The Outcasts (11 page)

So Morrison walloped the man with a good hard right hand, and felt it all the way up his arm, in his chest, his throat, his eyes. Not the impact, not the shock. Far worse: the satisfaction. Like love: his heart swelled. The man dropped and sprawled, and Morrison felt huge. The man gathered himself and sat up, blinking, pressing his jaw with both hands; and pouting then, like an unwarned child spanked unjustly; pouting without rancor.

Blessed are the peacemakers. The crowd was silent. Philips and Craddock stood watching. To Philips Morrison gestured his helplessness, palms up, shrugging. Philips spoke to Craddock in the local language, and then to the crowd. Someone laughed, and called out a joke; others laughed. Even Morrison's victim smiled. Craddock left the circle, which broke up; Morrison's man, with a last musing glance, shanked off; Philips joined Morrison and they stood quietly.

“Hurt your hand?”

“A little. Was that Craddock?”

“Yes.”

“Who did I hit?”

“Fellow named Cook,” Philips said. “A cab driver.”

“Well.” Morrison was stupidly content. “Time for a drink. Do I have to keep looking over my shoulder?”

“No. It is finished for tonight. If he comes to the table, offer him the bottle and drink after him. Why did you hit him?”

“I hate cab drivers,” Morrison said. By heaven he felt good. He felt so good he wanted to cry.

He unfurled a kerchief to wipe his brow, and found that he was still wearing Tall Boy's fez.

The sun woke him, late. Emanuel had strung a hammock for him between two leafy trees. The sun glared from the hilltop, brightening his bower. A yawn and a stretch. His watch told him the hour was ten. All about him, silence, golden sunlight, broad leaves limp. He sat up in the hammock and rocked playfully. Clear head, muddy mouth. Hunger. Through the brush he saw the shed; no one. He made his way inside. Still no one. Behind the bar he found a spigot, and twisted, and water gushed, cold. He felt for the fez: gone. Reclaimed. When? No matter. He bowed his head beneath the spigot. The water was cold on his neck and chest. He drank freely, spat, drank again. Then he stood in the sunlight to dry, and then he sat lizardlike at a table and dreamed of food.

After many minutes he heard footsteps, and turned. A woman came to lean against a post. She was in her fifties, perhaps, medium of figure and plain of face, wearing a print dress, yellow cloth and red flowers. “Good morning,” he said.

“Good morning.” Her face was pleasant, her eye quick. Her hair was frizzy and short. He saw that her legs were quite bowed, and she was barefoot. “Look,” she said suddenly, and pointed beyond him.

It was a yellow parrot with a blue-green beak, high in a tree near Morrison's hammock.

“Pretty,” he said. “When I came here I looked for animals like a little boy. Jungle cats, monkeys. But I haven't seen much.” He rose. “My name is Morrison.”

“I know,” she said. “I am Martha.”

“How do you do.”

She nodded.

“Sit down?”

“No. Not yet. You probably want to eat.”

“Yes. Anything.”

“You sit down. I will get you fruit and coffee.”

“Thank you. Will you have some with me?”

She smiled faintly. “All right. Just coffee.”

She was a plain woman but graceful, and seemed amused by him. Why not? A queer guest he was. The word came to him: chatelaine. Being a chatelaine is sometimes in the set of the shoulders and the quick but calm eye.

A spider scuttled across his table and down. The parrot spoke: one hoarse caw. The sun was hotter now and he moved inside, under the roof, and took another table. The boulevardier and the chatelaine. Des fruits et deux filtres.

“Quite a time last night,” she said. She bore papayas and uglies in a basket; on the tray, coffee things.

“Oh yes,” he said. “Do you mind if I begin? I'm dying. I hope I didn't disgrace myself.” Sweet papaya! Juicy papaya!

She poured coffee. “Sugar?”

“Two, thank you. And milk.”

“Goat's milk.”

“Fine. I didn't see you last night.”

“Not Saturdays. I like it quiet.”

“Do you really keep all the bills in your head?”

“No.” That made her laugh. “For a few only. Philips is one. I am glad he is not my son—he is wild—but he is an honest man. He lacks kindness. He is so honest that he hurts people.”

“Why is that? Do you know?”

“No. Maybe that preacher who gave him a home. Some people steal like breathing. He is honest like breathing.”

Morrison nodded, accepting that, and sliced more papaya. “None for you? Sure?”

“Sure. I ate. Why did you hit Cook?”

He told her.

“That is all right then,” she said cheerfully. “He is not a bad man. You should know that.”

“It had nothing to do with good or bad.”

“You were wearing a Muslim hat. Are you a Muslim?” She sipped elegantly at her black coffee; her little finger crooked.

“No. That was Tall Boy's hat.”

“Christian?”

“Yes and no.” It was the local way and he did not mind. A foreigner was fair game and could be asked all questions. “My father was Catholic and my mother Baptist, and neither of them cared too much. So I am nothing. If you mean do I believe in heaven and hell, the answer is no. And if you don't believe in that, there's not much reason to believe the rest.” It came to him then: “This is Sunday morning. Is that why you ask? Are you a Christian?”

“I am like you,” she said. “When I need religion I talk to the sky.”

“I'm much worse than that,” he said. “When I need religion I talk to myself. Are there many Christians here?” Small talk in the bois on Sunday morning.

“Oh yes. Many Christians and many Hindus, and still many who talk to the trees and the rain. And many who have nothing. Some of your people are here. They have a radio station, and they sell radios cheap, and talk about Jesus. Every day of the week. They tell about young people who die of cancer but are happy because of Jesus.”

“Oh.”

“You had no woman,” she said.

“I don't want to talk about it.”

“All right,” she said. “Why do you come here and not go to town? The big hotel.”

“I go there when I have work in town,” he said. “Otherwise I like to be near the job. I came here with Philips. He said it was a good place.”

“For a wild one like him it is.”

“Well, I like it too.” He smiled. “Any more coffee?”

“Here. Is it?”

“Is it what?”

“A good place?”

“Oh yes.” He smiled again. “Things happen. The last time I hit a man must have been twenty years ago. And he hit me back.”

A gust of laughter shook her; she threw off hoots and cackles like a fruit tree in a gale, and the morning was littered with her pleasure.

“I want to be delivered from the flesh,” Tall Boy said, while Philips rolled his eyes in mockery. “Yes. I am a Baptist man.”

“On Sunday morning you are a Baptist man,” Philips said. “The rest of the week you are a liar, a thief, a braggart, a drunkard, and a fornicator.”

“Leave him be,” Martha said. “He is just back from church and let him feel pure for an hour.”

“He is also out of his head and sleepy,” Philips said. “He never slept last night. He went straight from rut to Jesus.”

Tall Boy bowed his head and suffered. They were all eating cold meat and drinking beer, some time after noon.

“You have a rough mouth,” Martha said. “Leave him be.”

“Right,” Morrison said. “A little God won't hurt him.”

Philips scoffed. “Hark hark the clerk. I thought you were a heathen like the rest of us.”

“I am. He isn't. Respect it.”

Tall Boy blessed him with warm eyes and stared sternly at Philips. It was suddenly obvious that he loved Philips. Morrison's eyes met Martha's.

“Respect it!” Philips scorned him again. “I respect Tallie. Not his fairy tales.”

“Then forget about them. They don't hurt you.”

“They do,” Philips said flatly. “They outrage me. I live in a world where a politician must fail unless he professes to believe in spooks. And when you believe in spooks you can justify anything by them. Murder. Slavery. Conversion by force.”

“Charity. Liberty. Equality. Fraternity.”

“Ten of mine to one of yours.”

“Let's drop it,” Morrison said. “Ite, missa est.”

Philips grinned. “You surprise me always. Morrison the scholar.”

Morrison too grinned. “Va te faire foutre.”

Philips laughed soundlessly, a gleeful grimace, and turned solemnly to Tall Boy. “You see, Tallie, he speaks in the tongues.”

Tall Boy was confused and possibly frightened, and stared at Morrison.

Morrison raised his right hand papally. “Lookoe joe oilie nanda watra befosie joe start na wagie.”

They all roared. Tall Boy too.

“You come back soon,” Martha said. She was leaning back against a post, her arms folded. “Nice to know you.”

“Nice to know you,” Morrison said. “I will come back. With pleasure.”

Philips hugged her briefly. “Good-bye, old lady.”

“Old lady, is it. I can still give you a better run than those girls any time.”

Tall Boy looked from one to the other, delighted. His Sabbath ended early.

The motor barked, growled. Morrison looked back and waved; Martha raised a hand. Then they were winding down the hill, and in a quarter of an hour they were skimming sleepily along their own road under a high hot sun. Tall Boy, in back, shifted somehow onto his side and slept, snoring and groaning. Philips yawned.

Morrison sank into a soft, aimless, unsleeping dream.

When they slewed off the road, his knee banged that bump and he started up thinking his leg was broken, but even as he contracted in pain he saw the pale of trees and flung himself across Philips, wrenching at the wheel. Philips was awake then and stamped on the brake, and they skidded, rocked, tipped, righted, and halted sharply with the left wheels in one of the sump slashes.

Tall Boy slept.

They sat for a time under the bruising sun. Philips smoked a cigarette, thick lazy rivers of smoke pouring from his nostrils. His hand was steady. They were no more than a car's length from the trees, and after a few minutes Morrison heard a chittering and a chattering, scolding voices like the wrath of some fish-wife goddess. Morrison watched the boughs and soon saw them. He gestured and Philips nodded. They were small, with light-colored faces and nervous movements, snaky tails, the females clutching babies like any mother. Some leapt from bough to bough. Some groomed themselves or others.

“What do your friends call you?” Philips asked.

“Moe. You?”

He hesitated, a shadow of resignation in his eyes. “Just Philips.” He tossed away his cigarette and vaulted out to inspect. “It is all right,” he said. Then he shook Tall Boy. “Tallie,” he shouted. “Lollie wants you.” The monkeys fell silent.

“Oh
no,”
Tall Boy moaned from the heart.

They laughed like lunatics, out in the noonday sun. Tall Boy blinked.

Philips caught his breath. “Get up out of there. I know how you feel about working on the Sabbath, but this is an emergency.”

In another hour they were home.

6

In June the near lip of the gorge was a village, with rude sheds and a parking area, stacks of lumber, coils of rope, kegs of nails, a powerful compressor, drums of petrol, and more on the way: L-shaped steel rods, cable, cement, bags of sand. The site had become part of Morrison, and he of it; he knew every hump and grade of the near side, knew the wind and the shifts of color on the earth as the sun rose and set; knew that there were owls in the fringes of forest, and woodpeckers, and shy warblers; had seen, far below, where the black water swirled white and the rocks waited like black teeth, a flock of finfoots, planing and swooping in the narrow gap, like the grebes he knew but with red bills and yellow feet. He had been over the side in a cradle of rope and knew the bare granite, its chinks and crevices, the smooth speckled gray of it.

He was alone there some of the time, and worked with half of him waiting for a sign of life across the gorge. He still wanted a sign for himself alone, and grew nervous as the road crept toward that last strip of forest; soon the gorge would be no longer his, but theirs. “We can move everything easily,” Philips said.

“No. No water, for one thing.”

“What are you saying? We will have to truck it in for daily use anyway. And for the concrete.”

“All right. But I think it would be better for the men to live away from the work. Four miles is nothing, after all. Let them have the river at noon. A change of scene morning and night. Go home for lunch. That kind of thing.”

Philips shrugged. “Whatever you say.” But he knew, and soon went on, his eyes laughing: “Maybe you could find a cave in the rocks down there, and stay forever. The white hermit of Morrison's Gorge. Tourists would come and drop pennies.”

Morrison laughed uneasily, because the demons of the place, who prowled at dawn and at dusk, who early roused the birds and late soothed them to silence, who whispered to him from the dark gorge, those demons were good companions. For him alone. He had come a long way to meet them, lonelier and happier with every step. Some final solitude called. Or a final mystery. To build a bridge was good; to build it to nothing was perfect. A bridge for its own sake. I claim this gorge in the name of Bernard Morrison, in perpetuity.

Across the gap, nothing. Always nothing. But they were there. There are two sides to every gorge.

Saturday evening: the sun just gone and the light fading fast, and he was alone, staring across the gorge and conscious of his own heartbeat. Feeling foolish as he mimed: sunrise, myself here, sunrise, myself here. Waving and pointing and slapping his own chest. Modern dance.