River of Dust by Virginia Pye Page B

Reverend smiled as he recognized lines of poetry he knew by heart. He pinched shut his eyes, tilted his face into the sunlight, and recited them under his breath. He felt most blessed precisely when he made the least effort to be so.
        "Master!" Ahcho called out. "Look ahead."
        The Reverend's eyes snapped open. They had passed the final turn of the mountainside, and there before them stood a vast field of late-blooming poppies and, beyond it, an open expanse where deepmaroon-colored tents had been set up and people gathered.
        "It is as the chieftain described," the Reverend said.
        Ahcho pulled up beside him on his donkey and offered that skeptical look again. The man was a worrier, a naysayer even.
        "This is where Fate has carried us," the Reverend said. "We must trust our path, Ahcho, if we are ever to achieve our ends."
        Ahcho nodded, although he appeared unconvinced. "Please be cautious, sir."
        The Reverend let out a laugh and spurred his donkey forward. "It will be all right, Ahcho. Everything works out in the end."
        Out of the corner of his eye, the Reverend saw Ahcho shaking his head. The proof was in the pudding, the Reverend would have liked to say, but the serious fellow would never have been able to grasp that strange idiom.
        Instead, the Reverend called back, "Come along!"
        The poppies danced in the wind, their glorious Chinese-red skirts swaying. The Reverend knew that these flowers were the culprits that caused every opium fool to loll away his life, but for the moment he did not care. He was going to carry his son home on his lap through this field and even allow the boy to pick a few.
        As they approached the crowd, the Reverend noticed the colorful glow of the tents. This primitive festival resembled a circus back home. He could recall the great excitement with which the locals ran out to the field at the edge of their town when the Barnum & Bailey train pulled to a stop. Every year, a motley-looking crew unloaded dozens of red boxcars, each inscribed with fine gold lettering and holding the most extraordinary sights: exotic animals coaxed and prodded down steep ramps and blinking in the bright sunlight. The Reverend had first seen camels in this way, and an elephant, too. Had he not witnessed them with his own eyes, he would never have believed that the Lord had such an imagination.
        And, sadly, the same held true of the poor souls trapped in the sideshow. He had only spied the freaks inside that tent briefly for fear that his mother would catch him and send him home. But it had made a deep impression upon him, one that had factored into his decision to dedicate his life to the Lord and to come to China as a missionary.
        Souls, the young John Wesley had realized, could be forgotten, misshapen, even mangled, and yet people were forced to live on and carry the burden of their deadened spirits for years. He had felt lucky as a boy to belong to a hardy race that lived well enough to help free others from their unfortunate lot. His soul was never in question, for he felt he had spirit in surplus— enough, indeed, to rescue others from their paltry allotment.
        There on the Midwestern plains, he had pulled his small head away from the flaps of the sideshow tent and looked back across the cultivated fields of corn that rose high in late summer. The tassels swayed with such grace that he had understood, even as a boy, that something had to be done. Rows of crops were planted with care and strict order to create a satisfying harvest. So, too, it must be with human lives. People needed a way to manage the sheer chaos of their misery.
        What a pure and sturdy understanding to recall at this time of rising doubt, the Reverend thought now as he approached the festival. Perhaps he would soon have ample reason to return to the timeworn theological track.
        It was unbelievable to him that his dear,