At Play in the Fields of the Lord

  Quarrier said, “Come back with me. I’ll testify on your behalf. I’ll tell the Comandante that you crashed by accident, that the tribe held you prisoner.”

  Moon shook his head. “This is the jungle, remember? By the time you gave your evidence, I’d be dead.” He got to his feet and walked outside. “I can’t go back. And besides, I made that promise.”

  “Yet keeping your promise, as you say yourself, will bring the whole army down upon the Niaruna.”

  “The Indians are too scattered to wipe out! And I can organize them for guerrilla war!” Moon waved his arms toward the forest. “We have a million square miles of jungle to retreat into!”

  “Fighting with the other tribes all the way?” Quarrier sighed. “And at the end, what hope for them?” He paused, then added coldly, “You haven’t helped these people as it is.”

  “So you think I’m beaten.”

  “Yes, I do. I don’t even think you’re safe among them any more.”

  “Misery loves company, eh, Quarrier?”

  “You can look at it that way if you like.”

  “Well, I think I’m beaten, too. But I’m still going to kill Guzmán.”

  “Because you promised?”

  “Because I feel like it.”

  MOON, running, stopped short in his tracks, caught by the sparkle of light and rain on the golden thatch of his village, by the clear ringing whistles of the birds, by the flower smell floating down from the high canopies, the pale gigantic trees—the painful beauty of the jungle daybreak. He was both hunted animal and hunter.

  The invisible plane was circling the mission; if they meant to follow up its raid, the soldiers must be on their way. He stationed himself at the foot of a tree in the downstream jungle; from this point he could cover the whole clearing. He checked the action of the revolver.

  Quarrier wandered out across the clearing; Moon called to him, and the missionary came and crouched with him behind the tree. Quarrier said, “What are you going to do?”

  “I’ll try to make it out through Niaruna territory and down to the rivers in Brazil. The Panoan tribes there are all right, or so I’ve heard. If I can make it to the Amazon, I’m in the clear.” When Quarrier started to speak again, Moon shook him off. “Forget it, man,” he said, “it’s Guzmán’s problem.”

  The airplane had stopped circling and was headed toward them. Against the sky from which the plane would come, a light breeze stirred the canopy of trees.

  Moon licked his lips. “If he comes in low and on a line,” he muttered, “into that sun, I’ll know this mother has been here before. I’ll know it’s Wolfie.” He shook his head. “The Old Wolf!” he grinned. “Sonofabitch! It’s been a long time since I really laughed!” Quarrier looked at him, bewildered, as if Moon were a madman. “When Wolfie’s finished,” Moon said, “go out and stand in the center of the clearing, where they can see you. If you’re with me when the soldiers come, you’re liable to get shot.” He looked at Quarrier. “That’s some mouth I left you with—I’m sorry.”

  His last words were lost in the roar of the plane, which broke the treetops, broke the sky wide-open; two dark eggs arched forward from its wing racks. Moon threw himself behind the trunk, dragging Quarrier down with him, and clapped his hands across his ears. But the roar of the plane diminished and no explosions followed, only the staggered vibration of the bombs striking the ground. One of the bombs plowed a small crater in the clearing; the other bounded down the bank and spun into the river. When no explosion came, he ran to the first bomb. He was dizzy and feverish, his mouth was dry; at the same time he felt indestructible. He hoisted it in his arms; his idea was to run with it to the river. But as he staggered forth, the plane came in on a second run. He dropped the bomb and fled toward the plane to get below the angle of its guns; behind him, the bare ground jumped and twitched, and the bullets thumped and caromed through the forest. When the plane had passed, he ran back to the trees.

  Wolfie roared down on the village twice again. Though the thatch danced on the roofs, the maloca and outlying huts drank up the bullets like great sponges; when the plane flew off toward the west, no visible damage had been done. Nevertheless, Wolfie’s aim was good: had there been Indians crouched inside, half might have been wiped out. Moon lay on the ground, no longer laughing. Quarrier had been shouting angrily from the start, “Oh you devils! Oh you murdering devils!”

  “Finish your hollering out there, where they can see you,” Moon said; he took Quarrier’s hand.

  Quarrier hesitated. “I don’t suppose you’d want a partner, would you?”

  Moon pretended that he had not understood. After a pause he said, “You tell Wolfie I sent regards, and tell him to go home. Tell him maybe I’ll see him again sometime, up in Barbados.”

  Quarrier nodded. “Good luck to you, Lewis.” He struggled to speak, then turned away. He crossed the clearing, hands slightly in front of him, like a child playing blind man’s buff. “Here I am!” he called in Spanish. Moon nodded; how trusting that was—that assumption that someone might care.

  “Here I am,” the missionary called again. “Don’t shoot.” With his tatters and great gory head and giant feet, he looked like some sort of mountebank. “Yoo hoo, mi comandante!” he called out for Moon’s benefit. “It’s me!” Turning in a circle, addressing the jungle like an audience, he waved and waddled, making fun of his own presence.

  An Indian appeared and disappeared again on the far side of the clearing. At first Moon did not recognize Yoyo, but then the Indian glided out into the open, and the sun fastened on his bright blue shorts and on the crucifix on his breast.

  Yoyo glanced back over his shoulder, seeming to listen, then ran forward to meet Quarrier, who revolved, still clowning. Moon never saw the machete until the missionary had fallen; the Indian’s arm rose and fell across Quarrier’s neck, over and over. By the time Moon got Yoyo in the sights of the revolver it was too late; he held his fire.

  Now Yoyo straightened. His breathing was audible across the clearing. He drew a pair of glasses from the pocket of his shorts, and snapping them in half, tossed them on Quarrier’s face. Then he turned his head again to listen. A flock of parakeets screeched down the walls of trees, and in their wake the jungle stirred, a murmur, a faint rumble.

  In Yoyo’s face fear was replacing rage, as if he had just awakened to his surroundings. His head turned slowly, like a cat’s; he studied the river bank, the maloca, the huts and the ragged jungle edge. When his eyes met Moon’s, he gave a start, and whined with surprise and pain. His body crouched, he glanced again over his shoulder in the direction of the oncoming Guzmán, then back at Moon, repeating this several times, faster and faster; then he scowled horribly and came for Moon, the blade extended.

  Moon set himself to kill him. But at the last moment, though he raised the revolver to show Yoyo he was armed, he did not fire.

  At the sight of the revolver the Tiro stopped; his face burst with hatred and, at the same time, with a remarkable expression of hurt feelings, as if Moon had misconstrued his actions. Again he whined, in wordless agony. Watching the bright beady eyes, the quick head and teeth, the febrile twitching, Moon was startled by so much hate, and his finger tightened on the trigger.

  “Drop the machete,” he said.

  The weapon fell. It must have come originally from the missions, for it had a cross carved in its haft.

  Yoyo seemed to decide that all was lost, that, being an Indian, his word would never be believed by Guzmán, even against that of the outlaw Moon. He glanced once again over his shoulder, then wrenched the chain and crucifix from his neck and hurled them violently to the ground. He ripped off the ragged shorts, threw them down in front of Moon and spat on them. He was trembling so that his skin danced. When Moon only stood there quietly and did not shoot, the Indian whined again in pure frustration. He still believed that Moon would shoot him, and when, a moment later, he sprang sideways and leaped for the cover of the bushes, making away into the forest on a
ll fours, he howled in frenzy from his hiding place. He was still uncertain of his triumph, or whether, in failing to take his life, the white man had not insulted him once again.

  Moon glanced about, then ran toward the body. From the forest came a muffled commotion; Guzmán and his men, abandoned by Yoyo, were struggling toward the light.

  Quarrier lay sprawled upon the earth as if he had fallen from the sky, and he gazed skyward as he bled to death. The whole side of his neck had been laid open; he was bleeding everywhere. When Moon crossed his line of sight, he spoke.

  “I’m dying, aren’t I?” He looked shy.

  “Yes,” Moon said.

  Quarrier raised his eyebrows, as if to try them out. When Moon lifted his head, a near smile came to his lips; he actually gave a bubbly cough of laughter. “Martin Quarrier, evangelist,” he said, “martyred by savages in the service of the Lord.” He looked pleadingly at Moon.

  “Yes,” Moon said, turning his head away.

  “No.” The missionary took Moon’s wrist in his big hand. “It was Yoyo, wasn’t it?” When Moon nodded, Quarrier stared at the sky, unblinking. He coughed again and muttered sadly, “All my life I wanted …” His voice trailed off, then said distinctly, “Didn’t you?” He tried to speak again, and died with his mouth wide open.

  “Listen,” Moon called after him; he actually shook him. “Listen to me!” He sat back on his heels in pain and shock. He was smeared with blood.

  The green wall stirred, about to burst. Moon ran back across the clearing.

  Guzmán called, “Uyuyu!” and then cursed.

  A ragged burst of rifle fire: the bullets sang across the clearing, piercing the empty huts. There came a solitary shot, then a loud curse, as if the gun had been discharged by accident; seconds later a squad of Quechuas, twenty or more, pushed and milled into the clearing. Another gun went off.

  If Aeore were here with three good men, Moon thought, no Green Indian would ever have reached the Tuaremi.

  Huge and pale, Guzmán plowed through his soldiers. He lined them up like a firing squad, and on command they poured successive volleys into the village. The soldiers were nervous, clumping awkwardly in their heavy boots, and talking so loudly that Guzmán could scarcely be heard.

  Guzmán came forward cautiously, almost on tiptoe, and overturned Quarrier’s body with his boot tip; his soldiers prodded at it with their gun butts. Moon lay in wait while Guzmán burned the village, while Guzmán sent his men into the plantations to hack down the Indian crops, while Guzmán howled for Yoyo. The Comandante appeared nervous about starting back to the Espíritu without a guide, despite the trail that had been made by twenty pairs of heavy boots. “Oye tú! Uyuyu!” Yoyo must be crouched near by, but not understanding how things worked, he had made himself a fugitive.

  Moon sighted Guzmán’s confused, brutal face with the revolver, but already he knew that he would not kill him. He lay back in the jungle gloom, waiting to see if they would bury Quarrier. In the sun’s glare, he was seeing spots; he felt dizzy, then cold, in the dark shadows. He was overcome by a sense of unreality: Is this me and who am I and where in hell am I going. Well … this was no time for malaria.

  They started away without burying the body, and Moon stood up and watched them go. But in a moment a soldier scurried back into the clearing. Squatting, he rifled the old, torn pants. Quarrier’s pocketknife turned in his hand, like a bit of fruit in the hand of a marmoset. The sun caught the wet rolling eye in the Quechua’s purple face, and Moon blotted out the addled eye with the sights of the revolver; filth could be wiped away so quickly, coldly, without emotion: cleanness through death.

  But again he did not fire. He watched the man strip off the missionary’s sneakers and tuck them into his bulky green pants, watched him probe the missionary’s mouth for gold and silver.

  The Quechua stood up again, and started after his companions. But then he stopped, as if awe-struck by the silence. He glanced at the body and started to run; then he stopped and came running back. Without troubling to remove the clip, he used his rifle butt as digging stick, chopping away at the soft ground in a crude paddling motion. As he worked he glanced fearfully after his fellows, who were calling to him. When his small Indian grave was dug, he rolled the large white body into it—or onto it, for the body still remained high above ground. Perplexed, then desperate, the man dug, kicked, scratched, flung dirt at Quarrier, but still the missionary lay there, mountainous.

  The soldier whimpered, scratched his groin, then drew the old sneakers from his pants. Kneeling, he returned them carefully to Quarrier’s pale feet. He had tied the laces and straightened up again when he caught sight of the solitary man at the edge of the clearing. His mouth made a black hole. He crossed himself, shouted for aid and ran; holding his rifle by the barrel, he dragged it behind him over the ground. As he disappeared into the undergrowth, the rifle’s trigger snagged and the weapon fired.

  Having no idea where the enemy lay, the soldier’s companions commenced firing at random, undeterred by the hoarse shoutings of their Comandante. Bullets flew in all directions. In the pause for reloading, the shattering scream of a man wounded rent the air.

  Guzmán’s voice boomed from the trees: “Ay, piloto! You are aquí?”

  Moon did not answer.

  “I es-spik you Ingliss,” yelled Comandante Guzmán. “You are prisoner to me!” Abandoning English, he yelled in Spanish, “Tell your savages to lay down their weapons! Tell them we will not harm them, even though they have sorely wounded one of my brave soldiers! But if you do not give yourself up, then we will fall upon them without mercy!”

  In the ringing silence, Moon’s harsh laugh resounded; it continued as Guzmán bellowed, as his men loosed a tremendous volley at their surroundings. Then came a loud thrashing all along the clearing edge; the soldiers were fanning out.

  Still whooping and coughing, Moon scrambled on all fours toward the river. Some soldiers had reached the river bank upstream; they glimpsed him as he skinned down along the bank. He plunged into the water, and the bullets sang over his head; a lucky shot made a thin splash a yard ahead of him. He ducked his head under, fighting his panic, and angled clumsily across the river, holding the revolver clear; the current helped him. He dropped the revolver into Boronai’s canoe and swam under it, to the other side; while the soldiers were lining up along the bank in their best firing-squad formation, he hauled it loose. Holding his breath against the corpse’s stench, he shoved the canoe toward the middle of the stream, swimming beside it. The dugout, heavy with rain water, was sluggish; bullets smacked into the wood. Already he was drifting clear; the canoe had picked up speed.

  “Come back!” El Comandante yelled. “You are surrounded!”

  Moon waved his hand, and the soldiers on the bank responded with another burst of fire. In the burned village, from the shroud of smoke, the Ugly One’s old dog howled.

  26

  “ANOTHER CHRISTIAN MARTYR!

  “Since my last epistle to Mission Fields, reporting on the work among the Niaruna, the Devil has inflicted a heavy defeat on the forces of God. Pray much for the soul of Martin Quarrier, slain by the savages; pray much for the soul of our young ambassador-in-Jesus, Billy Quarrier, deceased only a short span before his dad. And pray for His childless servant, Hazel Quarrier, in her time of awful sorrow.

  “He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it (Matt. 10:39).

  “Now, at the same time that we contacted the Niaruna, Satan also got to work, for as you know, Satan never sleeps but always fights the hardest just when it seems that the forces of the Lord are moving ahead to victory. Now Satan sent an emissary to another band of Niaruna, a North American soldier of fortune, a terrible sinner, dope fiend and drunkard. All the time we thought this man had crashed his airplane and died, he was working on the innocent minds of the Indians, going around naked like an Indian, actually encouraging them to remain forever in blackest sin and darkness! And during the absence of the Undersigned in Madre de D
ios this outlaw struck the first blow for Satan, sending four of his corrupted Indians among those at the mission. Unfortunately, Mart was too upstanding to suspect anything, but still and all he began to feel that the Niaruna were hostile to him; they were even afraid of him. Meanwhile the situation deteriorated. By the time I went in to check on things, our Niaruna were all naked again, which just goes to show you how bad it was!

  “Now double disaster struck: along about this time little Billy was taken sick and died. As the Lord giveth, so doth he take away, but we were very upset. Billy was promoted to Glory on the ninth day of last month, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. But I saw right off that the Niaruna liked little Billy a whole lot, and, as I said to Mart to comfort him, Maybe little Billy’s death is the Lord’s way of opening up this Niaruna work, and calling them to the communion of Jesus Christ! Of course Mart was too upset to understand how this could be, and maybe I ought to tell you that he was very nervous and upset right along after that, and so was Hazel—which didn’t make the Lord’s work any easier for the Undersigned and Andy. Then the black day came when the emissary of Satan actually told us we had to leave or they would kill us!

  “Well, a lot of worse things happened which I can’t even put down. The Lord led us to send the girls out; and then Mart Quarrier, against the advice of the Undersigned, decided to take Uyuyu and go to the Niaruna village and warn them that their devilish behavior was actually leading to an attack upon them by our local Comandante and the soldiers!

  “I was left alone to guard the station. When they didn’t appear again by the next day I knew there was trouble, and headed downriver to get help (and by the way, I want to thank all of my friends in Christ for that fine new outboard motor—it’s a beaut!). The Comandante was already on his way. Though I pleaded with him to show Christian mercy, Uyuyu, who had escaped, led him back to that village, and they drove away the Indians in a fierce fight, in which one of his own soldiers was killed, and also burned the village, which surely goes to show what happens to people who consort with Satan, just like Sodom and Gomorrah. But anyway, Uyuyu, who went ahead as scout, was taken prisoner or worse, and at the village the Comandante found the body of poor Mart Quarrier, killed savagely by savages.