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