At Play in the Fields of the Lord by Peter Matthiessen Read Free Book Online Page B

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—
See
mite?” 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,