sack. I was going to say that he strikes me as straight and earnest as they come. A true believer in what he’s doing, and maybe that plays into the agendas of some of the people he deals with.”
“He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy people could take advantage of. Seems pretty smart to me.”
“He is, but you know how it is with true believers.”
“No. How is it?”
“Their belief gets in the way of their brains.”
“If you believe in something, then you’re stupid?” A sudden wind blew through Quinette, and it wasn’t the wind of the Holy Spirit but the Enemy’s wind, rousing her to anger. Realizing that she was being tested, she silently beseeched God to help her contain her temper and to feel, if not a little Christian love for this harsh woman, then at least a little Christian forbearance.
“Not stupid, no—” Phyllis began.
“Madame.”
It was Matthew, looking sullen as he held a calabash of hot water and two tea bags. He dropped the bags into two cups the women had retrieved from their bags, then filled the cups from the calabash.
“Asante sana, shukran, and thank you,” Phyllis said.
Matthew turned on his heel and went back to his comrades. The smoke from their campfire rose in a pale gray pillar that leaned to cross a band of sunlight, shooting almost horizontally over the tukul’s roof. Phyllis picked up where she’d left off.
“Not stupid. Belief is a virus, and once it gets into you, its first order of business is to preserve itself, and the way it preserves itself is to keep you from having any doubts, and the way it keeps you from doubting is to blind you to the way things really are. Evidence contrary to the belief can be staring you straight in the face, and you won’t see it. No, not stupid. True believers just don’t see things the way they are, because if they did, they wouldn’t be true believers anymore.”
The Lord answered if you called on Him with an honest and contrite heart. Belief a virus, faith a disease that blinded you? Awful words, yet Quinette was able to listen to them without the least bit of anger.
“So you don’t believe in anything, not even in God?” she asked, not completely sure she wanted to hear the answer. She’d known sinful people in her trailer trash period, but she’d never met a real atheist before, at least not an atheist willing to admit he was one.
“Read much of Ernest Hemingway?”
The reporter raised one knee and clasped her hands around it. From up in the trees, where the campfire smoke split into delicate tendrils, a bird sang a soft, plaintive note, while off in the distance somewhere cowbells rang.
“In high school,” Quinette said. “We read a couple of his short stories.”
“He once said that a writer needs a built-in, shock-proof bullshit detector. That goes double for a news correspondent, triple for a news correspondent working in Africa. I guess I believe in that. In skepticism. When you’re in the varnish-removal business, that’s the active ingredient. My apologies if that offends you, but you asked.”
“No offense taken. I think I feel sorry for you, and I’m going to pray for you,” Quinette said with brittle calm.
“Make it from the Old Testament. I’m Jewish.”
She didn’t know any Old Testament prayers. How did you pray for a Jew anyway? she asked herself, taking her Bible from her rucksack. She walked to the edge of the compound, and there, with the wide yellow plain stretched out before her, she opened her Bible. It was small, designed for travelers, and difficult to read in low light. Straining, her eyes fell on Psalm 115: “Wherefore should the heathen say, Where now is their God? But our God is in the heavens. . . . Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands.” The answer was right there—her hand must have been guided to it. Phyllis was a kind of idol-worshipper, and her idol was her skepticism. Quinette closed the book and asked God to show Phyllis the falseness of her beliefs, prayed for help in learning to love Phyllis the sinner while hating her sin. Oh, she could feel the love beginning to course through her, as if she’d been transfused with warm honey. The wonderful thing about being saved was that it made you feel better about other people because it made you feel better about yourself. You couldn’t love your neighbor if you didn’t love