A Single Eye (9 page)

I nodded, still not quite recovered from my gaffe. It was cold in the cabin. Roshi poured from thermos to cup and held the cup between his hands, warming his fingers while savoring the aroma. The oil lamp sent deep shadows over his face, making his eyebrows bushier, the points of his high cheekbones sharper, and his mouth wider. Exaggerating his already exaggerated features gave him an aura of almost mystical authority.

He motioned me to the cushion across from him. I plunked my jacket on a hook, gave my head a shake—a mistake that sent the cold condensed mist down my hair onto my shoulders and back—and sat. I stared at the hem of his
okesa
, the sari-like rectangle of brown silk hand-sewn together from many smaller rectangles, all cut from the same original cloth. The okesa would have been stitched by his students, silently repeating a mantra with each stitch, squinting to make sure the stitch matched every other stitch in height and spacing. The sewing of a teacher's okesa was a coming together of the community, a visible sign of support, indeed, of love, from the students. It was too dark in here to spot a frayed hem or block of stitches come loose, to guess how tattered his support had become.

“Leo—Roshi—if I'm going to be any help to you I need to know what's going on now. What is it you're trusting me to keep an eye out for? Is it Rob?”

He nodded, and for a moment, I really thought he was going to explain. What he said was, “These first few days of sesshin will be dead simple. I want everyone in the zendo all the time. I won't give
dokusan
interviews till later.”

I'd been around Zen long enough to understand his tacit answer to my question:
Don't presume. I am not the old guy in the truck now. I'm the teacher. I set the rules. I'll tell you what I want you to know when I want you to know it
.

I was almost sorry now I'd had that ride with him and formed that picture of a nice old guy with a quirky sense of humor, the kind of guy I'd share a glance with when things got too-too in the zendo. Leo would have told me his worries and suspicions straight out. But a master of Zen teachings, a roshi, was different.
Do not seek after enlightenment, merely cease to cherish opinions
, the teachings say. A roshi does not utter an offhand opinion, much less a mere suspicion.

I was impressed, but, dammit, I was also frustrated. Still, I've had a lot of experience swallowing frustration. In stunts I create the illusion of near-death; I'm not about to let it become reality. I may postpone, but I don't give up.

I looked at Leo and postponed.

He was all Zen master now in his formal brown robes. “When we approach the altar in the zendo, do you know how to handle the incense, Darcy?”

“I think so.”

“Rob will be my jisha tonight. Just watch him.”

I nodded.

“Okay, then. Tomorrow morning we sit zazen—three periods like I told you—do the service, and eat breakfast. After lunch we have work period. Your job is to get me my newspaper.”

I laughed.

He didn't.

“I'm serious. I'm the boss; cocoa isn't my only perk. One of my students pilots a helicopter for the fire watch. He knows how attached I am to my newspaper”—he nodded, acknowledging his un-Buddhalike attachment—“and it's his gift to drop it in the meadow,
almost
every day. On the days he doesn't, disappointment is his gift. I accept either.”

We hadn't passed any meadow. A chill shot down my back. Did he mean I'd have to walk through the woods to this meadow of his? This had to be a hoax, the kind of thing that would amuse Leo, the guy in the pickup truck. But nothing about him looked amused now.

“But—a newspaper? Dropped from what, a hundred yards? It'd be in shreds.”

“No, Darcy, it would be in a padded container, a red one, like the pizza deliveries use, only this one's a tube. I have another student who owns a mailing service.” He sipped his cocoa.

“It's already starting to rain. No one's going to be flying around here.”

“Rain might stop. You don't know. Don't assume. Either way, it will be good for you to learn the path before the weather gets any worse. You go back along the road we came on till you pass the bridge, and that red Japanese maple that juts out into the road, the one you were so sure I was going to plow into, right?'

He'd paid that much attention to me, even when he was driving. He wasn't the kind of man who would blithely send me into the woods. Was this a test? Didn't Leo understand?

“Then you take a left. The path is right along the river. It's about a mile long.”

“A mile! In the woods! In this weather?” Horror rang from my voice. I should have told him about my fear. Could he know somehow? Was this a test? Yamana-roshi must have told him about me. Didn't Leo understand? The answer to my fears wasn't as simple as telling me to walk through the woods. I tried to think. My head was in chaos. I had to swallow twice so my tongue didn't stick to my palate. “Yamana-roshi must have told you about my—”

“He didn't
tell
me anything. He sent a message.”

“A message?”

“Darcy, we don't have a phone here. You're lucky I was in town yesterday to pick up messages at all.” He started to sip his cocoa, reconsidered, and checked his watch. “His message said: ‘I am sending my cherished student. Pay attention to her.'”

The muddle in my head was worse. The woods; I couldn't—His
cherished
student! How could I disgrace him? But the woods, I couldn't—I could tell from Leo's brusque sigh as he considered and again rejected his cocoa that he was through humoring me.

There was no time for me to explain the depth and reality of my fear; anything I blurted out would sound superficial, and hysterical, or just plain untrue. I needed to see through
the Roshi
and recapture my buddy in the truck. Desperately, I tried a line that had worked for me on a weekend visit with friends near Lake George.

“I'm a city girl; I know the woods are full of dangers. Walking in alone, it's like asking for a separate canoe in
Deliverance
. Anything could happen. Crazed survivalists. Bears, cougars . . .”

“Cougars wait all year for a tasty New Yorker.”

“No, listen, I'm not kidding. I don't do woods.”

He was laughing.

“Leo! You'll just have to find someone else to—”

He lifted his cup and poured the cocoa on the floor.

I stared, stunned into silence.

He refilled his cup from his thermos and sipped as if nothing had happened. He sat there in his robes, his gaze downward: 0% Leo; 100% Roshi.

I was so shocked I just stared. I looked at him with fury, but I was damned if I was going to give him the satisfaction of seeing my panic. It took all my restraint, but I waited, forcing him to make the next move.

A full minute passed. The aroma of cocoa, wasted cocoa, filled the room like thick, noxious smog. Finally he pointed to a corner cabinet. “The cleaning supplies are in there.”

I said nothing. I did not bang the door open, or slap the rag on top of the brown puddle as I started to mop it up. I didn't dig my fury into the floorboards with each push, not did I bang or even leave open his outside door when I took the sodden rag out to rinse in the rain spitting off the gutter.

I am no stranger to choking back anger. Movie sets are aflame with egos, and the
first
in Me first is never the stunt double. But even considering the provocation now, it was frightening how furious this man made me.

“One thing to watch out for,” he said.

One
thing? Just one? But I didn't say that.

“Once you leave the road, the path forks in half a mile. And you remember, I know my forks.” He paused, watching me till, in spite of everything, I almost smiled at the thought of his collection of plastic utensils and the two of us laughing about them. Then he flashed a grin. “The right tine goes uphill to the fire-watch tower.” He paused, looked me square in the eye and said, “It would be a mistake to take that.”

I started to speak, but he put out a hand. “After tonight's zazen, Darcy, give me about ten minutes—I like to get in the bathhouse before the late-night rush—then meet me back here and we'll talk about tomorrow.”

He didn't say
don't bang the door on the way out
, not quite. He certainly didn't say he'd reconsider about the walk in the woods, but that door seemed open. After all, he had mentioned the paper not arriving some days and the gift of disappointment. Still, I hated the thought that gift would be coming from me.

As I walked down his steps into the thick gray of evening, it shocked me how quickly the light had vanished. In the dusk the valley seemed narrow and deep. I pulled my jacket tighter around me against the cold rain. My feet splatted with each step. I almost didn't hear the sobs as I passed another cabin.

Maybe I shouldn't have stopped. In sesshin we face our own problems alone. We don't speak, don't make eye contact, don't give encouraging pats on the shoulder, don't offer distractions. The support we give one another is that we, too, are facing ourselves silently moment after moment, day after day. But sesshin hadn't quite started and I did stop long enough to see the girl who had been hauling individual cauliflowers in the kitchen. She was sitting on the steps under the porch roof. Her long honey-colored hair was wet, her face was blotched red. “I can't—” she muttered. “I just can't.”

I sat down next to her on the step and said nothing. Two weeks is a long frightening time.

She wasn't looking at me. It didn't matter who I was. She was already alone with her fear. “I hate it here. And Justin, he's so fucking gung ho. He won't even talk to me. And I just know I'll never ever be able to do this. I can't—” she turned to me, tried to swallow and ended up coughing. She blurted out, “I'm so damned scared.”

I put my arm around her shoulder and could almost feel her fear flowing into me. For a moment I just felt sick. “I've come to sesshins for years. I've never started one without being scared. We're here to find out what's real and to see through what isn't. We could come out fundamentally changed. It's scary, real scary—”

“But it's different, for me. No one's as scared—”

“Sure they are.”

“Are you?” she asked pleadingly.

All I had told her about sesshin would be a lie if I lied. “Yes.”

There was a little crinkle by the corner of her nose as if she couldn't decide whether to pout or laugh.

In for a lamb in for a sheep, or whatever livestock. I was leaving myself no choice but to face my fear. I forced a grin. “I'll bet you the first cup of cocoa we get, winner take both. And you can be the judge. But I have to warn you you're on very slippery ground here. You on?”

I freed her shoulder and shifted right, leaving a little space between us.

She ran a finger over the rough denim of her jeans, back and forth, as if moving from her fears to mine. Her pouty mouth said she knew no one could be as terrified as she was. But was she sure enough to deny herself the one special treat we'd get?

I was just about to take pity on her when she surprised me. “I'm afraid I'll go stir crazy in the zendo. I'll start screaming. I'll make a fool of myself, the roshi will scream ‘Amber, get out of my zendo,' and my boyfriend will be so disgusted he'll dump me. And that'll just be tomorrow.”

I let out a laugh. “Amber, the contest is over. You win. None of that will happen. But you still win.”

“Huh?” She looked almost disappointed by her easy victory. “But what was yours?”

I shrugged.

“Tell me,” she said, sounding like a pleading little sister. Then she dared me. “Double or nothing if you give in to it.”

I could tell, she, too, wouldn't give up; she'd postpone. “Okay. It's the woods. Here I am in the middle of the forest and I'm terrified of the woods.”

She stared. Then she snorted. I had intended to cheer her up—I'd revealed my deepest secret, or at least the most damning part of it—and here she was laughing so hard she could barely sit up. It was almost insulting. Still, it was nice to have a buddy at sesshin. Amber wasn't Leo, but she'd do. By the end of sesshin, I'd find a way to assure her discretion; I'd have to.

I almost missed the sound cutting under the bubbling of her laughs. The clappers. Wood hitting wood, and again, and again. The timekeeper had been standing on the zendo steps striking together polished blocks the size of blackboard erasers. By now he'd be walking toward us, or toward the kitchen, or the parking lot, ready to hit the clappers again, to signal students at the farthest corner of the property.

“The clappers,” I said to Amber. “Ten minutes till sesshin starts. You're already closer to that extra cocoa.”

Her lips quivered in what I took as an attempt at a smile. “Yeah. If I survive the zendo and the trees don't grab
you
.”

I had meant to comfort Amber, but oddly that little interchange lightened my own steps and made me feel a part of the place. I walked more easily toward the zendo and when I passed the regal Rob, the jerk who had pulled rank in the truck and then sat in the cab wagging his finger at Leo, I even smiled. After all he wasn't the roshi, not even the jisha anymore.