Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [104]
“I circled behind the mill and saw a small wooden shanty. Smoke came from the chimney and a woman in a black dress and a flowered apron was throwing crumbs to the few stringy hens roaming by the door. My heart lifted, where there were hens, there were eggs. If I were clever and silent enough, I would have a meal that evening. Then it sank as I saw the shambling black dog sniffing in the bushes. He would be sure to bark and warn his mistress.
“As the sun set, the whining of the saw ceased and the gwailos drifted homeward, shouting and laughing. I waited until the woman had gathered her hens together and locked them in their pen for the night. She called her dog and went inside and closed the door. I saw the light of a lamp through the curtained windows and my heart ached for the lamplit security of my poor village near the Yangtze—until I remembered my father and what he had done to us, and I knew that I had no home. I steeled my heart and vowed to go on. Somehow I would survive and one day I would return to my village a rich man. And I would destroy him the way he had destroyed my mother and Mayling.
“As dusk fell, I crept closer and sat behind a tree waiting for darkness. The birds sought their nests and fell silent and the rustling in the forest stilled.
“I crept stealthily up to the pen. The hens squawked loudly and I stood there, trembling, letting them get used to me. Then I quickly searched their nests and found two warm eggs. I couldn’t wait. I cracked them open and poured them into my gaping mouth. I was ravenous for more. I scooped up the scraps she had thrown down for the hens and ate them. I found the dog’s dish and scraped up the remains of its dinner, licking the bowl. And then, still hungry, I started to walk again through the forest.
“I do not know how many days I walked, or how far. I lived on berries and roots. I caught a young rabbit and killed it, scraping off its fur with a stone. Then I ripped it limb from limb and devoured it with its blood still warm. The forest thinned until I was in an orchard, and I chewed the wizened fallen apples and drank water from the brook.
“The hot daytime sun had dried my clothes but the nights were cold and as dawn came I could see my breath on the icy air. That next night it grew even colder and though I walked even faster it was impossible to get warm. I still had only my cotton trousers and smock and my thin cloth shoes were now full of holes. I saw a path and followed it and soon came across a long wooden building with a bell on top in a little tower. The door was open and I crept in. In the moonlight, I saw rows of long wooden benches and an altar table with a cross such as I had seen at the mission in Nanking. I realized it must be the gwailos’ holy place and I prostrated myself and kowtowed to the foreigners’ god, touching my head respectfully to the floor so that he would not mind my intrusion.
“It was a cold place but at least I was out of the freezing wind and I stretched out on one of the wooden benches and closed my eyes. It was the first time I had felt four walls around me since I left China. I felt strangely peaceful and secure, and I slept.
“I awoke suddenly. Sunlight was streaming in through a tall window and someone was shaking me by the shoulder. It was a man, dressed all in black, red-faced, with hard eyes of a pale water-blue such as I never saw in China.”
Lai Tsin paused. He stared down at the floor, unwilling to go on, and Francie said comfortingly, “It’s all right, you don’t have to tell us.”
He shrugged, “It is nothing. The man was a preacher. I did not understand what he was saying but I knew I was his prisoner. I looked wildly about me for an escape and the man laughed, a big booming laugh, like his deep voice. And holding me by the shoulder he marched me out of the chapel and along a path until we came to a small village.