River of Dust A Novel

Seven

G race cherished the Reverend's firm grip on her elbow as he steered her up the aisle, but she hated the moment when he placed her in her seat in the front pew and moved away. It took all of her self-control not to turn to him before the assembling congregation and beg him to hold her a moment longer. She watched him rise to the platform behind the simple podium. Then she looked down at her lap and ran her fingers over the fine lacework of her dress stretched tightly across her growing belly. She hoped that no one would spot the tears gathering behind her eyes and prayed she could make it through the morning service without causing a stir.

But, quickly enough, she and the other missionaries and the usual Chinese faithful were distracted by a racket at the back of the chapel. Grace turned to see what the disturbance might be. A cart had pulled up out front, and from it climbed more than a dozen men. A second cart followed closely behind, and another after that. While Grace couldn't see all that was happening beyond the open double doors, she gathered that a steady stream of congregants was clamoring toward the little chapel.

She recognized none of the peasants' faces that entered through the door. She heard the rattle of more carts arriving, and the influx continued with no sign of abating. In the seven years that the Reverend had lived in Shansi, the mission had grown slowly and steadily in numbers that were nothing to be ashamed of. But as she glanced up at him now, he must have sensed her eyes upon him, because he glanced back and raised a single eyebrow, as if to say that he, too, wondered what the Lord had wrought.

The service began a full half hour late because the new congregants had to pack themselves into every pew, some sitting on each other's laps. More stood at the back and along the sides. Others filled the central aisle and edged out the door. The faces of those who could not enter pressed against the windows.

Grace peered around for her young lady friends with whom she had lost touch during the recent difficult months. None of the not-yetwed missionary teachers appeared to be in attendance. The night before, when Grace had pressed Mai Lin to tell her about the changes to the congregation to which the Reverend had referred, her servant had alluded to the fact that the chapel now belonged to the Chinese. Grace surmised that this recent change was the reason the young ladies now stayed in their homes on Sunday morning.

She did spot Mildred Martin, the Reverend Martin's wife, and offered what she hoped was not too desperate a smile. Mildred had been quite dear in the first days after Wesley had been taken, although her visits to Grace's bedside had tapered off in the subsequent weeks of summer and finally stopped altogether. Grace realized that she had hardly noticed, occupied as she had become with her constant vigilance all night and then her need for sleep during the day. But now she looked across at Mildred and yearned for her gentle company. Grace smiled, and Mildred offered pursed lips and a little nod that made the hair on Grace's arms rise.

The Reverend cleared his throat and began to speak. As he did, the new congregants sucked in air, as if amazed that he could converse in their tongue. Why on earth had they come, Grace wondered, if they did not believe they would understand him? Such a daft and mystifying people, she thought.

Her husband's face appeared pale and calm, but rather quickly perspiration appeared on his handsome brow. He seemed to have a difficult time finding his handkerchief in his jacket pockets or in one of those little sacks and pouches that he wore. As his voice began to gain its stride, she found herself wondering what on earth were in all those odd items strung about him. She had noticed that several of the coolies who had come tromping in carried just such amulets in their hands. She hoped to heaven they weren't bringing them all to the Reverend. The man was beginning to look like a great Hawaiian chieftain sporting one too many leis. At such a ridiculous comparison, Grace giggled quietly to herself. Getting out and about seemed to agree with her. She must try to do so more often.

The Reverend's cheeks flushed, and the timbre of his words echoed against the plaster walls that he himself had erected. He was a master builder, a man with a vision in the full stride of life at forty years of age, and here, surrounded by witnesses, it was to God that he spoke with force and purpose and even anger, something she did not recall from his previous sermons. Now, from the simple wooden pulpit, he called out and begged the Lord for mercy.

Grace could not help remembering what a thin reed of a fellow he had been when she had first met him. He could barely raise his voice then to reach the back of the crowd where she and her girlfriends were hanging about. It was in 1903 on the Oberlin College campus in Ohio at a ceremony celebrating the erection of a memorial arch to the recent martyred missionaries of Shansi. As the band played a rousing march and the dedication gained momentum, with speaker after speaker extolling the bravery of the missionaries who had lost their lives in the battle against ignorance and fear in a distant province of a distant land, Grace had left her friends under the trees and drifted toward the front of the crowd. Once there, she had noticed the young Reverend who glanced repeatedly at the papers in his hand as he prepared to take the stage.

When he stepped forward, the young man towered over the dais, inspiring hope in the crowd that this chap would carry them away with his words. But, instead, his voice had faltered, and Grace could plainly hear that he had the uncertain rasp of a humble servant of God with a head cold. His eyes did not blaze yet with purpose, although he vowed to move to China that very year, but instead blinked under eyebrows that twitched unpredictably. Young Grace felt a surprising tenderness toward this man who bowed awkwardly when he finished speaking. Later she would wonder how she could possibly have sensed his power and potential based on that uninspired performance.

As she looked around now at the crowded chapel and her husband's flushed face and heroic stance there above them all, she allowed herself to consider that her direction had changed forever, not only because of the message of sacrifice and endurance that the young Reverend had conveyed on the first day she had met him but because the sun had glinted off his fine spectacles and the hand that held his remarks had trembled most sincerely. There was no doubt in her mind that she had chosen her path well, especially because he had become enamored of her, too, not long after her arrival in Fenchow-fu, and their destiny together had been sealed.

In a surprising magazine that had fallen into her hands during her brief stay in New York prior to her departure for Cathay, Grace had read the rather forward advice that a modern woman must take the reins in matters of the heart. The Lady's Realm printed articles not only about how women now had the right to vote in four Western states, whereas it was unheard-of in the rest of the country, but also on how a lady could manage her own honeymoon. The modern woman understood that when she married a gentleman greatly distracted by ambition, she must nonetheless persevere with her own hopes and dreams. Grace was not sure what her own hopes and dreams might be, but she recognized that the Reverend was a man much distracted by ambition.

Indeed, the man before her today bore none of the human frailty and lack of surety of the young man she had first met but instead, was a substantial figure who had achieved a great deal. She rather liked that he appeared now as the Chinese had come to see him— as a bear, a giant, an oversized miracle of a man. Ghost Man, they called him, and she could see why.

Grace reminded herself that as a girl of twenty, she could instead have become a schoolteacher in a one-room schoolhouse on the Midwestern plains, a librarian in the college town, or most certainly a secretary to one of her father's fellow academics on campus. Instead, four years before, she had followed a man in whom she sensed greatness into the desert halfway around the world, and it was here that she now watched him spin his words into blazing gold.

"I, too, am a sinner," the Reverend called out in a fiery voice. "I am one of the fallen."

Grace glanced about and saw that the Chinese sat on the edges of the pews, their whole bodies tilting toward him, their hands clasped and their eyes rapt in attention. The other ministers and their wives shifted uneasily in their seats. The Reverend's sudden urge for selfrevelation was not at all the usual approach to their mission. Grace dared to look again at Mildred Martin and swallowed hard as she saw the older woman's jaw go slack and hang partially open. Her husband, Charles Martin, the Reverend's most loyal friend, looked on with an expression that could only be described as horror.

Grace turned back to her husband and widened her beaming expression up at him. Unlike her compatriots, she was proud that on his journeys he seemed to have come to the same stark conclusion that she had in the several months since their disaster: she and the Revered were indeed sinners, and not just in any usual sense. The Martins might still believe themselves to be otherwise, but Grace, and apparently the Reverend as well, knew the truth. The Lord had chosen to reveal their sins by punishing them most thoroughly. They were, without a doubt, as fallen as Adam and Eve on the wretched morning when the Lord had raised His arm and pointed them out of Eden.

"I am lower than the lowliest of beggars on the streets," the Reverend shouted. "I am as blind as the men whose eyes are crusted over with scabs. I am as infirm as those who lie in the streets with limbs hanging torn and useless. I am no better than the poorest of the poor, for my heart is black with sin."

Grace felt a shiver rise up her spine. She feared she might faint, and yet she knew her face glowed with recognition. She understood as never before that she had been guilty of the sin of pride when, as a blithe and naive girl, she had been overly pleased with herself for having married such a man. Several of the other ladies at the mission had been partial to the Reverend as well, but Grace had won out. She had always considered herself blessed. The Lord would spare her any true pain. And yet, decidedly, He had not.

The echoing hum had begun in the back of her mind again, and she felt herself starting to move away from herself, rising up from her seat and looking down over them all. She welcomed these strange sensations that usually accompanied her nightly bedtime odysseys. It was the familiar feeling of being washed over with shame.

The new Chinese Christians all around her rubbed their hands together in delight. No doubt they must have wondered how it had come to pass that a white man who had once stood so tall and upright and clean now hung his head and debased himself before them. If this great man who had built roads and hospitals and schools professed such weaknesses, what did that mean for those who struggled simply to plow their dry fields and place meager food upon their tables?

Grace looked upon their faces and saw a strange sight: she saw hope. She felt she had no business recognizing it in her own current miserable state of loss, but there it was, quite undeniably. Hope lit up their faces, as it did her own.

The Reverend raised his fists at the timbers. He shook his head of shaggy hair. His shirttails came loose as he lifted his enormous arms. The greatcoat wafted, and the talismans and bells tinkled on their ropes. He described the torture he had endured at the hands of the world, and the Chinese let out cries of agreement and shouts of joy. They knew of what he spoke before he even said the words. It reminded Grace of the sounds she had heard coming from the Negro church at the edge of her Ohio town when her family rode past on a Sunday afternoon. The native faces around her now were alive with both anguish and bliss.

Someone called out from the back of the little chapel, "Speak loudly to the heavens, Ghost Man!"

Reverend Martin in the front row turned instantly and put a finger to his lips to shush them.

"Call out to the Jesus for more miracles," another voice called.

Reverend Martin stood and said, "Quiet now, gentle people."

The Reverend looked over his friend's neatly combed head and shouted to the increasingly restless crowd, "Yes, my friends, we understand one another, do we not? But now, let us pray."

The crowd, which he had worked into a frenzy, would not be calmed with the notion of prayer. They stood and suddenly surged forward and up the aisles. They reached out their hands toward him.

Reverend Martin shouted and waved frantically for them to stop. "That is all for today. Help yourselves to water in the courtyard, and please return for Bible study at four this afternoon."

But the people did not seem to hear. They continued to surge toward the Reverend with outstretched arms. Grace was not surprised to see them clamoring for his attention. She herself had done as much in recent weeks, but with little success.

Now the dizziness and humming in her head became quite forceful. Perhaps Mai Lin's medicines had worn off altogether, Grace thought, and she looked around for her servant with a growing sense of panic. The trick with her potions was to maintain the correct balance, and clearly Grace had gone too long without being administered to. She knew Mai Lin did not care for Sunday services, always a sticking point between her and the Reverend, but Grace was certain she would at least stay nearby when her mistress was in such a weakened state.

The vibrations inside her skull were decidedly pronounced, and Grace shut her eyes. She longed for bed. Then, just when she thought she might faint, the Reverend's voice boomed over the chapel again, and the entire congregation snapped to attention, including his wife.

"Silence!" he bellowed. He pointed at the crowd, his long arms sweeping over them. They stopped where they stood. "The Lord, the greatest Ghost Man of all, wishes you to file out peacefully, get into your carts, and go home to rest on the Sabbath. Tomorrow you will rise, and the crops will have grown."

The crowd let out a hopeful gasp.

"Go now in peace." The Reverend swept his hands through the air, his fingers spread wide like great nets to catch them and pull them into his embrace. "I bless thee, my children. I bless thee."

Grace shut her eyes and tried to feel his blessings rain down upon her. All around, she felt the crowd ebbing back out the door. She kept her eyes pinched shut and waited for her husband's absolving hand upon her arm.