At Play in the Fields of the Lord

  Moon toppled backward over the end of his own bed and blew a long sigh at the ceiling. Wolfie was sighing, too.

  “I’ve had a hard-on for three days now,” Wolfie said. “You think I ought to consult my physician?”

  And they lay there laughing for a long time, Wolfie hiccuping for joy, while the vultures circled in the dull gray sky beyond the window, crisscrossing the black crest of jungle, and the enormous moth on the ceiling gazed down upon them with the white eyes on its wings. And then Lewis Moon sat up again and brought both feet down hard on the floor between the beds.

  4

  ON THEIR WAY DOWNSTAIRS THEY WERE INTERCEPTED BY THE Comandante, who bought them a drink. Moon emptied his glass and banged it down on the table between himself and Guzmán, contemplating his host until the latter, caught by the sound in mid-pontification, withheld a frown, smiled that long smile that seemed to move straight back instead of moving upward, and asked Señor Wolfie if he and his … friend?… would not have another. Moon raised his eyebrows, shifting his gaze to a fourth man who had joined them at the table.

  “I would be happy to join you,” the priest said in English; he had come in late. He smiled, affecting innocence of the Comandante’s irritation, and bowed almost imperceptibly to Moon. He was a small spare figure with a shrewd frugal face and stiff white hair standing straight up on his head, and this evening, despite the heat, he wore his black robe and a crucifix on a long chain.

  More drinks came, and still more drinks, and the Comandante paused briefly in his discourse to display soiled photos of his forlorn fat wife, taken head on, at attention—Señora Dolores Estella Carmen María Cruz y Peralta Guzmán, he proclaimed—and of his son Fausto, whose head at this moment was just visible behind the bar. El Comandante did not dispense salaries to strangers.

  “The Indians, in my heart I love them, they are my brothers, but this great land must be made safe for progress …” Guzmán had already made his point obliquely, confidentially, demanding and eliciting an occasional “Sí, claro” from Moon and from the padre; swollen with drink, he was now prepared to start again. Even Wolfie, who had caught little or nothing of the address, sensed that they were in for a reprise. “Oh man,” he groaned, and rolled his eyes. Clearly, he felt that an interjection in another language could scarcely be taken amiss—or not, at least, by a drunken greaser. And it was true that in an access of self-hypnosis, El Comandante continued to speak with furrowed brow, his eyes shut tight in psychic pain; he seemed oblivious of them all.

  “Los indios, quiero decir, los salvajes bravos—”

  Wolfie whistled. “Even him payin for the drinks, it still ain’t worth it. I mean you boil down all this gas he’s blowin which I don’t even understand a word of it, and what he still wants is that we swing out there and blast the crap out of the redskins, right?”

  Moon nodded, and the padre’s smile flickered a moment, like a tic.

  “Jesus, why don’t he spit it out then?” Wolfie said. Then he yelled, “Get your ass out there, boys, and blow them little brown pricks to Kingdom Come!”

  The silence that followed caused all three to turn toward Guzmán. He had stopped talking some time before and was watching Wolfie with a hatred so huge and silent that it bathed the entire room in apprehension. The faces gathered swiftly in the windows.

  Wolfie nodded his head, impressed. “Look at them eyes,” he said. He kept on nodding. “Like he don’t understand a word I said and this jungle beast wants to massacre the poor old Wolf.” To Guzmán he said, “What are you, some kind of an anti—Seemite?” And he laughed into Guzmán’s face, in honest delight.

  Moon caught a glint in Wolfie’s eyes which, coupled with the cheerful tone, meant that his partner wished to fight. And Guzmán himself, who had also attained that plane of drunken perception on which all languages are understood, turned his gaze from Wolfie to Moon and, making no headway, to Padre Xantes; the priest lowered his eyes, though calmly.

  “Bueno,” said Guzmán ambiguously, and cleared his throat. The padre, chin on chest, nodded minutely.

  “No bread, no bombs,” Wolfie told the Comandante. “You got that, Duke? So let’s cut out, let’s go get laid.” Jumping to his feet, he clapped Guzmán on the shoulder; Guzmán’s hands dropped down below the table, and Moon’s own hand slid inside his shirt. “How about that, Stud? Chicas? Mujeres?” The hands appeared again, first Guzmán’s, then Lewis Moon’s, and were placed carefully on the table edge. Moon almost said, “He’s got a knife,” but watching Wolfie, he knew he did not have to.

  Guzmán decided to smile. The smile slid back along his jaw, more like a split. “Gurls,” he said. “Woomans.” He laughed: “Ha, ha, ha, ha.” It occurred to Moon that Guzmán was the only man he had ever heard who actually said “ha, ha,” when he laughed, heavily and separately like that: “Ha, ha, ha, ha.” While Guzmán laughed, he stared at Moon. “Indio,” he said. “Ha, ha, ha, ha.”

  Moon did not join them when they left. He sat quietly, facing the padre, and after a while the priest lifted his head and returned his gaze. “You think I am humiliated, do you not?” the padre said.

  “Why do you care what I think?”

  “You don’t answer my question.”

  “It’s not my problem, Padre.”

  “I am humiliated, of course. It is humiliating to have to sit here and listen to cold plans for taking life and know that one will not raise a hand to stop it.”

  “Why do you sit here then?” Moon said.

  “I was told to come. Our Comandante intends to break the national law, which forbids the killing of Indians except in self-defense. But as long as he compels the representative of the Church to give tacit agreement to what he is doing he can always spread any blame so thin that—”

  “Yes, I guessed as much. I asked a stupid question.”

  “The question you intended to ask, señor, is how a priest such as myself, willing to sit here and drink with villains, may call himself a priest. But is he then to turn his back on the other tribes who need his help, to abandon the work that can be done, to do nothing but creep about an empty church? For that is the alternative, should one contest the word of El Comandante. And so I must choose what seems to me the lesser of two sins, and pray for forgiveness in the eyes of the Lord.”

  The priest stood up. “I suggest,” he said, “that you and your colleague must do the same.” He bowed very slightly. “Buenas noches.”

  “Buenas noches, Padre.”

  Xantes hesitated.

  “What kind of men are you? Could I plead with you? No! And if it is not you, then it would be somebody else.”

  “That’s right. You’re not a stupid man, Padre.”

  “Quite true. I am the only man of—is it this word?–sensibility in the entire state of Oriente; that makes me somebody, no?” He paused. “And who are you, Mr. Moon? Are you anybody?”

  Moon looked at him; he had been taken by surprise. “Me?” he said. “Why, I am the great halfbreed of the world.” He paused and drank; the priest awaited him. Moon seized a fold of his own skin. “The color of modern man! In a few centuries everybody is going to look like Lewis Moon.” He burst out laughing.

  “You are not truly amused,” the padre told him coldly; Moon stopped smiling. “You did not answer my question—who are you, Mr. Moon? I did not ask what you were.” Xantes considered him a moment; they nodded at each other. “You are an educated man. In the times we have talked, I have found it entertaining. It is too bad we work against each other, no? In a stupid world?” He bowed.

  Moon rose drunkenly and returned the bow, lifting his glass, but the priest, in elegant distaste, paid him no heed. For all his drink, he was as ascetic and erect as he had been three hours before, though he had to shuffle now to keep his balance. Turning slowly at the door, he contemplated Moon for nearly a half-minute. “These Indians that you wish to kill …” A faint smile emerged on his face, and he nodded his head up and down, up and down. “Yet it appears that you are part
Indian yourself, señor?”

  Moon was silent.

  “How sad,” the padre sighed. “Does it not strike you as rather sad, señor?”

  Then he was gone. Moon sat down heavily. His ill humor was compounded by the appearance of Uyuyu, even though it was Uyuyu whom he awaited; the very sight of that red shirt annoyed him. The Indian must have lurked outside until Xantes departed, not wishing the priest to learn of his business with Moon. And since Moon did not feel guilty, Uyuyu’s guilt annoyed him further. According to Xantes, Uyuyu had come to Madre de Dios in search of an education so that the Indians of the Remate de Males region would be less easily cheated by the traders. He had sold his service to the priest, who taught him to read and write, and he became a fanatic Christian: within the year, Xantes had made him the mission teacher at Remate. But when his Catholic prayers for his people went unheeded, Uyuyu had switched to the Protestant prayers of Leslie Huben. He had also applied his education to the exploitation of the very people he had set out to defend, and was now so little at ease with himself that as he approached Moon’s table, his grin and grimace were not readily distinguishable. But he had brought it, a large wine bottle full of the thick brown fluid called ayahuasca, which he placed on the table, patted, and relinquished.

  “Uyuyu. Ésta muy fresca, Uyuyu, no?”

  “Muy fresca, señor—ayahuascero amigo mío.” The Indian backed out of the room. The distemper in his narrow face reminded Moon of James Mad Raven, one of the last full-bloods on the reservation. James Mad Raven had called the halfbreeds “white trash” because the halfbreeds, in recent years, had taken to calling James Mad Raven “nigger.”

  Up in Barbados lived a big brown nigger girl in a big plain dress with a round white collar. Moist-voiced and obscene, with a languorous warm tongue and a breath of candy, she had tried hard to evangelize him, wagging an earnest finger with one hand while with the other she explored his lap under the table.

  She was an Anglican, very devout. “Mahn, you got to know Jesus. And how you gone know Jesus if you wuh-shipin dat May-ry?” It did not occur to her that someone who was not Anglican might not be Catholic either. When he said nothing, she had mourned a little. “In de day, you see, it be all right, but in de night, mahn …” She sniffed painfully. “De single life, doss de way it go.” This big sweet girl took him home with her to a world of chickens and poinsettias. Now what tam you mus go, sweet honey. Coss when you go, you woan com bock. In the morning, her little boy clung to him all the way to the bus back to the port, calling out joyfully to children who jeered him, “See mahn deah? He fath-ah to me!”

  Wistaria, that was her name. Wistaria dancing naked in her cottage. Wistaria, who cried when he went away, was the only one he remembered.

  De single life, doss de way it go.

  IN the bar the atmosphere had changed; a dim figure had moved into the corner of Moon’s consciousness. Turning his head very slightly, he saw a man poised in the doorway. It was a gringo; in the remote corners of the world the short-sleeved flowered tourist shirt, the steel-rimmed glasses, khaki pants and bulldog shoes had become the uniform of earnest American enterprise. Moon recognized the man as the new missionary. His head was cropped too close, so that his white skull gleamed, and the red skin of his neck and jaw was riddled with old acne; his face was bald with anxiety and tiresome small agonies.

  Coming up to the table, the missionary bumped nervously into a chair; it screeched on the tile floor. “Buenas noches, señor,” he said. “Puedo sentarme?” He sat down on the edge of the chair.

  Raising his eyes without raising his head, Moon contemplated him while he rubbed his ear, which was already numb with drink. After a moment he said, “Why don’t you sit down at my table?”

  “I have,” the man exclaimed, flushing. “I mean—” he stood up, knocking the chair backward. “I didn’t mean—” He restored the chair. “It turns out we’re both Americans! Imagine! I mean, the way you dress and all, someone could take you for—”

  “—a gook, a wog, a spic, a spade—”

  “Excuse me? No, a local fellow. Of the town.”

  “Because of my clothes, you mean.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And because I look like all these local halfbreeds, these mestizos.”

  “Well, yes, in a way,” the man said, gazing frankly at Moon’s face. “Look, I was just trying to get acquainted. I knew all along you were Mr. Moon.”

  “Well, I know who you are too, friend, and if you sat down here to save my soul, forget it.”

  “How could you tell I was a missionary?”

  “Are you serious? How do you tell a hunchback or an elephant?” Moon whistled in derision.

  “I don’t understand why you’re so angry—I just got here!”

  “All halfbreeds, as you must have heard, are violent and treacherous, especially when under the effects of alcohol.”

  The man laughed aloud, controlled himself, and sighed. “Personally, as an American, I’d be very proud to have Indian blood. I think most Americans would be proud to have it.”

  “They would, huh?”

  “I should think so.”

  “How much Indian blood would most Americans be proud to have?”

  “Oh.” The man sighed again and shook his head. “But you’ve done all right, it seems,” he said, unruffled. “Probably your education is better than my own.”

  “Probably. I’m very well educated.” Moon, nodding, finished his glass. “When you walked into this room just now, you not only knew my name was Moon but you knew that I was educated. You knew exactly who I was, isn’t that right?”

  The missionary tried to bluster, then waved his hands and groaned.

  “How did you know?” Moon said.

  “It was just that Andy … Mrs. Huben … she remembered reading something … she was very sympathetic with your position.”

  “She was, huh? Let me ask you another question.”

  “Why, certainly.”

  “How would you like a short kick in the nuts?”

  The man stood up.

  “Sit down,” Moon said, taking his arm. “They say that Indians can’t hold their firewater.” He grinned stupidly, and the man sat down. “Last question,” Moon said. “How would you like me to marry your sister?” He burst out laughing, leaning back in his chair, hands in his pockets.

  “I would like to ask you a question,” the man said. When Moon only shrugged, he said, “With that education and everything, how did you end up in Madre de Dios?”

  “Why, I’m a missionary,” Moon said. “I’m at work in the fields of the Lord. Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. Mark, Chapter 16, Verse 15. You want to get preached to?”

  The man looked angry but said nothing.

  “You don’t believe I’m a missionary?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Are you calling me a liar?”

  The man said, “I deny your right to speak this way, even in jest, because you’re not a missionary. You are a vicious, drunken man, and a blasphemer.” He mopped his face, very upset. “The Niaruna you intend to murder are the ones I will be working with. I mean to go to them whatever you people do. If you bomb them, machine-gun them—”

  “It will make things hot for you, is that right?”

  “I wasn’t thinking about that—”

  “Better start right now, then.”

  “I’ve thought about it. I have a wife and child.”

  “You have faith in the Lord, don’t you?”

  “There are limits to what we can ask of the Lord’s mercy.”

  “Well, I never thought I’d live to hear one of you fundamentalists admit that. Look, what are you hanging around for?” Moon said. “Why did you sit down here in the first place?”

  “When I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life; the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but
his blood will I require at thine hand!”

  “Okay, I’m warned.” Moon gazed at him. “You have faith then.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “When you are out there in that forest, with the savages behind those trees—how much faith will you have then?”

  “In God?”

  “In your own faith.”

  The missionary began to speak; he faltered and stopped short.

  “I’ll bet you’ve asked yourself that very thing quite a few times. Let me ask you something else. Did you earn your faith, or were you stuffed with it, like a big turkey?”

  “My faith is a question I’ll have to work out without your help.” The man got slowly to his feet. “I wanted to talk to you, Mr. Moon, but I see it’s impossible. Perhaps you could tell me where I could find your partner.”

  Moon picked up his glass and drank. “You want to see Wolfie, you’ll find him at the cat house. Only he hates being interrupted while he’s in the saddle, so while you’re waiting you can screw one of the pigs.” He finished his drink and stood up. The serenity in the missionary’s face incensed him; yet he wondered if he really knew what he was angry at. Was it the distemper he felt whenever he had talked too much, or was it only that flat ugly voice of Western white America that to this day he could not hear without a twitch of shame and hatred?

  One time, drunk, he had taunted his father for volunteering as a soldier in World War I, taunted him as a mongrel white. Alvin Moon had whipped him so badly that he had finally drawn a knife. They were in a saloon, the first and last time they ever had money enough to get drunk together. Alvin Moon told him to put down the knife, and he had done so without blustering. They returned to their bar stools and went right on drinking. After a while, when the onlookers had gone, Alvin Moon said, “That meanness.” He had it all thought out. “You tote that there meanness around with you just like you tote that big heavy old-time war knife that the old men give you. There ain’t no real use for a knife like that no more.”