River of Dust

by Virginia Pye

  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."

  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'v
e 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.