Robert Stone - A Flag for Sunrise

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.”