River of Dust (24 page)

    She let out an irritated growl and said, "You must listen to me."

    "I shall do my best to concentrate on your every word," the Reverend said, "although parasites, hunger, and overall misery and fatigue can drive a mind to distraction."

    He raised his bushy eyebrows and actually smiled. This was the Reverend that Ahcho knew: clever and bright and true. And yet Ahcho felt he should not be encouraging his wife so. Modern did not mean undisciplined.

    Mistress Grace planted herself before her husband, her hands on her hips, and spoke with surprising authority. "While you have been occupied elsewhere, I was forced to make the most difficult decision of my life. Our precious daughter, whom I love with all my heart, needs a safer and healthier setting to grow up in. America, not here. But I'm not well, Reverend. Not well at all, and I fear I wouldn't survive the long journey home. Also, I couldn't possibly leave without you, my love."

    He smiled at her in genuine, fond reciprocation.

    "So," she continued, "I have asked the Reverend and Mrs. Martin to take her with them when they leave Fenchow-fu tomorrow morning. They will raise her until we are able to be reunited. I can't bear that I might not see dear Rose again, but at least she won't die of some disease or starvation or be kidnapped in this frightful land. I came to fetch you back to the compound tonight so we may bid them farewell in the morning."

    The Reverend's calm expression shifted. Ahcho waited for his master's former sternness to erupt. The baby was leaving the mother and father. That could not be right. Such a decision about a family should never be made by the wife. This was unfathomable. The balance of things was all askew. The Reverend needed to set her straight. It was not too late to do so. There was still time to be reunited with their child this very night. If Ahcho had known that this was his mistress's reckless plan, he would not have hesitated to find the Reverend right away.

    But, much to Ahcho's dismay, the Reverend merely put one hand into his pants pocket while the other remained gripped over the round shape in the pouch with the twin golden dragons at his hip. He fid dled with the strings that closed the bag and with the red cloth from which it hung.

    "Did you hear me?" she repeated.

    The Reverend nodded but still did not speak.

    "What on earth is in that infernal pouch that swings at your side?" she asked. "You clutch it as if it were the Holy Grail itself. Let me see it!"

    The Reverend yanked the pouch upward and tucked it inside his coat. He buttoned the few sagging buttons as quickly as he could with trembling fingers. "It is something," he said.

    "I know it is something," Mistress Grace said. "You have carried it with you ever since our son was stolen from us. What is in that sack embroidered with the twin golden dragons, Reverend?"

    He patted at the thing behind the worn fabric of his suit jacket and bit his bottom lip. "Ahcho, help me," he stuttered and lifted a finger to his lips to suggest that he wished their secret to be kept. "I'm not thinking clearly enough to explain."

    It pained Ahcho to see his master's plaintive expression, and he wanted to help the hungry and confused man. Also, Ahcho didn't like the mistress's insolent tone, but he supposed that was how things were with young women these days. So he sucked in his breath between clenched teeth, looked at his feet, and began.

    "Mrs. Watson, on that tragic day, which I wish barely to mention, we found something left behind by the kidnappers. The Reverend, of course, is not a man of primitive superstition, but he does somehow believe that carrying this object with him at all times will help him in his search to find his son."

    The Reverend nodded his approval at this explanation, and Ahcho felt he had done his duty to his master as best as he could under these trying circumstances.

    Mistress Grace frowned. "But what is it, exactly? I must know."

    The Reverend's whole body vibrated, and he swung his head wildly from side to side. Then he began to scratch his legs again, next his arms, and Ahcho thought he could feel his master's misery. The man needed a bath, a good meal, and sleep to restore his nerves and mind.

    "I'm afraid it would not be wise for you to know, Mistress. It is better if the object stays quietly with the Reverend. We don't need to concern ourselves with such silly superstitions, am I right?" Ahcho tried. "We Christians don't believe in old wives' tales. We are people of Jesus, not country types who see witches flying about after dark and spit over our shoulders when we pass wells and spin around three times before planting. We believe nothing of the sort."

    The Reverend and Mrs. Watson bobbed their heads, as if weighing the validity of each custom.

    "Come," Ahcho said with more force than he had ever used in speaking to either of them before. "I insist. We go now!"

    "Such a good man, Ahcho," the Reverend said. "Good to the core."

    The mistress nodded in agreement, and the couple seemed warmly united in this one thing. But still the Reverend did not budge from the center of the dimly lit room.

    Mistress Grace turned to her husband and quietly asked, "Have you anything to say about my plan? It's hard for me to imagine that you feel nothing for our daughter."

    "My darling," the Reverend said and moved closer to her. He pushed a lock of dusty hair from her brow. "It is
because
I love our child dearly that I trust you to know what is best. I don't know much anymore about anything. I'm in a miserable state. Really, I know so very little and never did." These last words were spoken with great sin cerity.

    Ahcho let out a tsking sound of the type that usually issued forth from Mai Lin. The Reverend's self-assessment was all wrong. And honestly, how could he turn over such an important decision to a member of the weaker sex, especially one who herself was clearly so weak? Had the Reverend not noticed how ill his wife had become in his absence? Did he not see that she, too, was a withered and unhealthy soul, or did the Reverend's feebleness of body and mind make him blind to her condition?

    The Reverend took his wife's hands into his own and continued, "I have been a sorry husband and an even sorrier father. I leave this next chapter to you because you are the wiser one. I see that now with great clarity. When God made woman of man's rib, I can only think that inside that bone was stored the very best of humanity. Why else do we suck on the marrow for so long if it were not the most precious part? You are by far the better half."

    Grace nodded, a slight smile on her face, but Ahcho did not see any such thing clearly. The Reverend had always spoken in this colorful way with examples that were meant to illuminate, but now the man's words were merely pretty pictures and nothing more. Ahcho felt he had to rid his master of the terrible lice and whatever poisons went through his veins so that he could regain his senses and become a precise thinker again. He was the man of the household, and he needed to behave as such.

    Mistress Grace wavered happily before her husband, her body swaying. She shifted, and dust rose and clouded her boots and the hem of her dress and the ragged bottom of the traveling coat. The Reverend did not seem to notice her strange attire, the sickly pallor of her skin, and the brume of dust that surrounded her. Instead, he appeared as smitten as a boy first in love.

    The Reverend gripped his wife's hand more tightly, but he did not offer her the shoulder that she needed to lean against, nor did he put his arm around her as a husband should to hold her upright. The Reverend only gazed with hopeless love in his eyes. He was quite useless.

    "You will return home with me, then, if I am the better one," Mistress Grace said. She gazed up into her husband's blue eyes and added, "And you will do as I say from now on."

    She did not ask him but instead told him. Then she extracted her hand from his, turned, and proceeded toward the door. After several paces, she looked back over her shoulder and beckoned.

    This was not at all how Ahcho would have liked the discussion to go, but he could see that his mistress was crafty. She was using the Reverend's erroneous perspective to trick him into returning to safety. Ahcho did not approve of this notion of the modern woman, but if it worked to bring the Reverend to safety again, he could not disagree.

    "I shall come along soon, dear Grace," the Reverend said. "Quite soon."

    Mistress Grace looked back toward her husband across the smoky room, and a strange look of recognition appeared over her face. "You say you will follow me soon, Reverend?"

    "Precisely," the Reverend said. "I still have business to attend to here."

    "You must attend to the dying?" she asked with great feeling.

    "Yes, the dying. I feel it is my task now."

    She nodded and gazed at him sympathetically, unwilling, though, to challenge the enormous mistake that seemed about to occur.

    "Tell me, do they still believe you are a Ghost Man?" she asked.

    The Reverend's head swayed as he replied, "I think not. I may, however, be a man inhabited by ghosts."

    "Ah," Mistress Grace said as she chuckled lightly to herself, "I understand."

    The Reverend smiled similarly, and the two of them appeared amused at some bizarre notion that they alone shared. Ahcho did not condone this perturbing union between them, but he felt helpless to correct it.

    Then Mistress Grace turned and departed from the room without another word, neglecting to protest or insist but instead leaving her husband surrounded by pariahs and jackals of the first order. Ahcho could tell that something had transpired between them, some comprehension that he sensed was neither prudent nor good.

    The Reverend and Mrs. Watson needed fervent prayer and careful instruction. But who would minister to them, he wondered, now that the Reverend Charles Martin and the others were leaving? It fell to reason that the task would be his. Ahcho, the first and most sincere of the Reverend's converts, as the great man had always said, would have to carry on the mission.

    He straightened up taller and hurried after his mistress, who had already escorted herself outside. He neglected to say good-bye to the Reverend but made the decision that he would return the following day to bring him home as only a man could. He had always been dependable, but now he saw that it was his turn to fully take the reins.

    When Ahcho stepped up and over the threshold, the desert night air struck him with its coolness and clarity. The moon and stars blazed in a pure black sky. Yes, he could do it. He could run the mission and carry on until the Reverend was well again. He even pictured himself behind the simple podium in the chapel. A small sea of Chinese faces would look up at him hopefully. Perhaps, in time, and using the best of the Reverend's practices, their numbers would rise again. Ahcho would pray that it was not sacrilege to envision a good future arising from his master's tragedy. But since he did so in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, he suspected it was acceptable.

L
ater that same night, Mai Lin helped her mistress back into bed on the second floor of the Watson house in the mission compound. The fever was upon her again, and Mai Lin wished she had been firmer and not allowed the young woman to go out on the foolish expedition to find her husband. Ahcho had explained that they had actually seen and spoken to the Reverend, but he'd chosen not to return with them. The willful girl had risked her life for naught.

    When morning came, and the other families of the compound met in the courtyard below to bid farewell to their servants, Mistress Grace remained delirious and unable to rise from her bed. Mai Lin kept cool cloths on her forehead and spooned water over her parched and dusty lips. As the donkey carts finally started to lumber away under the weight of the Americans' many possessions, Mai Lin leaned out the bedroom window for one last glimpse of Rose Baby.

    Mildred Martin sat beside her husband upon their buckboard, a bundle held lovingly to her chest. As the American caravan pulled out of the mission gates, Mai Lin allowed herself to wonder if the wicked Mrs. Martin was not quite so evil after all.

    Mistress Grace continued to sleep fitfully all that afternoon, calling out often for her baby girl. Mai Lin had to admit that she might improve more quickly with her husband at her side. When Ahcho announced he intended to try again to retrieve the Reverend that very day, Mai Lin entreated him to do so posthaste. The parents would find solace together at this difficult time with their daughter now gone from their lives. Ahcho set out before midday, and the afternoon passed slowly in the desolate compound. Mai Lin liked the quiet and even managed to nap some, but mostly, she attended to her mistress, who appeared to be feeling better as night fell again. The moon came up, and still Ahcho had not come home. For a brief while, Mistress Grace sat against her pillows and sipped broth. She asked for Rose Baby once again, but when Mai Lin started to answer, the grieving mother interrupted.

    "I remember now," she said. "I can feel it in my heart that she's gone. My whole body knows she's no longer at my side."

    Then, finally and for the first time all day, Mistress Grace slept soundly, and Mai Lin did so, too.

    Later, much later, deep in the dark hours, Mai Lin awoke in her cot to hear camel bells approaching. She went to the window and opened the shutters and saw only darkness, but still she kept watch. The mistress must have sensed her vigilance because she shifted in the bed and let out a soft, indistinguishable sound— a question that hung on the quiet air. Mai Lin went to her and placed a wrist on her forehead. The fever had broken, but the young woman still breathed restlessly, her chest heaving as the fluid thickened. Mai Lin returned to the window and was about to close the shutters against the chill when she heard it again. This time the bells sounded quite nearby, followed by a soft thud on the ground directly below the window.