“Leslie! Stop it!”
Andy held a handkerchief to her face, and as she came close Moon could see that she was feverish. Her skin was soft and flushed, and her eyes blurred, and she was not steady on her feet; nevertheless, she was looking him straight in the face.
“Andy, keep away! Go back to bed!” Huben exclaimed. “Do you want to give them flu?”
Moon said, “So you’re sure it’s flu?” Quarrier nodded.
“Eat? Kin-wee? Presents?”
“Leslie, don’t! It’s Lewis Moon.”
A cricket whistled. Turning his back on them, Moon went off into the forest.
22
ON THE EVENING OF HER ENCOUNTER AT THE RIVER, ANDY HAD spoken to Quarrier in the same flat voice: “I think it was Lewis Moon.”
Quarrier had jumped to his feet. “Why, that’s impossible,” he said. He picked up a stone and hurled it at a silk-cotton tree; insanely, it bounced straight back at him, making him skip clumsily out of the way. “No! Why, even Moon wouldn’t run around naked like that, barefoot.” He trembled with outrage. “And anyway, Moon is dead!”
And now Andy said, “It’s Lewis Moon,” in that same odd noncommittal voice. And Moon went off into the trees without a word, before Huben could react.
“How?… What do you … How? In the name of Christ—” Huben’s passion, when it came, astonished Quarrier—“how could you let me make a fool of myself, talking to Satan in Jesus’ name … How could you?” And to Andy: “You were looking at his nakedness, and you knew he was a white man!” He whirled around again, but Moon was gone, and this set him howling at the looming faceless wall of the still jungle. “How dare you! How dare you stand there and flaunt your filthy sinful nakedness in front of Christian women!” He rushed at the forest in a frenzy, became entangled in the vines and fell. “Moon!” he screeched. “You’re leading these people to damnation! You will suffer, Lewis Moon! The torments of the damned!”
“Hee, hee! You hear that, Moon?” Hazel, laughing in the doorway, shook her fist at the jungle wall, then collapsed backward to a clatter of fallen pots.
At Quarrier’s glance, Andy said, “No, I didn’t tell him.” She went to her husband, who scrambled to his feet; he shook her so violently that when he released her suddenly, she crumpled to the ground.
“How could you!” he gasped. “How could you look—” He stared at both of them in hatred, then turned his stricken face at the mute forest. “We’ve lost them,” he muttered. “We’ve …”
“Leslie—”
“We’ve lost them! Don’t you understand that, Quarrier, you stupid oaf!”
Andy said, “Why is a white man’s nakedness too filthy and sinful to look upon, when a red man’s nakedness is not?” She was still seated on the ground.
“Go back to your bed!” Huben shouted. “It’s the intent! His intent was sinful, it was mocking, he made fools of us!”
“Make a fool of us, will you!” Hazel shrilled. “Take that!” She smote the open air with her prized fly swatter. “And that! And that!”
“It’s more serious than that,” Quarrier said. “He’s leading the tribe against us.”
“He wouldn’t let them kill us!” Huben sneered. He glanced uneasily at his wife but did not help her to her feet, as if this would acknowledge that he had laid violent hands upon her. He was beside himself; in another moment, Quarrier thought, he is going to weep or wring his hands. “But … a devil like that!” Huben burst out again. “I’m not going to take any chances, I’ll notify Guzmán! Wait till he hears about this outlaw threatening us! Why, he’ll have soldiers here so fast—” He broke off and trotted toward the radio shed.
“Leslie, listen, you can’t do that!”
But Huben only raved and choked and raved again. He insisted that the Lord’s work would never be done among the Niaruna as long as Satan had his demon there corrupting them. Quarrier shouted angrily that neither could the Lord’s work be done if the Niaruna were all dead.
“Better dead than to live in sin!” cried Huben, livid. The words hung in the air between them.
There, thought Quarrier, it’s out.
Huben was fiddling feverishly with the radio set, his muddy toothbrush stuck behind his ear. Startled himself by what he had said, he added quickly, “What’s the alternative? Do we run away with our tails between our legs? You ought to know Leslie Huben better than that!”
As Huben’s voice railed at the transmitter, Quarrier turned away and went back into the yard. “How do you feel?” he said to Andy, helping her up.
“I don’t feel,” Andy smiled. “I’m not feeling these days.”
“So you didn’t tell Leslie about the business at the river?”
Andy glanced at him as if his question were insane; she did not answer. Instead she said, “You weren’t very happy about his nakedness either, Martin. You were accusing, too. And Leslie has more cause to be upset than you have.” She eyed him carefully. “After all, he is my husband.” His face reddened; he was shocked by a new hardness in her, he felt betrayed by her hostility. “I talked to you because I thought you were a man,” she said. “Leslie is a boy.”
Because her bathrobe was drawn tight, he stared at the firm shifting of her hips as she walked back to the hut; he despaired of his peeping, but he no longer struggled to control himself. Since knowing that Moon had seen her naked—oh Lord, touched her—he himself could scarcely think of her any other way. His spiritual love had been ousted unceremoniously by a lust so brutal that he despised himself, despised his thick red body and its thick red needs; he thought with envy of the self-flagellation said to be practiced by the Opposition. He could taste Andy Huben, he could smell her—her mere proximity made him twitch. He was enslaved by the pretty body in boy’s blue jeans, knew every crease and swelling of it when it moved or bent. Once, squeezing past her at the stove, he had scarcely restrained his fingertips from brushing across her hips. Hastening off, hand tingling, he was grateful to the Lord for the strength that had restrained him; yet he did not dare to glance back, for fear that the radiation of his hateful lust had given him away. The whole situation was ludicrous, but every time he tried to laugh he would weep and tear his hair.
HUBEN’S message was transmitted to Guzmán, and the next morning word came back: El Comandante would be delayed for a few days, but would arrive on the Espíritu with a punitive expedition before the moon was new.
Leslie was chastened by Guzmán’s phrase, but he could not bring himself to consult with Quarrier about what to do. On the third day he radioed Madre de Dios that the mission could handle the situation and that no expedition would be necessary. This decision restored to him his brisk bearing and the bold crooked smile of the buccaneer. “We’re going to fight Moon, mister!” he declared. “We’re going to win this big one for the Lord!” And he laughed a two-note laugh of triumph, big and booming—“Huh-ho, boy!”—and shook his handsome head; this challenge was just his meat.
Leslie’s idea was that they would take the women out to Remate and come back with four more soldiers. Even Moon, he said, would not be so cold-blooded as to risk his Niaruna against firearms. But the next day Guzmán’s answer, mentioning both the savage raid on Remate de Males and the bloodthirsty murder of the Tiro family on the river, advised them that El Comandante could no longer sit idle while his people were being slaughtered by savages under the influence of international adventurers; the expedition would arrive in a few days.
At night they listened to the insects, the moths and lantern flies and locusts which clacked and fluttered at the light. The insects nagged at Quarrier’s nerves—what drove them to seek the light like that, what made them flail themselves to death in pointless struggle and bewilderment and pain? One kind of locust made hideous small sounds when its wings burned, then fell to earth and crawled in circles around the lantern.
Quarrier was desperate to warn Moon of what was coming, but there had been no sign of Indians since their last appearance, and he had no idea h
ow to reach their village. The atmosphere at the mission—even Hazel was aware of the hopelessness of their alternatives—was silent and hostile, with discord seeping in all directions. Hazel was the only one who spoke at all, offering dark little fragments from the bitter tumult of her mind.
“The Ambassadors of the Lord,” she snorted. Or, “He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it. Matthew 10:39.” Or, “We are enjoying the profits of a business deal we entered into with the Lord. We have thrilled to see our new brown friends grow so rapidly in Jesus …”
“Please, Hazel,” Quarrier said. “You must help us pray for guidance.”
“Let not your heart be troubled!” Hazel shouted. She added quietly and sadly, “Neither let it be afraid.”
“That’s it, Hazel,” Leslie said. “Let us speak the Holy Scriptures with respect.”
“John 14:27,” Hazel said. “Please pass the Ajax Flavor-Sealed Canned Tuna that He hath sent us in His wisdom and His mercy.”
ON the third day they heard a motor on the river; Guzmán’s invasion had begun. Toward noon a flatboat came, with eight armed men; they did not put their carbines down until they collided with the bank, and they held the flatboat hard aground by running their pandemoniacal old motor full speed ahead, the thick mud churning.
All eight shouted tempestuously above the smoke and din. “Hah, evangélicos! Where are the salvajes? We saw no sign!”
They were not soldiers but rivermen, delivering the shipment of barbed wire. They were barefoot and mustachioed, lean grinning brigands; they shared a mangy wild-eyed boldness, like a dog pack, and a furtive wild-eyed fear, not only of the savages but of these protestantes. Fortified by cane alcohol and by the news of the Tiro massacre, they were anxious to shoot Niaruna and take women.
“Hah, evangélicos! You do not have the women here? Where are the women? Let us speak with them! See! We have presents!” The halfbreeds held up beads and liquor, like pilgrims bearing alms.
But when they saw that there would be no sport, they jeered and cursed among themselves, pricking their hands as they dumped their cargo on the bank. One, grinning, held up his twin bleeding palms: “Estigma!” Departing, they shouted innocent obscenities to console one another, and fired their carbines at the descending sky.
THAT afternoon, unable to sit still, Quarrier took one of the boats upriver; it relieved him so to break out of their dungeon that at first he felt unafraid. But the small river soon became a creek, dark and tangled where the jungle swarmed across it; the outboard went aground on shoals of mud. Sure suddenly that he was being watched, he crouched there in a bursting silence, half blinded by his sweat, then fought the boat into the clear and fled downriver. The next day he set out on foot, seeking the Niaruna trail; a few yards past the gift rack, where the remnants of the dead snake oozed and stank, all signs of man gave out entirely. He pushed farther, unwilling to go back and at the same time wondering what he would do if he actually found a trail.
His mind refused to concentrate; though he was no more than a quarter-mile from the station, he was soon lost. He touched a tree, dismayed anew by these dark twisted amphitheaters, the hanging ropes, the quaking rot beneath his feet that breathed its reek with every step. He was a hundred feet below the leaves and flowers, a soft blind denizen of caves. He stumbled around in small half-circles. A strange explosive pop made him lunge with fright; it was only a small manakin snapping its wings. The bird sat perched in silhouette, in a long lonely shaft of sallow light.
In the dark tunnels of the rain forest the dim light was greenish. Strange shapes caught at his feet, and creepers scraped him; putrescent smells choked his nostrils with the density of sprayed liquid. He fell to his knees on the rank ground and began to pray, but instantly jumped up again. He had wandered into a cathedral of Satan where all prayer was abomination, a place without a sky, a stench of death, vast somber naves and clerestories, the lost cries of savage birds—he whooped and called, but no voice answered.
The jungle pinned him in. Hadn’t he heard that even an Indian careless enough not to mark his departure from a trail might lose himself forever in this forest? It was growing dark. His best course was to remain where he was until the others missed him, and came out and called. But he was not a woodsman, and he was terrified of the jungle creatures; standing there, he turned his head every few seconds in response to sounds—the chewing of insects, a twig fallen from above, the mindless peep of distant tree frogs. He was so taut that at a small noise behind him he jumped sideways and backward, tripped and fell. Expecting the leap of a jaguar or the big probing head of an anaconda, he was astonished to see two Indians, one on each side of a huge pale tree. In the dim light, they were little more than shadows. They seemed to wait for him; he was surrounded.
“Welcome,” he begged; he could not rise. “Welcome!”
Fear shook him without mercy. He tried to pray, but no prayer came.
One Indian raised his hand, palm outward. “Redskins all day all day be good. Fire Place no go.”
“I was lost,” Quarrier said. “I came out to look for you.”
“How much medicine can you spare? My people are sick.” Moon came closer. He was wearing ragged pants. “I gave them flu.” He glanced at his companion, who looked astonished at Kisu-Mu’s conversation with the white man. He shrugged and continued, “They’re very sick. The girl Pindi, and now Boronai, and some of the children; they’re all going to get it.”
“Flu!” Quarrier said. “She didn’t come that close to you!”
With his spear Moon pierced a leaf. “So how much medicine do you have?”
“Enough. I’ll have to ask Huben.”
“Very good. Let’s do it.” Moon started away, followed by the Indian; they headed in the last direction Quarrier would have thought to go.
He plunged along behind them. “Listen,” he called. “Huben’s pretty upset.”
“I know,” Moon said.
“I don’t blame him.” Quarrier was rushing to keep up; he felt irritable and out of breath. “I’d be upset too. You have no business—”
“I didn’t think you’d recognize me, Quarrier.”
“I don’t mean that time. Andy told me about what you did, down by the river.”
Moon stopped short. “She spotted me too, then?” He laughed angrily, shaking his head. “Some Indian!”
“She said you didn’t molest her.”
“No,” Moon snapped. “I didn’t molest her. I came just close enough to get her goddamn flu from her. You had no business letting her walk around—”
“We didn’t know,” Quarrier said. “She brought it back from Madre de Dios.”
When they reached the clearing, Quarrier told Moon to wait where he was. “If Huben sees you,” he said, “he might get upset again.”
Moon said, “I’m wearing pants—what more does he want?”
Huben was sitting at the table in the cooking shed, staring at his radio. The instrument stared back at him, like a boxed oracle. More and more these days, Leslie lost himself in world news and the latest tunes. “I have a special message,” the radio addressed Leslie, “for all you friends out there—” But when Leslie heard what Quarrier had to say, he turned it off. “So he’s come to us on his knees, has he? I knew it!” He slapped his hands down on his thighs and rose. “All right, where is he?”
“He’s not on his knees, Leslie.”
“Where is he?” Huben said. They went outside.
At the clearing edge the missionary confronted Moon. Hands in the hip pockets of his shorts, he rocked back and forth on his heels.
“Big Chief Crazy Horse,” Huben said at last. “Now tell us exactly what you want.”
“You know what I want.”
“First you come here and tell us we have eight days to get out, and now you have the nerve to come back here and ask us for our medicine.” Huben laughed aloud while the others watched him. Moon said nothing. Finally Huben stopped his laughter, sighing a little, as if it was all too
much for him. “And what do we get in return?” he said.
“You brought that medicine for the Indians, right? Well, now they need it.”
“How badly?” Huben said. “Badly enough so that unless they get it, they’ll be too weak to drive us out? Do you really expect us to help you undo the Lord’s work with this tribe, to aid and abet the work of Satan?” He shook his head. “My goodness!”
“In other words,” Moon said calmly, “you’re willing to let the whole tribe die. In Jesus’ name, of course.”
Huben yelped in disbelief. “In Jesus’ name! How filthy those words are in the foul mouth of the blasphemer!” The missionary’s teeth were bared, and he was panting. “A devil! An obscene drunkard and fornicator, a sinner too shameless to cover up his shame”—he glanced with hatred at Moon’s body—“who would come here naked before the eyes of good Christian women! And now you have the nerve to tell me that it is the servants of the Lord Almighty who are willing to let these people die!”
Moon was gazing at the huge rolls of barbed wire. “That’s right,” he said. “Let’s have that medicine.”
“I will not!” Huben shouted. “As God is my witness, I will not! Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?”
Moon turned to Quarrier. “You go along with that?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t mean the Scriptures,” Moon said irritably. “I mean about the medicine.”
Quarrier said, “Leslie, we cannot save these souls for Christ if they are dead.”
“I tell you, I will not put into the hands of this painted demon the healing provided in all His mercy by our Lord! Can’t you see that? Are you too stupid even to see that?” Huben shook both fists in Quarrier’s face.
“What he wishes to do now is a Christian act.”
At Play in the Fields of the Lord Page 31