River of Dust Read Online Free PDF Page A

bandits had taken it, too. The Reverend chided himself for even a moment's lapse in pursuit of his mission.
    "I wish to know if anyone here has seen my boy?" he shouted.
        Quiet fell over the room. Even the most delinquent of men sprawled on mats turned their heads toward the Reverend. Several girls in flowery silk robes crowded together and whispered at the sight of him.
        The grandfather held up his hand and said something in a rapid dialect that the Reverend could not catch. The ancient fellow clapped his hands and waved them in the air as if conducting a silent concert, and then his message was over. The room buzzed again as the fallen all around him were apparently appeased by whatever had been conveyed. They no longer concerned themselves with the white giant in their midst.
        The Reverend shook his head. Extraordinary, he thought, the way evil could be so all-consuming. They had their sinful business to attend to and could not be bothered with anything else. These people would not notice if the Lord Jesus himself walked through the door.
        At his elbow appeared two thinly clad ladies, while another stood writhing happily before him. Not ladies, not remotely ladies, the Reverend knew. He was a minister, but he was also an American male who had grown up in a sinful world. After school one time, a classmate had surprised him by handing him a card. Assuming it was an invitation of some sort, the Reverend had flipped the thing over and stared for several long moments at the ample, naked backside of a woman who offered a coy smile over one shoulder and most beckoning eyes. No, the Reverend knew precisely where he stood: at the puerile heart of Sodom and Gomorrah.
        He attempted to slip away from the girls and search through the smoke for the grandfather. The ladies surrounded him again, and he could not help but notice that although they were young, they were not children. As their robes fell open, their slight breasts shone in the lantern light. The Reverend did not look away immediately, but when he did, he shook his head vigorously. He must turn from such sights. This was precisely how the devil did his work: by sneaking in under the door of the mind and taking control.
        Needing clearer vision now more than ever, he began to undo the buttons on his traveling coat in order to use his shirttail to clean his spectacles. The girls misunderstood his gesture and grabbed his arms and pawed at his traveling coat. They appeared eager to undress him. The Reverend's heart, that involuntary muscle, beat frantically with what he hoped was honest fear rather than prurient desire.
        Then their pale hands sneaked into his pockets, and he felt certain he was about to be robbed. But each girl merely held up the object she had found and giggled. Truly, they were hardly older than children. One excitedly examined his small folding knife and simply tossed it back into a side pocket of his coat. Apparently, his throat would not be cut this evening, at least not by these urchins.
        Another snatched his thick, compact traveling Bible from his jacket. She flipped through the thin pages crowded with his scrawled commentary. Several sheets of ministerial notes and ideas for future sermons fluttered to the dirt floor. The Reverend snatched them up, stuffed them back into the book, and took the Bible away from her. He returned it to his breast pocket, where it always stayed close to his heart.
        Yet another of the young ladies sank a lithe hand into one of his deeper pockets and pulled forth his leather-bound copy of the Romantics. This thick volume, every page of which the Reverend had read and reread, committing many fine lines of poetry to memory, had been given to him upon his graduation from seminary. Here in China, it had proved almost as important a companion as the Lord's good book. Within those poems, the barbaric was tamed; the wild was praised, and yet the language, through its