before his face and inspected it. The black initials— J. W. W: John Wesley Watson— hung in the air. The man nodded in confident affirmation, although of what the Reverend could not know. Then the fellow let out a high, happy cry of triumph.
Baffling people, Grace thought as she watched the man stuff the handkerchief into one of his many pouches. As he did so, she noticed something that equally surprised her: hanging from the dirty, embroidered sack was another strip of cloth that appeared to be made of the same fine linen as her husband's handkerchief. Thin and gray from use, the edge of this other piece of fabric looked identical to the one the man's thick hands stuffed inside now.
The Reverend appeared mesmerized by this sight, too, although he did not seem concerned about the coincidence. His face remained steely and firm until Grace noticed the slight twitching of his eyebrow, a tic from his boyhood whenever self-doubt captured him. The older bandit pulled the red string on the pouch. He let out a long, satisfied sound, then looked directly at the Reverend and pointed, his eyes fierce and sure.
The Reverend suddenly whipped around and shouted at Grace. "Go, woman, get inside with Wesley and lock the doors!"
Grace heard her husband's words and wanted to obey, but her arms wouldn't let go of his sleeve. He pried her fingers off and pushed her toward the cottage. With effort, Grace finally began to move.
"Run, Grace, run!" the Reverend yelled again.
Clutching Wesley to her chest, she hurried up the rocky path in the direction of the cottage. She heard Mai Lin screaming to her from the porch. It was a harebrained plan. She could not possibly escape two men on horseback. But Grace tried anyway, her fingers digging into her son's small body to keep him close. As she approached, she called out to Mai Lin to open the door.
"Gentlemen," she heard her husband behind her plead, "take this very fine watch. Sell it for many cows."
The older one shouted orders. Grace turned back, and it wasn't the gold watch she saw held in the air but a sword aloft in the older man's hand and pointed in her direction. The younger man threw himself onto his horse and rode hard toward her. Grace stumbled over the rough ground toward the cottage, but she did not fall.
Mai Lin called, "Here, Mistress, come!"
Behind Grace, the Reverend instructed her to press onward, too. But as she did, she was in such a state of confusion, she could no longer tell who was yelling what, and then it no longer mattered— none of it mattered. She might as well have been standing still, for the young man barely slowed his horse as he swooped down over her. He grabbed Wesley's arm and pulled. The boy held on to her neck for as long as he could. He cried out as his mother and the bandit fought over him. But finally, the barbarian stopped toying with Grace and simply yanked her son away.
She would never forget how easily Wesley was lost to her, as if to show that these men could have done it at any moment all along. They could take whatever they pleased. And what they wanted was not her but the child.
"My son!" she screamed.
The robber turned his horse and rode away across the flat land with her baby in his arms. The older man let out a loud cry, too, as he whipped his horse away. Grace chased after them. She ran until the frantic noise in her ears became unbearable. She tried to press on through it, but finally she bent over to catch her breath and crumpled onto the hard dirt. Her hands gripped her belly, and she squeezed shut her eyes and saw blackness. A quick prayer passed through her mind for the unborn child in her belly. She opened her eyes again and through tears saw the sun blazing on the horizon, that too-red ball of fire and blood. She could not bear to lose another one.
The Reverend ran past her and frantically worked to unhitch their horse from the wagon. "Mai Lin," he shouted, "help her!"
Grace tried to stand but fell again and clawed at the dust that quickly turned her palms yellow. After a few moments, she lay unmoving except by her sobs. Through the dust and tears, she saw Mai Lin hobbling toward her. The old woman bent low, her face alive with worry and indignation.
"Take care of her," the Reverend shouted as he mounted his horse and rode off after the kidnappers, who were becoming smaller and smaller in the red distance.
Two
M ai Lin shook her fists in the air and shouted, "Lord Jesus and the great ancestors rain curses upon them!" She then lifted Grace to stand and helped her up the steps and into the cottage.
It was the first time Grace had walked over the threshold of the new little home built for her by her husband. Her eyes immediately found, over in a corner of the open room, a newly made baby's crib with a toddler-sized bed pressed up beside it. Despite his many duties as head of the mission, the Reverend had clearly spent hours turning the dowels and staining the wood for each charming piece. Such was his love for his children. The infernal humming in Grace's brain grew louder, and she thought she might go mad if it continued. Doc Hemingway had said that she needed rest, and yet how could she find rest in a country that tormented her with loss?
She broke free of Mai Lin's grip and staggered to the child-sized bed. Suddenly on her knees, she bowed before it, her body pressed over the low cornhusk mattress. A cry broke from her throat, and she wailed into the calico quilt.
Then she sat up again and looked about frantically, for what she did not know. She grabbed the boy's pillow that his father had no doubt set there himself. She thrashed it until feathers flew out from the pretty embroidered case. She slammed it down again and again, as a dog shakes a rabbit until it grows limp, all life ravaged. Finally, Grace flopped forward onto the bed and simply wept.
The last of the white feathers fell onto her outstretched arms like surprising snowflakes back home when she woke in early spring to find the milk bottles frosted on the back porch. Black twigs and cherry blossoms littered the sudden whiteness. It was on such days that Grace was glad to be alive in a world where surprising things happened, yet never so surprising as to carry away all hope of something better, of redemption if one simply bowed to the Lord's great plan.
On springtime mornings like those, when the rain had finally stopped, they waded out toward the creek that had been rising for days. From farms upstream floated all manner of tires, cut logs, old boots, and once a bloated cow, swirling in an eddy until it was skewered by the limbs of a fallen tree. The Lord had seen to such disasters, but there was always an escape, a way to survive and even grow stronger in one's faith. There was a lesson to be learned, and then you carried on.
Grace sat again, and her head hung limply in the posture of a supplicant. She knew she appeared to be praying there beside her son's unused bed. But she was not. She was cursing the Lord instead. Above the incessant vibrations in her brain, she cursed Him as she never had before. She would not carry on. She would not survive, especially not in this terrible land that He had created out of fire and brimstone and suffering.
Mai Lin knelt beside Grace and tucked a strong hand under her arm. She helped her stand. As Grace stepped away from the child-sized bed and the crib, she did not look back but tipped her head to see past the curtains and out the window as wild strands of pink and purple slid down the sky. Soon a gray stillness would spread. With nightfall, a frightening moonscape would appear, cold and lifeless and full of peril. Her husband was out there in that lonely land in pursuit of their beloved son.
Mai Lin hobbled forward on her miserably deformed feet and helped Grace sit on the adult bed in the far corner of the open room. Grace leaned against the pillows, almost calm now, although the dizziness and agitation in her brain remained a quiet refrain. Even in her grief, she noticed the touches the Reverend had added to please her: the coat hooks beside the door, a handsome cabinet to hold pans
