River of Dust A Novel

Twenty-four

A s the other families attended the burial of the Martins' daughter, Mistress Grace and Ahcho plodded out from the compound and into dusk. She fussed for many miles, but he didn't listen. She was flabbergasted that they had only one donkey now. Had she known that the old gentleman would have to walk the whole way, she would have insisted on some other mode of transport. He didn't wish to be disrespectful, but this was a ridiculous notion. Nor did he mention that he had borrowed the donkey from the Martins by bribing their number-two boy with a precious cigarette. This sorry animal was one of the very last beasts of burden in the compound and had to be returned to them without fail this same night so that it could cart that family away the next morning.

On they walked, Ahcho holding the reins of the tired animal. As he tromped along before it, Grace sat perched upon its back in her long white dress, both legs dangling over one side against a thick blanket. It was not lost on him that they resembled that blessed man and woman on their way to Bethlehem. Although he did not mean to suggest, even in his mind, that they were that sort of couple. He wished only that he could promise his mistress as warm a greeting as the shepherds had given the Virgin Mary on that deep winter night so long ago. If only he could bring her to as pure and simple a setting as the stable where the straw had been warm and the animals had stood guard. He longed, most of all, for her to hear angels singing all around. He liked to think of the cherubim, those chubby babies whose cheeks were always pink and whose voices no doubt rang out like high and happy church bells. He longed for his mistress to hear such sweet music and not the frightening cries of the banshees that cascaded down from the craggy mountains in the near distance.

But he knew too well the sort of place where he was taking her, and that by doing so, he had become an altogether different character from one inspired by the Good Book. He was now like Judas, a man who loved his master so, but through some will not entirely his own was forced to betray him. This part of the story Ahcho had never fully understood. He needed the Reverend to instruct him again on this most disturbing section of the Bible. For he had grasped that the betrayal was wrong, and a sign of human weakness, and yet it was somehow also blessed, for only through this betrayal had Jesus been brought back to humankind as a true God.

Ahcho shook his head at this paradox of faith and fate, evil and goodness. It reminded him of the old superstitions, which he refused to believe any longer but which crept into his thinking just the same. Somehow Judas's story made sense, and yet it did not in any rational way. Ahcho fancied himself a man of science, as he had been taught by his master, and so preferred for things to be explicable. And yet sometimes they clearly were not. If only the Reverend were here.

Ahcho knew that his master would not want Mistress Grace to find him at his current location, and yet, for some reason that only God, and perhaps the great Reverend, could understand, it had fallen to Ahcho to bring her to him. As they traipsed over the dry, rocky ground and each footfall ached, he kept repeating the story in his mind. Judas had been deeply loved by the Lord. And Judas had loved the Lord every bit as much, if not more, than the other disciples. Yet somehow that love had turned and twisted and turned again, in the manner of the desert wind that lifted the sand into the air at sunset now, swirling around Ahcho's boots and around the poorly shod hoofs of this last, forlorn donkey. Ahcho's mouth filled with the sorrowful grit that Judas must have tasted, too.

The rocky trail had passed through the plains, and the foothills grew nearer. Ahcho tried to think of the words that the Reverend would have used to admire the dark purple shadows, but he couldn't recall even a single poetic phrase. He chastised himself for not better absorbing the great man's wisdom. It was as if all the profound lessons he had learned were slipping away in his master's absence.

In the last light of day, Ahcho turned toward the abandoned hamlet. Having lived in Fenchow-fu all his sixty years, he knew every trail through the plains. He could have shut his eyes and still known the way. And yet the landscape around them was too mysterious to ever be truly grasped. The sun hung low in the sky, and the moon had also risen. Orange sunset bathed the mistress's face in a golden glow, but when Ahcho turned to see a dead tree by a dry riverbed, or the stark boulder that marked the last turn in the road, these things stood silhouetted and silver against a darkening backdrop. The brightness of day ebbed before his eyes, and all was sketched in charcoal. The edges became smudged as each thing grew softer and more forgiving. The cool night air caressed his cheeks and dried the sweat from his brow. Ahcho wished with all his heart that this hallowed peacefulness could last, but he knew better. The night was only the night and the desert as menacing as ever.

"Not much farther, Mistress," he said. Then he bowed his head and added too softly for her to hear, "May God and the Reverend forgive me."