A Flag for Sunrise

by Robert Stone

  “Thank you,” Pablo said. He held her look to see what her face would do. She looked away. As he walked toward the stone slabs someone called to him.

  “Hey, your leg’s bleeding.”

  The slabs were like tombstones the height of a man. In the flickering light of the nearer fires, Pablo examined the first one he came to. He saw the profile of a face with the features chipped away. Over the figure’s head was what appeared to be a fanged cat with its mouth open wide. Below the obliterated face was another, upside down; it seemed the same face reversed like the obverse head of a one-eyed jack. Below that face were things like the rattles of a snake, feathers, a lizard.

  It was a sign of the place, Pablo thought. The slabs were what everyone was there about.

  Some distance beyond the three carved stones, an old man in a white shirt was feeding twigs to a small fire. There was a Bible beside him and a bottle of liquor. Pablo watched him awhile and then approached the fire.

  “Say ho,” he said to the old man.

  Father Egan looked at him without surprise.

  “Hello, son.”

  Pablo let himself down across the fire from Egan and leaned his back against a log. He felt, for a moment, as though he would never rise again.

  “You know,” he told the priest, “like, I just come out of the ocean here. I was shipwrecked.”

  Egan’s face was blank.

  “I’m not lying,” Pablo said weakly. “We tucked in a reef a few miles down. I think our boat’s under.”

  “For heaven’s sake,” Egan said. He poked at the fire. “Is everyone all right?”

  “Yeah,” Pablo said. “It was just me.”

  “You’ve hurt your leg.”

  Pablo nodded, reached for the priest’s rum and drank.

  “I need help,” he said. “I need to lie down. I might need medicine.”

  “You’re lucky,” Egan said. “We can provide you with a bed and medicine.”

  “No shit?”

  “Absolutely not,” Egan said.

  Pablo closed his eyes in gratitude.

  “The other thing is … we weren’t supposed to be here. We ain’t supposed to fish off here, understand? Ain’t got the papers for it. So we don’t want any cops or coast guard or like that. We don’t want them to know about us being here.” He kept his eyes on the old man’s face. Egan looked untroubled. “I’m asking you because you’re a fellow American. You are a fellow American, ain’t you?”

  “More or less,” Egan said. “A citizen, yes. A citizen of no mean city.”

  “So if you could help me out, see? I got some money. Coming to me anyways.” He secretly touched the folder of bills in his pocket. “If you could put me up and leave me see to my leg. And you kept it quiet—that would be real good. I could see you got paid.”

  “We can do all that for you, I suppose. What’s your name?”

  “Pablo,” Pablo said. “Goddamn, that’d be great, bro. That’d be real fine.”

  The priest let the fire be and looked at his guest.

  “It wasn’t you I was expecting, Pablo.”

  Pablo smiled and settled back against the log. It was too good to be true but he was too exhausted for caution. He believed.

  “It’s me you got, though,” he said. Then he passed into unconsciousness.

  When he came to himself again, he could not remember where he was. He smelled damp wood smoke and heard the night birds, sat up and saw Egan at the fire. He felt as though he were choosing one dream from among many. There were birds in all of them.

  “You were angry,” said the priest.

  Pablo looked about the clearing and saw few other fires burning now. The strangers had tucked themselves into shadow. Someone was playing chords on a guitar, hammocks were strung between trees.

  “I wasn’t anything, mister. I was asleep.”

  Egan’s empty gaze was fixed on the fire.”

  “Was there a fight on your boat?” he asked Pablo.

  Pablo shrugged and frowned.

  “No. I mean, I couldn’t say. I don’t remember too well. Maybe I hit my head.”

  The priest looked at him thoughtfully. Pablo returned a warning smile but Father Egan went right on staring.

  “Where were you coming from? Where were you going?”

  Pablo hunched his shoulders as though to throw off the questions.

  “Florida,” he said. “You know,” he told Egan after a moment, “you shouldn’t ask me a whole lot of questions. Then you won’t be concerned, you see what I mean? Down here, the way it is, you shouldn’t be.”

  “Down here,” Egan said. “Absolutely right. Well, I’m very discreet. I’m known for my discretion down here.”

  “You said you could help me out.”

  “Yes, I can help you out, Pablo. We have to stay here for a while, though, because I’m waiting for someone.”

  “Who?” Pablo demanded.

  “No one you have to be afraid of. Wait and see.”

  Pablo bent forward to touch the knife strapped to his calf and chewed another pain pill to stay primed for uncertainty. After about ten minutes, Father Egan said: “He’s coming.”

  Pablo followed the priest’s gaze and saw a massively tall figure picked up in firelight, a man in bib overalls with a straw sombrero. When he drew nearer, they could see his broad square-boned face. He had a nose that drew attention to itself, being long almost to caricature. His eyes were blue and small and set in a web of fine wrinkles. In age he might have been anywhere between eighteen and senescence.

  “His name is Weitling,” Father Egan told Pablo. “I used to call him the Farmer.”

  “He ain’t American,” Pablo observed.

  “No.”

  Pablo watched the Farmer come up to the fireside and look cautiously around. He was very big indeed, six-four or -five. His whole body bespoke physical strength.

  “Who is that man?” the Farmer asked in a soft, almost womanish voice. He had reference to Pablo.

  “That’s Pablo, Weitling. Are you afraid of him?”

  “Yes,” Weitling replied. He gave his answer a faintly interrogative tone.

  “Don’t be. He’s a friend.”

  “A night friend?”

  “Yes, another night friend. Like you.”

  Pablo had bared his upper teeth, he was not pleased with Weitling. The huge man hunkered down and removed his sombrero. The fair hair on his head was so fine it seemed to reflect the firelight.

  “Tell us, Weitling,” Egan said, “what have you seen and heard and what have you thought about?”

  “I’m not to say what I have heard,” the Farmer explained to them. “It’s forbidden. They are secrets.” His English had a Germanic slur. “Sometimes you … I’ve thought about.”

  “Very good, Weitling.” Father Egan nodded grave approval. “About what I said to you?”

  “Yes,” Weitling said. Then he turned his attention to Pablo, whose face had gradually contorted itself into a mask of hatred beyond loathing. The Farmer faced Pablo’s malevolence with the unconcern of a draft horse.

  “Tell me what you’ve decided,” Egan said. He poked at the fire with a long green stick, and as he did so his hand trembled slightly.

  “The world is full of devils,” Weitling said. He was looking at Pablo. “He is a devil.” He turned slowly toward Egan, who was looking into the fire. “You also.”

  Egan did not look at him. “By your fruits shall ye know them,” the priest said. “Have I told you anything to make me seem a devil?”

  “I have heard so,” Weitling said softly. “I have heard tell.”

  “From the voices?”

  The Farmer uttered his soft questioning affirmative.

  “Ah. But of course you can’t tell me what the voices said.” Egan pursed his lips.

  Pablo had drawn as far away from Weitling as his posture permitted. Inwardly he made a sign against the Evil Eye. The Farmer’s eyes were like blue buttons. Stuffed-animal eyes.

  “L
et’s try and remember what we talked about,” said the priest. His voice was informed with a music of few tones; Pablo recognized the calm singsong of the practiced confessor. “I told you I thought when you hurt people it was instead of loving them. That you really wanted to love. Did I not?”

  The Farmer was silent.

  “I suppose you thought that was nonsense. Maybe it is nonsense. Overwrought pap. Eh?” He looked at both of them in turn. “It didn’t seem so at the time. It seemed vaguely true. What do you think, Pablo?”

  “Hey,” Pablo said, “you know, I couldn’t say.”

  “Let’s forget that then. A maudlin conceit. But, Weitling, I did tell you that the Lord likes his little creatures as they are and that’s not just an emotional transport of mine. It’s true, believe me. I said, I believe, that he never made anything more wonderful than a small child. You’re forbidden—forbidden, Weitling—to harm a hair on the head of a child. I gave you chapter and verse, didn’t I? Luke 18:16, eh? Matthew 18:6.”

  In the great square of Weitling’s face, a turmoil was reflected.

  “Ja,” he said. “Ja.”

  He seemed excited for a moment; he began to bounce in his squatting position, the muscles in his thighs shifted under his overalls like railway lines.

  The sparks of hope were fanned in Egan’s dull eyes.

  “Now you’ve thought about all this, haven’t you?”

  “Ja,” said Weitling. His hands gripped his knees, he was staring into some distance. “I thought and thought it over. I was in pain from it, yes. I prayed. Then they said you are the devil and you’re tempting me.”

  Egan drew in his thin lips and raised a weak hand to his forehead.

  “But you know that’s not true, don’t you, boy?”

  Then Weitling stopped bouncing on his haunches and turned to Egan with a great glowing smile. His teeth were regular and white.

  “I think,” he said, “you are.” And he laughed.

  Pablo, to his own confusion, saw that Egan was trembling.

  “Weitling,” the priest said. He licked his lips and leaned forward. “Weitling, think of God’s sparrows. ‘Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall upon the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, for ye are of more value than many sparrows.’ That’s what the Almighty tells His children, Weitling. You dare not harm them.”

  The Farmer laughed again; the laughter came from within his body, it was unlike his thin soft voice. When he stopped laughing, he fixed the old priest with small fiery eyes. “And fear not those who kill the body! Yes? It says, nix?”

  “Don’t listen to the voices, Weitling! They’re evil things.”

  “No,” Weitling said. “God speaks.”

  “God forbids murder, Weitling. God watches over the little children. He is Who loves truly. He made the lamb.”

  “One day there will be a ram for sacrifice,” Weitling declared, looking beyond the fire. “When things are made clean I will see a ram with his horns caught. Then sacrifice by bad monkeys will be over and it will be the ram. I am promised this.”

  “Ah, Weitling,” Father Egan said, “we talked it out so carefully the other night. We were both so lucid. I thought you’d listened to me.”

  “I have to fool you,” the Farmer said, and his features were illuminated by another witless smile. “I am smart. I was fooling you.”

  Pablo Tabor was driven toward homicidal delirium by the Farmer’s manner. He had spent several secret minutes changing his position in order to have a grab at his knife when the time came. Now, Weitling’s smile put him over the top. “Crazy fuck.” He spat bile through his teeth. No one seemed to notice.

  “Weitling, son …” Egan stretched a tentative bony hand toward the young man. “What kind of a thing would God be if He made you butcher His innocents?”

  As Egan and Pablo, flesh acrawl, watched, Weitling threw back his head and puckered his lips to form a quivering O. From the oval space issued a shrill keening.

  “Oooh, he is terrible,” Weitling sang. His face was distended by fear. He folded his arms across his chest and thrust his hands under his armpits. He was in ecstasy. “He is more terrible than you can know. His face is like Indian corn, of colors. Then sometimes invisible, the worst. The hair of him is blue. He is electricity. Arms and legs are made of worms. The power. And it is like space beneath you, you are falling. I fall. I, poor myself, I fall. He crushes me. And he is terrible music, a howling. I am made to see his terrible face and to hear his horrible voice. He makes the noise of a drum. The noise of an organum. Ein flaute, also. Also of parrots, and sometimes is so, a parrot. He says I will fall more and I am squeezed. Poor myself. He says there is not mercy anymore. He says of Jesus Christ—hex not rex. He says that I must see the corn face. He says I am bad Weitling and I am frightened cold.”

  Weitling bent his great head as far backward as his neck allowed and uttered another cry.

  “Oooh, he says the wine is blood! Eat flesh meat, he says this. He will make blood run out until fields are covered and he will bowl the sun to dry it. He has not mercy for Weitling. Nor for children. They are in depravity, he says. He is free. He takes them up, their bones, their gut bags. He makes rain out of them. The rain, this is him laughing at Weitling. His laughing is rain. He makes the rain of parts of children. The fish are fed with blood. When they see his face their eyes are opened, they eat their teeth. He says Weitling go down. And I go down and do it. We are shit upon the ground to him. This he tells me.”

  “Lamb of God who takest away the sins of the world, have mercy on us,” Father Egan said softly, and struck his breast. Pablo could not take his eyes from Weitling’s enraptured face.

  The priest reached out with an unsteady hand to touch Farmer Weitling’s shoulder.

  “Weitling, the necessary sacrifice was made long ago. No one asks anything of you except that you get yourself healed.”

  Weitling rocked to his drummer god; Egan’s hand fell away.

  “He is king and I, his bad monkey. I am the bad monkey in the trees. They tell the children run from the bad monkey and the children run. But whose monkey I am, they don’t know. He calls. He screams like a hungry monkey. He must make the rain. In his horrible voice he screams at Weitling.”

  “Stop it,” Egan said in a dull voice. “Stop it now, son.”

  Weitling kept rocking.

  “They don’t know what I, Weitling, know. I make the sun to come up. I hear it come up. Without me there is no rain. When the sun is bowled and the blood is dry things so beautiful will be. Ja, it’s so. No hungering. No wondering. Everything we must have will be.”

  Egan watched him for a moment, in silence.

  “Well now,” the priest said, “I’ve heard that one before.”

  “But if there is not blood everything is destroyed. Darkness and the sun falls and the stars and moon. The ground opens and it is all crushed like Weitling.”

  “But you’re deluded, Weitling. It all takes care of itself. That’s the beauty of it—so they say.” He put his hand around the bottle of rum as though he were about to drink but after a second he took the hand away. “Don’t you see that it’s better that the world endures its own destruction than that you make yourself work such cruelties? Or that an innocent child is made to suffer and die?”

  Weitling stopped rocking and began to stand up. The mask of celebration dissolved and his broad stolid face relaxed.

  “I am small,” he told Egan, looking down on him, “but I’m too big for you. He’s with me and I’m strong.”

  “Well, you’re too strong for me but that’s no trick. Go, Weitling. Go back to your people, find your bishop or your elder and let them help to cure you.”

  “Where I go,” Weitling said, “They don’t find me.”

  He looked about him and then turned on Pablo.

  “You,” he told Tabor, “you’re not a good boy.”

  Pablo snarled. “Oh
yeah?” he said.

  The Farmer took a step backward, turned and went his way rejoicing.

  “Some big creep,” Pablo said. “You ought to put a fence around this place.”

  “You should know,” the priest explained, “that he’s a killer of children. We’re not sure how many he’s done in. He hears voices.”

  “He really does that? He kills little kids?”

  Egan, looking into the fire, nodded.

  “If he does that, man, you got no business letting him run around.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Well, shit, you oughta tell someone. Or just take him out—bingo.”

  “If I told anyone around here, Weitling would be strung up the same day.”

  “What’s the matter with that? Then he couldn’t hurt no more kids.”

  “Yes. But I’m not sure he’s beyond help.”

  “Are you kidding me? You just don’t have any kids, that’s why you can talk like that.”

  “Ah,” Egan said. “Maybe you’re right.” He was thoughtful for a while. “You know, I’ve always valued children above everything else—even though I haven’t any. It’s always bothered me that the world hurts them. That they got lost in the bush, wandered into traps, all those terrible things. The thought of those things could always spoil the most beautiful day for me.”

  “Fucking-A, man. Kids are the only clean thing in this rotten fucked world. You can’t give a shit about people, they bring their trouble on themselves. But kids, that’s different.”

  “But Weitling—he’s a kind of a child himself, isn’t he?”

  “A fucking killer ape is what he is. There’s only one cure for him.”

  “He’s very sick and his head is full of dreams and stories that went bad on him. He’s not alone in that condition.”

  Pablo sighed and turned over to lean on his elbow. “I don’t know, bro,” he said wearily. “I got troubles of my own, you know.”

  “I’ve tried to get to the Mennonites about him—I’ve had my friends up-country get in touch. But they don’t have telephones, they live in inaccessible places and some of them don’t talk to strangers.” Egan reached for the bottle again and this time he took a drink. “You’re right, of course. I’ll have to see that he’s picked up. I’m as deluded as he is.”