Jocundra rolled onto her stomach and gazed out to sea. An oil fire gleamed red off along the coast; the faint chugging of machinery carried across the water. Wavelets slapped the shore. Sea and sky were the same unshining black, and the moonlit crests of the waves looked as distant as the burning well and the stars, sharing with them a perspective of great depth, as if the spit of land were extending into interstellar space. Donnell ran his hand down her back and gently pushed a finger between her legs, sheathing it in the moist fold. She kissed the knuckles of his other hand, pressed her cheek to it, and snuggled closer. The movement caused his finger to slip partway inside her, and she drew in a sharp breath. She lifted her face to be kissed, and kissing her, he pulled her atop him. Her hair swung witchily in silhouette against the sky, a glint of the oil fire bloomed on her throat, and it seemed to him that the stars winking behind her were chattering with cricket’s tongues.
On the afternoon of the third day, Donnell decided he had done all he should to Mr Robichaux. Though his field was not yet normal, it appeared to be repairing itself. His entire chest was laced with broken capillaries, but his color had improved and his breathing was deep and regular. Over the next two weeks they visited daily, and he continued to mend. The general aspect of the shacks and their environ improved equally, as if they had suffered the same illness and received the same cure. The dog wagged its tail and snuffled Donnell’s hand. The children played happily in the yard; the litter had been cleared away and the weeds cut back. Even Mrs Robichaux gave a friendly wave as she hung out the wash.
The last time they visited, while sitting on the steps and waiting for Mr-Robichaux to dress, the youngest girl - a grimy-faced toddler, her diaper at half-mast - waddled up to Donnell and offered him a bite of her jelly donut. It was stale, the jelly tasteless, but as he chewed it, Donnell felt content. The eldest boy stepped forward, the other children at his rear, giggling, and formally shook Donnell’s hand. ‘Wanna thank you,’ he muttered; he cast a defiant look at his brothers and sisters, as if something had been proved. The toddler leaned on Donnell’s knee and plucked off his sunglasses. ‘Ap,’ she said, pointing at his eyes, chortling. ‘Ap azoo.’
Robichaux was buttoning his shirt when Donnell entered. He frowned and looked away and once again thanked him. But this time his thanks were less fervent and had a contractual ring. ‘If I’m down to my last dollar,’ he said sternly, ‘that dollar she’s yours.’
Donnell shrugged; he squinted at Robichaux’s field. ‘Have you seen a doctor?’
‘Don’t need no doctor to tell me I’m cured,’ said Robichaux. He peered down inside his shirt. The web of broken capillaries rose to the base of this neck. ‘Don’t know why you had to do this mess. Worse than a goddamn tattoo.’
‘Trial and error,’ said Donnell without sympathy. It had come as a shock to him that he did not like Mr Robichaux; that - by gaining ten pounds and a measure of vigor - the characterless thing he had first treated had evolved into a contemptible human being, one capable of viciousness. He suspected the children might have been better off had their father’s disease been allowed to run its course.
‘It ain’t that I ain’t grateful, you understand,’ Robichaux said, fawning, somewhat afraid. ‘It’s just I don’t know if all this here’s right, you know. I mean you ain’t no man of God.’
Donnell wondered about that; he was, after all, full of holy purpose. For a while he had thought healing might satisfy his sense of duty unfulfilled, but he had only been distracted by the healing from a deeper preoccupation. He felt distaste for this cringing, devious creature he had saved.
‘No, I’m not,’ he said venomously. ‘But neither are you, Mr Robichaux. And that little devil’s web on your chest might just be an omen of worse to come.’
‘… Since the great looping branches never grew or varied, since the pale purple sun never fully rose or set, the shadow of Moselantja was a proven quantity upon the grassy plain below. Men and beasts lived in the shadow, as well as things which otherwise might not have lived at all, their dull energies supplied, some said, by the same lightless vibrations that had produced this enormous growth, sundered the mountain and sent it bursting forth. From the high turrets one could see the torchlit caravans moving inward along the dark avenues of its shadow toward the main stem, coming to enlist, or to try their luck at enlistment, for of the hundreds arriving each day, less than a handful would survive the rigors of induction…’
‘What do you think?’ asked Donnell.
