3
Chapter Three
It took a long time to get ready for the trip to Indi Urcu the next morning. Mrs. MacDonald packed a lunch of sandwiches, oat cakes and several thermos bottles of tea. She had to feed the doves and chickens and close all the shutters in the house against robbery, for which mountain Indians were famous. Mr. MacDonald went to the gas station and filled two jeep cans with gasoline because there would be none available farther up in the hills. It took me no time to assemble my few things and then I offered to help Mrs. MacDonald, but she said, “Oh, thank you, dear, no dear, I’ll just put these plants away from the window and then we’ll be ready.” She scurried about, finding things to do, glancing now and again at the clock, making sure the doors were locked, and then she took off her apron, tucked in a strand of hair, put on a coat and said, “Now. Is Ian ready? Ian’s all ready, I think. We can go now, dear. Do you have a coat? Good girlie. It does get cold up in the mountains.” Her husband was just loading some boards into the back of the jeep. They might be needed for bridging an irrigation channel or a washed-out place in the road, he explained.
The trip was long and very bumpy and dusty, but I did not mind it at all. It was a comfortable feeling to be sitting between two veteran servants of the Lord, people who knew the country and the Indians, who were profoundly concerned with the work I had come to do, people I could trust. Other journeys in Ecuador had been alone: the endless trip by bus, ferry and train to Ambato when I could not speak Spanish and kept waking up all night long, fearful lest I should sleep through the stop where I was supposed to get off, or waken to find my purse gone; the bouncing ride from Ambato to Riobamba when I was squeezed against the window by an enormous man dressed in black with a gold-headed cane who kept smiling and leaning toward me, breathing garlic and asking in English, “What ees your name? Where are you going?”
For the first few miles out of Wairapamba the people whom we passed waved in recognition of the jeep and the MacDonalds. “Oh, now there goes a dear lady, Margaret. My, what a story! Her husband drowned himself and left her with five children and shortly after that twelve sheep that she was keeping for someone else were struck by lightning, and then her youngest child died of smallpox. She accepted a New Testament one day when we visited her and now she’s just a radiant Christian, such a dear soul. Oh my, Margaret, if you could know her!” A man rode by on horseback and waved to us. He was a simpatizante, they said, very friendly and open to the Gospel. A priest in a brown robe and sandals raised his hand and nodded—the MacDonalds had had some long talks with him. “There are many true believers in the Church, I think, Margaret,” Mr. MacDonald said. “Oh, I think we’re going to be surprised to see who’s there when we get to heaven. ‘He that is not against us is for us,’ Jesus said. He alone knows who they are. And then there are those we expect to see who won’t be there—Not every one who says ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Ah, it sobers me to think of it”
The rest of the journey was like the day before—great stretches of brown grass, patchwork of cultivated fields, maguey borders, Indians trotting in both directions, scarcely looking at the car, then turning their faces away to avoid the dust; sheep and cattle and horses, a few goats, even a pair of llamas looking over a broken mud wall near a thatched house. And on all sides the mountains rising toward the burning blue sky, with the snow covered cone of Chimborazo always in view. We stopped beside a small stream to eat our lunch. The grass grew lushly green beside it, but before we got out of the car Mrs. MacDonald whispered to me to be careful walking in the grass. “You know the habits of the Indians, dear. One has to be careful.” It was well that she had warned me, for although I had learned to watch my step near towns and villages, the freshness of the mountain air and the glorious cleanness of the wide landscape might have given me a false confidence. Mr. MacDonald spread a blanket for us and his wife unpacked the sandwiches and laid them in neat piles and then poured tea. It was quiet except for the far-off bleat of a sheep. Occasional cloud shadows floated over us but we were protected from the wind in the shallow ravine where the brook ran.
We drove on after lunch, the road becoming increasingly rutted and winding so that I marveled to find that the jeep kept going. No one seemed inclined to talk, and I sat with my thoughts. Here, now, is the land of my adoption. I had heard missionaries use the term affectionately. “Yes, dear friends, my heart is in Africa, land of my adoption, and I long to return.” Upon my arrival in Guayaquil I had tried to arrange the furniture of my mind to include the dim light bulbs in the hotel, the short sheets on the bed, the lukewarm water from the tap which I dared not drink without boiling, the towels that looked like dresser scarves. These things had not satisfied my idea of missionary hardship and I knew that I would have to wait until I got into my real work.
When I had walked the streets of the port city, my heart sick at the sight of the beggars with their streaming eyes and the precarious bamboo houses leaning against modem steel and concrete structures, I had felt almost offended that such poverty should exist. I had looked at the emaciated children in the slums and the empty faces along the waterfront and had thought of Jesus, weeping over a great city, for they were as sheep without a shepherd. What sacrifice would I not make, I had asked myself, to meet such need? Why is it that no one does anything about it now? As soon as I learn Spanish . . . But, of course, I was not called to those people. It was to the Indians of the highlands that I had been called, and now, as the village where I would live came into view around the shoulder of a hill, I wanted to give notice that help was on the way. A woman carrying an enormous clay water jar passed us, and I wondered if she might someday be a friend of mine who, when she saw me, would call out, “Buenos días, Señorita Margarita!” and be glad that I had come to the mountains. The street we entered first was cobblestone and perfectly empty, with rows of squat, whitewashed houses on both sides, windows shuttered and doors closed. A door opened, an arc of dirty water splashed into the street, and the door banged shut. Someday, perhaps, that door would open to let me in.
“This is Indi Urcu, Margaret,” said Mr. MacDonald, “Hill of the Sun.” The sun shone down on the dusty cobblestones, and little eddies of wind drew circles in the corners of the doorways. Each corner we passed revealed identical streets, empty and silent. Then a man driving an ancient donkey loaded with round metal water tanks went by, switching the beast with eucalyptus twigs. The flanks of the donkey were great sculptures of bone, swathed in mouse-colored skin so thin that it looked as though it might at any moment give way. The animal moved without modifying in the slightest his creaking pace, the switch falling regularly on his back, the two heavy cans scraping his sides. Someday, I hoped, the love of God would get through to that man, and he would learn to love his burro.
When we reached the plaza in the center of the little town the car was instantly stormed by energetic women with baskets.
“Choclos! Choclos a un sucre! Queso!” They bleated at us, thrusting their wares through the windows. Mr. MacDonald smiled and nudged his way gently through the little knot of people. Market was over for the day, so the rest of the plaza was nearly empty. A few people came to the doorways of small shops to watch the gringos pass, and an Indian woman who had just knelt on the steps of the Catholic church turned her head to gaze after us, still kneeling. Would she, too, perhaps someday know the liberty of the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Was she, like most of the Indians, Catholic in name only, and lacking in any personal relationship with Christ? How much of her native ignorance and superstition were bound up in the only form of worship she knew? I wanted to guide her far beyond forms and ceremonies to the living Savior.
Mr. MacDonald drove up another side street and stopped at a doorway where a woman with an apron and dangling earrings gave him the key to my house. We could see that she wanted him to come in, but with a gracious bowing and gesturing in the Latin way he explained that we could not take the time. The lady nodded to us and we drove away, up the hill to a street where grass grew between the cobblestones and each house had a tiny yard enclosed by white adobe walls.
“Here we are, Margaret dear. This one is your little house. Oh, and the geraniums I planted are blooming so nicely!” Mrs. MacDonald patted my hand. The house was low, with a rust-colored tile roof and small-paned windows with shutters.
“Oh, Ian dear, you must fix the latches on those shutters! I thought we’d shut them when we left last time!” said Mrs. MacDonald in dismay. The whitewash on the adobe walls was dusty and the door was unpainted. I liked these touches. They made it seem a quaint and rustic cottage. I will be happy here, I thought.
While Mr. MacDonald unlocked the door I turned to look at the view from the front gate. The main part of the town lay below us, and I could see over the roofs and far across the valley, where hundreds of thatched houses—Indian houses, I thought joyfully—studded the plain like haymows. I saw that the MacDonalds had chosen the location wisely, and my eye drew imaginary lines, like the spokes of a wheel, from the gateway to the little houses—that one with the smoke filtering through the roof, the one over there on that knoll, that tiny one I could barely see in the haze of the distance. Unreached, every one of them, but, God helping me, I would reach them.
“Come in, dear.” Mrs. MacDonald beckoned me inside, and I surveyed my home, the first I could call my own. There were only a few things in it—a small table, a chair, a chamber pot in the bedroom and a set of rusty springs, besides the bigger pieces of my baggage and furniture which Mr. MacDonald had brought up a couple of days before. We unloaded the things from the jeep, including a box of food which Mrs. MacDonald had prepared for me, enough to last for several days. She went about from room to room, mentally placing me in each one, anxiously arranging the things she knew I had brought and questioning me about other things she was sure I would need. Eager to show her that I could manage, I went into the kitchen and made tea and we sat on boxes and foot lockers in the living room while we drank it.
“You’ll be all right here now, won’t you, dear?” she said. I thanked her for all they had done—finding the house, cleaning it, transporting my things, bringing me. They were to spend the night in a room at the landlady’s house since there was no hotel and there were not beds enough in my house for three.
“We’ll just pop round in the morning, then, dear, to see that you’re all right,” she said. “Oh my, how we thank God that you’ve come, Margaret! How we prayed, didn’t we, Ian? And now you’ve come!” She gave my shoulders a squeeze, her husband tipped his hat to me, opened the door and gently helped her into the jeep. I watched them move slowly down the street, Mrs. MacDonald’s handkerchief fluttering from the window.