At Play in the Fields of the Lord by Peter Matthiessen

Author:Peter Matthiessen
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780307819642
Publisher: Vintage Books

16

THE RÍO ESPÍRITU, ON WHICH THE MISSION STATION WAS LOCATED, was a small tributary of a river system which flowed northward, draining the Andes, before turning east into the Amazon; the upper Espíritu was separated by a few miles of high ground from a nameless stream which, flowing directly eastward, joined the system of the river Purus. Both systems carried swiftly in the rainy season to the Amazon, but they traveled through different countries, losing themselves in ever greater rivers which in turn lost themselves, at points a thousand miles apart, in the great Río Mar.

Months had passed, and a second coming of the rains, and Billy Quarrier’s world of birds and light, glades, rivers and bright-feathered arrows had again shrunk to a dungeon of rain-beaten huts, cut off by dark high dripping walls and a mud river. For some days the boy had lain in bed, limp from malarial delirium; quinine had not helped him, and Hazel had refused to give him a potion brought in a wooden bowl by the Niaruna. Because of bad weather it had not been possible to fly him out from Remate de Males.

Then one morning came a forecast of clear weather. As he spoke on the radio beside the cot, Quarrier watched a dark stain spread slowly on Billy’s sheet. He had just arranged with Far Tribes Headquarters for a pontoon plane which would meet them the next day at Remate, but now he removed his earphones. He could not speak. He stared at the sheet, then drew it back and lifted the child out of the cot and stood him on the floor before his pot. Billy was half asleep and weak and had to be supported; his skin felt hot and damp, and for the first time since his birth Quarrier was conscious of the odor of his breath.

“Billy, honey,” he said, “you were wetting your bed.”

“Oh,” the child said, opening his eyes, “I didn’t mean to, Pa.”

“No. What I mean is, I want you to do a little more, into the pot. Can you do it?”

“Yes.” But the child began to urinate with his arms and hands limp at his sides, and Quarrier reached down and took the small thing between his fingers, turning it toward the pot. The sensation was vaguely disagreeable. This strange tiny scrap of flesh was part of his own son, and his own son, by the next morning, would be dead.

For the urine was dark and discolored; in the pot it looked vile black.

From the doorway Hazel said, “Is it all right then? Are they going to meet us?”

“Billy has wet his bed.”

At his tone, she darted forward. “For goodness’ sake, what do you expect? Poor baby!” Worried and irritable, Hazel forsook the Indian child whose infection she had been bandaging; expressionless, the little girl watched the bandage unravel and drop onto the mud earth of the shed. After a time the child rose and came over and looked at the dark stain on the sheet, then at Quarrier and then at Hazel; she ran out of the hut.

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