River of Dust (16 page)

    The two men rode out from the compound. As the Reverend looked over his shoulder, he saw Reverend Charles Martin and Reverend John Jacobs retreating back into their homes. He thought he should stop to speak to his colleagues, for it had been some time since he had last done so, but he did not want to distract himself from the important task at hand. His wife was in great need.

    "How is everyone holding up?" the Reverend asked Ahcho as they passed through the open compound gates and turned onto the road that led toward the small town.

    "What do you mean?" Ahcho asked.

    "Are the other families of the mission faring decently? I'm afraid I've lost track of them."

    "You have been gone most of the time."

    "And they resent me for it?" the Reverend asked.

    Ahcho did not answer, which the Reverend took to be an affirmative.

    "I will make an effort when we return with the food. Perhaps we can procure enough for the others."

    "We shall see, sir," Ahcho said.

    "But they are all right?" the Reverend pressed.

    Ahcho's eyes betrayed very little, but the Reverend thought he sensed some sort of judgment coming from his servant. Then Ahcho spoke with an evenhandedness that the Reverend admired.

    "The Jenkins family lost their oldest girl," he said. "She was too hungry and ate a persimmon from the market without washing it first. She was old enough to know better, so no one understands why it happened. The illness took her in two days' time."

    "Dear Lord," the Reverend muttered. "I remember her. Miranda was her name. A lovely girl, almost a woman."

    "But a child still, or else she would have known better. Unless she wanted it to happen thusly?" Ahcho asked tentatively. "The servants have been discussing the possibility."

    The Reverend tried not to show his alarm at such a supposition. It could not be. "I think that's most unlikely," he answered, although truly he could not say.

    Only a cruel God would do such a thing, unless, he sighed, there was no God at all keeping watch over them. The two rode on in silence.

    They passed through the market, where the stalls stood derelict and empty. A gathering of old hags and beggars sat on their haunches in the shade by the side of the road. When they saw the Reverend, they did not rise to their feet or even lift their open palms in hopes of a coin or two.

    "Isn't this market day?" the Reverend asked. "Where are all the farmers?"

    "They stay on their farms to protect them now. Bands of robbers sweep through the countryside and burn them down. Very dangerous."

    "But have they no crops at all? Not even a kitchen garden to feed their families?"

    Ahcho turned to the Reverend. The older man appeared baffled and apparently speechless.

    "What is it, Ahcho?" the Reverend asked.

    Ahcho shook his head with uncharacteristic dismay. "I cannot imag ine how the great Reverend has not noticed the plight of the people on his trips?"

    "Why, of course I have noticed them. I have a keen affinity for these peasant types." The Reverend looked around for coolies to corroborate this, but the streets were empty.

    Ahcho's words tumbled out with surprising fury. "But your nose remains in a book, and your head is high in the clouds. You see nothing!"

    The Reverend felt a flush of feeling he did not recognize as his manservant stared at him incredulously. Heat rose from his collar as shame overcame him.

    "You see only what you wish to see," Ahcho added more softly. "I fear you are not the expansive man you once were."

    The Reverend felt his cheeks flame fully, and his shoulders felt uncomfortably hot under the hide. He wanted to defend himself against this accusation. In the past, he had built the people fine roads and a school and a hospital. How could he ever be perceived as anything but a champion of the poor?

    He swallowed the cold, dry air, and his throat constricted. He had to admit his mind was often someplace other than where it needed to be. Ahcho's accusations rang true. He did see only what he wanted to see. And yet what he saw was not one bit pleasant.

    Recently, he had been preoccupied by wrestling with God. He had come to the anguished conclusion that his Lord had been steadily slipping from his grip and intended to abandon him altogether. The Reverend felt quite alone with his failed effort to clutch on to Him. But now, as he glanced at Ahcho's disappointed expression, he understood that his sorrow at losing the Lord did not matter nearly as much as the fact that he had somehow managed to lose the Chinese as well.

    "I shall try harder," he finally said.

    Ahcho nodded, clearly uncomfortable with the strange occurrence of his master apologizing to him.

    They continued onward without speaking and the Reverend tried to take careful note of the miserable state of things around him. The empty shop windows, the frail and defeated beggars, even the few dogs that appeared mangier than ever and who no doubt would serve as some lucky person's dinner before long.

    After some time, Ahcho pulled his donkey to a stop outside a forlorn-looking shop, and the Reverend pulled to a halt as well. The dusty road led to the threshold of the sunlit door, and on the doorstep sat a stick-thin boy who raised his head and rubbed his eyes.

    "If you watch our animals," the Reverend said to the lad, "I will give you a coin."

    The boy hurried to take the reins, although Ahcho said in English, "He may try to sell them before we come out. No one is to be trusted these days."

    "This fine young fellow?" the Reverend asked as he ran a hand over the boy's hair. Instantly, the Reverend thought he felt lice on his fingers. He wiped his hand roughly on his coat and whispered to Ahcho, "Do they no longer take baths?"

    "What's the point," Ahcho shrugged, "if you're starving and soon to die?"

    The Reverend followed him to the doorway of the shop. He tried to peer in, but the room inside was too shadowy and the road too bright with the winter's sun. The Reverend couldn't tell what transpired within. He paused for a long moment on the threshold and knew that with the morning light at his back and his silhouette blocking the door, he would appear an impressive figure. Once again, he hoped this effect might work in his favor.

    But when he stepped inside, he saw that the audience he wished to impress sat lolling on wooden barrels in what appeared to be an oldfashioned general store. The Reverend was reminded of one just like it back home and in every American village and town. This was the center of local commerce, where shelves were meant to be stacked high with every sort of goods for farm and home: tin nails and calico fabrics, thick braids of rope and sacks of flour, workmen's gloves and dainty ribbons for the piping on girls' dresses.

    The Reverend could see that the intention here was the same: high shelves covered the walls, and the room was divided by a long counter. But nothing, not one thing, sat upon these dusty surfaces. A Franklin potbellied stove stood cold, although the room was chilly. A young man who appeared to be the proprietor leaned against the blank counter, and beside him sat several grandfathers, another boy, a girl, a woman with a baby in her arms, and several young men— a typical Chinese extended family, the Reverend thought, with its many appendages and hangers-on. Who could guess how the half-dozen men seated on the barrels were related to the owner of the place? But the Reverend was certain that they were.

    The people did not offer the usual gasps of recognition that the Reverend had grown accustomed to upon arriving in any setting. Usually, his reputation as the Ghost Man preceded him, but here in his own town, where he had assumed he was revered, the natives eyed him with an even stare. That was all right with the Reverend. He didn't need to appear a god to all concerned, so long as he was able to obtain what he had come for.

    "Good people," he began.

    Ahcho shot out a hand and patted his arm. Then his manservant spoke in a quick and unrecognizable dialect that surprised the Reverend. He had thought he knew all the possible permutations of the complex language of the region, but apparently he did not.

    The proprietor, who appeared to be the most robust of the men behind the counter, leaned forward to get a better look at the Reverend. He spoke quickly to his friends or cousins, who also leaned their elbows on the counter and stared.

    "What are they saying?" the Reverend asked Ahcho.

    "They have heard of you."

    "Good, good."

    "No, not so good," Ahcho mumbled.

    "Why ever not?" the Reverend asked.

    At that moment the proprietor came out from behind the empty counter. He planted himself before the Reverend and raised an eyebrow. The fellow was shorter than the Reverend by at least a foot, but he was sturdy and muscular. He did not look one bit affected by the famine. His eyes in the shadowed room appeared black and angry— shiny beads that sucked in the dim light. The man put his hands on his hips and lifted his chin.

    "Show us, Ghost Man," he said. "Show us your miracles."

    The Reverend thought he had caught the meaning of the taunt, but the others did not wait for his reply.

    A bent grandfather stepped forward from where he had sat hunched on a barrel. "You are the one who turned a small white freak into a deity that no man can harm?"

    Before the Reverend could answer, a different young man came from behind the counter and said, "And I hear you taught an elephant to fly."

    Even a mother with a child on her hip spoke up. "I heard that you made the snakes fall asleep forever."

    The Reverend pushed the wolf's head back and off his brow so they might see he was only human, like them. He bobbed his head and smiled slightly. "No," he began, "not exactly."

    "You," the proprietor said as he stepped closer and poked a finger hard at the Reverend's shoulder, "you who can do so much magic, I say you will now fix the drought for us."

    Another strong young fellow stepped forward and insisted, "That's right, you'll do what he says."

    "The fields are cracked," one of the grandfathers added from a shadowed corner of the room. "The last time it was this bad was before the Boxer Rebellion. Foreign devils were amongst us then, too."

    The Reverend understood the phrase "foreign devils" and grasped the angry sounds of agreement now coming from the other elders.

    "Oh, heavens," the Reverend said, "I am not responsible for the weather, gentlemen and dear ladies. We know better than that, now, don't we?"

    One of the grandmothers spat on the dusty wooden floorboards, as if to prove that she was no lady, but also that she did not believe him.

    "But you made these other miracles happen, did you not?" the proprietor asked.

    "Well, I— " the Reverend started.

    "Because if you did not," the proprietor said as he crossed his substantial arms over his wide chest, "then you have been fooling us all along. And we are not a stupid people who deserve to be fooled."

    His friends nodded in agreement.

    "Of course you're not," the Reverend said. "My God, I was just thinking this morning that my servants are far cleverer than I." He looked over at Ahcho and hoped that the dear man understood that he meant this sincerely and was not just saying it to make an impression.

    Ahcho blanched and stepped forward. "Ghost Man respects
all
Chinese, not just his servants."

    Before the Reverend knew what was happening, one of proprietor's friends, clearly a thug, had Ahcho's long queue in his hand. "Old one," he said to Ahcho as he tightened his grip around the braid, "I see you follow the ancient ways. But we're done with all that. We're servants to no one now."

    Ahcho spoke calmly to the man. "Let go of me and we'll leave."

    The man pulled a knife from a sheath at his waist. "Before you go, I think I'll cut off your queue," the young thug said. "That would shock the old-timers who serve the white people. Imagine if you returned to the Christian compound with the new short hairstyle. You'd be a laughingstock. Maybe you'd even lose your easy job, old one?"

    The grandfathers and grandmother who sat nearby made tsking sounds and shook their heads at this insolent behavior, but they did nothing to stop him. The Reverend waited for them to at least reprimand the young hooligan who was disrespecting an elder, but they didn't open their mouths. Such were the appalling changes of these times.

    The Reverend felt he had no choice but to pull his small knife from its elaborately carved sheath. "Leave him alone," he said, stepping forward and thrusting the dagger outward.

    The young man looked at the Reverend's upraised hand and began to laugh. Then the others joined him, their lips pulled back from brown teeth as they bent over in mild hysterics.

    "Where did you get that souvenir, Ghost Man?" one of the young thugs asked.

    The Reverend looked at the knife in his hand.

    "He doesn't even know it's a letter opener," one of the others said.

    The proprietor chuckled and held out his hand. "May I?" he asked.

    The Reverend had no choice but to give the man his only weapon.

    The proprietor inspected the knife and said, "My father sold this same model. It's a letter opener, all right, but of decent quality."

    The Reverend chuckled out of nervousness, too, but Ahcho wasn't smiling. The older man's eyes burned with rage. "Unhand me," he said.

    The young thug who held his queue finally let go.

    "I wonder," the Reverend tried, "could I trade you this fine letter opener for some beans, perhaps?"

    The proprietor let out a disgusted snort, as if he had been waiting for this question all along. "You and every other person in the province would like to make a deal with me."