The American politician leading the delegation says he has testimony that those who join the church can never leave it and must cut all ties with relatives outside of it. If people really associate with the church of their own free will, then why the secrecy and remote location? Why the hostility to scrutiny from outsiders? What about the parents who have left the church and say their children are still being held captive? These are some of the questions that a visit will settle. Has the commune committed some crime, crossed some legal line, or contravened some rule? The delegation lists contempt of court and some shady financial dealings back in the U.S. The delegation must see the place to ascertain whether the inhabitants, who are still U.S. citizens though far away, remain there voluntarily. And there is the unresolved issue of the subpoena for the three children and the preacher’s dismissal of a court order. The delegation and the president’s office debate this for a while:
—Your police force, bound by the courts, needs to enforce these court orders.
—But our police force has its hands full chasing dangerous criminals. The commune leader is no danger to society.
—Not to your society maybe, but what about his thousand followers?
—They’re American citizens.
—In that case, a conscientious American is well within his rights to make a citizen’s arrest of this man.
—Have you traveled all this way to make a citizen’s arrest?
—No, the delegation’s mission is a fact-finding one.
The delegation tours the botanical gardens. They admire the gigantism of Rafflesia, and right on cue, a flower as big as a hand basin and sealed for twenty years opens its vault and emits the strongest and most nose-pinching rotten-meat smell south of the equator, to the delight of the delegation, who reach for cameras and handkerchiefs to cover their noses and mouths. The gardeners tell them that this is a lucky omen for their visit and that they should make a wish. Many people pause and think of something that they dearly want to happen. If only this sealed flower were the commune waiting to open its gates and reveal all to the delegation. At the zoo, they stop and wait for the sloth to stop imitating a carbuncle on a tree trunk, but to no avail, and an anteater snorkeling a viand of ants earns applause and shudders from the delegation. Many nibble at blood pudding but draw the line at souse—pig feet in a clear lime stew. And mutton in a bun proves too stringy for some. The biggest hit is the country’s red rum, for its sweetness and the traces of molasses. The iced tea, brewed from a root, tastes too medicinal; the shavings of sugared coconut, fried with a touch of spice, too distinctive. Most of the delegation tries to limbo but give up about waist-level and marvel at the locals scraping the floor with their backs to make it under the stick.
The delegation walks along Market Street outside the covered area with its cavernous alleys and lopsided shops of dubious commercial brokerage. They interview vendors and shoppers alike, and each time they ask about the commune, they are painted the same picture of efficiency and beneficence. But then the handpicked guides of the delegation confuse a right turn with a left, and by the time they get their bearings, it is too late. The delegation is halfway along a row of diminutive shops and overstocked stalls belonging to the government opposition, and the same question to shoppers and vendors results in talk about commune men moving around the city in packs, wielding Kalashnikovs and big sticks and buying favors from high-ranking ministers, and in one instance armed commune guards look on as a woman from the commune whips a grown man in public for going about his humble business in ways of which the commune does not approve.
—The government hires them to break up our demonstrations.
—They run people out of business and out of town if you cross them.
An old woman lifts the blouse to show the delegation the scars on her back from a beating she claims she received at the hands of commune guards at the central office, who accused her of stealing. Like judge, jury, and executioner, they just decided she must be guilty, and they beat her black and blue and threw her into the street half-naked. No police would take her case, she says, when they heard from her mouth that the commune had beaten her up like that.
Others say that pork-knockers embark on diamond prospecting trips into the jungle and emerge months later from the bush with precious stones and with stories of a commune where people disappear.
—They walk into the place and are never seen again, and the ovens smell of burning flesh.
—The children have no parents, and the adults behave as if they were born full grown and self-sufficient and never needed suckling.
A man with long dreadlocks and a crooked staff (to correct a limp he says he got from a snakebitten ankle) describes how he worked as a guide in the jungle interior for a U.S. government agent who told him that the commune is a mind-control experiment.
—How else can so many Americans commandeer so much of our land and do whatever they please without any inquiry from our government?
—They’re there to mount an attack on the neighboring country because they occupy disputed territory.
—They have enough guns and chemicals to defeat our army and take over our country.
The delegation makes copious notes. Their time in the country has been managed so well that, to this point, they have encountered only citizens held under the government’s mesmeric influence. But the picture of the commune painted by these eyewitness accounts, even if partially hearsay, adds to the troublesome one the delegation left their own land with and crossed the sea to find corroborative evidence about. Nearly a thousand lives are at stake, many hundreds of them children.
—I don’t want to give my name. My child is held captive at the commune. I made the mistake of walking into their office and asking about their commune after they gave me food and money to get me through a bad patch I was going through. I took the boat ride with my child, and we got there, and after a day or so, no more, I realized my big mistake. The food was scarce and the children trained to punish each other for the slightest mistakes, and the adults worked from sunup to sundown and the kids were put to work before and after school, and the one sermon I heard made me believe I was in hell and waiting to get to heaven. I wanted to take the next boat out of there. But they would not let me leave. They surrounded me and asked what made me such a weak woman and a bad mother for a child who needed guidance. They said I had to stay. That faith in the commune was a process. They carried long sticks, and I could see I was next in line for a beating. But I kept saying I wanted to leave. Then they told me: Okay, you can go, but your child must stay. They insisted I was free to leave and they made my child tell me to my face that I could go but she wanted to stay there. I was chased out of the place with big sticks, and my poor girl had to stay behind. No one in charge in this city wants to hear my story. Thank you for coming all this way to do something about it. My girl’s name is Rose. She’s seven now, this was taken a little after her sixth birthday.
She hands them a passport-sized color photo of a little girl with a broad toothless smile. Other mothers and fathers press similar pictures of their missing children into the hands of the delegation. The government officials, with help from the police, chase off the surprise petitioners and herd the delegation back onto the official path to the isolated privacy of the luxury hotel. The next thing the delegation knows, the time arrives for their long-anticipated visit to the People’s Commune.
A twin-propeller Cessna chartered from an ex–military officer turned entrepreneur waits for them at the capital’s private airport. The same flight operator organizes tours of the country’s interior for dignitaries from abroad who invariably want to fly over the rain forest and land near a waterfall for lunch, meet a local indigenous tribe, buy a few arts and crafts, and fly back in time for a sumptuous dinner at the best hotel in the city.
As a result of the eyewitness accounts at the market and the pictorial evidence of several children in captivity, the leader of the delegation requests a last-minute meeting with the
country’s president. Granted a mere fifteen minutes, the delegation leader presents a number of questions. First, does the delegation require security for their visit to the commune? The president replies that he thinks it would be overkill to send a peaceful delegation under armed guard to a Christian camp. The leader of the delegation agrees that their intention is peaceful, a fact-finding mission, and perhaps they have nothing to worry about. Second, can the president guarantee the delegation’s safety? And third, what about the rescue of those captive children? The president replies in his most legal voice, tinged with thinly disguised irritation, that because the delegation’s visit is not from government to government, and because both delegation and commune are guests of his country and welcome guests so long as both obey the laws of the land, the answer has to be no, his government cannot guarantee the safety of the delegation even if, in his government’s humble estimation, no such security is necessary. The president explains away the use of guns by the commune guards this way: One, commune guards have security clearance to bear arms; two, they carry guns as a result of their remote location frequented by wildlife, bandits, and pork-knockers; and three, with no proper police presence in the area to summon in an emergency, it makes sense for them to police themselves. The president even tries to make light of the situation with an anecdote. He says the only rumor he ever hears is about some drunkard watch repairman whose sole complaint against the commune is that the guards fired on him and destroyed his precious timepieces. The president can hardly contain himself as he chuckles and concludes by saying that by firing on the watch repairman’s merchandise of various and sundry timepieces, it is clear that the commune guards were not trying to kill the watch repairman but trying to kill time.
—These aren’t dangerous people. They’re holy crusaders—idiosyncratic mavericks, I grant you, but not sinister in any way.
The president reduces his chortle to a smile and looks at his watch as the more persistent members of the delegation wave their petitions from concerned parents. He gives up on getting rid of the delegation and orders tea and tells his secretary to cancel his next meeting. The president asks if the parents of the children will be satisfied with evidence that their young offspring are happy at the commune. If the minors elect to remain at the commune, will the relatives accept their decision? The relatives, between accepting finger food off trays pushed at them by young men dressed from head to toe in white, feel it fair for an adult to choose to do as he pleases but not a good thing to leave such a choice up to an impressionable child, given the very high probability of coercion. The president, who prefers white sugar to brown, provides both kinds for his guests. He directs a waiter to add spoon after spoon to his cup of tea, and he speculates aloud if it would not be wiser for the concerned relatives to act at that future time when such a change of heart occurs rather than cause a fracas now.
The relatives respectfully inform the president that he has way too much regard for the preacher, who masks his bad actions with the holy cloth. The president sets aside his very sweet tea and sits back in his high chair. Surely the president must have heard about the preacher’s claims to cure the crippled and the diseased, feats of chicanery performed with the collusion of trusted followers to lure new and gullible followers into the organization. The highest office in the land says that the man he knows as the commune’s leader never claimed such powers on this soil and never performed any miracle healings to win gullible converts. The president encourages the relatives to eat and drink as much as they wish, but he has another appointment, and will they kindly excuse him. The relatives of the delegation protest that the preacher preys on the poor and the weak and collects the pensions of the old and vulnerable. The president pauses at the door and says that sounds a lot like taxation, but the relatives do not find his quip the slightest bit funny.
The moment the president returns to his office, he makes a private call to the leader of the commune and asks how he is keeping. The preacher hears the smirk in the way the president says his name, but nevertheless replies that his feet are bothering him, fluid retention, and he cannot sleep well, worrying about the delegation coming to disturb the peace of his community. The president wants to know if he should worry about the safety of this high-level delegation or whether he can trust his old friend to handle the matter. The preacher says he would be insulted by the insinuation that he and his members were prone to violence had it not come from the trusted leader of the country where he and his members were honored to be guests, no, the president should not worry, and no again to any notion of violence on the part of his members against the delegation. He hopes the delegation is not coming all this way to stir things up and disrupt his peaceful community. Has the president heard of any violence within the community? No. Has any indigenous Indian in the area complained about any disturbance at the community or received any violent threat from members of the community? No.
—Well, actually, now that you mention it, there is the matter of the pig farm polluting the river, and there are rumors of commune guards forming some sort of firing squad and shooting down the forest.
The preacher ignores this altogether and asks the president to imagine what it would take to drive the commune to violence against anyone, what type of threat and what manner of provocation.
—I don’t know. What would it take?
—A lot, Mr. President, a whole lot.
The president wishes the reverend good luck with the visit and promises him all the help of the highest office in the land to see that the delegation departs the capital expeditiously upon its return from the commune. The preacher thanks him, but the call ends without the usual cordial goodbye. The president pelts his chewed cigar across the room. The preacher pounces on a guard and pounds him with his fist.
Trina wishes to secure permission from the preacher to rehabilitate the prefect struck dumb by the tarantula. The prefect’s parents express gratitude for the help with their daughter from someone gifted with insects and animals and people. Trina asks the preacher for the scorpion boy, so called by the other children, to be included in her therapeutic plan to cure him of wetting his bed and to stop his hair loss, both maladies inflicted upon him by the insect sermon, as the commune has come to call it. The preacher asks her what she has in mind. She says she will not stray off commune property, but she has a plan to reintroduce the girl and the boy to the rewarding side of life in the forest, lessons she has learned herself from the commune’s schools.
She wants her mother to be her assistant. The preacher says Trina understands him more than most; she cues into his ideals better than most. And if she plays her cards right, one day she can lead lost souls, just as he does. With that, Trina and her mother walk to the river with Ryan, his head shaved, included in the therapeutic group of Rose and the two prefects. Kevin guards them. As they pass Adam’s cage, Trina, Rose, and Ryan run their hands along the bars and touch Adam’s hands poking through. Adam’s chain is removed from his ankle to allow the torn skin to heal. The group marches toward the pig farm, and Trina looks back at Adam several times, and each time he waves at her with a flick of the back of his hand, and Trina thinks he might be ushering her away from this place. She waves at him, copying his gesture of shooing flies from a surface.
The party turns right at the pig farm and eases along the trail that slopes down to the pier. Joyce and Trina try to remain calm and act casual and avoid each other’s eyes just in case seeing one or the other’s glee triggers some uncontrollable reaction that might make Kevin suspicious. Joyce stops in the path and tells the children to look closely at a broad leaf, and they bunch up close and peer at it, and the blemish on the leaf sprouts a head and legs and hops away and croaks at them. They hear more frogs than they can see. Guided by an expert Ryan, they shout at each other about their sightings: a caterpillar with bands of flesh and feet like waves coming into shore, a butterfly as big as a dinner plate mistaken for a large piece of bark on the ground until it flaps and lifts away from them,
a colony of bees formed in a black cloud around a newly hatched queen moving overhead in a promenade of kazoos.
The group meets Eric at the wharf. Soon Kevin and Eric wander a little away from the dock, engrossed in conversation. The children search for flat stones on the riverbank and skip them on the water to see who makes the most skips. Ryan enjoys this right away and counts for everyone. He asks where Kevin and Eric got to, and Joyce says they are sure to be nearby, spying on them. Ryan watches everyone’s attempt with a stone and counts the result aloud each time. Trina tells him that she can do her own counting, thank you, and she looks at the mute prefect for solidarity, but the prefect looks away. The five youngsters search for the best stones to skip, choosing and discarding one for another, and straightening from their search to watch each other taking turns skipping the flattest stones on the water.
Joyce divides her time between scanning the slope for signs of Kevin and Eric, watching the children, and looking up- and downriver for any traffic as she sits on the landing pier and swings her legs and her toes just skim the water. The mute prefect finds a particularly flat stone that fits into her hand as if molded by her palm. She aims at the river and swings her arm and sends the stone skidding on the surface, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight times. And that is how the prefect counts aloud and for herself and smiles. Everyone looks at her and she covers her mouth and they nod approvingly and she takes her hands off her mouth and smiles. They hear a hum and turn toward the water, wrinkled by a faint breeze, and they see this rainbow vessel tacking toward them with the captain and first mate waving. The children hold on to each other and on to Joyce and do everything in their power to keep calm and still rather than jump up and down and wave.
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