toward the young gunman and wrestled him to the ground. The Reverend took the opportunity to study his own chest. As a man of science, he searched for a logical explanation for his survival. In an instant, he understood what had happened. He had read of just such miracles taking place on battlefields for those boys wise enough to carry their Bibles over their hearts.
"Help us, you drunken louts!" the grandmother yelled above it all. "Stop this fool before we are cursed for all eternity."
The young, strapping fellow was too much for Ahcho. The gamblers finally gathered their wits about them and joined the elderly Ahcho in his attempts to subdue the strong gunman. But in the confusion, he managed to yank his hand free. He raised it for a second time and shot again.
The Reverend grasped what had happened by the anguished look on Ahcho's face. He felt a searing heat rise up in his torso as his head grew light and vague. The sight of the red cloth over his chest startled the Reverend as he wondered if it had always been the color of blood. He had forgotten he wore such a strange talisman, but now he noticed that the second bullet had gone right through the fabric, and yet it had not been severed so badly as to fall off him. Like the pouch with the twin golden dragons attached to the red cloth, the Reverend swayed gently. But still, he did not fall.
A great hush filled the room. The people sucked in gasps of air, their hands covering their mouths, their eyes wide and unblinking. Ahcho left the gunman, finally held fast by the other gamblers. He wrapped the Reverend's arm over his shoulder and had him lean into him.
Unable to disguise the desperation in his voice, he said, "Don't worry, Reverend, the Lord Jesus will save you."
"No doubt," the Reverend mumbled. He clenched his teeth and hoped his convert understood that his lack of enthusiasm was no indication his faith was faltering.
Yet his mind was narrowing, his vision closing in. He placed trembling fingers over the second bullet hole, where blood had begun to appear. Using all that was left of his blurred and pain-filled brain, the Reverend pieced together that he must have been turned sideways when the gunman, lying prone on the dirt floor, had fired. The second bullet had risen at an acute angle, grazing his rib until something— something quite impenetrable— had stopped it from bisecting his heart.
The Reverend looked up with wonder in his eyes. If he was going to live, which remained to be seen, he now fully grasped that he would owe his life to poetry and, by extension, to the Lord's great whimsy. There was a lesson in it, one he would exploit for a future sermon should he be allowed to live long enough to give another. As his vision fully darkened and he began to topple, the Reverend managed a final wish: that his son be brought home on just such a tide of good-humored grace.
Four
A hcho pushed open the screen door and joined Mai Lin on the front porch. She crouched on the top step, chewed betel quid, and spat the juice over the side. They acknowledged each other with customary grunts. He brought out his pipe, struck a match against the rough side of the mud-brick home, and puffed. Smoke wafted into the restless air. Ahcho squinted into the darkness, where the wind rustled under a moonless sky. He was thinking about the boy out there somewhere.
"Your patient is the easy one," Mai Lin started, interrupting any peace Ahcho might have hoped for. "He has merely a gash and a broken rib. Those will heal with little help from you. As always, you're the lucky one."
"It's not so simple as that, and you know it," Ahcho said. "The man has lost his son."
Mai Lin shrugged. "Well, at least the mistress did not lose the baby in her belly. I saved it. No one else could do that. Am I right? You tell me anyone else in these provinces who could have done that?" She did not wait for a reply but carried on. "I will be up all night, giving her remedies and burning incense over her. You know all that must be done. Her female organs are— "
"Enough, woman," Ahcho said wearily. He bit down on the stem of his pipe. He had no intention of listening to a medical report