“Because it’s an affront to God. There is no other reason. Nothing hidden or held back, no fine print. The poisoned field is a perversity and an affront to God.
Look down, David!” He did, and was shocked to see that the Viet Cong Lookout was no longer in the tree. It now floated, like a magic carpet made out of boards, above a vast, blighted countryside. He could see buildings here and there amid rows of gray and listless plants. One was a trailer with a bumper-sticker proclaiming the owner a Snapple-drinkin’, Clinton-bashin’ son of a bitch; another was the mining Quonset they’d seen on the way into town; another was the Municipal Building; another was Bud’s Suds. The grinning leprechaun with the pot of gold under his arm peered out of a dead and strangulated jungle.
“This is the poisoned field,” the man in the reflector sunglasses said. “What’s gone on here makes Agent Orange look like sugar candy. There will be no sweetening this earth. It must be eradicated—sown with salt and plowed under. Do you know why?”
“Because it will spread?”
“No. It can’t. Evil is both fragile and stupid, dying soon after the ecosystem it’s poisoned.”
“Then why—”
“Because it’s an affront to God. There is no other reason. Nothing hidden or held back, no fine print. The poisoned field is a perversity and an affront to God.
