River of Dust A Novel

Six

I n the first days and weeks that followed, as the Reverend regained his strength and his rib healed, his second-in-command, the Reverend Charles Martin, led several unsuccessful search parties into the Shansi Desert and the borderland provinces beyond. The Reverend was most grateful, and yet he could not have been more frustrated. While he waited for his compatriots to return, he wrote passionate letter after letter as he sought help from the Chinese authorities and the local warlords of the region. The American legation in Peking became involved for a time.

A long month later, Doc Hemingway granted permission, and the Reverend was finally able to take over the search. During his period of recuperation, he had devised a plan to visit every village of the mountains and plains. He set out right away. He followed rumors. Someone had seen a startlingly pale child in a market, or on a boat going upriver, or on the back of a Mongol tradesman's horse. The Reverend remained on the road all through that summer. He would return to the compound for a day or two but then quickly saddle up again. As head of the mission, part of his duty was to support and grow the outlying churches, yet everyone soon understood why he was gone so much of the time.

Confined at home through the humid summer months as the child in her belly held on, Grace had her bed turned to face the window. Her nervous condition remained inflamed, and Mai Lin saw to her health with strong potions. Grace could not shake from her rattled mind the feeling of her son being torn from her arms. The panic that had accompanied that moment hovered over her still. It kept her awake at night until Mai Lin arrived at a correct dosage.

When the moon spread a pewter glow over the rocky ground and a breeze from across the plains finally blew in milder, Grace was given respite and reward for her vigilance. The ghosts of her babies came back to her, and she was most grateful for their presence. They hovered just over the windowsill and beamed at her with their sweet, divine faces. Their high, angelic voices sang her to sleep, although a restless sleep it was. In that dreamy state, she listened to her angels of the desert, whom she came to both love and fear. As night wore on, she thrashed about in her bed, waiting for the visions to calm her. Sometimes it took hours for her to no longer reach out and try to snatch her children back. Instead, she would finally let them go and, when morning came, she woke with a pillow wet from tears but with a renewed lightness in her heart. Her children were out there, she was sure of that. It was only a matter of time before she was allowed to hold them again.

It would have been so much easier to simply give up, to lose one's faith; easier to turn against the Lord as she had on the first night after Wesley had been stolen. But from that dark moment, her true self had risen again. There was no denying she was a cheerful Midwestern girl at heart: an American girl, synonymous with optimism. And in so being, she understood that she must endure her greatest punishment. She must live with the hope, the infernal hope that love could survive even out here where nothing else did. Her son would return to her. She just knew it.

One evening near the end of summer, as Mai Lin prepared Grace's sleeping concoction by the water basin, the Reverend startled them both by rapping on the bedroom door. Mai Lin let him in and stepped aside. He did not seem to notice the old woman. Grace knew he had been terribly preoccupied since Wesley's kidnapping with his travels and attempts to find the boy. But she wished he would be kinder to the one person who had been kindest to her in the aftermath. Given her delicate condition, Grace felt certain that her current pregnancy could not possibly have lasted into the fourth month if it had not been for her skilled amah. The Reverend needed to appreciate that.

He strode into the room with remarkable haste and stopped at her bedside. He rattled as he walked now, the several pouches and bags he had begun to acquire on his summer-long trips making him sound altogether too much like Mai Lin, who wore similar belts of accessories. Grace started at the sight of him bedecked in his amulets but then quickly began to pat down her flyaway hair. She was glad that she had changed into a fresh gown that morning.

"My dear, this won't do," he said abruptly.

She looked down at her hands.

"People are beginning to wonder about us," the Reverend continued. "I would like you to accompany me to chapel tomorrow morning. The natives need our example."

She nodded. Of course she would. He was right. In so many ways, he was right.

"We must carry on, mustn't we?" he asked.

She lifted her chin and attempted a smile.

He pushed aside his long coat and the belts with the pouches hanging down as he sat at the side of her bed. The sack with the twin golden dragons was most handsome and bulged as if it held some sort of orb. She had meant to ask him about its contents, but she had seen him so rarely in the past few months, she did not wish to distract them from more pressing matters.

"My dear," he said, more softly now. He took her pale hands in his own rough, red ones. "I am so sorry. So terribly sorry."

His high, usually erect head bowed, and then suddenly, he fell forward and pressed his face against her breast. The metal of his wireframed glasses dug into her soft skin, but she did not complain. She placed her hand on his head. She let herself feel the actual touch and texture of his fine, thinning red hair. He was no apparition.

"It isn't your fault," she said. "Please, don't blame yourself."

He groaned as if she had struck him a blow. "But it is, and I do."

She pushed her fingers through his hair more firmly now. Then she touched around his unshaven cheek and rough jaw and lifted his face to hers. "The baby inside me will also help us to heal. This one is going to make it. I know he will."

The Reverend must have seen the doubt in her eyes, or heard the quiver she tried to keep from her voice. He looked at her with a tender expression, and she felt tears rise up behind her eyes. He brought her to him and kissed her on the lips. Grace thought she might faint, she was so happy to be in his embrace again. She had feared she had lost him forever.

But his lips were dry, and they did not press for long against her greedy ones. He pulled back and looked away out the open window.

"I have a sermon to prepare," he said. "You will come with me to chapel tomorrow?"

"Of course I will come with you."

"Bless you, my dear." He turned and began to leave the room. Then he paused and stepped back, closer.

Her heart could not help fluttering with hope that he might bestow upon her another kiss.

But he simply added, "Do not be surprised to see that our ranks have swelled. I seem to have sparked a revival of sorts. Most strange, but positive for our cause, I believe."

She looked at him, waiting for more, but he bent quickly and merely kissed her on the forehead before stepping away.