Denis Johnson - Tree of Smoke

“Although, therefore, those things which are evil, in so far as they are evil, are not good, yet it is good that there should be evil things.” “And if God foreknew that they would be evil, evil they will be, in whatever goodness they may now appear to shine.”

“Are we children? Will we hide from the truth that God by His eternal goodwill appointed those whom He pleased unto salvation, rejecting all the rest?”

This fluttering heart, the thrill of the abyss, the inescapable truth of my foreordained damnation. She fell asleep with the light on, holding these terrifying affirmations against her breast.

The next morning came sunny and almost cool, the sky full of beautiful traveling clouds, everything so different from last night’s cauldron of ooze. Cory came in with bread and three tiny eggs from the market and made breakfast, after which Kathy met with eight nurse’s aids whom she’d trained and who now ran stations in the outlying barangays, at the moment only four stations, and six last quarter, and next quarter who knew, one or six or ten, the funding came and went.

The meeting was joined by a woman from the Upliftment Development Foundation, Mrs. Edith Villanueva, who took notes unnecessarily. Kathy’s eight aids, all women, all young, all married, all of them mothers many times over, and none of them very often free of their barangays, made a party of the occasion. They had rice and sugar fried in coconut oil and wrapped in banana leaf, rice wrapped in coconut leaf, and regular rice. “It’s all rice,” Mrs. Villanueva said somewhat apologetically.

The ladies were all very fond of her husband, had all the news about his disappearance, spoke of him respectfully, in such a manner as to imply he was neither dead nor alive. They called him Timmy.

And then, lunch concluded, it was time for Mayor Emeterio D. Luis, who held a central and elevated position by virtue of having learned everything about everyone in Damulog, who would have been the mayor even if no such municipal office had presented itself for his occupancy. Kathy brought him the leftover dainties arranged on a mahogany tray and draped with a silk scarf. Although Damulog housed a post office and city hall in a three-room cinderblock structure by the market, the mayor stayed out of it, preferring the small parlor of his home, which got shade and a breeze. He put Kathy in a wicker chair beside his desk, called out loudly for ice water, and asked her about polio immunization. She’d known him for two years. Still he took a few minutes to address her as if she’d just landed as an emissary. “Can we bring the polio vaccine to the outlying stations? We have problems in the countryside. Not everyone can march along the roads with so many children all the way to Damulog. These are the poor of the poorest. And sometimes also there can be robbers on the road. We don’t want to be victimized by these lawless elements. These are the poor of the poorest.” Kathy had heard him use the phrase several times lately. He invariably turned the words around. Yes: Emeterio D. Luis, the D, according to an engraved granite paperweight on his desk, standing for “Deus.”

Elections were far off, but already, he told her, his opponent for the office of mayor had slandered him, called him a coward, a man with “white eggs.” In his eyes, beneath the pains of office, glowed a general happiness. His sister, who taught at Southern Mindanao University, was singing tribal folk songs through a small PA amplifier on the patio, and he listened with satisfaction, his hands folded beside a vase of foam-rubber blossoms on top of his desk.

He talked to her about the American, Skip Sands, just as he must have spoken to Skip Sands about her. And of course he was aware she’d encountered the American in the Sunshine Eatery.

“I asked Skeep Sands if he knew the American colonel, and yes, they have a very interesting connection … Are you going to ask me what connection?”

“I wouldn’t want to gossip.”

“Gossip is un-Christian!” he said. “Unless you are talking to the mayor.”

Kathy uncovered the desserts and he studied the tray like a chess

board, his hand hovering. “So many visitors!” Kathy said, “I think you conjure them up.” “I conjure them up! Yes! I have conjured the American colonel, and

the Philippine Army major, and I have conjured that other man, I think

he was Swiss, what do you think he was?” “I didn’t meet him. Or the Filipino. Just the colonel.” “And I have conjured the survey team of engineers. Mrs. Luis,” he

asked his portly wife as she entered from the kitchen, sliding across the linoleum floor in her straw-soled zoris, “what do you think? Do you think I am a conjurer?”

“I think you have a very loud voice!”

“Kathy believes I can conjure things,” he called as she continued toward the rear of the house. “Kathy,” he said, “I want the survey team to do some work for me. I think you can help me to persuade them.”

“I don’t hold much sway with them, Emeterio.” “I have conjured them up! They must work for me!” “Well, you’ll have to do your own talking there.” “Kathy. The American called Skeep, do you know what he told me?

The colonel is his relative. The colonel is his uncle, to be exact.”

Kathy said, “Well!” He’d made a strong general impression, but she couldn’t remember—conjure—the colonel’s face in order to make any comparison.

“When I asked Skeep about the Filipino officer and the other man,

he pretended he doesn’t know them.” “Why would he know them?” “These people all know each other, Kathy. They are on a clandestine

government mission.”

“Well, everyone’s under cover.” She herself appeared here under the auspices of the International Children’s Relief Effort, an organization without religious affiliation, whereas in fact she’d come as the wife of her husband: a worker in the vineyards of Jesus Christ.

The mayor threw his sandal at a dog that wandered in, a perfect shot, dead on the rear, and it screeched like a bird and leapt out the door.

“It’s completely outside of our ideas to gamble,” he suddenly reflected. “Gambling is against the Seven Day ideas. I’m trying to put it behind me.”

“I bet you succeed.”

“Thank you. Oh-‘ I bet’! Yes! Ha ha! ‘I bet’!” He quickly sobered. “But you see, I go to the cockfights. It’s my obligation. I want to connect to the passions of the people.”

“I’ll bet you do.”

Fifteen minutes had passed, and now a young woman—servant, neighbor, or relative—set down two glasses of ice water on the desk. Mayor Luis dabbed at the sweat on his forehead with the back of his hand. He sighed. “Your husband Timmy.” The Filipinos all referred to her husband, for the first time in his life, as Timmy. “We will wait for word about the remains. It’s taking a little longer. I hold out hope, Kathy, because it’s possible that suddenly we might hear from some criminal elements of people who have taken him alive. We are victimized by so many lawless elements and kidnappers, but this time it can be said that they give us hope.” He sipped his water while a completely candid silence enclosed him: No. No hope.

At two in the afternoon, after classes let out and while the town dozed, she opened the doors of her Damulog health station, which operated in one of the cinderblock schoolhouse’s four classrooms. Upliftment Development’s Edith Villanueva was on hand to observe as young mothers brought in their infants to be immunized. A couple of dozen lined up, girls as young as twelve and thirteen—and looking only nine or ten—gripped the limbs of their babes ruthlessly for the shots, and received each a can of evaporated milk, which yielded, for them, the real meaning of the visit.