by Robert Stone
The trouble with the library, Veronica said, was partly old Mrs. Rand’s ignorance and partly the blessed Mormons and their vigilant censorship. As if the television wasn’t bad enough, they used their influence in Boise to force the really interesting network shows off the local stations. Justin could be sure they weren’t waning in power in that part of the country; still they weren’t as bad arid as bigoted as they’d been in the old days, in their parents’ days. And even if everything that people said about Catholics were really true about the Mormons, it shouldn’t be forgotten that they had their good points, that there were plenty of fine decent people among them, no one should ever call them hypocrites, though some did.
Like most of the Gentiles in Idaho, Veronica was forever damning the Mormons with one breath and commending their rectitude with the next. Justin herself had not been so even-handed. It had been her habit at home to refer to the tablets presented to Joseph Smith by the angel Moroni as the Moronic tablets; in her junior year of high school a girl named Ada Bengstrom had had the wit to punch her in the mouth for saying it once too often. Ada Bengstrom, Justin reflected, was Veronica’s nearest neighbor now. Her name was Ada Parsons and she belonged to the Purple Sage Cowbelles.
When the stock were in summer pasture, if they took on help, Veronica hoped she might get Morton to take two weeks off and they might go to New York, which she loved—if not there then to Palm Springs, where they had spent their honeymoon, or even to Maui, where she had always dreamed of going.
It had been two years since Justin had seen her sister—during the last trip home. And Veronica had looked lovely with her tanned country face and her horsewoman’s slow grace and an expression of such despair in her light eyes that Justin could hardly speak to her without stammering. It was self-pity really, Justin thought, that made Veronica’s letters so oppress her. The forlornness she read into her sister’s life was as much her own.
Of the two of them perhaps Veronica was the plainer, the less ambitious, certainly the less arrogant. But it was she who had more knowledge of the world, at least in its North American manifestation.
She had worked in New York, as a publisher’s reader after college; she had spent three years working for a community newspaper in Los Angeles. But she was back home now—a rancher’s wife with too many kids, married to a good-natured incipiently alcoholic Finn whom she pestered toward Catholicism. Arrow’s own culture vulture who would drive most of the night to see a dance company, drive as far as Salt Lake for the national company of an O’Neill or a Chekhov play or a touring opera.
She could, Justin thought, indulging her own fantasies, have got herself a newspaperman. Or even a doctor, some kind of professional capable of conversation beyond cursing out the posy pickers in the Sierra Club or the price of feed.
Little enough she herself knew about that kind of thing. On one of the visits home, when Justin had been lecturing—handing out threadbare pastoral advice and textbook family counseling—Veronica had turned on her. “Christ, I wish I knew as little about it as you do,” Veronica had said.
Justin put the letter aside.
And what did either of them know and where had it gotten them? The promising, brainy Feeney sisters—May now called Justin playing Sister of Mercy in the crocodile isles and Veronica playing Carol Kennicott in Arrow, pop. 380.
Before her, the ocean rolled lightly against white sand, the plantain leaves hung still. The inaction after such elation, the delay, most of all Godoy’s intrusion into and subsequent disappearance from her life weighed her down. How stupid it was, she thought, how adolescent and egotistical to invest such promise in a single man when the suffering of Tecan had been before her so long and she had done nothing but simmer in indignation and go by the book: But she was lonely too, on one level it was as simple as that, she needed a friend, a guide. The blank soulless world she had confronted at twenty lay again before her like the limitless unmoving sea; she would have to reconcile herself to it again, as she had then, to find in it meaning and self-transcendence, to make the leap of faith. Again.
There had been child murders along the coast, cruel and gruesome. Local children called the undetected killer The Bad Monkey and that was what the cries of “mono malo” were about. Someone was killing children. She was alone, the sun rose and set over the ocean. She picked up Egan’s mail and went inside to his quarters.
You can go along for years, she thought, walking dreamily across the kitchen toward Father Egan’s door, and you think you’re there—then sooner or later you realize you’ve got to make the jump. And this one—toward man or history, the future—call it whatever—was harder for her. She accepted the revolution, she had for years—but she was critical, arrogant, better at the forms of humility than the substance, not so good a lover of her neighbor as herself. So there it was at her feet, another death-defying leap.
For a moment, at Egan’s door, she thought about death and the defying of it. What was death, she wondered, and what did it mean to her? A proper essay for the novitiate, a nunnish reflection.
She rapped lightly on Father Egan’s door several times, then slowly pushed it open. Egan was sprawled across his cot, still dressed in his khaki work shirt and tan trousers, his Detroit Tigers cap on his head, the laced work boots on his feet.
Justin went toward his unconscious figure, slowed by dread. He’s dead, she thought. He’s really died. “Father?”
She stood over him looking for signs of life and after a moment she understood that he was breathing; she could see the slow heaving of his shoulders and hear the irregular wheeze of his exhalations against the mattress. His hands as well as his boots were soiled with black earth.
“Father Egan? Charles?”
She put her hand against his damp shoulder and shook him. Very slowly he raised his head from the mattress, even more slowly turned and looked at her with utter incomprehension.
“Are you all right?” she asked him.
“Might I,” he asked, “have a paper?”
“A paper?” Justin asked in astonishment.
Egan had begun a cetaceous wallowing to right himself. Justin noticed that his pills were at his bedside and that the Flor de Cana bottle stood on his desk.
“You can’t mix those,” Justin pointed out to him. “You’ll kill yourself.”
Father Egan managed to place his feet on the floor and sat with his arms folded, head down.
“I can’t do anything about a paper,” Justin told him. “But I can point out that we have a shower. And that there’s a change of clothes available.”
“Shut up,” Egan said sourly. “Just … shut up, Justin. There’s a good girl.”
She walked to the far end of the room and considered him.
“Did you mix those pills and rum?”
“No,” Egan said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“You were out last night. Where on earth were you?”
The puzzled look on his face frightened her.
“Oh, yes,” he said presently. “Yes.”
“Well,” Justin said, “may one ask where?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” Egan said.
Grim suspicions assailed her. Just how crazy is he? she wondered to herself.
“I might,” she said. “Try me.”
“I was out at the ruins.”
Justin watched him, holding her position at the farthest extremity of his cluttered room. “But why?”
“I can’t tell you that. Under the seal.”
Justin went out and put some coffee on for him. He preferred the Irish tea that sometimes came from home but that morning there was none available. When the coffee was ready she carried the pot and one cup on a tray to his quarters. Egan was still sitting on the cot, staring at the scrubbed wooden floor. She poured him out a cup of the thick native coffee.
“There’s fruit in the kitchen,” she said. “And there’s mail.” In her fright at his condition she had set the letters down on his desk. She handed them over. “We’v
e got Fellowship if you want to look at it. There’s a letter for you. And we’ve got a flash from the provincial.”
Egan took his mother’s letter and set it beside him.
“It’s all been opened,” Justin told him. “Whether by Campos or by someone higher I’ve no idea.”
The priest shrugged and began to remove his stained shirt.
“What does the letter from the provincial say?”
As she was opening it, he stood up and began undoing his belt buckle. “Oh, hell, tell me later. I’ve got to clean up and get to work. Answer it in whatever manner you feel’s appropriate and I’ll sign it.”
While Father Egan carried on with his undressing, Justin went outside and read their letter from the Very Reverend Matthew J. Greene, to whose directives she and Charlie Egan were bound by sacred vow.
Monsignor Greene’s letter finally and unequivocally closed the mission. It contained airline ticket vouchers and orders for them to report, prior to the twentieth of February, to the Devotionist House of St. Peter Martyr in Metairie, Louisiana. They would have been informed by the mission country’s ecclesiastical authorities, the letter went on to say, that an intervenor had been appointed by the bishop of the diocese to take charge of the mission house grounds and supplies, and to supervise the property’s transfer to the Millimar Corporation of Boston, the parent company of International Fruit and Vegetable, to whose control it now reverted. They were reminded that funds to cover the last quarter of the mission’s expenses had been disbursed and that no further funds would be forthcoming.
“There is no reply to this one, Charles,” Justin said in the empty slatted hallway. Egan was in the shower. “This is the one.”
In fact, no one among the church authorities in Tecan had informed them of anything, nor had International Fruit, which had a large district office in Puerto Alvarado. It meant, Justin thought, either that the local diocese was simply proceeding in the Tecanecan style or that someone in the hierarchy was delaying the operation for unfathomable reasons.
As for IF&V, they must be simply waiting; in spite of rumors that Millimar was planning Tecan’s first Florida-style resort at French Harbor, they seemed content to let the church sort out its minor schisms before taking over. Eventually, of course, they could go to the government—the President was by way of being a junior partner in the firm—if they saw the need for any dispatch. Things worked better in Tecan if you were IF&V.
When she went back into Egan’s quarters the priest had changed and, red-eyed, was gathering up his books.
“You can read it, Charles. It’s a final notice. We’re not replying.”
“Fine,” Egan said. He picked up the provincial’s letter, wadded it and threw it in his wastepaper basket.
“Our ticket vouchers have arrived.”
“Really?” Father Egan asked. “They’ve sent us tickets before. They must have forgotten. That’s the profligacy that goes with being tax-free. So now we’ve each got two tickets. If we hold out down here long enough maybe they’ll send more and we’ll take our entire flock to New Orleans with us.”
“We don’t have a flock anymore, Charles. Haven’t you noticed?”
“I have a flock,” Father Egan said.
“And the order’s dissolving. Tax-free or not, they’re really broke.”
Egan looked at her blankly. “I can hit Hughie up for a thousand dollars U.S. God knows whether it’ll get here and how long it will take.” Hughie was his younger brother, a former Devotionist seminarian, now a liquor wholesaler in Seattle. “But it’ll be the last grand I get from him.”
“Do it then,” Justin said.
“Personally I’m prepared to move to a hotel in town. Or I might try to trade those vouchers in and buy myself a little house inland. Don’t stay on my account, dear.”
“It’s not on your account, Father Egan.”
So it could go on awhile she thought. And they might yet be needed.
“What’s your citizenship?” she asked Egan, possessed of a sudden thought. “It’s U.S., isn’t it?”
“It’s U.S. For over thirty years. Since just before Pearl Harbor.”
“Right,” Justin said.
Just at the door, she stopped.
“You know what’s funny?” she said. “The rest of the team—I hardly remember any of them. I mean Mary Margaret Donahue was here for five years and I can’t remember what she looked like. Don’t you think that’s strange?”
“Yes,” Egan said. “But it’s like you. Myself—I remember them all. I don’t forget people.”
He began to type as she went out; she walked to the veranda and commenced pacing its length. The idleness was destroying her, she thought. Egan at least had his imaginary endless book; she had nothing. As she paced, she kept watch for the fish seller and for Epifanía to come with her basket to do the laundry. The laundry, especially Egan’s, was a rotten job, yet she half hoped that Epifanía would stay away like the rest, so that she herself would have labor for the afternoon. But if Epifanía too failed to come, their situation would be even more grotesque. Pathetic as it was to have in the visits of a washing woman a last hold on duty and reason, if Epifanía and the fisherman stopped coming the place would be utterly shut off from the community of French Harbor, completely without intercourse, pastoral, social and even commercial. As though, she thought bitterly, they were there to buy fish and have their laundry done.
Then she thought she saw Epifanía walking along the beach road and even while she wondered why Epifanía was without her basket, she saw that it was not Epifanía at all, not a black offshore-island woman at all—but Father Schleicher’s friend, the community-planning trainee from Loyola, barefoot, her hair in braids and wearing a bright print dress. Almost, Justin thought, in disguise. She went down the steps and stood in the road until the woman came up to her.
“You look lovely,” Justin said. She did not try to smile. “Out for a walk?”
“To see you,” the girl said. She looked at Justin gravely, though she seemed to be mastering excitement. “I bring you a message from Xavier Godoy.”
Justin’s heart turned over.
“He says you must be ready for an action.”
And will I see him? she wanted to ask. But she asked simply: “What do we have to do?”
“You must have a place ready for men to go if they are hurt. Where they can hide until we get them out.”
“We have,” Justin said. “But there’ll be a risk if the place is really searched thoroughly.”
“We think it won’t be. Not everywhere.”
“Then,” Justin told her, “we have such a place.”
“We have to know if you have antibiotics and dressings. Also whether you yourself can treat the wounds of bullets.”
Justin pursed her lips to keep from trembling.
“We have all the medical equipment we need. I can treat a bullet wound—I can extract a bullet if the wound’s fairly superficial. I’ve done it. But I’m not a surgeon. With really deep bad wounds all I can do is try and stop the bleeding and the pain.”
The Tecanecan girl listened with her eyes closed. They were both visibly trembling now.
“At what time can I expect business?” Justin asked.
The girl shook her head quickly. “We here don’t know. We’ll be told.”
“O.K.,” Justin said.
“What about the old Father Egan? Will there be trouble because of him?”
“He’s ill,” Justin said. “And he’s not a bad man. He won’t be trouble, you can depend on that.”
“Well,” the girl said, “that’s it then.”
That’s it then, Justin thought. At last.
“Will I see Xavier?”
The young Tecanecan drew herself up at Justin’s naked breathless question. But suddenly she was smiling, a soft and kind smile.
“Maybe you will see him. I don’t know. Who can know in these things?”
“Of course,” Justin said, smiling back. And they wer
e holding each other’s hands.
“But you mustn’t say anything to anyone. I know you understand that.”
“Good glory, yes.”
“Then good luck.”
“Good luck to you. And to those who fight.”
“To all of us,” the girl said. “To our Tecan.”
They embraced quickly, and the girl with a little curtsy that might have been nervousness or upbringing or a show for onlookers hurried along the sandy road toward town.
Justin ran up the steps and leaned panting in the doorway. She looked at her watch—it was nearly eleven. There was plenty of time—there was too much. If the fisherman failed to come she could drive into Puerto Alvarado and buy groceries from the Syrian, enough for extra mouths if necessary but not so much as to arouse suspicion.
When the prospect of the long afternoon’s waiting began to oppress her she remembered the laundry. Thank God for it! If Epifanía came she would give her some money and send her away.
Without a word, she gathered up the scattered dirty clothes from Egan’s rooom, then fetched her own laundry bag and set the load down by the kitchen sink. There was no need to tell Egan now; it was best that, if there were people to treat, he should know at the last minute. There was always the chance, she reminded herself, that Godoy would not come, that she would not see him, that she would have to handle it all herself. It would be all right.
As she watched her scrub bucket fill with well water from the tap old prayers came to her mind. Justin drove them out, sorting the wash, lighting the stove.
You don’t pray to that God, she thought, that God of meaningless battles, of unconsoled poverty and petty injunctions. Perhaps Egan was right when he said that they had it wrong—wrongly written down. It was superior and uncharitable of her to be such bad company, to ignore him so. Perhaps his thinking was closer to hers than she imagined.
When the bucket was full, she went off to look for soap.
So, she thought, let God be in those children on their carousel, in Godoy, in these people proud and starving. Because if not there, then where would He be and to what purpose and what would it matter?
She put the steel bucket on the stove and opened a fresh white bar of soap.
