Gods Men by Pearl S. Buck Page B

single street and asked for two places on the sleeping platform for herself and her grandson, and the innkeeper gave them without more questions than such men usually ask of those they have not seen before. The old woman told a simple story, much of it true, how her husband and son were both dead together of the same disease and how she had left only this grandson and they were returning to her old city where she had been reared and where she might find her daughter married to the ironsmith.
    â€œWhat is his name?” the innkeeper asked.
    â€œHe is named Liu the Big,” the old woman said.
    A traveler spoke up at this and said, “There is an ironsmith surnamed Liu who lives inside the east gate of that city and he forged me an iron for a wheel of my cart, when I came westward through there. He has the finger off one hand.”
    â€œIt is he,” the old woman said. “He lost the finger when he was testing a razor he had ground. It went through his finger like flame through snow.”
    Clem passed the night lying among the travelers on a wide bed of brick overlaid with straw and slept in spite of the garlic-laden air because for the while he felt safe again.
    Nights and days Clem spent thus, always as the grandson of the old woman, and each day she grew more fond of him. She told him many curious tales of her early childhood and she asked him closely about his own people and why he was here instead of in the land where he belonged and marveled that he knew nothing at all of his ancestors.
    â€œYou foreigners,” she said one day, “you grow mad with god-fever. There is something demon in your gods that they drive you so. Our gods are reasonable. They ask of us only a few good works. But for your gods good works are not enough. They must be praised and told they are the only gods and all others are false.”
    She laughed and said cheerfully, “Heaven is full of gods, even as the earth is full of people, and some are good and some are evil and there is no great One Over All.”
    Clem did not argue with her. There was no faith left in him except a small new faith in the goodness of a few people. Mr. Fong and his wife had been good to him and so now was this old woman good, and he listened to her as they walked over the miles, side by side unless they came among people when he took the end of the stick she held and pretended to be blind. From her lips he learned a sort of coarse wisdom as he went, and he measured it against what he had learned before and found it true. Thus, the old woman said, the great fault with Heaven and whatever gods there were was that they had not arranged that food could fall every night from the sky, enough for everybody to eat so that there could be no cause for quarrel.
    â€œIf the belly is full,” she said, “if we could know that it would always be full, men would be idle and laugh and play games like children, and then we would have peace and happiness.”
    These words, Clem thought, were the wisest he had ever heard. If his father had needed to take no thought for food, then his faith might have been perfect. Assured of food, his father could have preached and prayed and become a saint.
    Thus talking and thinking, sleeping in inns at night, Clem and the old woman reached the city where she must stop. He had noticed for a day or two that she seemed in an ill humor, muttering often to herself. “Well, why should I not?” this she asked herself. Or she said, “Who cares whether I—,” or “My daughter does not know if I live.”
    Before they got into the city, on an afternoon after a thunderstorm during which they had taken refuge in a wayside temple where there were gods but no priests, the old woman came out with what she had been muttering to herself.
    â€œGrandson, I ought to go to the coast with you. What will you do if I leave you? Some rascal will see your eyes and think to gain glory with the Empress and he