River of Dust. Virginia Pye
he was teasing, his face hardly showed it. Grace felt the breeze and breathed in the mossy air by the stream. She admired the tendrils of willow swaying in the trickling water and wondered if she could have been happier than on this day in June, here with her accomplished husband, healthy young son, and another child on the way. The Reverend bent and accepted a stone handed to him by their boy. A routine transaction and yet it made Grace marvel at her remarkable good fortune in this most unfortunate land.
Wesley stood straight, a miniature version of his upright father, and pointed to a cow in the field across the dirt path. The animal chewed at the brittle grass, oblivious to the watchers who wondered at its strong appearance and appetite.
"Odd, I didn't notice that creature before," the Reverend said. "I don't see how I could have missed it all those times we worked at building the cottage. It must have been left more recently."
"Perhaps someone will return for it soon." Grace stood and slapped the infernal dust from her skirt. Fine yellow silt wafted out from the folds of linen. They called it loess, this loamy soil that blew in from the distant Gobi. She would ask Ahcho to buy a better broom in Fenchow-fu and bring it with them the next time they visited the vacation home. She followed the Reverend and Wesley across to where the cow grazed.
"Quite surprising to see such a healthy animal in these lean times," the Reverend remarked. "No ribs showing. Any farmer would want to keep a close eye on this one. I cannot imagine who left it here unfettered."
She thought she heard an uneasy hitch in his voice and tried to judge if the Reverend was merely registering a general complaint about human profligacy or a more specific concern. When he noticed her watching him, he smoothed his brow and tried to smile, although his mouth more readily formed a mild grimace.
"Nothing to worry about," he said. "I have brought you to the countryside so that you might let go of all concerns."
As she continued to study him, a humming began in her head: a slight bothersome background murmur that was not altogether a noise but could grow to become one if she was not careful. It was a matter of controlling one's worrisome sensibilities, she reminded herself. She was, quite truly, a cheerful person and always had been.
The Reverend then addressed their son with an insistently joyful tone quite unlike him. "You may pet the cow if you wish." He lifted Wesley, and the boy's hand shot out toward the twitching tail. "Don't grab hold of it, although there is nothing more tempting. Just pat the hide. That's right."
Her husband now fully smiled down at Grace, and her heart ached to think of the effort it caused him to be frivolous for her sake. She stepped closer to his side and touched his jacket sleeve. "Reverend, I know you have brought me here so that our unborn child stays with us this time. I am most grateful."
He froze for a moment before handing her their son. He appeared ready to speak but had lost the words and now was unable to bring himself even to look at her. He stepped away and surveyed the plains.
"It is perfectly all right," she said more softly, for she knew that her words bruised him as if they were stones. "Mai Lin is in the cottage unpacking our things, and the door is shut. She can't possibly hear us. Ahcho has gone off in search of hay for the horse, and our little Wesley is too young to understand." In her arms, as if to prove the point, their son kicked his legs in delight as he patted the cow's back. "There is nothing shameful in it," Grace tried again. "I have heard that back home husbands and wives discuss such matters nowadays."
The Reverend took out his handkerchief and wiped his nose. Then he folded it carefully and returned it to his breast pocket. Yet still, he did not speak.
Instead of dwelling on her disappointment, Grace chose to help free her husband from his own harsh self-judgments, for surely he must have sensed he had fallen short. But how could she expect more of a man so preoccupied with matters of the spirit? She whisked away any unreasonable hopes along with the flies on the back of the cow and began to pet the animal with pretend delight, which was silly given that she had spent enough time on her grandparents' farm to know a work animal for what it was.
The smell of smoke wafted near again. She could see that the Reverend felt some relief that her onslaught had subsided. He appeared happily puzzled by the simple concerns of this world as he searched for the source of the distant fire.
"They must be clearing the fields," he said, rising onto his toes and rocking back again. "Extraordinary how spring brings out the optimist in man, even the poor farmer with no rain in the forecast. I believe the Chinese are even more resilient than my father was in a bad year."
"They have to be," she said, more flatly than intended. "It is their pitiful circumstance."
The truth was that Grace had seen no signs of industriousness on their ride into the countryside from Fenchow-fu. The fields stood fallow as the drought entered its second year. To her, the black cloud that had appeared on the horizon seemed to be rising not from fields as a sign of some farmer's forward-thinking efforts but instead as an indication of trouble in the last hamlet they had passed through. Then again, she was more apt to look for indications of ill luck or sorrow.
He had been right to bring her into the country, away from the town of Fenchow-fu, where, outside the missionary compound, instances of human suffering abounded. The Chinese children to whom she taught kindergarten routinely ate dirt. Many of their parents, good Christians, had not seen proper soap in months. Grace presided over the weekly ablutions where lye and a small strip of cloth were handed out to the long lines that formed before the men's and women's tubs. But how these people survived on so little sustenance remained a mystery to her. They ate nothing more than pale broth and dried meats swarming with flies, stone soup, and mush made from the ragged grasses nearby.
And those were the ones who still had homes. The beggars in the streets sat on their haunches not far from human and animal refuse. They stared at her with eyes scabbed over and unseeing. The smells, dear Lord, even the memory of the smells should have been enough to make them gag, as Grace did suddenly now. The humming in her head started to return, and she felt upset with herself for having brought it on with unpleasant thoughts. She bent forward and tugged at her high lace collar, covering her choking sounds with a cough. But the Reverend clearly recognized her familiar symptoms and appeared at her side in an instant.
He took the child from her and wrapped his long arm around her waist. Grace knew she was showing weakness by leaning into him, but she held on anyway. She looked into the wild red sun dissected by the black horizon. Was it happening again? Her knees buckled slightly as the vibrations in her brain persisted.
She glanced back toward the house and was not surprised to see Mai Lin appear on the front porch. Her amah had an uncanny way of knowing when Grace needed her. She squeezed her husband's arm, and he looked down at her strangely. Had she called out to Mai Lin, was that why her servant had come outside?
Grace swayed as the sunset pulled her gaze toward it. She stared into that bloody ball and saw red in a Chinese chamber pot, red on her linen nightgown. Her knees gave way, but the Reverend kept her upright and held her tight to his side. Twice Mai Lin had come to her in the middle of the night when Grace had needed her most. The old woman had rubbed ointments and herbs into her skin, swinging incense to calm her. Grace had survived, although her two unborn babies had not, but the Reverend was correct. It had all been too much for even a sturdy Midwestern girl.
Grace gripped him now in hopes that his unwavering stance would stop the dizziness in her head and erase the streaks of red behind her shut eyelids. After a long moment, she came to her own rescue with a biblical truth: the thought of being made of her husband's rib seemed right. She opened her eyes and saw that he was Adam surveying his world. And she was but Eve, the lesser one, and grateful for it. She must hold on to that perspective at all costs, although other, perturbingly discordant notions had started to seep into her mind even here in this distant outpost.
Then, far off, from the direction of the smoke, they heard the faint rumble of fast-approaching horses. Two specks came into view, and within a few moments the smudges of motion became riders charging their way across the open plain.
"Nothing to concern ourselves about," the Reverend said to his wife, "Most likely men