At Play in the Fields of the Lord (4 page)

“Martin will,” Hazel said.
“Won’t you, Martin?”
Her tone was so cold, her voice so very different from the flustered voice of a moment before, that the Hubens stared at her.

“I don’t know yet,” Martin said.

“Why, I saw those men this morning, in the street!”
Hazel acted flustered once again.
“And they’re even more black-hearted than you say they are!”

I
N
an early light as clear and warm as melted amber, Quarrier would set forth with Billy to look at Indians in the market place, or to walk the river bank, keeping a sharp eye out for jaguars and anacondas, or to take a boat across the river to the jungle on the far side.
There was so much to do.
Yet in the end nothing happened; they never found what they were seeking.
Even Billy tired quickly once the sun had leaped clear of the trees; the sun grew swollen, lost its outline, turning the sky from limpid blue to dull cooked white, like a gigantic frying egg, until the sun itself turned a sick white, in a white sky.

Though it was still early in the morning, they would retreat into the Gran Hotel, with its slow creak of ceiling fans and dusty purr of frazzled chickens in the kitchen court.
In the bar of the hotel, the people sat all day waiting for rain to cool the air, and when the rain came, every afternoon, they waited for it to clear.
The missionaries felt uncomfortable in the bar-salon and did their sitting in their rooms.
They were waiting for supplies to come, and meanwhile they sweated like the damned, and sipped on orange
gaseosas
and prayed prayers.

For three days now, in time of worship, Andy’s right knee and his left had touched, and he was straining to touch knees again when the brutal shout of the gross bearded outlaw pierced the thin ceiling from the bar below; all four stared at one another, tense with dismay.
Only the moment before, Leslie Huben had said, “… and we pray for the Niaruna, O Lord, that they may come to know Thy great love and the blessings of a Christian life in Thy sight and the joy of the hereafter in Heaven above—”

“—and blow them little brown pricks to Kingdom Come—”

“Amen.”
Leslie, startled, concluded his prayer by mistake.

In the silence Martin thought, Can God be laughing at us?
He really meant, laughing at
me
, for he realized that none of the others had grasped the juxtaposition of
Heaven
and
Kingdom Come
, nor even the obscenity, but only the dreadful callousness of that man’s exclamation mounting from the lower regions.
It was left to him, Martin Quarrier, to see the lurid irony of the timing.
Why had he seen it?
And why—since the event was circumstantial, after all—had his first thought been that God was laughing?

Or had the Lord intended that hellish cry to draw his attention to his own behavior; for an instant his leg had actually been pressed to hers, because Andy had swung half about, and gazing straight through him, blind to his confusion, said, “May God have mercy on his soul.”

“Amen,” her husband said again.

“
No
,” Hazel said.
She had started up like a goaded beast, then sank back heavily once more, her shoulders slumped, her ears protruding through her hair; her bun, ordinarily immaculate, had collapsed since their arrival, and reminded her husband of a loose rat’s nest he had once found in the barn.
“Sometimes we ask too much of Him.
Our God is a just God, and He will strike down such iniquity with His terrible swift sword!”

“On Judgment Day, perhaps,” Quarrier said.
He rose and went to the window.
In his guilt he did not wish to look at Hazel, who wore high sneakers and a big print dress with hearts and bright red roses on a shiny background; his guilt made him feel irritable.

Huben jumped up and walked the room, up and down, his eyes upon the floor.
“I’ll be franker than I was the other day, Martin.
If the Niaruna
can
be cowed a little, they will be softened up for an outreach of the Word, and this will make our work—yes,
your
work too, Martin, don’t look at me like that—a darn sight easier.
Don’t you forget that the Opposition is just lying in wait to see us lose the advantage I have won in Jesus’ name.”

Quarrier said, “It is our responsibility to try to stop him—”

“It is
not
your responsibility.
It is
my
responsibility.”

“Yet you don’t accept it.”

“I beg your pardon.”
Huben stopped short in his pacing.
“Now you be careful, fella.
We have other people working with the Tiro and Mintipo in this area, and I can’t, I
won’t
jeopardize those fellows for your sake—”

“I certainly understand that you can’t jeopardize the other missions, so what I’m after here is permission to talk to Guzmán again on my own responsibility—”

“No,” Huben said.
“You’ve caused enough trouble already.
I’m sorry, Martin, but I forbid this.”

“I’ll talk to the Americans then.”

Huben shrugged.
“Go ahead.
You’ll get nothing but jeers from men like those.”

“They are devils,” Hazel muttered.
“The limb of Satan.
That hairy one—he could pass for a devil himself!
And that other one—I’ve never seen a face like that in all my born days.
That man has looked Satan straight in the eye!”

“I don’t know,” Andy said slowly.
She had moved across to Hazel, who had never once lifted her eyes from the hands clenched in her lap, and now she put her arm around Hazel’s shoulders.
“That second man, I saw him in the corridor.
Maybe Martin could talk to that second man.”

“Yes, I’ll try.”
Quarrier turned his gaze from Leslie to Andy.
“What does he look like?”

“You must have seen him in the hall.
In a strange way, quite an interesting face.
Dark, a little hard.
Indian blood.
And he always wears a dark blue neckerchief round his throat.”

“What makes you think he’s Indian?”

“Oh Andy!”
Leslie snorted.
“She’s got this idea that this Moon fellow comes from up our way.
He looks more like some kind of an Italian to
me
.”

“I
know
he’s an Indian; he’s part Cheyenne.”
Andy got up and walked about the room.
“I knew I’d seen that face before, and when I learned that his name was Moon, I was certain of it.”
She turned and looked at her husband.
“He’s from our mission schools, somewhere up in the Northwest.”

“That
hairy
one?”
Hazel, distracted, was gazing out the
window after Billy, who was playing in the streets.
“That hairy one never came from our
Sioux
mission, I’ll tell you that much!”

“No, no, the other man.”

“Andy, honey, just because this fellow looks a little Indian—”

“I told you, he’s part Cheyenne or something; anyway, he’s from the reservations.
And he was bright, and he had a fine war record, and he was a Christian, so they decided to make an example of him, don’t you remember?
Years ago.
He was the first Indian from the missions to go to the state university—Somebody Moon.
There was a lot of talk about it.
I remember, because my dad was all excited.”

“But you were only a child!”
said Leslie, frowning.

“Yes.
I was only a child, but I cut his picture out of the paper and even kept it in my room.
I felt sorry for him, I don’t know why.
I mean, I guess I felt sorry for
all
Indians, the way we treated them.
And especially the Cheyennes—the first time I read about that journey from that Oklahoma reservation, all the way north across Kansas and Nebraska and South Dakota and on into Montana, and getting shot down by those stupid, stupid people just because they wanted to go
home
, I cried all night—it makes me cry right now!”
She laughed at herself, for angry tears had risen to her eyes.
“So anyway, I prayed for him.”

“Dull Knife’s people,” Quarrier said.

“Martin knows all about Indians,” Hazel said in a flat voice.
It seemed to her that her husband, in the past years at the Sioux mission, had grown more and more indecisive, masking a loss of evangelical zeal with his “respect” for the Indian culture; how was he ever to redeem a people whose religion seemed to him so beautiful?
It was her theory that his fascination with the tribal sacraments, the respect he paid them, not only impeded the harvest of souls but was downright disrespectful to the Lord.
Martin claimed that his gradual methods laid a better foundation for true faith than quick conversion, but his dogged adherence to these methods was the sin of pride.

“Well, a lot of my mother’s people were massacred by Sioux in Minnesota, so our family isn’t quite so sentimental as Andy’s
is.”
Leslie looked impatient.
“You mean this Moon got his picture in the paper for going to the university?”

“Well, yes.
And again for being thrown out of it, just before graduation.
A lot of folks hollered, ‘Darn drunken Injuns!’
but they were pleased it happened.
And then a third time when he was sentenced.
Only he never came home again—they never caught him.”

“A criminal!”
cried Hazel, who had never seen one.
“I might have known!
And a backslider, at that!”
When her husband smiled, she immediately looked cross; this was a rule of her game.

“Well, it wasn’t all that simple.”
Andy seemed sorry that she had brought it up.

“I think I
do
remember,” Quarrier said.
“Somebody Moon.
I certainly do remember.
He assaulted somebody, stole his money—don’t you remember, Leslie?
It was in all the mission newsletters for months.”
He rose and started for the door.

“At that time, probably,” Leslie said, “I had not been called by Jesus.
Anyway, it just goes to show you what you’re up against.
A man like that will only mock you.”

“Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers,”
Hazel intoned as her husband went out,
“for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness?”

And what communion hath light with darkness
.
II Corinthians, Martin thought as he went down the stairs.
He had never dealt with this aspect of his work, the hostility and jeering, the contempt.
How strange that the contempt should be so frightening—as frightening, yes, as the danger from the savages … Well … He drove himself along the corridor, determined not to reconnoiter but to make a firm entry and demand an audience.

In the door to the bar he collided with Padre Xantes.
The priest smelled of liquor but was otherwise composed.
“Good evening, sir,” he said to Quarrier.
“You are looking for the bar?”
And he smiled pleasantly at Quarrier’s consternation.

Quarrier grinned, frowned, said “Excuse me,” said “Good evening,” and finally in a fit of nervousness and impatience extended
his hand, which the padre took, and to his dismay, did not release.
They struggled silently in the passage.

“Why do you hate and fear us so,” the padre said, “when all we feel towards you is mild astonishment?”

Still smiling, Quarrier thrashed politely, desperate to free himself.
This is absurd, he raged; why does he cling to me?

Over the padre’s shoulder he saw Huben’s convert, Uyuyu, who skulked past them, hissing,
“Buenas.
Buenas noches.”
The padre said, “
Sí, sí
, poor Uyuyu.
Such a promising boy!”
He gasped for breath, but still he clung to Quarrier like a blind man.
“
Sí
, I raised him myself in the mission, raised him a pure
católico
, and now he is—eh?
What is he, this Indian we have fought over?
A Protestant?
Do you believe so?
Is he neither?
Is he both?”
The padre stopped smiling; he gripped Quarrier’s hand in his bony fingers.
“Answer me, Señor Quarrier.
Do you think
he
knows the difference?”