Robert Stone - A Flag for Sunrise

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.

“Let’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.”