A Different Sun: A Novel of Africa by Elaine Neil Orr Read Free Book Online

would it be like to touch him there?
    “I spent years running from God,” he said. “The price was steep.”
    He seemed to have embarrassed himself with this confession because he turned sharply and left her standing alone. She turned just as quickly, hoping to give the impression that the end to the conversation had been mutually struck.
I didn’t do anything so terrible
, she thought to herself. But she felt ashamed and naïve that she had indulged a romantic inclination.
    At home, her mother was waiting for her upstairs. “Well? Did you meet the missionary?”
    “I greeted him. We all did.”
    “And that’s all?”
    “That’s all.”
    Her mother touched her cheek, and Emma wished for all the world to tell her everything. In her bedroom, she was stunned by her grief over a man she had known to think of for only two weeks. She slipped her praying hands between her legs and rocked in sorrow.
    The next day, Emma came late to breakfast. A dullness seemed to cloak her, a feeling of dejection she had not known before. She drank tea and did not write or tend to her regular duties. Late in the day, a boy called at the back door, his skin dark to a mirroring. He carried a letter from Rev. Bowman addressed to Emma.
This must be how African children look
, Emma thought, her hands shaking as she pulled at the envelope. The reverend asked if he might call two days hence. As a pilaster against hope and disappointment, Emma kept focused on the child long after he had left. After all, Henry Bowman might wish only for her to create a church circle to raise funds for his cause. It was an agonizing thought.
    At dinner, she sensed her parents’ skepticism when she mentioned the letter. “I wonder what it pays a man to be a missionary,” her father said, and then they ate for some minutes in silence. Her mother recommended that Emma serve pound cake to her guest. “I’ve heard that travelers from such ill countries come home gaunt,” she said.
    Early the following morning, Emma saddled the new mare. It seemed like an eternity until the next day and she was too nervous to sit still. She carried her journal in a leather pouch hanging by the saddle horn. With the winter sun breaking through the trees, she cut down the hill, took the back way behind the neighbors’ houses, and let the horse find its crossing at the creek. A pair of mallards turned slow circles in a cove, the male showing his bright green head. Up the hill on the other side, she intercepted the road leading to the sawmill one way and the granary the other. She passed a teamster hauling wood, but the mare acted nicely. A cardinal winged by, red against the evergreens. She followed a path that ran to an old pottery works, now closed. But she felt oddly separate from the scene. The mare had slowed to a walk; it wandered into a field and grazed. She pulled her journal out to reread a recent entry:
What do I believe? The purpose of life is to manifest God’s love.
She had skipped a line and then:
What does God require?
Beneath this she had drawn a hard line before penning:
Preach the gospel to the poor, set at liberty them that are bruised.
Emma touched her face. It was an enigmatic verse. She closed the book and returned it to the pouch, pulled the reins to the right, turning in a circle, and surveyed the land of Georgia. The slopes of the hills were like the fine curves of the animal’s back that carried her.
    As she brought her horse up to the front of the house, she saw Rev. Bowman on the porch. Her mother was framed by the doorway as if perhaps she were barring the entrance. Her visitor came into the yard to help her dismount.
    “I thought you said tomorrow,” she said, hoping her exercise would account for the flush in her face. She kicked her left foot free of the stirrup iron, and as she pushed back from the horse, he caught her right at the waist.
    “Excuse me, I thought you might fall again,” he said. “Well, you didn’t fall—the other night, I mean.