types." The Reverend looked around for coolies to corroborate this, but the streets were empty.
Ahcho's words tumbled out with surprising fury. "But your nose remains in a book, and your head is high in the clouds. You see nothing!"
The Reverend felt a flush of feeling he did not recognize as his manservant stared at him incredulously. Heat rose from his collar as shame overcame him.
"You see only what you wish to see," Ahcho added more softly. "I fear you are not the expansive man you once were."
The Reverend felt his cheeks flame fully, and his shoulders felt uncomfortably hot under the hide. He wanted to defend himself against this accusation. In the past, he had built the people fine roads and a school and a hospital. How could he ever be perceived as anything but a champion of the poor?
He swallowed the cold, dry air, and his throat constricted. He had to admit his mind was often someplace other than where it needed to be. Ahcho's accusations rang true. He did see only what he wanted to see. And yet what he saw was not one bit pleasant.
Recently, he had been preoccupied by wrestling with God. He had come to the anguished conclusion that his Lord had been steadily slipping from his grip and intended to abandon him altogether. The Reverend felt quite alone with his failed effort to clutch on to Him. But now, as he glanced at Ahcho's disappointed expression, he understood that his sorrow at losing the Lord did not matter nearly as much as the fact that he had somehow managed to lose the Chinese as well.
"I shall try harder," he finally said.
Ahcho nodded, clearly uncomfortable with the strange occurrence of his master apologizing to him.
They continued onward without speaking and the Reverend tried to take careful note of the miserable state of things around him. The empty shop windows, the frail and defeated beggars, even the few dogs that appeared mangier than ever and who no doubt would serve as some lucky person's dinner before long.
After some time, Ahcho pulled his donkey to a stop outside a forlorn-looking shop, and the Reverend pulled to a halt as well. The dusty road led to the threshold of the sunlit door, and on the doorstep sat a stick-thin boy who raised his head and rubbed his eyes.
"If you watch our animals," the Reverend said to the lad, "I will give you a coin."
The boy hurried to take the reins, although Ahcho said in English, "He may try to sell them before we come out. No one is to be trusted these days."
"This fine young fellow?" the Reverend asked as he ran a hand over the boy's hair. Instantly, the Reverend thought he felt lice on his fingers. He wiped his hand roughly on his coat and whispered to Ahcho, "Do they no longer take baths?"
"What's the point," Ahcho shrugged, "if you're starving and soon to die?"
The Reverend followed him to the doorway of the shop. He tried to peer in, but the room inside was too shadowy and the road too bright with the winter's sun. The Reverend couldn't tell what transpired within. He paused for a long moment on the threshold and knew that with the morning light at his back and his silhouette blocking the door, he would appear an impressive figure. Once again, he hoped this effect might work in his favor.
But when he stepped inside, he saw that the audience he wished to impress sat lolling on wooden barrels in what appeared to be an oldfashioned general store. The Reverend was reminded of one just like it back home and in every American village and town. This was the center of local commerce, where shelves were meant to be stacked high with every sort of goods for farm and home: tin nails and calico fabrics, thick braids of rope and sacks of flour, workmen's gloves and dainty ribbons for the piping on girls' dresses.
The Reverend could see that the intention here was the same: high shelves covered the walls, and the room was divided by a long counter. But nothing, not one thing, sat upon these dusty surfaces. A Franklin potbellied stove stood cold, although the room was chilly. A young man who appeared to be the proprietor leaned against the blank counter, and beside him sat several grandfathers, another boy, a girl, a woman with a baby in her arms, and several young men— a typical Chinese extended family, the Reverend thought,