At Play in the Fields of the Lord

  “In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world (John 16:33).

  “Mart died like a Christian martyr, and we shall certainly miss him here in the Lord’s work. But it thrills us to talk to Hazel Quarrier, whose faith is stronger than ever, and who is actually cheerful in the face of all her tragedies. Hazel intends to go back in with us, to continue as her husband would have wanted, although when this will be I wouldn’t know. The Comandante says that the outlaw may have survived the attack, and may still be at large among the Niaruna, and until he is captured and the Niaruna subdued and civilized, no further mission work will be permitted. So it looks like the Niaruna are to be punished, the good ones as well as the evil.

  “Well, that’s the story on these savages whom we have come to love in Jesus in spite of the way that they have treated us. The Undersigned certainly hopes there is some better news for the next epistle: one of these days our folks will win these souls and claim the victory which is in our Lord Jesus Christ!

  “To Jesus be the Glory.

  “LES HUBEN”

  When he had read out his own name, Huben glanced at his wife. “What do you think of it?” he said defensively. Instead of praising God for his escape, she kept looking at him in a way that made him nervous, as if she were trying to see right through his head. When she did not take the letter, he dropped it in her lap. “It should bring in all kinds of new contributions to the work, the way I look at it.”

  When Andy got up, the letter fell to the floor. But she had scarcely reached the corridor when Hazel’s door opened; the woman lay in wait for her these days like one of the huge trapdoor spiders that she and Billy had watched so often at the mission. Andy stopped short, out of breath.

  “Andy, will you take a cup of tea with me? I get so lonely, you know, without Martin, on these long tropical afternoons—but there, I’m sure you have your own troubles …”

  She trailed Hazel into her room.

  “Oh Andy, you’re so sweet, dear—”

  “Hazel, why don’t you go home? There’s nothing for you here.”

  “Carrying the Word of God among the Niaruna—you call that nothing? Carrying on the work of that brave man whose widow I am proud to be!” Hazel Quarrier giggled. “Why, I’d call that something, Andy dear, yes, I surely, surely would. Each of us must serve our Lord according to our abilities …”

  Andy thought, Why, she’s nothing but a huge crafty child: she’s playing a game. Her pity was tainted with revulsion, and during the days since they left the mission, since Hazel became her responsibility, the revulsion had come to dominate. Hazel no longer troubled to keep herself very clean. Her hair looked dead, and on the thin pallor of her face her mustache, heretofore scarcely apparent, had become prominent. Andy had not noticed this new appearance until she glimpsed the creature hid behind it; Hazel’s candor, so appealing in the past, had become a front for unctuous wheedling and overblown statements of faith. Even worse, Hazel seemed aware that she was not fooling Andy for a moment; she exploited the loss of her husband and son in compelling Andy to hear out her deceits.

  But now she spoke honestly. In a harsh voice, staring at the wall, she said, “Isn’t it strange? Martin and I were both such ugly people, and that is why we found each other, yet we never really forgave the ugliness in the other. And do you know why? Because we were both lecherous, and our love was a sin in the eyes of God!” Hazel silenced her with an imperious wave. “Do you know something else? Our families were ugly too, and lecherous—both parents, on both sides! And from way back!” This was the big, sporty, roadhouse Hazel who had no business in a mission; she laughed so heartily that Andy laughed as well, delighted with her.

  And then Hazel said, in a clear quiet voice, “Out of all that lechery and ugliness—generations of it, I mean—how was it possible to bring something so beautiful as my little baby into the world? How was that possible?” She gazed at Andy. “Do you know something? The only time in my whole life I didn’t hate this big lecherous ugly body of mine was when I remembered that somewhere inside, it must be clean and beautiful, or my beautiful Billy could not have come from it.”

  In this moment a great peace touched Hazel’s face. Andy, undone, was seeking a way to speak, to embrace her and help her. Perhaps the hatred of one’s God-given body was the ultimate sin—but Hazel’s face shrank back to slyness, and the cute voice of the past days said, “My sin was the sin of pride, of course, and may our Father in Heaven forgive me! He alone made my beautiful little Billy, and caused him to walk this cruel earth so that one glorious day his death might be, as Leslie says, the instrument of the savages’ salvation!” With a sweet smile of goodness and infinite mercy, Hazel folded her hands primly in her lap, and bent her head. “Our Father which art in heaven—”

  “Hazel!”

  “Excuse me, honey?” Hazel’s tone was lightly reproving.

  “I was just going to say … you have every right to be proud of Billy—”

  “You were very jealous of me,” Hazel said, “weren’t you, honey? I mean, being barren before God?” When Andy only stared at her, she said, “Of course, you are pretty and I am not. And you were content that Martin lusted after you, I suppose?”

  “Hazel, why do you say such things!”

  “A little while ago, my dear, you laughed at me when I told you how lecherous Martin was, how ugly. Oh, it’s easy enough to laugh at my poor Martin, goodness knows!” She humph-ed and sniffed elaborately, to express injury, at the same time biting her lips to restrain her mirth.

  “I wasn’t laughing at anything, I never thought about his looks,” Andy exclaimed. She stood up, fighting for breath again. “I liked Martin. I admired him as a man. He never once did or said anything suggestive or improper.” She longed to say, I admired him most because he had lost his faith and did nothing, even under duress, to weaken mine.

  “You deny being aware that he lusted after you?”

  “Why do you use that awful expression? Martin liked me, and I am glad he did. We could talk together, for goodness’ sake!”

  “Talk together!” Hazel snorted. Then she smiled again, with infinite understanding, lowering her voice. “Perhaps you and Leslie have had … well, difficulties. I mean, you know. You can speak honestly to me—” And she actually shifted herself closer to Andy, chin out, cheek half turned against the blow, adopting a resigned expression which proclaimed the strength to bear all manner of revelation, never mind how terrible or disgusting. Andy was furious that once again she had made herself a party to the woman’s games. She said, “I don’t like you, Hazel. I just don’t like you, not when you’re like this.”

  The big woman cringed grotesquely, bringing her hands up toward her face. “No, of course, how could anyone like me? I’m so upset these days, so strange. Oh, you needn’t spare me, I know how strangely I’ve been acting!”

  “You’re strange, all right, but not the way you pretend to be.” Andy went to the door. “You’ve found a good excuse for spitting up all that unhappiness of yours, and then afterwards you can say, ‘I didn’t know what I was doing.’ ” Hazel cringed again. Andy said, “I’m sorry, Hazel. I wish you would go home. There’s not going to be any Niaruna work, not for a long time, maybe never. But if you do stay here, I’m not going along with your game any more, do you hear me? Do you hear me, Hazel? Maybe Leslie will play along, but I won’t.”

  “Your husband is a good God-fearing man,” Hazel accused her. “You don’t honor Leslie Huben as you should!”

  “Perhaps I don’t,” Andy said. She went out the door. She had never felt so cold and tough, so deeply angry. She felt cheated.

  “What if I tell him?” Hazel shrieked after her, so loudly that her voice carried easily to the adjoining room. “What if I tell Leslie what you said?”

  Leslie already knows it, Andy thought. He could never admit it, but he knows it.

  “You said you’d have tea with me! You promised!”

  She went down
stairs, with no idea of destination. A fan, the slapping of bare feet, the musings of a hen beneath the courtyard window, a red flower … The man Wolfie was in the bar, and when she passed it he came running, glass in hand. But on reaching Andy he seemed to forget what he wanted, and she saw that he had nothing to say. She was shocked by his appearance. He looked like a newspaper picture of some sort of addict.

  “I just wanted to say ‘Hi,’ ” he said. “You know? I ain’t seen an American in a long, long time.”

  “Hi,” she said.

  “You don’t look so good,” he said, and grinned uneasily. “Your name’s Andy, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I mean, a chick like you don’t never drink, I know. But you look like you could use a drink.”

  She gazed at him without expression, watching him withdraw in expectation of the rebuff. But the tart remark which had started automatically to her tongue perished unspoken. Tiredly she said, “Not here.” A great inertia had come over her; she could not go back upstairs to those small rooms.

  “Oh yeah. Leslie, huh?” He looked at her, astonished. “Well,” he said, “well, well, well.” Still uncertain of himself, of her intent, he said, “Well, look … I mean, can I buy you a drink?”

  “Where?” she said, and started walking.

  He hastened along at her side, poking his head around in front of her each time he spoke; his fingers rose to her elbow, fell away, came back again and stayed.

  “There’s only one other place—La Concepción. La Concepción ain’t so nice, Andy, only we could sit outside. They got tables outside, see?” He hurried eagerly along beside her.

  They went down the mud street, among the hogs and vultures. “Did you see him?” he said to her.

  “Who?”

  “Lewis. Lewis Moon.”

  “Lewis Moon.”

  “What I mean is, did you see him?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I saw him.”

  “How about that?” Wolfie said. “How about that?” Shyly he said, “I don’t guess he sent no message, did he? Lewis didn’t send no message?”

  “No.”

  “I mean, like, Tell the Old Wolf hello. Somethin like that. He didn’t send no message like that, huh?”

  Andy stopped and faced him in the street. She wanted to cry, not for Wolfie, but for both of them, for the way of the world. She reached out and touched his arm. “No,” she said, “no message. There wasn’t time for messages.”

  Wolfie licked his lips. “I been waitin a long time,” he said. “He shoulda sent a message.” He looked into her face and sighed. “So,” he said gently, “so’s how’s it goin with you, kid?”

  On the way down the street to La Concepción, they held hands. “Tell me about him,” she said at the table. She ran her fingers over the cold glass, which she had not touched.

  “That’s what everybody says t’me: Tell me about him. How come they all wanna know about Lewis Moon?” Wolfie laughed tiredly and she smiled. “You know what I finely figured out?” he said. “I figured out that a guy like Moon, everybody wants to change him. When they say, Tell me about him, they really mean, Tell me how I can get at him, get with him. Like, he’s too far out there somewhere, we want him back where we can keep an eye on him, make him care about somethin. Christ!” he cried out sudddenly. “I wish I was a talker. I finely figured this out, see. I could tell you …”

  “Go ahead. You’re doing just fine.”

  “Well, Moon is kind of like a threat. For most guys this guy is a kind of a threat. He don’t seem to care about nothin nobody else cares about, not even his own life hardly; so as long as a guy like that’s around, the things you thought were so important, they begin to look kind of stupid.”

  “And women?”

  “That’s part of it too. Women can’t stand a loner, you know that—they feel like insulted. So long as a guy like this is on the loose, the whole game they been taught to play looks kind of stupid too. But they all think they got the secret—about makin him care, I mean. They feel sorry for him, see. They want to mother him. What this guy needs, they yell, is LOVE! So they fall in love with him. But what it really is, they want to ball him. I mean … you know, excuse me, have sexual intercourse with him, because that way they got his number, at least for a few minutes.” He looked up at her, out of breath, and laughed. “This is hard work for me. Only I finely figured this thing out.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” Andy said, “as far as you go.”

  “That ain’t very far, huh?” Wolfie shrugged. “Maybe not.” He turned away from her. “You goin to drink that drink, or what?” He signaled a woman on the porch and pointed to his glass. Andy picked up hers and drank it off all at once, holding her breath.

  “That’s not what I mean,” she said. She felt a little odd. “I meant, do you think he … Lewis Moon … I mean, a man like that, do you think he … Did he ever care?”

  Wolfie gazed at her, nodding his head lugubriously. “Don’t try it, kid,” he said, “don’t try it. That Moon’ll kill you. That is the hardest sonofabitch I ever seen. Like him and me, we were buddies, for Christ sake. I saved his life more’n one time. And what does he do? He splits without a word, just like that”—Wolfie snapped his fingers—“takin the aircraft which half of it is mine. And after all this time, what does he do? Does he send a message? No, he don’t.”

  Wolfie took his new drink off the tray and drank it even before the woman had left the table. She observed his distress with sympathy and glared balefully at his companion. Other women had come out onto the porch to look at Andy; they stood there barefoot in gingham dresses, their arms folded on their breasts.

  “Rosita,” Wolfie muttered, waving the near one off. “Go on, vamos. Cut. I mean it. C’mon. All you whores beat it. Don’t look at her like that.”

  “Do they understand English?” Andy laughed; she felt shocked that she was not shocked.

  “Only dirty words,” Wolfie said. “Just like my Spanish. Some conversation! I done near two years in this stinkin hole and all I can say in polite company is huevos fritos!” He shook his head. “So stay away from him. He didn’t even send a message.”

  “Why did you wait here for him all this time?”

  “Wait for’m! Who waited for’m?” Wolfie glared at her. “Well, whaddya want I should go and do, run out on him? How’d I know what happened to him, he coulda come back any day!” He shifted unhappily in his seat, and when he spoke again his voice was quiet. “Well, I’ll tell ya. At first, see, I thought it was only he had flipped out on that ayahuasca, that he never meant to cut out on me. Lewis cut out on you, Wolf?—I says to myself—don’t be ree-dicalous! Did you or didn’t you save his life, many’s and many’s the time? No, Wolf, I says, you gotta wait for him, because Lewis never cut out on you, and you ain’t gonna cut out on Lewis, I says. Very good. So then I kept rememberin them diamonds he left on my pillow—he had these wild diamonds he picked up somewheres, up on the rivers—and I says, well, listen, man, like maybe Lewis didn’t exactly cut out on you, man, don’t be ree-dicalous, only, well, them diamonds, man, I mean, layin diamonds on you, man—well, it looked like the old payoff for the aircraft, ree-dicalous or no ree-dicalous.” He raised his head. “And after a while it didn’t look so ree-dicalous no more.”

  “But why didn’t you leave when you realized that?”

  “How could I leave? I tried it only lately. I got so frantic I tried to give diamonds to Guzmán for my passport and a ticket out, but he only laughed into my face; this Guzmán is so smart he’s stupid. He thought all diamonds looked like diamonds, see, he thought Moon’s diamonds were some nutty kind of rocks. Wolf, I says finely, you are castin wild diamonds before swine. So the diamonds wind up one by one”—he waved his hand—“at La Concepción.” Wolfie sighed mightily. “Leavin this jungle is like tryin to leave quicksand—you fight like hell, but you don’t go no place.”

  “Do you know what he said that night he left here? He said, If there is a
jungle there, go through it, and come out on the other side.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, if he thinks Wolfie’s goin to plow through I don’t know how many million miles of that stuff”—he waved violently toward the jungle across the river—“he better think again, the stupid bastard.” Wolfie laughed drunkenly, affectionately, sprawling back a little in his chair. “That’s Moon, all right. One night we was down to our last thirty-four pesos, and Lewis says, That thirty-four pesos, Wolf, that’s good for seventeen aguardientes each, right? Right, I says. Well, my capacity for tonight is seventeen, he says. And I says, Seventeen of them things? In one night? I says, Listen, Lewis, like even if we survive it is the end of our financial solvency. And Lewis says, You want to go somewheres in life, then you got to commit yourself, you got to burn all the bridges behind you, man.”

  “And how do you feel about him now?”

  Wolfie stopped laughing. “I’m gonna tell you somethin, I don’t care how this sounds to you, kid, but I admired that maniac, I really did. I don’t know why, but I loved him. Believe me, I ain’t a faggot or nothin, only I really loved him, more than I loved even my Ex.”

  “Your ex-wife?”

  “Yeah. While I was sittin around here goin nuts, I wrote Azusa I was lonely for her and Dick the Infint, which this is our kid, and was sick and tired of the road and wanted to come on home. Where was she livin at, I asked her. And she wrote me back she was now my Ex and had changed Dick’s name to Richard!” Wolfie shook his head, incredulous. “Richard, my Ex wrote me, jams all his toys down toilets; Richard, writes my Ex, is very hard on toilets.” He grunted bitterly. “Richard. I mean, imagine it. But now,” he said, “me and Moon ain’t friends no more. If Lewis Moon come walkin down this street, I’d kill him.”