whisked away flies. Then he bent closer— far too close, Ahcho felt— and pinched his fingers against the greasy scalp and pulled out a bug.
He held his hand up to the lamplight and exclaimed, "Aha! I have rescued another soul."
"Dear God," the mistress said.
Her knees buckled, and Ahcho caught her arm and steadied her.
"Yes, dear God," the Reverend said and shook his head as if remembering someone fondly from his childhood.
"We must go home now," she said, regaining her composure. "Our compatriots are all setting out tomorrow morning on their long journey back to America. The compound is soon to be empty, and we must not abandon ship like the others."
"A ship?" the Reverend asked, distracted again by the gasping breaths of the body below them on the mat.
"You are the captain of our ship," she reminded him, finding now a firmness in her voice that Ahcho admired. "You must return to it before it sinks."
"Our ship is sinking?" he asked.
"Not literally, my darling," she said.
"Ah." He raised himself up. "You mean figuratively. This is a crucial distinction. Listen closely, Ahcho," the Reverend said, pointing at him. "Your mistress has something to teach you. She is a clever girl. And brave. My goodness, she is brave to have come all this way and to have left behind a life of ease."
"Don't concern yourself with that now, my love," she said as she took her husband's arm and began to walk him away from the sickbed. "None of it can be helped. We are what we are."
The Reverend patted her arm and agreed, "We are."
"What's done is done," she said as she steered him across the room.
"Done, all done," he murmured.
They were making real progress and had almost made it to the exit of the interior chamber when the Reverend looked down at her and shouted, "Unhand me!" He wrenched his arm free as if she had held it in an iron grip, which clearly she had not. Ahcho couldn't help wondering whatever was the matter with the Reverend's mind.
Grace stumbled back.
The Reverend began scratching his shins under his pant legs. He brushed aside his jacket, lifted his shirt, and scratched his inflamed belly. Ahcho knew he would have to work hard to rescue him from the maddening insects, but luckily he had many methods and would not hesitate to try them all until the battle was won. Perhaps his master's unstable mental condition could be corrected by proper fumigation.
The Reverend stopped and fixed his eyes on his wife. "Woman," he said both sternly and loudly, "have you ever seen a louse living in a pair of trousers?"
The men and women asleep or lost in a haze of opium on their beds turned to stare with vague interest in their eyes.
Grace replied, "No, dear Reverend. I have not."
"Well, then, you cannot possibly understand."
The Reverend began to pace as he spoke. He lifted his long arms, and Ahcho could not help recalling the sermons that had made his master famous in this land. His stature, his wisdom, the truth that fell from his lips had rung out over the little chapel, echoing as far away as the hills and the desert beyond. Ahcho's Reverend had preached of man's sin and God's forgiveness and the hope, the pure and absolute hope, of eternal rest and salvation. Ahcho had felt it— he had known it— in the Reverend's words. There was a better world beyond. Heaven awaited us, all who believed and repented. Ahcho knew this because the Reverend had spoken of it.
"The louse," the Reverend continued in his grandest oratorical manner. Several in their deathbeds stirred. "The louse regards the trousers as a fine and prosperous home. He feels he has attained a wellregulated and honorable life. A decent life. A godly life. But soon, flames will come over the hills. Fire, the like of which has never been seen before, will spread. Villages will burn. Cities will fall. And then the lice will perish!"
The Reverend bowed his head in what appeared to be abject sorrow, and Ahcho waited for uplifting words to rise from his master's throat. Hope was waiting in the next sentence, Ahcho was certain. They would escape this wretched place.
But the Reverend looked around the room, taking in the miserable creatures whose lives leaked out of them in smoke and blood and bodily fluids. He growled, "And the man you wish to be, how does he differ from the louse?" He waved his arms at the evil on all