Free At Play in the Fields of the Lord by Peter Matthiessen

tryin to tell us about sin? That’s what you’re hangin around for, right?”
    “Yes,” Quarrier said, and Moon watched Wolfie twitch under the steady gaze that the missionary fixed upon him.
    “Well, you got nothin to look so holy about, am I right, Lewis?” When Moon said nothing, Wolfie turned back angrily to Quarrier. “You and them Catholics both. Some
holy
men! All this lousy backbitin and knifin over people who maybe they don’t want no part of
neither
of you; well, maybe you ought to think of
that
before you come sneakin around here criticizin! Maybe them people are better off bein run back into the jungle where they got a little human
dignity
, for Christ sake, and not where you bastards can make beggars out of them, not to mention all the booze and slavery and syphilis”—Wolfie jerked his thumb at his female companion—“that comes after. How long do you think them Neo-rooneys are gonna last once you’ve softened them up for all these jungle cons?” He jerked his thumb at Guzmán. “Ten years? Thirty years, maybe?” His voice rose. “So don’t come runnin to us about our business. ‘Physician, heal thyself’—right, Lewis?”
    “Fa-Cry-sek,” the Comandante said. “Fa-Cry-sek.”
    “Rufi-
ni
-to,” complained the whore called Suzie.
    “
Silencio! Nosotros hablamos inglés
. We arr es-spik Ingliss!”
    To Wolfie—though looking straight at Quarrier—Moon said, “You forgot the part about robbing the Indians of their own culture and then abandoning them”—he raised his voice in mock outrage, as if he were making a speech—“leaving them with nothing strong enough, neither their old culture nor a new one, to support them against the next group to come along.”
    “Oh yeah,” Wolfie said, “that’s right. Neither their old culture or a new one,” he yelled angrily at Quarrier, “and then you come runnin to us about our business. Well, all I can say is, ‘Physician, heal thyself.’ ”
    Quarrier said mildly, “They say that every sin has its justification in the mind of the sinner.”
    Pleased that he had acquitted himself so well, Wolfie had leaned back in his chair, relighting his cigar; now he slammed forward once again.
    “Jeez! You’re a smug sonofabitch, now ain’t you!” he said to Quarrier. “And I’ll bet that kid of yours you mentioned a minute ago, the chicken-chow-mein eater, for Christ sake—I bet you already made another smug sonofabitch out of that kid already, am I right? Well, let me tell
you
somethin: I never sinned in my whole life—I don’t
believe
in sin!”
    “Smuk snuffa-bits,” Guzmán repeated. “Smuk snuffa-bits. Ha, ha, ha, ha.”
    Quarrier opened his mouth to speak, then closed it.
    Moon got to his feet and made his way around the table. Behind him he heard Wolfie say, “Well, it just so happens I
seen
your kid, I run inta him on the street. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a real nice kid, Reverend, no shit. Listen, Reverend, you ain’t really a
bad
sonofabitch or nothin. It takes all kinds to make a world, know what I mean? Know what I mean, Reverend?”
    H OLDING his breath, swaying drunkenly beneath a bulb which illumined little more than grime and moisture, Moon stared awhile at the cement wall; it took just such a hopeless international latrine in the early hours of a morning, when a man was weak in the knees, short in the breath, numb in the forehead and rotten in the gut, to make him wonder where he was, how he got there, where he was going; he realized that he did not know and never would. He had confronted this same latrine on every continent and not once had it come up with an answer; or rather, it always came up with the same answer, a suck and gurgle of unspeakable vileness, a sort of self-satisfied low chuckling: Go to it, man, you’re pissing your life away.
    Standing there, swaying pleasantly, he grinned. I do not care, he thought. I no longer care. If I can just stay where the action is, I never
will
care,