As soon as Tom Riley had left the room and his heavy footsteps could be heard ascending a flight of unseen stairs, Nomie looked at me. "Tom's been with us now, I don't know how long," she said in a low, confidential voice. "Maybe five months, even. He came here to make Fellowship with us, and he won't leave. You can't believe how much he eats! But we get all types here. He wants to set out on a Mission himself, and he's been here learning. The man has a wonderful way with the languages, but he's just so darn big! He frightens the people. You know how the Dyalo are. I told him that he should make a mission to Africa, but he said he had heard about us and he has his heart set on the Dyalo." She chuckled softly. "But he loves Jesus so much, and he's got so much good heart, sometimes God chooses the oddest vehicles."
She paused. I think she expected me to say something like "Amen" or "That He does!" but I stayed silent. Something in my silence encouraged her, and she continued: "The oddest vehicles! Who would have ever thought that He would have chosen me? Why, I remember when I met Mr. Walker for the first time! I was twenty-one years old, and he came to speak in 1956 at the Wheaton Bible College, where I was a student. He was older than me, almost thirty-five, but he was the handsomest man I had ever seen, with the saddest greenest eyes! Mr. Walker started talking about his childhood in Tibet and in China and his family's work with the Dyalo, and I whispered to my girlfriend Evangeline, who was here to visit just last year, I said to her, ‘Evangeline, that is the man I am going to love and marry.' I'll bet half the girls in that auditorium were whispering that, but the Lord heard me, and now he's mine. One year later there I was in Burma, married to Mr. Walker, with a baby on the way! I must say, it is a very good thing the Lord gives us memory but not foresight, because I really don't know if I would have become a Walker if I'd known what was in store! When Mr. Walker came to speak that day, I don't believe that I had ever once thought of spending my life in the Orient and Burma and Thailand and places like that. I had never even heard of the Dyalo. Now here I am in Thailand with five beautiful Dyalo babies, and fifteen Dyalo grandchildren!"
Nomie's mention of her family reminded me why I was there. I started to construct a sentence around the name "David Walker" and found myself lacking a verb of adequate sensitivity. I debated "murdered," "killed," "passed away," and "died." Later, I learned that the Walkers preferred to say that he had been "called Home." I didn't say anything at all. I imagined Nomie wondered at her unusual guest who had phoned her out of the blue, come to her house, and drunk her Tang in silence! But really, I had no idea at what strange things Nomie wondered: there was some weirdness in the Walker way that made the normal conversational forays seem weak and ineffective, even inappropriate. It was like talking to royalty, or to the very wealthy, or the very beautiful.
The silence was broken by the entrance into the living room of a man who I presumed was Mr. Walker. He was a man of perhaps—who can tell with old people?—eighty?—old, gray, and not entirely steady on his bare feet. Yet tomorrow he was going to Mandalay! He walked slowly to the rocking chair, and with a deliberate motion turned himself in a half circle, gripped the railings of the chair, and hovered himself down. Then, turning to me, he extended his hand across his body, and I rose halfway off the couch to shake it. His large hand was calloused and strong. "Thomas Walker," he murmured in a low voice.
"It's very nice to meet you," I said.
"Glad to have you here," he replied.
Installed comfortably in his rocking chair, Mr. Walker seemed a more solid presence than he was on his feet. His dark-green eyes were the color of drying moss; they flickered alertly behind heavy square-rimmed glasses. His hair was gray but thick, cut short, and held in place with oil. His light-gray skin was very cleanly shaved, and I wondered idly for a second how he shaved the jowls: Did he shave down one side of the jowl, arrive at the cleft, and mount back up the other side, like a mountaineer? Mr. Walker wore a checked buttoned-up shirt and a pair of shiny brown polyester slacks which rode up high on his waist. He had the severe, serious, grave, and melancholy air of the midwestern farming stock from which I later learned he came. He was not a large man, but he dominated the room in a way that big Tom Riley hadn't.
Mr. Walker began to rock. Nomie placed the ball of wool in her lap. Outside the window, the slow thump of construction began from somewhere far away. From down the hall, I heard the clink of metal pans and the sizzle of something frying. I could think of no way at all to introduce the subject of their son and why Martiya might have killed him. I had no excuse for being here except that I was very curious and thought that if the story was good I could sell it: I would summarize their grief in two thousand words, peddle it to the Bangkok Times or Executive, and then the story of their son's death would line the birdcages of Bangkok's better families. The Walkers sat implacably, organically, rocking slowly, adjusting themselves, as if my presence there were no more notable than one of the dark, buzzing flies that came in from the garden—until finally Mr. Walker asked his wife if Tom Riley would be at home for lunch.
"I think so. He's just gone to wash up."
"And Bill? Did you hear from Bill?"
"He called this morning. He's busy as a guy can be, and Margaret is sick. But he's got the hymnals all ready for tomorrow."
"It's a good thing Tom decided to go to Burma. Need somebody to carry those boxes!" Mr. Walker said.
Mr. and Mrs. Walker laughed.
"Is Preacher Matthew going to be taking the jeep?" Mrs. Walker asked.
"Why?" said Mr. Walker. "Why should he take the jeep?"
"Well, honey, if he's going up to Chiang Rai and Dok Rao to witness, he'll need the jeep."
"We'll worry about that when I get back," said Mr. Walker decisively. He turned to me. "And you, young man, what can we do for you? Can we help you with something?"
It was the most natural question in the world.
I hesitated a moment, then told them why I was there. I confessed everything—about Josh O'Connor and his visit with Martiya van der Leun, how I had spoken subsequently with Martiya's family and friends. I told the Walkers that I wanted to know the final pieces of Martiya's story, and I babbled out an apology for the imposition.
When I was done, the room was silent again. Mr. Walker rocked in his chair slowly once or twice. He looked at me, and then at the ground, and then his eyes fell on his wife. Nomie picked up her ball of wool and placed it beside her. Then she stood herself up from the couch.
"We do not say the name of that woman in this house," she said, and, moving slowly on her puffy legs, left the darkened room.
Mr. Walker insisted that I stay for lunch.
"Nomie's a fiery woman, but she'd be just crushed if you didn't eat with us," Mr. Walker said. "Her bark is worse than her bite." There was a distinctly doubtful note in his voice.
Mr. Walker led me into the dining room, where Nomie and a slight Asian woman were setting the table. Like the living room, the dining room was austere, bare but for a long table surrounded by high-backed chairs. Nomie smiled at me as I entered, and I did my best to smile back. "Mischa, this is Ah-Mo, our helper," she said, and turning toward Ah-Mo, she made what I assumed was the inverse introduction in what I assumed was Dyalo.
"Ah-Mo doesn't speak any English," Nomie said. I started to speak to Ah-Mo in my clumsy Thai, but Nomie added, "She also hasn't learned any Thai yet. Ah-Mo is Dyalo. She's here from Burma. She's a refugee."
Ah-Mo was the first Dyalo I had met, and her unusual face held me entranced for a moment. No one knows where the Dyalo come from, but some speculate Tibet—and there was to her face a Tibetan air: she was flat-featured but round-eyed, with thin, elegant lips. I wished I could talk with her: it is always difficult to read very foreign faces, but there was something keen and witty in the way she looked at me, as if she'd have a million good stories about these people, if only we could brew up some barley tea and chat. Judith must have seen me staring at Ah-Mo. Standing beside me, she whispered, "How old do you think Ah-Mo is?"
"Maybe thirty?" I whispered back.
"She's over fifty," Judith said. "Isn't that amazing?"
"Wow."
"It's because there's no pollution in the mountains."
"Do all the Dyalo look like her?"
Judith looked shocked. "Oh my, no," she said. "Only the Christians."
I was on the verge of asking from what unpleasantness Ah-Mo had fled when Nomie waved me to a place at the table. When we were all arranged, there were six of us: Mr. and Mrs. Walker, Judith, Tom Riley, who had mysteriously appeared from the stairwell and was greeted with almost rapturous pleasure by the entire Walker family, Ah-Mo, and myself. Mr. Walker asked Judith to say grace, and Judith Walker again spoke in that utterly strange language. Everyone at the table folded their hands in front of their chins and closed their eyes. Judith must have been very grateful for the food because grace went on a very long time. Then Mr. Walker decided he wanted to bless the food, too, because he started talking in Dyalo also. This was the signal that we were all supposed to hold hands. Ah-Mo's dry little hand reached out for mine on the left, and on the other side I found Tom Riley's enormous whale fin of a palm. Yet it was Ah-Mo who held my hand tighter.
Conversation over lunch—midwestern with Oriental accents: baby corn fried in a wok with bacon; an omelette served over rice with cheese, chili peppers, and tomatoes—was general: travel plans were made; the health of people whose names I did not recognize discussed—they all seemed to be getting better, thank the Lord (which was not a reflexive phrase at all but an actual opportunity for those seated around the table to bow their heads and murmur for a moment), all except someone named Susie, who apparently was not doing so well; construction would begin soon on the Ministry Center. This was missionary shop talk, and after the first half hour or so, it was boring.
At one point, Judith leaned across the table and touched my forearm.
"Mischa, are you a Christian?" she asked.
"No," I said. I shifted uncomfortably in place and said that I was Jewish.
All of the Walkers and Tom Riley turned in my direction and stared, as if I had announced that I was pregnant with triplets, all except Ah-Mo, who hadn't understood a word. She just kept eating.
Finally, Judith said, "How wonderful! We love to meet Jewish people. You know, Jewish people are God's chosen people."
Judith stared at me. "No, it's true," she insisted, and at that moment, Mr. Walker, who had been momentarily distracted, asked his wife to pass the milk, and the conversation drifted back to the pastor from Terre Haute who would be coming next week to make fellowship.
After Nomie's explosion, I certainly wasn't going to be the dang fool who introduced Martiya's name back into conversation. Lunch had lulled me: the day was warm, my eyes were heavy. I had organized my life around the principle that nothing came between me and my naps—not murderous anthropologists, not fiery-tempered missionaries—and for all of Nomie's protestations that Mr. Walker liked to take himself a little rest in the afternoons, the man seemed to me altogether too wide awake: these missionaries, I concluded sadly, were not the napping type. They were decidedly of the this-life-is-short-so-let's-get-something-done type. So it was with excitement and drowsiness mingled in equal measure that I accepted when at the end of the long meal Mr. Walker invited me to join him in his study.
Mr. Walker led me to his study and then left me alone in it for a moment, as he recalled another question for his wife. I am a snoop when it comes to people's books, and I studied his while I waited. His library wasn't large, and it was clearly the collection of a man with a narrowly centered but deeply researched set of interests. There were at least a half dozen translations of the Bible into English, from the King James to the New Revised Standard, as well as editions of the Old and New Testament in the original Greek and Hebrew. There were Greek and Hebrew dictionaries and grammars. Every book of the Bible had a thick, leather-bound commentary. These formed an imposing shelf unto themselves. There were books arguing against Darwinian theories of evolution, and a smaller number of books supporting the theory. There was a book entitled Apocalypse Tomorrow, the thickest of a long series of tomes which to judge by their bright-red covers seemed to be arguing that the end was very nigh. There were a few Tom Clancy novels with well-cracked spines.
Mr. Walker returned to the office after a minute and closed the door behind him. He circumnavigated his desk, then sank down with a grunt. He folded his hands into narrow steeples and brought them to rest in front of his mouth. He stared at me very seriously.
"I didn't want you to leave without an answer to your question," he said. "It's just that Nomie, she gets so upset."
"I understand," I said. "It's natural. I'm sorry I—"
"Do you know how they found Davy?" he asked.
"Davy?"
"My son," Mr. Walker said.
"No," I said. "No, I don't know how they found him."
Mr. Walker didn't say anything for so long that I began to think that I had offended him too. "When Davy fell from the bridge," he began, "he fell a long way, but the doctor said, the doctor said he probably survived that. His left arm wasn't broken, it was shattered, like a windowpane. His leg was broken, too, but not so bad. She left him for two days, and then she shot him from behind. That was the worst part, her leaving him. Two days."
The only noise in the room was the hum of the air conditioner.
"He was just thirty," Mr. Walker continued. "So when Mrs. Walker … Mrs. Walker—I don't think I've ever met a better Christian than my Nomie. She wrote to Martiya in prison, she sent her food even, and clothing. She forgave her. I think she genuinely forgave Martiya, because she knew Martiya—she knew that it wasn't Martiya who killed her baby. But … but until you lose a child—you don't know what a murder means. How do you act like a good Christian when someone does something like that to your boy?"
Mr. Walker's voice was deep, and he spoke softly, and when he wanted to emphasize something, he spoke softer still, so that when he told me that Mrs. Walker was a good Christian woman, I was leaning on the edge of my chair, straining to catch his words. Mr. Walker stared at me a moment, and I realized with a start that his question wasn't rhetorical. He was waiting for an answer.
"I don't know," I said. "I don't know how you act like a good Christian."
"Fair enough. You don't know what a murder means." It wasn't an accusation, just a simple statement of fact. Mr. Walker fingered the Greek dictionary lying open on his desk. "It's a rough, rough business we're in. I have a friend here who's a phu yai, a policeman, and goes after the worst kind of men—drug dealers and men who put hill-tribe women in cages and sell 'em in Bangkok like pigs, I've seen it, rough business— but I sometimes think we Walkers chose the roughest line of work there is. I always wonder if David really knew how rough it is, if we prepared him. My parents knew, and my brothers and sisters, and Mrs. Walker, and I think even the other kids knew that it was a rough business—but David, he was such a likable guy. Everyone liked him. Charming as heck. I don't think he ever really understood how cruel and vicious and cunning and resourceful the forces keeping the Dyalo in bondage were, how they were prepared to stop at nothing to keep the Dyalo enslaved."
I had no idea whatsoever what Mr. Walker was talking about. I nodded and crossed my legs. He unfolded his long fingers and spread them out on his desk.
"We used to have her in this house, did you know that?"
"I had no idea."
"Oh yes, she was here all the time. She had so many questions, and we might not be scholars, but we know the Dyalo better than anyone. She stayed right in this house, and she'd ask us all those questions for her research. She'd ask why the Dyalo think pregnant women can't use iron knives and we'd tell her, or why the Dyalo think it's shameful for the man and his wife to plant the rice in the field together. We'd tell her, ‘Well, gosh, that's simple, you see it's like this,' and she'd say, ‘Gosh, you people are Dyalo!' and Mrs. Walker would say, ‘Four generations—you get used to folks!' But Mrs. Walk
er was wrong about that. We're not Dyalo, and God made people as mysterious as He is. You don't get to know anyone."
A phone rang and rang again. Mr. Walker stopped talking for a second, and when Nomie shouted, "Honey, it's for you, it's Khun Nirawat," he picked up the cordless phone which was sitting on his desk and began to speak in Thai. Excellent, fluid Thai—the kind of Thai I'd be lucky to have if I stayed in Thailand another thirty years. He raised a finger to say that he'd just be a minute. Something on the other end of the line made him chuckle. After a minute or two, he hung up the phone and his face grew serious again. "The Dyalo aren't foolish, you know," he declared, almost aggressively.
"I didn't think they were," I said, almost defensively.
"It was the hardest thing for that woman to understand. We understood that the Dyalo people … the Dyalo had certain needs, and the Dyalo recognized that we understood those needs. Do you understand what I'm telling you?"
Mr. Walker spoke so calmly, so reasonably, that I was sure that when I thought it over later it would all make sense. I nodded. Mr. Walker seemed satisfied with this response.
"The Dyalo would tell her that they were in bondage—bondage!—to the demons, and she'd write in her little notebook, ‘The Dyalo have a rich hierarchical system of animistic spirit worship.' She didn't believe them. But we knew what was going on, because we've been here so long. Back when we first came, family after family asked us, ‘Two thousand years! Why did it take you so long to come with God's word? To bring us this Good News? We were orphans and slaves to the forces of darkness! Our fathers have died, our grandfathers all died in bondage—and they died without hearing this Word.' Foolish people don't talk like that, you know—people know when they're slaves, and I tell you, brother, no man wants to live in chains."
Fieldwork: A Novel Page 8
