Tantric Coconuts (18 page)

Angel cranked the old cracked, white vinyl steering wheel to the right and coasted off the exit ramp. When Bertha came to a complete stop, Ted watched Angel open the driver’s-side door and get out. He was going to pump the gas for her but hesitated, instead taking in the afternoon sun, which cast an amber light over the desert.

A fog was lifting or a layer of consciousness had been peeled back. His awareness of the world and how he fit into it was subtly shifting. Although Ted could not recognize the importance of these shifts, being here with Angel, No Barks, and Argo in Bertha the Bookmobile he no longer felt strange or uncomfortable; it was nothing less than exhilarating. Ted exited, took a few hurried steps, and caught up with Angel as she stood over the gas cap. He put his hand on her shoulder. She stopped and turned toward him.

“Thanks for being my spiritual consultant—choosing me to be your student. I’m lucky you crashed into me.…”

A slightly embarrassed but pleased look crept across Angel’s face. She squeezed his hand slightly. “I’m glad you swerved in front of me too.”

Bertha wound her way up through the mountain passes. They flanked the Rio Grande as it coursed through the southernmost part of the Rocky Mountains—sometimes gently but more often in a fervent roar.

At the end of a self-imposed moratorium on conversation, Angel reminded Ted that among her people, the Lakota, silent spaces are valued. “There are ways to connect with everything around us without using words.” She asked him to simply allow his mind to rest in the scenic beauty and to focus on his surroundings in the same way that he might try to listen to the notes of a symphony.

This particular exercise was well suited for Ted. As far as he was concerned, men and dogs are on good terms because they can be together without feeling the need to continually share words. Considering Angel’s advice, he tried to expand this mode of being that he enjoyed with Argo outward and toward her and his surroundings in general.

Once Angel had a sense that Ted was settled and calm, she offered him an opportunity to expand on the exercise. “Your ears and eyes and the sensations they register in your
mind are not the only way to process life. Try to register sensations that arise in your body and see them as separate and distinct from the thoughts that arise randomly in your mind. These are equally valuable communications. Try to notice the subtle sensations in your abdomen—there is much more than just digestion going on in the gut. Try also to feel into your heart spaces. Do you sense warmth—perhaps a reverberation? See if you can feel into the other discrete spaces within you where sensations might be arising. Take an inventory of the areas where sensations arise. Perhaps you can feel the right lobe of your lung, a slight pain in your left kidney, or a sense of peacefulness that seems to originate around your diaphragm. Try to feel into these spaces and be more cognizant of the biological and emotional processes that are occurring within you and around you. Sense too, if you can, your entire body—shift your focus and awareness away from these neglected spaces and then back to your body as a whole. Is your body trying to tell you anything?”

Ted found this exercise much easier than meditation. In fact, it gave him a sense of reclaiming something pleasant that had been lost—like an adult discovering a favorite childhood toy crammed in the back of the attic. He had become disconnected from a vital part of Teddy Day. When it came to bodily sensations, if it didn’t hurt or feel good, it was ignored.

Angel moved on to the final part of the exercise. “Ted, you can learn to listen not only to your body’s most vociferous signals but also to more subtle sensations. To gain this skill, I want you now to visualize your body as a vessel and a
warm, gentle fluid filling the empty spaces of your body, starting at the tip of your right toe and gently spreading to the adjoining toes and into your right foot and up and into your ankle. Sense this fluid pooling in your entire right foot, and hold that sensation for a moment.” After allowing Ted time to let the sensations register, she continued, “Now allow the fluid to continue to move away from your right foot and up and into your right calf. Let it pool there for a few moments.” Angel spent the next ten minutes helping Ted to experience the sensations within his body, directed carefully from his toes to his cranium. When she was finished, she said, “Ted?” When he opened his eyes and she thought she had his attention, she continued, “How do you feel right now? What is the feeling that this exercise is evoking for you? I want you to try to answer this question more from your body and less from your mind.”

Angel’s timing was good. Ted had just asked himself the same question. There was, therefore, no hesitation. “Angel, for the first time in a very long time, I feel at home with myself.”

“That’s right, Ted, comfortable, at home. I’m very happy for you.”

The outskirts of Taos were littered with clumsy little strip malls and fast-food restaurants, but they quickly gave way to the far more charming historical city center. Angel found a good parking spot for Bertha in one of the public lots not far from the Taos Plaza. They walked the dogs in a nearby park
and grabbed a cup of coffee and a thick cookie generously studded with nuts and chocolate. When Argo and No Barks completed their sniffing and territory marking, the four of them wandered about, shopping in Taos.

Angel excused herself to call Mashid and let her know they’d arrived. She was just leaving Denver and would not be back until late that night, she said, but they were not to worry. The key to her front door was in a pot by the mailbox, so they could let themselves in. She warned that because her Earthship home was off the power grid and short on lights, it was hard to find at night, and she provided detailed directions.

Angel had done a little research on the Taos Earthships and was intrigued by the concept of homes that were crafted primarily from recycled trash and functioned off the grid with their own power and heating sources. As they window-shopped, Angel described what she knew about Mashid’s home.

As the sun set over the desert, the four of them crossed the Rio Grande and watched in amazement as they came upon the compound of strange dwellings that stood on the desert floor. Ted felt like he had stumbled into a community of hobbits. The Earthships did not appear to actually be from earth.

Bertha’s headlights illuminated the strange but magically playful structures. Following Mashid’s instructions, they turned right on the second gravel road and then into the driveway of the darkened home on the left. They used flashlights to find the key. Once the lights were turned on, they could see that the interior was more traditional.

The kitchen space was combined with a south-facing
greenhouse filled with vegetables. The nutrient-rich gray water from the kitchen sink drained into the plant beds. Fish swam in a small concrete pond at the center of the greenhouse space. Angel found a note on the kitchen table. After reading it, she summarized for Ted. “Mashid says the bedrooms are at the end of the hall. You can have the green guest bedroom and I can have her room across the hall. She’ll take the sofa when she comes home.” She set the note down. “The code for her router is here if you need it.”

“Sounds perfect.” Ted was looking forward to a traditional bed and shower and some time on his laptop. He went back to Bertha, grabbed his pack and Argo’s dog bed, and begged off for an early night. He wanted to thumb through some of the books that Angel had given him to read. But more important, he wanted to do some legal research for Aunt Lilly.

Once online, Ted searched legal databases to frame the central legal issue. He needed to know whether self-defense was based on an objective or subjective state of mind. Was it enough that Aunt Lilly
thought
Uncle Harry was going to hurt her, or did the fear have to be justified under some more objective “reasonable man” standard?

He was surprised to find that there was less law on the subject than he might have imagined. In a way, this was good. It gave defense counsel more room to argue. Open and ambiguous issues make prosecutors nervous and more inclined to offer a plea bargain. After an hour or so of research, he decided he would need a full copy of the police report, and, as Angel had suggested, he needed to interview Aunt Lilly so he could get a better understanding of the facts.

Ted got up from the small desk where he had been working, sat down on the bed, and beckoned Argo to jump up and rest beside him. He rubbed the old dog’s face and asked, “What are we doing, Argo? We’re in an Earthship in the middle of the desert and traveling across America with a spiritual consultant. Would Grandpa be proud of us? I’m as happy as that day I brought you home from the animal shelter. Kind of strange, isn’t it?”

Ted leaned over to the bedside table and pulled the Bible from the stack of texts that Angel had suggested he read. He thought of questions that he wished he’d had the time to ask Father Chuck. Ted could almost be jealous of those who claimed to be saved and to have a personal relationship with Jesus. No one was telling him to run for president, start a church, work in a ghetto, or firebomb an abortion clinic. He wondered why Jesus or God never spoke to him. The lack of dialogue made him wonder if he was just unworthy. Maybe it was his own fault for not trying to speak to Jesus. Even if he wanted to find God or Jesus, the distinction between the two was lost on him. Where and how was he to seek such a relationship? Was the Bible just a composite of very old and very tall tales or a doorway into something profound?

Ted flipped through the pages, and a sense of awe unfurled as he read the book of James. As he read the Gospel of Mark, he was overcome by a sensation he couldn’t identify. Was it physical or psychological? He closed the Good Book and laid it on his chest. He tried to put his finger on the feeling in his chest cavity. He sensed a connection with humanity.
Loneliness—to which he’d grown accustomed and which often seemed to haunt him—was absent.

Even if what Jesus said had already been said by others before him, he said it in such a convincing and beautiful way that the text left Ted feeling inspired. There was a sense of the man, Jesus, behind these words. Was he experiencing real faith, or was it something else? Was this what allowed Christianity to put so much confidence in the power of believing? Ted recalled the lesson he had learned from Father Chuck, and it occurred to him that maybe all of these questions only made sense when God was objectified and treated as something separate from himself. Perhaps these were the struggles one needed to have to move past the primary grades of spirituality that Angel had started to show him. Perhaps, he concluded as he returned the Bible to the bedside table, the answers to these questions would become clearer with time.

Ted closed his eyes, not yet sleepy enough to turn off the lights, and rested quietly for a few moments before more corporeal questions and quandaries arose.

Ted could hear Angel rustling across the hall. He had to admit he enjoyed sleeping on the floor of the bookmobile—if for no other reason than it seemed to throw him into some nominal intimacy with Angel. Ted imagined her moving about in her room, with No Barks lying on the floor patiently watching over her. He wondered if he should manufacture some excuse to knock on the door and talk with her. Perhaps just to say good night. Ted lamented that his relationship with the wolf dog was progressing faster than his relationship with
the tall, dark woman. He knew how bad an idea it was to even entertain such thoughts, but he couldn’t help wondering if he was becoming infatuated with Angel. Could any man spend three days with this woman—beautiful, courageous, wise—and not be smitten? After his own divorce and after handling divorces for so many clients, Ted had serious misgiving about marriage. Now here he was questioning whether it was healthy to go through life as a single man.

Ted turned off the light, shut his eyes, and tried to resist fantasies that would only set him up for disappointment. It had been a long time since he had been this close to a woman he respected and desired. He needed to savor every minute of their brief two weeks together and then get back to a healthier, saner life in Crossing Trails without her. Angel and No Barks would soon only be fading memories.

Giving up on sleep, Ted got up from the bed and sat down at the small desk, again opening his laptop. He went into his zone, drowning out uncomfortable thoughts. He went where he was good, brilliant, really. His grandfather had said Ted was the best researcher and brief writer he’d ever known.

As the night hours passed, Ted raced through cases one after another, trying out theories and piecing together the elements of Aunt Lilly’s self-defense argument. He found cases from courts as far apart as Maui and Chelsea. By 2:00 a.m., Ted knew what was behind, beneath, and beside this defense. He had a very good sense of when it worked and when it failed. Without something more from Aunt Lilly, he knew, it would fail. As he suspected, the defense was firmly grounded
in a reasonable-man standard. Reasonable men did not wake up from dreams and shoot people.