Robert Stone - A Flag for Sunrise

“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.”

Talk of being picked up was troubling to Pablo. As he watched the old man’s vacant face, cadaverous even in the firelight, his leg began to hurt and he felt cold. Things were wrong, he thought. Things were wiggy.

Egan was drinking now; he sat with his head lowered, talking softly to himself.

“Again I couldn’t see,” Pablo heard him say. “Could it be that because there was no concupiscence I was …” The priest’s thin voice trailed off.

Pablo sat up.

“Hey, man, you said you could help me out. You said you’d give me a place to crash. You said you had medicine. Now I’m sick, you understand me?”

“The boat,” the old man said, “you fought on the boat. That’s why you’re here.”

“Never mind the fuckin’ boat,” Pablo said. The fear that had been hovering in the surrounding darkness touched him with its feathers. The place was wiggy. There were killers and the old man was stoned mad. He was one of those people — whatever you wanted they had it, but jack shit was what they had. It was a turned-around place, a bad place. Maybe not a true place at all.

“Something’s going on, Pablo,” the priest said. “Something to do with the place we’re in.”

Pablo’s throat was dry as sand; he opened his mouth to breathe.

“What do you mean?” He knew that the pills had started to poison him at last. And people had better beware then and they had better not try to turn him around.

“Did you look at the stones?”

Pablo realized he meant the inscribed upright slabs in the center of the clearing.

“Yeah. Sort of.”

“Did you examine them? Did you read them?”

“It was dark. Anyway, how’m I gonna read that craziness?”

“The stones tell about human sacrifice. All the glyphs and all the figures here are about that and nothing else.”

“Human sacrifice,” Pablo said.

“A man came here once from the national museum. They took rubbings of those stones and they picked up everything that could be moved. They said it was for the museum’s collection but of course it was for the President’s family to sell. They picked up bone carvings and shards with graffiti on them. The man said he thought the graffiti might tell him something about everyday life here long ago, about how people went about life. But it turned out that he was wrong, it turned out that every single stroke represented human sacrifice — even the graffiti. It was as though there was no everyday life. Only sacrifice.”

Tabor looked at him blankly.

“You understand, Pablo? There’s a charge on the place. It draws people like Weitling and people like you. The field of blood. The place of the skull. They played the ball game here, you know.” The old priest frowned and shook his head. “Can that be? A temple? A temple of the demiurge?”

Pablo felt as though the short hairs on the back of his neck were on end. He opened his mouth to breathe. “The ball game,” he repeated.

“But why not?” Egan asked. “Whatever life is, it isn’t rational. Signs and wonders, eh?”

“Now look,” Pablo said, “you’re tryin’ to turn me around.” Something like the taste of an old bad dream stirred under Pablo’s memory. Place of the skull. “What happened on that boat, man, that was the purest case of self-defense you could want. Those people were bad, man, they were wanting to kill me. I’m just lucky I’m alive.”

The old man’s eyes had come to life. He pursed his lips and thumped Pablo on the chest.

“Something’s going on, Pablo. Always. Something taking its course.”

“I don’t …” Pablo began. “I don’t …”

“A process.” Egan took a deep breath, held it and released it in a hoarse whisper. “Measureless.”

I’m in such trouble now, Pablo thought, I might as well be dead. He thought of mornings in the piney woods, of going for quail. But he had shot his dogs.

“Imagine it,” Egan said. “This colossal immanent force and it’s a gleam in the muck. Layer upon layer of intention, consciousness. Measureless will. Unseen and encompassing everything.”

“Could I have some of your rum, bro?” Pablo asked. “See, I don’t feel good.” When Egan did not respond, he reached over and took it.

“It’s woven in,” Egan said. “Hiding in the universe. Everywhere and yet never anywhere. Always present and never available.” Father Egan’s bright gaze fell upon Tabor. He appeared not to recognize him. Yet he called him by name. “Pablo,” he said, “what a mystery, eh?”

“No,” Pablo said, “no, I don’t feel so good and that’s the truth. I don’t like the way I feel.”

“It’s here after all, marking a passage, setting traps. Like insect traps among the leaves. For butterflies. We never find it. Does it ever find us?”

“It’s my leg that’s hurting,” Pablo said. “I think it might be pretty bad.” He reached with difficulty into the pockets of his jeans. “See, all I got is these pain pills and I gotta have more.” He held up the little glass bottle for Egan’s inspection. “And even aspirin, if I had that, see.”

“Telling the dancer from dance, Pablo. That’s what the poem’s about, you know. That’s the problem.”

“You don’t even give a shit,” Pablo said bitterly.

“But I do,” Egan said cheerfully, not looking at Pablo. “Now, listen. A friend of mine, a Maryknoll chap, lived fifty years in Africa. He told me they had a moth there that lived in colonies. The colonies lived in the branches of a certain kind of tree, they would settle on a branch and there they would form a leaf and flower pattern unknown to nature. It was totally their own. Now that’s marvelous, isn’t it? But that’s not the half. If you shook the branch, the moths would fly away. Then in minutes they’d settle down again and form the same leaf and flower. Hundreds, maybe thousands of moths, every one in its exact place. Each moth an exact part of the whole.” He turned toward Pablo. “A jigsaw.”

Desperate, Tabor rolled his eyes and ground his teeth.

“I don’t even know what the fuck you’re talking about, you crazy old bastard. You said you’d help me out.”