Denis Johnson - Tree of Smoke

bathing. The tank made a leak.” He was talking about the badly cracked

concrete cistern a few yards away. “Are there quite a few Catholics in your parish?” “Oh, yes. Yes. Catholics. I’ve baptized hundreds, confirmed hun

dreds. I don’t know where they go afterward. I never see most of them.” “They don’t come to Mass?” “They come here in times of trouble. To them I’m not really a priest

of God. They like to use witches to help them. I’m more like that.” “Ah.” “They’ll come tomorrow. A few. Because it’s Saint Dionysia’s feast

day. They believe she has power.” “Aha.” “And you.” “Me?” “Are you a Catholic?” “My mother wasn’t a Catholic. My dad was.” “Well—the father isn’t usually very religious.” “My dad died in the war. I made lots of visits to his Irish relatives in

Boston. They were pretty rabidly Catholic.” “But you’re confirmed?” “Right, I had my confirmation in Boston.” “Did you say Boston? I grew up in Bridgewater. Near there.” “Yes.” They were now having most of this conversation for the second

time. The priest told him, “After I left home, my mother and father moved to Boston. I talked to my mother on the telephone in 1948.1 called from

the new important hotel in Davao. New at that time. Still important, maybe, eh? She said she was praying for me always. Hearing her voice made her sound more far away than ever. When I got back to the parish here, it was like starting all over again on the first day. I felt far from home again.”

Four tiny children, naked but for undershirts, stood at the corner of

the building, staring. When Sands smiled, they screamed and ran away. Carignan said, “I met the other man. He visited us, too.” “I’m not sure who you mean.” “The colonel, Colonel Sands.” “Oh, of course, the colonel,” Skip agreed. “But he wasn’t wearing a uniform. I think the uniforms must be too

hot. So I don’t know what branch of the military.” “He’s retired.” “He is also Sands.” “Yes. He’s my uncle.” “Your uncle. I see. Are you also a colonel?” “No, I’m not with the military.” “I see. Are you with the Peace Corps?” “No. I’m with Del Monte. I think I mentioned that.” “Some of the people are very excited about the Peace Corps. Every

body wants a visitor if possible.” “I’m sorry to say I don’t know much about it.” “And the two others yesterday. The Filipino soldier, and the other

one. “Yesterday?” Carignan knit his eyebrows together and said, “Wasn’t it yesterday?” “Let me get the sequence of events in order,” Sands said. “When did

the colonel come?” “Oh, some weeks ago. Around the feast of Saint Anthony.” “And the other two were here yesterday?” “I didn’t see them. Pilar told me. I went downriver to deliver the last

rites—a very old woman there. Pilar said a Filipino and a white. Not a Joe. A foreigner. They had a palm-boat.” “I see, a palm-boat,” Sands said, feeling the shores erode beneath his feet. “Boston, is it,” Carignan said.

“Yeah, Boston,” Skip said. “Del Monte, did you say?” “Yes, I did. But these two visitors —how strange, huh?” “I believe they’re still on the river. I’ll ask Pilar. She has all the news

from the river people.” “Pilar is the housekeeper? The lady who served us the tea?” “Is it okay? We don’t have milk,” the priest reminded him, as he had

when they’d sat down. “Jesus,” Skip said. The priest seemed to sense Skip’s disarray. He was solicitous. “We all

have a spiritual trial to go through. When I was a little boy I was very hateful toward the Jews because I said they were the crucifiers. I was very contemptuous of Judas too, because of his betrayal.”

“I see,” Sands said, and saw nothing.

Carignan seemed to struggle. The words stuck in his throat. He touched his mouth with his fingers. “Well, it’s very much for each person to experience alone,” he said, and whatever truth he meant to get at, his eyes were the visible scars of it.

“May I snap your picture?”

The priest suddenly looked studious and foreboding, his hands clasped together before his chest. Skip focused and tripped the shutter, and Carignan relaxed. He said, “You are something of a pilgrim, eh? Yes. Me too. I went on a very long hike to the Pulangi River.”

“We can pray for each other,” Skip said. “I don’t pray.” “You don’t?” “No, no, no. I don’t pray.”

Th e Joe liked tea. Insisted on getting it himself. Talking a great deal

with Pilar about the other visitors. Why these people kept coming was a mystery. The Joe had seemed to enjoy riding his motorbike, bucking over the

ruts into the yard, his belt strung through the handle of his cloth satchel and the satchel swinging at his side.

In the Joe’s absence the children materialized around the machine, openmouthed, touching it with their fingertips. “Here he comes!” Carignan shouted in English, and the children scattered.

Why was his English coming back to him these last few weeks? Because he’d been thinking of the American missionary? The bones in a box, saying nothing, but in every language? Maybe because he’d opened a hole in his mind when he’d first spoken to the American visitor, the colonel, the first American in years. In decades.

This colonel had come twice. He’d come alone and had behaved respectfully. He was good, and the locals responded to him with enthusiasm. But good or bad, a strong man causes trouble.

With a sense how it all must look to the visitor’s eyes, Carignan regarded the red muddy path to the riverbank, the cracked cistern, the tarped roof, the mildew crawling the walls. The Joe was probably using the concrete chamber, the “facilities” downstairs—dark, grimy, separated only by a low wall from the kitchen, in which Pilar now cooked rice and sang a song. If she wanted, she could step over and stare into his face as he crouched over the hole. The Joe would want toilet paper. There was a roll of the stuff in the facilities, but it had been soaked and dried out by the weather and really couldn’t be used.

Pilar stopped singing in the kitchen and came out with another tray. Sliced mango and pineapple. “Pilar, I told you: if the American comes again, tell him I’m not

here.”

“It’s not the same one.”

“I don’t like so many Americans.”

“He’s Catholic.”

“So was the colonel.”

“Don’t you like the Catholic? You are Catholic. I am Catholic.”

“You’re being silly again.”

“No. You are silly.”

She resented him for failing to take advantage of her. And he understood. Who would mind if he did? It’s just that he was very ashamed of any kind of touching.

She said, “That old man is coming up the road to see you. I saw him just now from the kitchen. Don’t give him any food. He always comes

back.” “Where’s the American?” She said in English: “Bathroom.” The old man waited until Pilar went inside before he appeared

around the corner of the church, walking sideways out of a kind of deference, dressed only in khaki shorts with the legs turned up to his crotch and the waist cinched around his belly with a rope. Carignan beckoned, and the old man came and sat. Like all of them he was shrunken and almost meatless, an animated mummy. He had the flat, weary features of a very wise Eskimo. He smiled a lot. He had hardly any teeth.

“Bless me, Padair, for I have sin,” he said in English without apparent

comprehension, “bless me and I ask you forgiveness.” “Te obsolvo. Have some pineapple.” The old man scooped up several pieces in his hands and said,

“Maraming salamat po,” thanking him in Tagalog, the dialect of Luzon. The old man’s preliminaries generally seemed to require statements in a variety of tongues.