought you woulda smelt me, at least, with this lousy jungle sweat I’m workin up. Every time I raise my arm, I knock myself out practically. This Christly jungle!” He swore and muttered for a while, but by the time he turned around again to stare balefully out across the jungle, his voice had lowered and turned cold.
“Look,” he said, “you better answer me. I’m sick of clownin, Lewis, you’re gonna push me too far. I ain’t noticed you hesitated to get blood on your hands when the price was right, so come on, explaina me, what is it? You dig Indians but not spades, is that right? And them Cubans, which is half-spic and half-spade and half-Indian too, from what I hear—you don’t mind bombin them.” He heaved around. “But Indians, never. Them little brown nudes down there that are prolly cannibals and I don’t know what else, no dice, not them!”
Wolfie was panting. When Moon remained silent, he looked confused. “Jesus! So just don’t push me too far,” he said. “Oh yeah, where was I? So I want you to explain to me.”
“It sounds like you’re explaining something to me,” Moon said.
Wolfie nodded. “You’re kind of a smart-ass sometimes, you know that, Lewis? I was just rememberin last night, the way you told me I was kind of stupid sometimes. You don’t even think you hafta bother explainin nothin, because Old Wolfie is stupid and ignorant, right? A kind of a clown you keep around for kicks. You think all you gotta do is say, So Wolf, forget it. Well, a lot of people would say that Lewis Moon is a cold-hearted communistical murderin sonofabitch, you know that, don’t you? A bum. That you never been off the road in your life and wouldn’t know how to make a honest buck, so you kill for money. A lot of people would say that, Lewis.”
“A lot of people would,” Moon agreed.
“God, you’re just so sweet and cool, now ain’t you? Christ!” Wolfie drove his fist so hard against the side of the plane that the fuselage quaked. “I had enough of this! How in hell did I get tied up with a cat like you in the first place, that’s what I wanna know. Well, listen, let me tell you somethin, college boy, who was it taught you to fly? You ain’t so smart as you think, when you got to learn your livin from me. And another thing, before I hooked up with you I wasn’t nobody’s sidekick, everybody else was my sidekick, it was Wolfie-and-his-friends wherever I went, and what I wanna know is, what did you do for a patsy before I come along? You have some kind of a congenital idiot, or what?”
“Let’s see now. There was Kublai Cahn, he got shot down in the Negev. Or was that you? With those rabbi beards,
” Moon said softly, and smiled at Wolfie, “it’s hard to tell you Jews apart.”
Wolfie’s knife was out so fast that Moon raised his eyebrows, impressed. He shifted his head minutely, for the tip of the blade was against his throat, under his chin; it had broken the skin, and he felt a warm trickle slide down to his collar.
“I had enough, Moon, like I told you.” Wolfie’s voice was thick and quiet. “When you get to Madre, you better put down nice and easy.”
Staring straight ahead, Moon considered his situation. He had about eighteen minutes before he would drop in for a landing, and that was probably not sufficient time for Wolfie to cool off. Very gradually he eased off course.
“Straighten out. South-southwest 183 degrees.”
So … Moon shrugged and grinned, and the grin spread quickly across his face; he knew he must not laugh, but he could not help himself. Already his body shook, and then his mouth fell open with the laugh and the knife cut him again.
“Don’t laugh,” Wolfie said. “Because I ain’t laughin and I ain’t kiddin.”
Then the pain overtook Moon and he stopped. The whole front of his shirt was damp with blood.
Wolfie said coldly, “You’re a fuckin maniac, you know that?”
Moon held his head as still as possible. In the near distance he could see Madre de Dios, the smoke of the lumber mill and the hot glaze on the tin roofs.
After a while he said, “So you’re going to stick me.”
“When we get in. I don’t want you bleedin all over my aircraft.” He forced Moon’s head back slowly on the knife tip. “There ain’t much I’d put past you, but Jew-baitin! It’s okay for a Jew to be a anti-Semite, but not no goyim bastard like you.”
Moon glanced at him quickly; he caught the faint humorous flicker before Wolfie could suppress it. “Not that that’s the only reason,” Wolfie snarled.
“Did you see that guy shoot an arrow at the plane?” Moon considered knocking Wolfie’s arm away and throwing the plane into a roll. But though he had little to lose by this maneuver, he had nothing at all to gain; Wolfie would kill him with the first reflex. Then he heard Wolfie’s voice again, and from its tone he knew that he had won.
“That’s a reason not to bomb? Are you outa your mind, Moon? You really mean you’d cop out on our only chance because some lunatic of a Indian is nutty enough to shoot an arrow at us?”
And though this was exactly what Moon did mean, he now turned his head and gazed coldly at his partner. He was sorry that he had pleaded, however obliquely, and now that he had gained an edge, the knife point at his chin infuriated him.
“Don’t try to understand anything,” he said. “Just put that knife back and shut up.” And he thought with a wild icy glee, Now you’ve done it. Now you’ve done it.
Wolfie forced his head back once again, drawing new blood. “C’mon, set the plane down. This can’t wait.”
“Suppose I don’t.”
“I’ll give it to you here. I can fly this thing too, remember?”
Moon jammed the stick forward and tipped the plane into a dive. Before they gained speed he yelled, “If we still have wings when I pull her out, you drop that knife out the side window, okay, kid?” And gritting his teeth against the pressure in his chest he sent the plane howling down at the green chaos, the treetops spinning and the brown river leaping upward and out to the side—an orange slough, white birds like giant flowers, green—hauling back again, eyes shut, and the pain of terror like hot wire in his chest—he had cut it too close—then a rush of leaves, the nose of the plane against the sky: Wolfie’s livid face intent on him, teeth bared, Wolfie bracing himself with his feet, keeping the knife neatly in place with his left hand while with his right he hauled instinctively at his own wheel; in a moment he would try to kill Moon and take over the dual controls. But on the rise, the plane snapping and shuddering like a kite, Moon rolled it violently to the right, knocking Wolfie back, and plunged again, at the river this time, pulling out of the dive a few yards above the water, to roar along beneath high branches, so that for a moment of horror it seemed as if they had entered a tunnel of swarming green; then he broke for the sky again, climbing steadily at an angle so steep that Wolfie, seeing that a stall was imminent, did not make his move.
Wolfie tried to shout, and when he found he could not speak, removed the knife from his companion’s throat and tapped a small metal plate on the controls, the manufacturer’s plate that read, THIS AIRCRAFT NOT CERTIFIED FOR ACROBATICS. Then the colors of oblivion whirled about their heads, and when they came out again Wolfie did not raise the knife. He was shaking his head sadly; the rage that had filled the tiny cabin shrank to an injured muttering. He had trouble clearing his throat. “You wanna commit suicide is fine by me, only just swing past Madre first, and let the Old Wolf bail out.” He reached back and stroked the parachute behind the crate. “I ain’t like you. I ain’t mad at life, Moon. I ain’t got no lousy death wish.” As he spoke he toyed with the side window, but his hand shook so that he was helpless. He did not seem to notice that Moon had leveled off and was flying normally. “This knife always brought me luck,” he said. “I had it made up special one time, down in Mexico.”
“Keep it,” Moon said. His heart was pounding so that he felt sick, and his legs, like two plastic tubes of water, were all but useless on the pedals.
On the airstrip at Madre de Dios they sat stunned in the plane for several minutes, unable to move. The people gathered around the plane at a little distance, the barefoot men, the barefoot women, the dogs and children, all of them remorseless in their curiosity. “Do not feed the lunatics,” Wolfie said. Although neither of them thought this very funny, they began to laugh loudly and violently, until the tears poured down their cheeks. Not yet able to face each other, they sat there shoulder to shoulder in the stifling heat of the small cabin. The bystanders withdrew a little, and they laughed a little harder; then, as suddenly as they had begun, they stopped laughing and crawled out of the plane. In silence they refilled the empty tanks by siphoning gas from the drums on the rickety platform, then locked the cabin, and in the haze of the dead sun, staggered off toward the town. The people, who had sighed and poked one another at the sight of Moon’s bloody throat, fell into line behind them.
Moon searched for a way to make amends. Because he was still angry about the knife, he started by saying sourly, “So you think I’m an anti-Semite, huh?”
“Nah, not really,” Wolfie said. “You’re anti-everything. But I’m an anti-goy, confirmed, for life. Everybody knocks the Jews, but it’s hard to find a Jewish lunatic.”
Moon grinned, but Wolfie’s own smile was dispirited. He walked stiffly, in a kind of shock, and his face was sad. For the first time that Moon could remember, his partner did not feel like talking, and as his own head began to clear, he realized that Wolfie’s terror in the plane had been fed less by fear of death than by bewilderment at Moon’s contempt for both their lives, by the threat of a totally meaningless end. When Wolfie had recovered from his shock, from his fatigue and hangover as well as from the experience of the morning, he would deeply resent what had been done to him and especially the careless way in which Moon had told him that he could keep his knife. Eventually he would doubt that he had ever seriously intended to kill Moon, and that Moon had known this all along and had humiliated him anyway. Then he would question his own courage and find some excuse to prove it, and the only proof would be the death of Moon.
Even this one, Moon concluded, glancing at the violent man beside him. Even this one must be handled like a baby.
His mind strayed back to the strange sights of the morning; he wanted to think about what he had seen and why it had so excited and unsettled him. To Quarrier, who stared at his bloody shirt from the salon doorway, he refused conversation, saying enigmatically, “Nice country,” and continuing upstairs.
Wolfie lay down on his bed without taking off his boots and fell asleep, a surprised expression on his face, mouth slightly open,
and the handle of his knife protruding like an iron nose between the buttons of his twisted shirt. Moon sank down slowly on the edge of the other bed and contemplated the round face and the roistering beard, the inseparable earring and dark glasses and beret like grotesque toys, the knife made specially down there in Mexico. In all the time that he had known this man he had never seen that knife before when it was not in use, and the fact that Wolfie had gone to sleep without sliding its sheath beneath his arm was the bleakest evidence of his defeat and new dependence.
He reached across and removed Wolfie’s beret. Wolfie’s hand flicked toward the knife, stopped, settled back upon his stomach. He sighed like a sleeping child. Moon nodded in regret. From now on, in some way, he was responsible for this human being; the partnership was over. And though he knew that this new relationship could have come about at any time in their common past, he was sorry that it had happened. Since he himself would refuse responsibility for this man—for any man—he and Wolfie had better part company, and the sooner the better. He made the decision without turmoil; he had made it before with other men and with twenty years of women. But the decision did not spare him sadness. A fine old kind of friendship had been killed, and a fine old freedom. How often in life, it seemed to him, he had come to this place before.
At Play in the Fields of the Lord Page 9