The Outcasts (16 page)

Morrison bowed. “Much tank. Tank Dulani. Tank all man here.”

Which Bawi did. Dulani seemed to fall asleep then, and the men dispersed. Bawi slipped the machete through his loincloth, where it hung awkwardly; he tried a few steps and removed it, brandished it, swiped once at an imaginary victim, and grinned at Morrison. After that he carried it in his hand wherever they went. It lent weight and menace to his gestures, and exaggerated his strut.

They toured the village again. Old women sat before huts, wooden bowls in their laps, and ground flour with large stones. “Cassawa,” Bawi said. The women were skinny and bent, save one, grotesquely fat, who could barely reach her bowl. Some younger women, and many children, followed them about until Bawi sent them scampering off.

“Show me cassava,” Morrison said, and Bawi led him downstream, beyond the huts, to a grove of leafy shrubs about as tall as a man, planted in regular rows. In the dirt at the edge of the grove was something Morrison had never seen: a wooden hoe, all wood, and hacked from one bough.

“You put this here,” Morrison said. “The cassava.”

“Yis sor. Ol' pop come, he bring cassawa. He put here. More pop put more. Much cassawa.”

“Ol' pop, what his name?”

“Name?”

“You call him what?”

“Yis, yis, name. Name Bawi. Name Tami. Bawi know name. 01' pop no name.”

“No name?”

“Bawi not
know
name.”

Another surprise. Morrison had wanted a beautiful legend, sung down in poetry. Hiawatha. Then fled the capital our pop with many wives, and led them here and founded this our tribe. And so on. Bearing cassava.

Bawi showed him the roots. “Like dis no eat,” he said gravely. “Vairy fuckin bad,” and he clutched at his throat and rolled his eyes.

“How you eat cassava?” They strolled back toward the huts. Children splashed and shouted in the stream, and fell silent to stare.

“Knife knife,” and he made chopping motions, “like dis,” and he pointed to the old women, “much sun. Much day sun.” Ten fingers. “Much day go, eat cassawa.”

Morrison could see the last little hut, shadowed and alone. “Kinjo,” he said, wondering: Christian? Kinjo. Kinjo.

But this time Bawi only grunted, and quickened his step. Morrison peered. Someone lay motionless at the center of the hut.

“Bawi. Who's in the kinjo hut?”

“Mmm.” They walked on while Bawi considered. “Bad man,” he said. “Man do bad.”

“What he do?”

Bawi hesitated. “No. No talk.” He shrugged, and Morrison wondered if all men everywhere shrugged. “Man do bad, man talk kinjo t'ree day, no eat, man come back.” He glared then. “No talk.”

So Morrison shut up and followed him, but before they reached Dulani's hut, which Morrison knew now was the town hall, they were brought up short by a great racket in the forest, and dogs yelping. Men called out, and Bawi favored Morrison with his broadest grin. “You come,” he crowed. They trotted. The whole village swarmed into the clearing and made for Dulani's hut. Morrison was jostled in the press and looked down to see that lovely girl at his elbow; she smiled shyly and slipped away. Now men came jogging out of the forest with their grinning, yapping dogs, and a shout went up: two of them bore a stout branch, and strung on the branch by his feet was a bloody animal. When they came closer, Morrison saw that it was a boar. He saw too that it was not strung, and he was pleased, and felt oddly at home, dis place my place, because it was what he had done with deer in Colorado. They had slit both hind legs low down, between bone and tendon, crossed the forelegs and jammed the forehoofs through the slits, and then broken the foreleg bones and twisted them across the slits. Like cotter pins. To make a sling. Over a pole or like a pack on your back.

Someone had speared the boar from in front, through the breast, just below the neck: the hard way, taking the charge. The hero was a young fellow, who smeared himself with blood now and grinned at the girls. Dulani congratulated him with a pontifical gesture. Then Malani the artist came forward, dipped a finger in the blood, and drew a circle on the young man's forehead, and everyone cheered. The hunting party laughed and strutted, and Dulani gave commands, at which there was more cheering, and some of the women ran off to obey him. Dulani spoke once more and there was Bawi again, at Morrison's shoulder, saying, “You come here, good come here.” Morrison was pleased to think that he brought luck. He was watching the victorious hunter, who pranced and cavorted. The young fellow darted to a fat, giggling girl and squeezed her buttocks; she went on giggling and the villagers roared approval, and when they saw that the young fellow was in more than one state of tall excitement there was thunderous rejoicing. He grinned and capered, making sure that no one overlooked this secondary achievement; he managed to favor half the women with some small evidence of his devotion. Morrison found himself tittering, and then bellowing glee with the others.

Later they hung the pig to bleed, and the machetes were brought forth and shown to the hunters, who expressed reverent joy. Bawi explained to Morrison—it took some time—that the machetes were common property. One was now entrusted to the young hunter. They were to be borne by heroes, but used for the village in whatever way Dulani decreed. They would be inaugurated tonight, in butchering the boar. Bawi asked politely if Morrison would honor them by staying to dinner. Morrison regretted; previous commitments. Another time, perhaps. Bawi was sorry. But soon it would be time for luncheon, and Dulani had commanded a surprise. Morrison was delighted and flattered. Well, Bawi admitted, the surprise was not altogether for Morrison, though he deserved one; it was in honor of the boar. Morrison assured Bawi that he was flattered merely to be invited. All that in grunts and groans and stone-age English.

Morrison chewed at his gummy manioc and ignored the women. He had awaited his servant girl with the clammy joy of the failed sensualist, but she disappointed him, yielding place to a withered, if flirtatious, crone. Dulani groped and belched, and was fanned. Bawi ate with zest. Soon a chant arose, and Morrison turned to see a line of women dancing forward, bearing huge gourds. The men approved loudly. Smaller gourds were dipped and distributed. Dulani spoke, and poured a few drops on the ground, and the men drank, Morrison too, delighted by the ceremony. Surprise.

It was a surprise, all right. Half blind, breathing fire from both nostrils, he set his gourd in the dust with exaggerated precision, allowed himself one roaring bawl of protest, and choked out, “Bawi. What is this drink? Petrol?”

“Dis good drink,” Bawi said. “Dis …” and his eyes narrowed as he searched the past, “dis …
booze.”

“Dis poison,” Morrison said. “How you make dis booze?”

“Cassawa.”

“You like this booze?”

“Oh yis sor,” and that grin of love. “You like?”

“Oh yes,” Morrison said. “Lovely. Full-bodied, slightly fruity. A trifle young.”

“You say?”

“Nothing. Very good booze.” He sipped again, and smiled, and ducked his head in thanks to Dulani.

In simple courtesy, and with burgeoning enthusiasm, he drank three gourdfuls. When Bawi suggested then that they go wawda, Morrison said woozily, “Yis sor. Go wawda. Sink like stone.”

The sun belabored him, but dust sparkled and green water beckoned. Blue at dawn, green at noon. Odd. Blinking and sniffing, he sauntered with the men. At the riverbank he removed his cap, sandals, and shorts, and a pleased cry went up.

“Oh yes,” he said breezily.

“Ol' Tami not,” Bawi said.

“Ol' Tommy boy,” Morrison said. “Dis tommy man.”

Bawi translated, and grunts received Morrison into fellowship. Gratefully he immersed himself; briefly he thrashed. He found a comfortable lodgment near the bank, and leaned back, and when he was sure he would not go under, he closed his eyes against the sun. Women's voices roused him, and the water's caress was suddenly unbearable; he was glad, for obscure reasons, that the women were downstream.

He slept.

Bawi woke him gently by placing a wet hand on his hot check, and Morrison smiled without moving, utterly renewed, brown, hard, cool, and—and unencumbered. Alone and yet not alone. Amphibian, straining ashore. Rising, he seemed to move in a new way, as if he were part vegetable, part animal, part river, part sun. With the men he strolled the bank barefoot, loose and strong, feeling the strength like a fever in his thighs and shoulders. The women joined them, and he accepted their curiosity, and returned it openly with one devastating pang, one excruciating, stabbing wish for the miracle, here, now and in sunlight; and then with a resigned and amiable equanimity. The men and women milled and chatted; Morrison stretched and lazed. When he was dry he dressed, and when he was dressed he felt foolish and alien.

“I must go now,” he said.

Bawi nodded. “You come Dulani.”

They walked slowly, in silence, to Dulani's hut. The villagers no longer followed; perhaps Morrison had ceased to be a novelty. They were alone with Dulani and his women; Morrison saw the young, pretty one, and they smiled.

Dulani spoke, sitting cross-legged as always.

“You good Tami,” Bawi said. “You—” and he paused, and searched his mind.

“Friend?” Morrison offered the word shyly.

Bawi nodded. “Friend. Bring good knife. We give much tank. We give dis.”

Dulani leaned forward, and presented Morrison with a purplish stone of many facets, polished smooth, and Morrison recognized a garnet. It was perhaps an inch across and worthless. He accepted it with respectful gravity, examined it, and spoke in tones of awed approval. Dulani was pleased.

“Dulani say, bridge bring you dis place, bridge good.”

“You say much tank.”

“Dulani say you come much. Come soon.”

“Seven days. Maybe two seven days. I will come.”

And again Dulani lapsed, shrinking back to a wakeful doze. Morrison checked a frown, a glance of concern. He smiled again at the girl and went away with Bawi.

He saw much more now: snakelike plants wriggling toward gray-white blossoms; sprigs of green that might be grass and might be fronds; slender trees stripped of their bark; a column of black ants; the flicker of a red bird; the stippled fall of thwarted sunlight in a grove. In clearings yellow grass stood like wheat, with narrow trails—rats? mongoose? dwarf deer?—like streets and alleys, and the sun lay heavy, and he sweated. The flowers grew straight, and the blossoms looked upward, with no south to turn to. He saw red earth and red rock, screens of distant green. Carrion crows patrolled. Only the large animals never appeared. He no longer missed them. He would have enjoyed the sight of a live boar, but the mountain lions were a menace now and not a spectacle for tourists. Peace was valuable.

“Bridge soon?” Bawi asked.

“How much days?”

“How much days.”

He counted off sixty.

“Rain come,” Bawi said.

“When? How much days?”

Seventy. Maybe eighty.

“Much rain?”

“Oooh,” Bawi said. “Much much rain.”

At the gorge Morrison remembered. “Bawi.”

“Yis sor.”

“Big boom here,” and Morrison's gesture exploded for him, “two, three days, not bad. Maybe much big boom. Not bad. Tommy make bridge.”

Bawi grinned. “Oooh. Big boom.”

“Boom boom,” Morrison said.

“Boom boom boom.” Bawi laughed in delight and spoke rapidly to the sentry, who also laughed. To Morrison they seemed to dance and shimmer in the sunlight, and he wondered suddenly why the colors were so stark: bright reds, searing yellows, shouting greens. The sun? Himself? A reversion to some forgotten meadow of childhood? Where everything is funny or sad, red or blue, rainy or sunny, friend or foe, chore or choice. He was like that, he knew: a thing was good, or a thing was bad.

“What's his name?”

“Galani.”

Morrison said, “Tommy,” and they nodded formally. “Bawi: all man name say ‘lani.' What is lani? Dulani, Malani, Galani.”

Bawi said, “Lani, all man like me.” He gestured back toward the village. “All in dis man much hut, Lani.”

“The name for the whole people.”

Bawi liked that. “Peep. Peep name Lani.”

“Bawi's name no Lani.”

Bawi laughed now. “Bawi name Bawilani.”

“Ah. Okay. I go now.”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” the sentry said in a cavernous bass. They all laughed.

Morrison crossed lazily, and turned on the far lip to wave.

“You come soon,” Bawi called. Galani was releasing the guide vine.

“I come soon,” Morrison said.

Philips had returned with a compressor truck and diamond drills. “All in good order,” he said. “Plenty of bits and so forth.”

“Good,” Morrison said “Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow.” Philips smiled.

9

For the next two months there was no Morrison. There was only a brownish creature, doubtless vertebrate, something of the primate certainly and more than a little of the lizard. Large it was, and strong for its size, and it stood in the sun shifting its weight from buttock to buttock, relishing the play of heat on its shoulders and forearms. Now and then a phrase of music crossed its mind, and it smiled sleepily. The annihilation of Bernard Morrison had occurred suddenly but was not unwelcome: without resentment he became superfluous. Philips had accomplished that almost inadvertently. Philips was everywhere—instructing, exhorting, pleading, interpreting, hammering, tugging, sighting his sacred transit. It was consequently unnecessary for Morrison to be anywhere. He inspected, measured, verified, approved; and might just as well not have troubled himself. Philips seemed to grow taller and leaner, Morrison shorter and stouter. Eminent ectomorph announces conversion. Oh, he made an effort. He set the first charges himself, and lit the fuses, and later tried to relieve Tall Boy on the crane but was driven off by a doleful pout. “Never mind,” he said apologetically, and went to sit under a tree and watch, like a boy with an ant farm.