Mischa Berlinski - Fieldwork

In the morning, Mrs. Chester was able to relate to the young Walkers the terrible events which had passed while the Walkers were off enjoying the hospitality of the Grand Tigi of Gartok.

Dr. Chester had left immediately to visit Père Antoine, traveling only with one Chinese helper. The journey had taken two days, and by the time they arrived, the Catholic evangelist was already starting to feel better. It was his servant who had sent off the urgent message which had summoned the doctor, and Père Antoine, a tough old soul, was vaguely embarrassed by all the commotion his illness had stirred. Dr. Chester spent a day in Père Antoine's mountain hut, then set off for Bantang.

He never arrived.

For almost a week Mrs. Chester had waited. Usually if he was to be away more than a few days, he would send a runner with a message. But poor communications were the norm here on the frontier: runners were often distracted by opium pipes, rice whiskey, or a mudslide washing out the solitary track which the Chinese called a road, and Mrs. Chester could do nothing but pray and wait. Then the message arrived — a letter, written in Chinese, from the leader of a notorious band of local brigands. Her husband had been taken prisoner and would be released only in exchange for gold.

Immediately Mrs. Chester set about amassing the ransom. From the local Christians, she borrowed on the credit of the Missionary Society in Kunming. By hook and by crook, she put together the extraordinary sum demanded, and was prepared to offer it to the thugs in exchange for her husband. Then, late that night, her husband's Chinese helper, who had accompanied him into the mountains, slipped into the Mission compound. The servant had escaped with an urgent message from the doctor. She was absolutely not to pay the ransom. He would not tolerate it! It would place every missionary in China in danger should word go out that missionaries could be kidnapped in exchange for easy cash. He would die or he would live — that, as always, was in his Master's hands — but he would not be ransomed. There would be victory in Jesus.

The next day, every Christian in Bantang beseeched God to spare the old scholar and evangelist's life. The kidnappers had proposed a complicated system to exchange messages, and by this system she sent back word: by her husband's own request, she would not pay the ransom. It was an excruciating decision, but she knew Dr. Chester. When Morris made up his mind on principle, he stood firm like a mighty rock. He would not waver, and neither would she. She would prove herself a wife worthy of his faith. Every hour now was spent on her aching knees in prayer. She would never have admitted it to anyone, but after a lifetime in His service, she felt that the Lord owed her and her husband this favor. But after three weeks, Dr. Chester's body was found by a shepherd in a cave less than five miles from Bantang. The old man had been dead no more than a day or two, and the kidnappers had evidently fled the cave immediately upon his death.

On receiving the news of her husband's death, Mrs. Chester built a small fire in the compound yard. There she placed her husband's nearly complete manuscript edition of the remaining unpublished books of the Tibetan Bible. These people, she decided, did not deserve Morris's gifts. They did not deserve the Lord's gifts. Then she lit the fire and watched the Bible burn. She had sat now in the garden under a raining sky for almost three days, bewailing the death of her husband.

Mrs. Chester told her story in a monotone, and then said hardly another word to the Walkers. Her red eyes accused the missionaries from Oklahoma: Raymond should have been the one visiting Père Antoine in the mountains, not Dr. Chester. What kind of people were these Walkers, who allowed a man of sixty-three to set out alone into the mountains, who had come to help the Chesters and instead destroyed them? Her sweet and tender Morris, the father of her children and the comfort of her old age! The Walkers offered an equally unspoken reply: it was the will of God.

Mrs. Chester remained in Bantang another week, until she joined a caravan of dealers in copper goods marching in the direction of Kunming. The Walkers begged her to stay a little longer and regain her health, but the woman was forceful as ever. She was returning to America, she said, to the leafy village in upstate New York where both her daughters lived, to inform them of their father's death. She would leave this hateful land forever. All the long week before Mrs. Chester quit the Mission, Thomas, aware of the tumult and sadness of the household, cried in his crib, and no matter how Laura bounced him on her knee the boy would not be comforted.

In this terrible way, God answered the prayers of the Walkers: they now were in charge of the Bantang Mission. Raymond swore never to submit his soul to the responsibility of another man but also never to forget the example of Dr. Chester's bravery, and he adopted as his own the other man's motto: "Jesus Wins All." The Walkers spent a year alone, preaching in their fashion and wandering the mountain valleys, then proposed to the United Missionary Society in Kunming that they quit the Bantang Station, in order to spread the Gospel to the tribal peoples along the Salween River, whom they had found were most receptive to the Word. When the Society refused their request, saying that the risks were too great in the tribal valleys, the Walkers resigned their commission entirely. Now the Walkers affiliated themselves with no one but God; Raymond and Laura now were truly alone in the Orient. Raymond's mother went from church to church in Tulsa, reading her son's letters from the tribal country, and the churches of Tulsa sent donations to support the work. These churches would continue to support the Walkers' work for the next eighty years, as the Walkers pursued with monomaniacal zeal their extraordinary goal of bringing an entire people, the Dyalo, into the Light.

Like so many occidentals in the Orient, the Walkers had swung to the pendulum-edges of their souls.

TOM RILEY WAS SWEETon Judith Walker. Tom did not have a boy's face: when he didn't shave, he looked like something out of those old Marlboro ads, the ones showing a cowboy roping a steer and lighting a cigarette off the edge of a red-hot brand. It was wonderful to see this large, handsome man's shy face as he admitted that he had "feelings" for Judith, and wondered whether I thought she might reciprocate them. It occurred to me that Tom Riley, who must have been in his late twenties, might well have still been a virgin, given how seriously in all other respects Tom took his faith. I told him that I honestly didn't know what Judith was thinking, and Tom asked me — begged me, really — to find out. He seemed to think that because I was living in sin with Rachel I had some secret insight into the hearts of women.

Whenever I saw Judith in those weeks, I tried to steer the conversation toward Tom. I watched very carefully to see if she became embarrassed or shy when the subject of Tom came up — if she went red, or shifted in place, or rearranged her hair. The problem was, I kept getting false positives. Judith did all those things when I mentioned Tom, yes , but also when I mentioned John the Baptist.

"Tom Riley is such a nice man," I said to Judith one afternoon.

"Yes, he really is," she replied.

I reported this back to Tom faithfully, and for a minute he glowed. Then he said, "That's all she said?" It was hard to get anything else out of him that day. I wanted to tell Tom that he should go and talk to Judith himself. But I was afraid that if I did that, he wouldn't tell me anything more about the Walkers. Also, I thought to myself, maybe this is normal for them. Maybe this is how evangelical Christians mate.