Gods Men by Pearl S. Buck

her mobile wrinkled face grow kind. “Let us sit down,” she told him. “But first look east and west and see if there is anyone in sight.”
    No one was in sight. The hot noonday sun poured down upon the dusty road.
    â€œHave you eaten?” the old woman asked.
    He had been walking for four days and his store of bread was gone. He had still some of the dried mustard wrapped in the cotton kerchief. “I have not eaten,” he said.
    â€œThen we will eat together,” the old woman told him. “I have some loaves here. I made them this morning.”
    â€œI have some dried mustard leaves,” Clem said.
    They shared their food and the old woman prattled on. “I asked Heaven to let me meet with someone who could help me on the road. I had not walked above half the time between sunrise and noon when you came. This is because of the amulet.”
    â€œWhy do you say Heaven instead of God?” Clem asked.
    â€œIt is the same,” the old woman said easily. “The priest said I need not call the name of a foreign god. I may say Heaven as I always have.”
    â€œWhat priest?” Clem asked.
    â€œI can never remember his name.”
    â€œA foreigner?”
    â€œForeign, but with black hair and eyes like ours,” the old woman said. “He wore a long robe and he had a big silver cross on his breast. He prayed in a foreign tongue.”
    Catholic, Clem thought. “What did this priest say the amulet meant?” he asked.
    The old woman laughed. “He told me but I cannot remember. It means good, though—nothing but good.” She looked so cheerful as she chewed the steamed bread, the sun shining on her wrinkled face, that she seemed to feel no pain at being alone.
    â€œDid he teach you no prayers?” Clem asked.
    â€œHe did teach me prayers, but I could not remember them. So he bade me say my old O-mi-to-fu that I used to say to our Kwanyin, only when I say it I am to hold the amulet in my hand, so, and that makes the prayer go to the right place in Heaven.”
    Wise priest, Clem thought, to use the old prayers for the new god! He had a moment’s mild uncensuring cynicism. Prayers and faith seemed dream stuff now that his father was dead.
    The old woman was still talking. “He is dead, that piteous priest. If he had been alive I would have gone to find him. He lived in a courtyard near his own temple—not a temple, you understand, of our Buddha. There were gods in it, a man hanging on a wooden shape—bleeding, he was. I asked, ‘Why does this man bleed?’ and the priest said, ‘Evil men killed him.’ There was also a lady god like the Kwanyin, but with only two hands. She had white skin and I asked the priest if she were a foreigner and he said no, it was only that the image was made in some outer country where the people are white-skinned, but if the image had been made here the lady would have skin like ours, for this is her virtue that wherever she is, she looks like the people there. The man on the cross was her son, and I said why did she not hide him from the evil men and the priest said she could not. He was a willful son and he went where he would, I suppose.”
    â€œHow is it that the priest is dead?” Clem asked with foreboding.
    The old woman answered still cheerfully. “He was cut in pieces by swordsmen and they fed the pieces to the dogs and the dogs sickened and so they said he was evil. I dared not tell them that I knew he was not evil. It was the day after my old man died and I had no one to protect me.”
    They sat in the sun, finished now with their meal, and Clem hearing of the priest’s dreadful end felt shadows of his own fall upon him. “Come,” he said, “let us get on our way, Grandmother.”
    He decided that he would keep his secret to himself. Yet as the day went on a good plan came to him. He could pretend to be blind, keep his blue eyes closed, feel his