River of Dust A Novel

Twenty-five

A hcho placed his aged fingers upon the rope handle of the door that hung now on only one hinge. The wind, suddenly up, rushed across the desert miles and shook it slightly, as if insisting they enter. He looked down upon Mistress Grace and wanted to brush aside her strands of hair covered in golden loess, but he did not. Ahcho did, however, think it appropriate to brush the yellow loess from the shoulders of the Reverend's traveling coat that she wore. He wished he had his whisk broom to do the job properly. His fingers left marks on the oilcloth as if the mistress had been pawed by a bear. The front of her gown where the dust had crept under the coat was clearly ruined. A mustard-yellow tint had seeped into the fine lace so completely that Mai Lin would never get it close to white again. Their mistress appeared as bedraggled as a street urchin, which suited this setting more than she could know.

"Perhaps you would prefer to wait out here, and I will bring the Reverend to you? You will have a moment to compose yourself, and I can help the Reverend do the same."

"Dear Ahcho," she said with that same unreal, happy lilt in her voice, "you are such a good fellow, but you mustn't try so hard to save us from ourselves."

She chuckled faintly, and then the coughing began. Ahcho knew his mistress was not well in several crucial ways. Her body was still weak from childbirth and also wracked with illness, but he worried just as much about her mind. He let her lean into him as her narrow shoulders heaved with the paroxysms, and he could feel her delicate body shudder under the massive coat.

Ahcho looked about to find a seat for her, but there was not a bench nor a log nor even a rock in the deserted courtyard.

"I believe we should retreat," he said more emphatically. "I will put you back on the donkey, and I can trot us home to safety. You will be asleep in your bed in no time."

When her coughing finally subsided, she looked up with a scarlet face lined by yellow dust. Yellow loam glistened on her chapped lips, and more mixed with spittle on her chin. Her eyelashes stuck together to form stars encrusted by it. Poor girl, he thought, for in that moment, she resembled a child more than a woman. A frightened child made dimly aware of her mortality by the onslaught of a fever and a cough more than by ever having seen life played out in others. She was still so innocent— ignorant, really— and more desperate than she would acknowledge.

"Please, Mistress Grace," he said with unusual familiarity, "we must leave before it is too late."

She reached for his hand, and he hoped she was finally about to heed his words. But instead, she lifted it to the rope handle, turned, and pushed open the door.

The dark room before them swirled as motes of dust were caught in the last streaks of day. Sunset skidded over the threshold, exposing emptiness— a chamber that had once held buckwheat grain or sacks of hemp waiting to be taken to market. Dried game may once have hung from the low rafters. Now a swag of herbs swayed in the afternoon breeze with a lonely rustling.

"I see I'm wrong. No one's here," Ahcho said. "I brought you all this way for nothing. So sorry! We will go now."

Grace stepped down onto the dirt floor and held up her hand. "Sh-sh-sh," she whispered as she walked deeper into the room.

Ahcho, practically stumbling over her heels, repeated, "Please, Madam, we go."

But now she had reached the door that led into the second chamber and smiled at him over her shoulder.

"I must warn you," he began, but it was too late.

Grace had turned the handle and pushed open the second wooden plank. Smoke curled out from the darkness of the back chamber, and Ahcho followed his mistress as she continued toward the lamplight. More than the stinging smoke, he hated the stench. Ahcho pulled out his handkerchief, one of the master's own, and offered it to the mistress, but she shook her head. He lifted the thin fabric to his nose and tried not to gag. Mistress Grace did not stop but proceeded into the room, which slowly came into focus as Ahcho's eyes adjusted to the dim light.

The sight was the same as it had been when he'd come here before: all around them on dingy mats lay mere stick figures with sallow eyes and sunken cheeks. Some sucked on opium pipes as the oil lamps were fired up and smoking. Ahcho tried not to look too closely for the source of the constant moaning. In a corner, the same young girls huddled, their heads upon one another's bare breasts, their legs and arms riddled with sores. They looked like tattered dolls, flung about unclothed and uncared-for. Their eyes stared fiercely in search of something— food, no doubt. They didn't even have the strength to rise and curl themselves around the visitors and beg. Ahcho almost missed their pathetic attentions, but he could see that they had lost all life.

The smell was unbearable, and Ahcho tried again to hand his mistress the Reverend's handkerchief. This time she took it, but she didn't press it to her nose, where it might have done some good.

"We've seen enough," he whispered. "I will ask if they know the Reverend's whereabouts, but then we must leave. They have the sickness."

Grace studied the prone figures. "These people?" she asked, finally taking in the drugged and ill bodies.

"The cholera, Mistress. That explains the smell."

As he said it, she finally pressed the cloth to her nose and began to gag. And yet she still did not turn back. Instead, Ahcho followed his mistress as her dusty, cracked boots shuffled toward the niche where the gamblers had once tossed their dice and raised their voices in drunken boasts. Only one or two men sat on the hard ground now, their legs splayed and their backs slumped against the damp mud walls.

An oil lamp flickered from where it had been placed upon a barrel beside a straw mattress. Upon that primitive bed lay the shriveled figure of the old proprietress of the brothel.

Ahcho stepped around the corner and now saw what had stopped his mistress in her tracks. There, in the darkest shadow, seated on a small stool placed against the wall, was the Reverend. His head re mained bowed, and his hands lay folded in his lap, the fingers nervously fingering the sack that held the orb. Ahcho noticed immediately how sallow and ill shaven his cheeks had become. The man needed his proper ablutions. Ahcho stepped closer and would have given anything to attend to his master, or at least fling away that terrible hat given to him by the nomads. It pained Ahcho to see it still cocked crookedly upon the Reverend's head.

Mistress Grace, however, did not appear nearly as upset by the sight of her husband as Ahcho had anticipated. She heaved a deep sigh, and her shoulders drooped with relief. Her entire being appeared to grow calm in his presence. Ahcho couldn't imagine such a reaction: for him, the sight of the Reverend brought forth an almost violent urge to do something.

The mistress inched closer, and Ahcho sensed that she wished to reach out to the Reverend, who remained sunk deep in his own thoughts. No doubt he was praying. Clearly, she wanted to rouse him and make him know that she had come for him. But she did not. She remained quiet and waited to be noticed by the man who was a shrunken version of his former self.

The Reverend's back sat curled and bent. His long legs were crossed like a scholar's, and his tattered trousers and worn boots trembled. Upon a closer look, Ahcho could see that all of the Reverend's thin limbs were shaking. The great man had been reduced to nerves and sinews with very little meat or muscle on him any longer. Ahcho could tell he was exhausted and needed food. He was wasting away.

Ahcho became aware of the raspy, irregular breathing that emanated from the proprietress under a coarse blanket on the bed. The smell of decay and human stench in this corner was so severe, it made Ahcho's eyes burn. He longed to remove both his master and mistress from this wretched place.

But Mistress Grace seemed undaunted by sight and smell. She moved closer and reached out a delicate, tentative hand toward her husband's shoulder. Her pale fingers hovered, unsure and yet brave, until she finally bestowed a firm grip upon him. The Reverend flinched at being touched, his gaze whipping upward and all about like the eyes of a cornered animal. He staggered off the stool and fumbled with the red sash across his chest until his hand took hold of the pouch that hung at his hip. Once he had it in a tight grip, he grew calm again and seemed to finally see his wife standing before him. To Ahcho's surprise, once the initial shock of being interrupted at his prayers subsided, the Reverend did not appear one bit surprised to see Mistress Grace.

"My dear," the Reverend said, his hand fiddling with the pouch and his eyes darting uneasily about the room.

Ahcho cringed to see the great man so weakened. What had happened to him here? This place had changed him in ways that Ahcho feared might be unalterable. At that very moment, poisonous opium, or something worse, must be coursing through the Reverend's veins, otherwise why would he behave so strangely? He needed to be carried home immediately, fed, and straightened out. A good bath would surely help.

For the first time since the mistress had suggested this nightmarish visit, Ahcho was able to imagine that something good might come of it. He and Mistress Grace would bring the Reverend back to his senses. Although night had descended outside by now, they would, metaphorically speaking, lead him out of the darkness of this vile hovel and into the pure light of the mission again. The Reverend needed merely to be carried forth, and soon they would all live together in the finest house in the compound. Ahcho waited for her to tell her husband this plan so that their journey home might begin.

"My darling," she replied in a voice as thin and weak as her husband's.

They didn't step closer, although clearly they had missed one another's company. They were proper people who did not show private emotions in public. Ahcho approved of this.

"You are attending to the sick?" Grace asked.

The Reverend's gaze drifted down to the proprietress's shriveled face, which poked out from beneath the covers. He nodded somberly, and Ahcho felt reassured that the Reverend was maintaining his good practices. Perhaps he really had been praying.

"Master offers last rites to the old, evil one?" Ahcho asked hopefully.

The Reverend squeezed the pouch on his hip with white knuckles and said, "No, I was merely wiping the liquid away. I can hardly keep up with it. She is seeping something terrible. I remember a goat that once ate nettles and managed to swallow a segment of barbed wire. Her insides oozed out of her for days. This illness is not unlike that."

"Oh, how awful," Mistress Grace said.

Ahcho hoped the Reverend might agree that the condition here was equally terrible, but he did not. Instead, he bent over the dying creature and whisked away flies. Then he bent closer— far too close, Ahcho felt— and pinched his fingers against the greasy scalp and pulled out a bug.

He held his hand up to the lamplight and exclaimed, "Aha! I have rescued another soul."

"Dear God," the mistress said.

Her knees buckled, and Ahcho caught her arm and steadied her.

"Yes, dear God," the Reverend said and shook his head as if remembering someone fondly from his childhood.

"We must go home now," she said, regaining her composure. "Our compatriots are all setting out tomorrow morning on their long journey back to America. The compound is soon to be empty, and we must not abandon ship like the others."

"A ship?" the Reverend asked, distracted again by the gasping breaths of the body below them on the mat.

"You are the captain of our ship," she reminded him, finding now a firmness in her voice that Ahcho admired. "You must return to it before it sinks."

"Our ship is sinking?" he asked.

"Not literally, my darling," she said.

"Ah." He raised himself up. "You mean figuratively. This is a crucial distinction. Listen closely, Ahcho," the Reverend said, pointing at him. "Your mistress has something to teach you. She is a clever girl. And brave. My goodness, she is brave to have come all this way and to have left behind a life of ease."

"Don't concern yourself with that now, my love," she said as she took her husband's arm and began to walk him away from the sickbed. "None of it can be helped. We are what we are."

The Reverend patted her arm and agreed, "We are."

"What's done is done," she said as she steered him across the room.

"Done, all done," he murmured.

They were making real progress and had almost made it to the exit of the interior chamber when the Reverend looked down at her and shouted, "Unhand me!" He wrenched his arm free as if she had held it in an iron grip, which clearly she had not. Ahcho couldn't help wondering whatever was the matter with the Reverend's mind.

Grace stumbled back.

The Reverend began scratching his shins under his pant legs. He brushed aside his jacket, lifted his shirt, and scratched his inflamed belly. Ahcho knew he would have to work hard to rescue him from the maddening insects, but luckily he had many methods and would not hesitate to try them all until the battle was won. Perhaps his master's unstable mental condition could be corrected by proper fumigation.

The Reverend stopped and fixed his eyes on his wife. "Woman," he said both sternly and loudly, "have you ever seen a louse living in a pair of trousers?"

The men and women asleep or lost in a haze of opium on their beds turned to stare with vague interest in their eyes.

Grace replied, "No, dear Reverend. I have not."

"Well, then, you cannot possibly understand."

The Reverend began to pace as he spoke. He lifted his long arms, and Ahcho could not help recalling the sermons that had made his master famous in this land. His stature, his wisdom, the truth that fell from his lips had rung out over the little chapel, echoing as far away as the hills and the desert beyond. Ahcho's Reverend had preached of man's sin and God's forgiveness and the hope, the pure and absolute hope, of eternal rest and salvation. Ahcho had felt it— he had known it— in the Reverend's words. There was a better world beyond. Heaven awaited us, all who believed and repented. Ahcho knew this because the Reverend had spoken of it.

"The louse," the Reverend continued in his grandest oratorical manner. Several in their deathbeds stirred. "The louse regards the trousers as a fine and prosperous home. He feels he has attained a wellregulated and honorable life. A decent life. A godly life. But soon, flames will come over the hills. Fire, the like of which has never been seen before, will spread. Villages will burn. Cities will fall. And then the lice will perish!"

The Reverend bowed his head in what appeared to be abject sorrow, and Ahcho waited for uplifting words to rise from his master's throat. Hope was waiting in the next sentence, Ahcho was certain. They would escape this wretched place.

But the Reverend looked around the room, taking in the miserable creatures whose lives leaked out of them in smoke and blood and bodily fluids. He growled, "And the man you wish to be, how does he differ from the louse?" He waved his arms at the evil on all sides and asked, "Is this not trousers?"

The mistress and Ahcho waited for more, but the Reverend's expression shifted again, and he appeared suddenly lost and confused. He pulled his spectacles away from his eyes and wiped them on the tails of the filthy shirt that hung below his threadbare jacket. He did not speak again to his sorry parishioners but only muttered to himself, "Heaven and earth are my dwelling, and my house is my trousers. I am no better than the Confucian lice and no wiser than the Daoists who invented this parable to illustrate Confucian profligacy. I am Lui Ling, a gentleman corrupted by my narrow, spoiled vision of the world. I am, without question, a louse."

The Reverend placed his glasses back upon his nose, and Ahcho noticed that one of the lenses was cracked. The Chinese gentleman's name the Reverend had spoken sounded familiar, but Ahcho could not place it at first. Then it came to him. He recalled that Lui Ling had been a drunken, hedonistic poet of the Han Dynasty, many hundreds of years before. In his incoherent and impromptu sermon, the Reverend had been citing a foolish ancient argument, a common Daoist story invented to illustrate Confucian corruption. The Daoists hated Confucian immoderation, but the Daoists themselves were heathens of the first order, too, believing as they did in the dangerous old superstitions. Mai Lin's frequent mutterings about Fate and Destiny were an example of their wrongheadedness. All those old religions were like haggling crones at the market, Ahcho thought. They had nothing of use to say anymore.

"Reverend," Ahcho said, "you shouldn't be bothered by such stupid, outdated arguments. Your way is far better and more modern. Don't fill your mind with such absurdity."

The Reverend looked up. "You believe that's so?" he asked.

"Of course I do! And you do, too!" Ahcho answered with what he hoped was a strong enough jolt of enthusiasm and reality to dislodge the Reverend from the shoals of religious relativism where he had momentarily been beached. "Come now, the Mistress is right, we must go home. The little chapel is waiting for you. Tomorrow is Sunday!"

"Ah," the Reverend said, his voice far off again. "Sunday is the holiest of days. But you know, some religions say that Saturday is the chosen day."

Why was the Reverend bothering to concern his great mind with other religions? Ahcho had the urge to knock some sense into the bedraggled man. But at just that moment, Mistress Grace beat him to it. She pulled back her tiny fist and socked the Reverend in the arm.

That finally got his attention, and he stared at her with remarkably



fond eyes and a charming smile. "I have been ignoring you again, my love," he said. "You must learn to speak up, but that love pat you just bestowed upon me also works quite well, too. I gather that today's women employ that method quite often. Gone are the meek feminine souls of yesteryear."

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.