A Single Eye (47 page)

He reached up with his fist and knocked on my forehead.

“Ah, ‘There's nothing that can't be replaced, except what someone didn't want to tell you to begin with.' Who said that?” he demanded in a completely different, all business, tone.

“You did, Roshi.”

“No, I didn't.”

“After Aeneas took the Buddha off the altar. A while after.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“I don't know. Someone told me. Why?”

“It doesn't sound like me. What I probably said was that no ‘thing' can't be done without. You know why, Darcy?”

I nodded. “There is no bodhi tree, no mirror or stand; fundamentally nothing exists, so there's nowhere for dust to land.”

“I was going to quote Suzuki-roshi: Things change. But the Sixth Patriarch will do.” He held my gaze a moment and he grinned, a big full grin like I remembered from the truck driving in. “As for the part about what someone didn't want to tell you to begin with being irreplaceable, I don't know who said that.”

But I did. And I understood why it had been said, and what was in the manila envelope.

He motioned me to get zafus out of the cabinet and go ahead with placing the lantern.

“But Leo, there's a killer out there. If I put that light up there I might as well hang out a sign, ‘The Roshi is in.'”

“For anyone who didn't notice the pulley?”

“Well, yeah.”

He maintained the smile. “Pulley was half an hour ago. Only one here besides me is you.”

“He could be waiting till I leave.”

“Go.”

I gave up. I mean, what was I going to do with the man? I couldn't cart him back down the hill, not weak as he was. So I stuck the plastic skull in the cupboard, and replaced it with the lantern. The cupboard held two worn zafus, which I pulled out for us. Roshi was quite particular about his spot against the blank wall. He wasn't looking straight on to the door, he was facing the spot next to it. And that was where he motioned me to sit. I tried again to wrap the squirming sleeping bag around him, as I had with Maureen, and somehow in that effort I understood the sincerity of her practice. Meditating on the skull up here was like a flashy pirouette; her real practice was just the basic steps of being at the monastery, working the garden, storing the cabbages for sesshin, staying out here winter after summer after winter, wrapping herself in the miserable nylon sleeping bag as he was. It was staying here in spite of her fear and suspicion that Leo was a killer, because at gut level she had never really believed it and she loved him too much to leave him unprotected.

I was glad that she was down in the monastery, safe in Barry's room over the kitchen and that, finally, she had her teacher back.

Now Roshi was doing for the killer what she had done for him, giving him the chance to reclaim himself.

The gusts rattled the windows. A steady draft slipped under the door and wound up over the top of my socks under my pant legs. In zazen the gaze is supposed to be downward, but I glanced at Roshi. The lantern threw wavy shadows over his face, emphasizing bushy eyebrows over sharp cheekbones. I don't know whether he felt my gaze on him or if he'd just been worrying about me, but when he raised his eyes and met mine his small sweet smile almost made me cry. It was gone in an instant and his face melted into a fuzzy outline of regret.

A moment passed. His eyes narrowed, his jaw tightened.

“Go, Darcy.”

I didn't go. I sat down on the cushion, crossed my legs, put my hands in the mudra, right hand resting in left, thumbs touching lightly. Despite the wheeze of the wind, the windows crackling, and the imminent prospect of footsteps on the stairs, there was an odd uneasy calm here, like being in the eye of a hurricane. I found I was aware of the movement of my breath, the cold air on the bit of shin I hadn't quite gotten covered. My eyes shut. What I saw was the hillside, bracken-covered, fog-dimmed, the meld of this hill and the one in Tilden all those years ago. My throat tightened; my skin went clammy; I was desperate to escape. I breathed. The spicy bite of incense tinged the air. I “heard” my brothers laughing, as they walked away from me. How
could
they? How could they have just left me there? I'd been screaming! How—Roshi shifted. I shot a glance, but he was okay. And when I closed my eyes I was back abandoned in Tilden Park, hearing my brothers, the responsible ones, giggling as they walked away. The incense was thicker; I inhaled.

And then I laughed.

“What?” Leo demanded, grinning himself.

“My very responsible brothers were smoking grass. No wonder they didn't want me to tell Mom.” I couldn't stop chuckling. Mom would have taken their heads off.

The light sputtered. I jerked my eyes toward it. It danced and settled.

Leo, Roshi, sitting against the far wall of the fire tower was still looking over at me. “Darcy, you think you're protecting me. But you're not; you're only putting off what has to happen.”

“It doesn't
have to
. Not here!”

“Here, is where I have chosen—away from the zendo and the grounds, where it is private—”

I started to protest, but he silenced me with his gaze.

“Here,” he said, “where it is dokusan.”

“But—”

“There will be two of us involved. I am doing this for both of us. Without this, I cannot go on. Do you understand?”

I nodded. I did understand. But I wasn't leaving, and Leo understood that.

I sat listening to the sounds, feeling the cold on the slice of exposed ankle as if only that small bit of my body existed, its cold smothering the passable warmth of the rest. Drafts stung the edges of the skin where the covering of slack leg stopped; it dug through flesh to bone, icing the fibula, like steel on steel. I felt that small, all-consuming patch of cold, and I thought of the manila envelope Aeneas had stolen.

“There's nothing that can't be replaced, except what someone didn't want to tell you to begin with.”

“Darcy!”

Who could have predicted my siblings' secret plan to smoke marijuana on a family hike in the woods would lead to my years of fear? Who could have imagined Aeneas's casual grabbing of a manila envelope would end with him dead? No wonder my brother John had been stunned that my fear of the woods was still a big deal. I was the little kid scrambling to keep up; I had always laughed about it with the rest of them. Right now he was probably berating himself for not checking on me every year after the Tilden event, making sure I was unscarred.

But the killer
had
checked on the red maple, made sure it wasn't in danger of being dug up. When Leo announced this was his last sesshin, he brought it all to a head at this sesshin.

Cloth rustled. I pretended not to hear. I ignored the groaning of the wooden structure. I couldn't deal with Roshi's demand to leave, not yet. If the killer had stayed with Aeneas's body, called for help, said Aeneas slipped off the bridge, no one would have doubted him. But he looked at Aeneas's body which covered the manila envelope, and assumed the envelope with its irreplaceable document was floating away downstream. He had to choose. He went after the envelope.

A hand touched my head.

“Roshi—”

But it wasn't Roshi.

C
HAPTER
F
ORTY-ONE

D
amn Gabe Luzotta and his fucking rental car!” Barry yelled. He filled the doorway of the fire tower. His corduroy pants were thick with mud almost to the hip, his navy V-neck sweater was ripped at both shoulders, and his blue shirt sweated through. If he had worn a cap it must have caught on a branch somewhere on the hillside, and there were blood-caked scratches on one side of his shaved head. He was panting, glaring down at Roshi. I could hardly believe he was the sweet guy who had loaned me his anorak. He gasped in air, seeming to swell even larger, and yelled, “I ran the whole way; the path's almost as bad as the road. Damn you, Leo! If you hadn't announced you were leaving, and made this sesshin a big deal, last chance ever sesshin, Gabe fucking Luzotta wouldn't have hot-footed it out here. And his damned rental car wouldn't be stuck in the middle of the road.”

The car Gabe had complained about that first day I met him! Of course it would be blocking the road. Gabe had abandoned it and hiked in on the path! All Barry's work, his isolation, his fine imported equipment, to create the perfect batch of chocolate, and now that chocolate was stuck in the front seat of the truck miles from the paved road.

Hot sweat vaporized off his scalp. “I spent six fucking years here to get myself in shape to go back to the Cacao Royale. I sat every fucking sesshin so I could learn to be calm enough to handle the contest. And now . . . now you do this!” His hands were on the doorjambs, as if they were all that restrained him.

I was too stunned to move.

Leo looked up at him, no sign of fear in his face. He seemed to be considering what to say.

Don't!
I wanted to shout.
Keep still. Don't set him off!
On impulse he'd tossed the peanut oil in his other contestant's vanilla tart. And now Barry was just waiting for Leo to stoke his rage. He was so furious he could barely breathe; his breaths were like great crackling thunder. How could I have missed him coming up the stairs? Leo must have heard him, why didn't he warn me?

But Roshi had set up this sesshin to help his guilty student. He'd drunk the poisoned cocoa and held his silence. Barry was his student, he wouldn't abandon Barry now. He would do nothing to save himself.

Barry took a step toward Leo, wrenching his hands free of the door. “The Cacao Royale comes once every six years! I can't wait six more years! I'll never get criollos that good again. That chocolate was my
life
.”

Leo was all roshi now, as he had been that first night in his cabin when he poured his cocoa on the floor. I remembered how furious that had made me, and it terrified me. I wanted to scream,
Don't! Leo, don't
teach
him now. Don't push him!

Roshi looked up at Barry, meeting his eyes. What he said was, “Your chocolate is good. It would probably win.”

Barry went stiff. He was like a plywood board tottering on its narrow edge.
It probably would win. Your
life
is the illusion of something that might happen
. Leo must have said that to Barry a hundred times. Barry's eyes widened. He saw it now. Then he teetered back and his face tightened against it.

Let him save face somehow. Don't push him!
I wanted to shout. But push is what Zen masters do. Losing face totally is the entire game.

How could this be the same Barry who said,
Roshi took me in when I was at rock bottom. He didn't ask questions. He stuck by me?
But I remembered what followed.
He gave me time to find my way, my Zen practice, to get to this point where I can go back to the Cacao Royale
. Was it just about the chocolate, all along?

Barry tapped his foot hard on the floor. Wind battered the windows; the stairs creaked. He was still near the doorway, almost next to me, but he'd forgotten I was there. He was staring only at Leo. I pulled my feet under me. The wind was so loud even I didn't hear them scraping the floor. I started to ease myself up.

“Damn it!” Barry yelled. “Yes, damn it, I would win. I would have won! I would have been . . .”

“You
are
,” Leo said.

I froze, halfway up, knees bent.

Leo inhaled slowly. The wind had died momentarily and the rasp of Leo's breathing cut ragged edges in the silence. The rattling of the door filled the void. It sounded like gunfire. The smell of the oil lamp was stronger. Barry didn't move. He knew what Roshi meant; but he didn't want to know, not now.

“My chocolate is sitting in the truck!”

“You are
here
.”

“Don't tell me I have a life here. I don't. You've taken even that away, you—”

Barry took another step toward Leo. One more step and he could grab Leo. His breaths were coming fast, thick. “Once you're gone, Leo, and Rob's in charge,
here
isn't going to be here! The place will look the same, the generator'll still fail four times a year, the lousy road'll still wash out. Someone else will run in on the path because the damn road's a swamp.” He took the last step. “It'll all look the same, but it won't be the same, Leo.” He was shaking; spraying sweat from his red face over Roshi.