Fieldwork: A Novel (9 page)

"We do not say the name of that woman in this house," she said, and, moving slowly on her puffy legs, left the darkened room.

Mr. Walker insisted that I stay for lunch.

"Nomie's a fiery woman, but she'd be just crushed if you didn't eat with us," Mr. Walker said. "Her bark is worse than her bite." There was a distinctly doubtful note in his voice.

Mr. Walker led me into the dining room, where Nomie and a slight Asian woman were setting the table. Like the living room, the dining room was austere, bare but for a long table surrounded by high-backed chairs. Nomie smiled at me as I entered, and I did my best to smile back. "Mischa, this is Ah-Mo, our helper," she said, and turning toward Ah-Mo, she made what I assumed was the inverse introduction in what I assumed was Dyalo.

"Ah-Mo doesn't speak any English," Nomie said. I started to speak to Ah-Mo in my clumsy Thai, but Nomie added, "She also hasn't learned any Thai yet. Ah-Mo is Dyalo. She's here from Burma. She's a refugee."

Ah-Mo was the first Dyalo I had met, and her unusual face held me entranced for a moment. No one knows where the Dyalo come from, but some speculate Tibet—and there was to her face a Tibetan air: she was flat-featured but round-eyed, with thin, elegant lips. I wished I could talk with her: it is always difficult to read very foreign faces, but there was something keen and witty in the way she looked at me, as if she'd have a million good stories about these people, if only we could brew up some barley tea and chat. Judith must have seen me staring at Ah-Mo. Standing beside me, she whispered, "How old do you think Ah-Mo is?"

"Maybe thirty?" I whispered back.

"She's over fifty," Judith said. "Isn't that
amazing
?"

"Wow."

"It's because there's no pollution in the mountains."

"Do all the Dyalo look like her?"

Judith looked shocked. "
Oh my
, no," she said. "Only the Christians."

I was on the verge of asking from what unpleasantness Ah-Mo had fled when Nomie waved me to a place at the table. When we were all arranged, there were six of us: Mr. and Mrs. Walker, Judith, Tom Riley, who had mysteriously appeared from the stairwell and was greeted with almost rapturous pleasure by the entire Walker family, Ah-Mo, and myself. Mr. Walker asked Judith to say grace, and Judith Walker again spoke in that utterly strange language. Everyone at the table folded their hands in front of their chins and closed their eyes. Judith must have been very grateful for the food because grace went on a very long time. Then Mr. Walker decided he wanted to bless the food, too, because he started talking in Dyalo also. This was the signal that we were all supposed to hold hands. Ah-Mo's dry little hand reached out for mine on the left, and on the other side I found Tom Riley's enormous whale fin of a palm. Yet it was Ah-Mo who held my hand tighter.

Conversation over lunch—midwestern with Oriental accents: baby corn fried in a wok with bacon; an omelette served over rice with cheese, chili peppers, and tomatoes—was general: travel plans were made; the health of people whose names I did not recognize discussed—they all seemed to be getting better, thank the Lord (which was not a reflexive phrase at all but an actual opportunity for those seated around the table to bow their heads and murmur for a moment), all except someone named Susie, who apparently was not doing so well; construction would begin soon on the Ministry Center. This was missionary shop talk, and after the first half hour or so, it was boring.

At one point, Judith leaned across the table and touched my forearm.

"Mischa, are you a Christian?" she asked.

"No," I said. I shifted uncomfortably in place and said that I was Jewish.

All of the Walkers and Tom Riley turned in my direction and stared, as if I had announced that I was pregnant with triplets, all except Ah-Mo, who hadn't understood a word. She just kept eating.

Finally, Judith said, "How wonderful! We
love
to meet Jewish people. You know, Jewish people are God's chosen people."

Judith stared at me. "No, it's
true
," she insisted, and at that moment, Mr. Walker, who had been momentarily distracted, asked his wife to pass the milk, and the conversation drifted back to the pastor from Terre Haute who would be coming next week to make fellowship.

After Nomie's explosion,
I
certainly wasn't going to be the dang fool who introduced Martiya's name back into conversation. Lunch had lulled me: the day was warm, my eyes were heavy. I had organized my life around the principle that nothing came between me and my naps—not murderous anthropologists, not fiery-tempered missionaries—and for all of Nomie's protestations that Mr. Walker liked to take himself a little rest in the afternoons, the man seemed to me altogether too wide awake: these missionaries, I concluded sadly, were not the napping type. They were decidedly of the this-life-is-short-so-let's-get-something-done type. So it was with excitement and drowsiness mingled in equal measure that I accepted when at the end of the long meal Mr. Walker invited me to join him in his study.

Mr. Walker led me to his study and then left me alone in it for a moment, as he recalled another question for his wife. I am a snoop when it comes to people's books, and I studied his while I waited. His library wasn't large, and it was clearly the collection of a man with a narrowly centered but deeply researched set of interests. There were at least a half dozen translations of the Bible into English, from the King James to the New Revised Standard, as well as editions of the Old and New Testament in the original Greek and Hebrew. There were Greek and Hebrew dictionaries and grammars. Every book of the Bible had a thick, leather-bound commentary. These formed an imposing shelf unto themselves. There were books arguing against Darwinian theories of evolution, and a smaller number of books supporting the theory. There was a book entitled
Apocalypse Tomorrow
, the thickest of a long series of tomes which to judge by their bright-red covers seemed to be arguing that the end was very nigh. There were a few Tom Clancy novels with well-cracked spines.

Mr. Walker returned to the office after a minute and closed the door behind him. He circumnavigated his desk, then sank down with a grunt. He folded his hands into narrow steeples and brought them to rest in front of his mouth. He stared at me very seriously.

"I didn't want you to leave without an answer to your question," he said. "It's just that Nomie, she gets so upset."

"I understand," I said. "It's natural. I'm sorry I—"

"Do you know how they found Davy?" he asked.

"Davy?"

"My son," Mr. Walker said.

"No," I said. "No, I don't know how they found him."

Mr. Walker didn't say anything for so long that I began to think that I had offended him too. "When Davy fell from the bridge," he began, "he fell a long way, but the doctor said, the doctor said he probably survived that. His left arm wasn't broken, it was shattered, like a windowpane. His leg was broken, too, but not so bad. She left him for two days, and then she shot him from behind. That was the worst part, her leaving him. Two days."

The only noise in the room was the hum of the air conditioner.

"He was just thirty," Mr. Walker continued. "So when Mrs. Walker … Mrs. Walker—I don't think I've ever met a better Christian than my Nomie. She wrote to Martiya in prison, she sent her food even, and clothing. She
forgave
her. I think she genuinely forgave Martiya, because she knew Martiya—she knew that it wasn't Martiya who killed her baby. But … but until you lose a child—you don't know what a murder means. How do you act like a good Christian when someone does something like that to your boy?"

Mr. Walker's voice was deep, and he spoke softly, and when he wanted to emphasize something, he spoke softer still, so that when he told me that Mrs. Walker was a good Christian woman, I was leaning on the edge of my chair, straining to catch his words. Mr. Walker stared at me a moment, and I realized with a start that his question wasn't rhetorical. He was waiting for an answer.

"I don't know," I said. "I don't know how you act like a good Christian."

"Fair enough. You don't know what a murder means." It wasn't an accusation, just a simple statement of fact. Mr. Walker fingered the Greek dictionary lying open on his desk. "It's a rough, rough business we're in. I have a friend here who's a
phu yai
, a policeman, and goes after the worst kind of men—drug dealers and men who put hill-tribe women in cages and sell 'em in Bangkok like pigs, I've seen it, rough business— but I sometimes think we Walkers chose the roughest line of work there is. I always wonder if David really knew how rough it is, if we prepared him. My parents knew, and my brothers and sisters, and Mrs. Walker, and I think even the other kids knew that it was a rough business—but David, he was such a likable guy. Everyone liked him. Charming as heck. I don't think he ever really understood how cruel and vicious and cunning and resourceful the
forces
keeping the Dyalo in bondage were, how they were prepared to stop at nothing to keep the Dyalo enslaved."

I had no idea whatsoever what Mr. Walker was talking about. I nodded and crossed my legs. He unfolded his long fingers and spread them out on his desk.

"We used to have her in this house, did you know that?"

"I had no idea."

"Oh yes, she was here all the time. She had so many questions, and we might not be
scholars
, but we know the Dyalo better than anyone. She stayed right in this house, and she'd ask us all those questions for her
research
. She'd ask why the Dyalo think pregnant women can't use iron knives and we'd tell her, or why the Dyalo think it's shameful for the man and his wife to plant the rice in the field together. We'd tell her, ‘Well, gosh, that's simple, you see it's like this,' and she'd say, ‘Gosh, you people
are
Dyalo!' and Mrs. Walker would say, ‘Four generations—you get used to folks!' But Mrs. Walker was wrong about that. We're not Dyalo, and God made people as mysterious as He is. You don't get to know anyone."

A phone rang and rang again. Mr. Walker stopped talking for a second, and when Nomie shouted, "Honey, it's for you, it's Khun Nirawat," he picked up the cordless phone which was sitting on his desk and began to speak in Thai. Excellent, fluid Thai—the kind of Thai I'd be lucky to have if I stayed in Thailand another thirty years. He raised a finger to say that he'd just be a minute. Something on the other end of the line made him chuckle. After a minute or two, he hung up the phone and his face grew serious again. "The Dyalo aren't foolish, you know," he declared, almost aggressively.

"I didn't think they were," I said, almost defensively.

"It was the hardest thing for that woman to understand. We understood that the Dyalo people … the Dyalo had certain
needs
, and the Dyalo recognized that we understood those needs. Do you understand what I'm telling you?"

Mr. Walker spoke so calmly, so reasonably, that I was sure that when I thought it over later it would all make sense. I nodded. Mr. Walker seemed satisfied with this response.

"The Dyalo would tell her that they were in bondage—
bondage!
—to the demons, and she'd write in her little notebook, ‘The Dyalo have a rich hierarchical system of animistic spirit worship.' She didn't believe them. But
we
knew what was going on, because we've been here so long. Back when we first came, family after family asked us, ‘Two thousand years! Why did it take you so long to come with God's word? To bring us this Good News? We were orphans and slaves to the forces of darkness! Our fathers have died, our grandfathers all died in bondage—and they died without hearing this Word.' Foolish people don't talk like that, you know—people
know
when they're slaves, and I tell you, brother, no man wants to live in chains."

"
Of course
not," I said. We sat for a second. I started to worry that my response had been condescending, so I asked, "What did you tell them?"

"Tell who?"

"The Dyalo. The Dyalo who wanted to know why you didn't come faster."

"I always said that
we
Walkers had come just as quickly as
we
could, and we didn't know why the others hadn't come sooner. But we were heartbroken, all of us, just heartbroken, that the Word didn't come much earlier, in time for all their forefathers to hear. When we told the Dyalo that they didn't need to be slaves, that they could be free—why! they'd
come over
to us, whole families, whole villages." Mr. Walker's green eyes were bright. "We warned her, we warned Martiya when she came that the evil spirits in the hills are dangerous, but she didn't believe us. We told her that the Deceiver was in those mountains and she needed to take precautions. We told her it was all right here"—he tapped the Bible. " ‘For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high
places
.' That's in Ephesians, and we read that to her, and she smiled politely, and she wrote in her notebook, and then she shot our boy."

He paused for a moment.

"She pulled the trigger, but make no mistake, it was the demons who killed him," he finally said. "I think she got into those hills and slowly but surely the demons mastered her. I think the demons who wanted, who were
desperate
, to keep the Dyalo in bondage murdered David." I must have looked at him strangely because he added, "It happens, you know—we've been here a long time and we've seen it."