Deshi (36 page)

I nodded. “So they watched Changpa, figuring they’d turn up there?”

“That’s my guess. Best place to hide something is in the mail. So Han waited around to see if it would turn up. In the meantime, Wu’s pressuring Changpa to keep a low profile. Beijing doesn’t want bad PR when they’re negotiating trade deals, and Wu doesn’t want anything coming out about what he was up to in Tibet. Kills two birds with one stone.”

“What a mess,” I said. “More than two birds got killed.”

Micky nodded. “Be more than a few Feds reassigned to North Dakota sometime soon,” he said. Then he looked up at me. “Makes straightforward police work look appealing doesn’t it?”

“Where’s Art today?” I asked him. I’d had enough of the whole thing.

He snorted. “He might be by later. Claimed his sister-in-law was having a christening, but he also mentioned something about being afraid of beach ninjas.”

I snickered. “Weenie.” But we both knew I was kidding: Art had been one of the few people left standing in the clearing that day. Micky got up and went over to help Deirdre with the swings.

Later I made my way through the crowds that were settled on blankets nearer to the shore. The fine, grainy sand was hot and it growled as my feet rubbed against it. I reached the water’s edge and stood watching the ocean. The water’s color went from a translucent champagne where it slid up the shore-line to a deep blue out beyond the breakers. The wind came in off the ocean and I could feel the salt on my lips.

I watched the water churn and heave against the distant horizon and thought of Changpa’s description of what it was like to see into the future: a surface in continual motion with peaks and valleys that formed and reformed before your eyes. You marked a spot or got a sense of shape only to watch it shift a moment later. Out in the distance on the water, fishing boats were pushed up by waves and then slid down into the troughs. They bobbed uneasily, frail-looking against the immense breadth of the sea. Sometimes the water was kind, but it could turn on you, whipped into surges where the valleys were deeper and darker than anything you could imagine. And then it could swallow you.

It’s a realization we try to keep buried way down deep. I wondered how someone like the lama dealt with it, because the awareness seemed always to be upon him. I had spoken with Yamashita about this.

“There are many types of strength,” he said. “If we are lucky, we each find our own before we pass out of this life.”

We were talking about Changpa, but I knew that he was thinking of Stark.

“He was drawn to a bad teacher,” I said. It was ungenerous of me, but true.

“In the end, he chose well,” my teacher reminded me.

“It killed him,” I said.

Yamashita had looked at me with that powerful look that is the combination of deep calm and the potential for sudden ferocity. “To live well is to hold onto life loosely, Burke, and to surrender it to something greater than yourself.”

I nodded slowly in acknowledgment. Stark had come to the Dharma Center following after Sarah Klein. He was probably more interested in her than in anything that Changpa or Yamashita could teach him. And what I had thought was a sinister motive of some sort on his part was really nothing more than jealousy. It was because he resented the relationship that was developing between me and the woman he once lived with. He could have left me up there in the clearing with Han. But he didn’t: eventually, he came to the Rinpoche and Sarah Klein and they took that fateful hike up the mountain.

Kita and Wu hadn’t counted on the power of men like Changpa and Yamashita. They root through the world, seeing people as rough stones. They polish and shape us, and if there is heat and pain, at the end they leave us more brilliant than at the start.

I like to think that’s what happened to Stark. That something of what Changpa had hoped for him came to pass. I don’t know. Maybe we just see the world through a perspective shaped by our own individual experience.

The water was still cold this early in the season; not many people were swimming. The surf washed up across my feet, an icy surge that was a strange contrast to the heat of the sun. My wounds had healed and I was almost back to full speed in the dojo. I’d have plenty of time there. The flap with the state and federal authorities, as well as the high body count, did not enhance my popularity at Dorian. The university did not want me back. But I didn’t dwell on the thought.

It was just as well. The university was like an ocean liner whose passengers turned resolutely inward, never trying to glimpse the ocean that surrounds them. A journey, I suppose, but an ironic one. Yamashita keeps yanking me out into the larger world. Sometimes it’s a scary place, but on days like today the expanse of light only hurts your eyes, not your heart.

The wind bounced around my ears, and the rush of sea sound on that bright blue day pulled me out and away, far from mundane things. I watched the heaving sea and imagined a swimmer, fighting through the swells.

We each carve a path for ourselves through a field of time and space that remains forever fluid. For the most part we look down, alert for imminent dips and unexpected surges. It’s probably just as well. We fight through one experience in the hopes of smoother seas ahead. If we lifted our eyes to the horizon, we might despair of ever finding rest. Or certainty.

But Yamashita has taught me something of the dignity of perseverance. In the end, it may be that all paths lead down to the dark valley. That we may never reach the far mountain. It may be the manner of the journey that’s important. And the people you travel with.

A small voice nagged at me as I stood, eyes wide and gazing into the distant ocean. It persisted, and eventually I looked down.

Meghan, my sister Irene’s kid, was standing there.

“Whaddaya lookin’ at, Uncle Connor?” she asked. Meghan was a moon-faced nine-year-old, and her stomach was giving the elastic material in her one-piece bathing suit a run for its money. Like most Burkes, she would grow steadily chubbier through adolescence, and then suddenly slim down in a rush of hormones just before adulthood. Her Long Island accent was heavy, and when she said my name, it came out as “Kahnah.”

“Wha’?” I asked, not fully focused. I was still far away.

“Whaddaya lookin’ at?” Meghan said again. The expression on her face was concerned. I smiled and ruffled her hair in reassurance. She smiled back. “Mommy says we’re gonna have cake soon and that you should come back.”

Meghan squinted up at me and it was the same quirky expression as my dad’s, alive in a new generation. For a moment, I heard the voice from my dream.

Time to wake up now, Tiger.

“She did!” I said, and smiled at the child standing next to me.

Meghan nodded solemnly at the power of cake. “Come on!” she urged, taking my hand and tugging me away from the water.

I looked up into the distance and saw Micky watching me. Art was with him, having come after all. And in between them, I saw the squat bullet shape of Yamashita, who was waiting as well.

Meghan and I threaded our way across the beach, her small feet leaving a trail that my larger ones followed. Later, the winds would send the sand skittering across our tracks. The seasons would scour them away. In the end, we wander across an uncertain world, and if it is hard to see the path, or to tell masters from disciples, it may be because who leads and who follows is not as important as the journey.

I held Meghan’s small hand and we went together to our destination.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Donohue is a nationally known expert on the culture and practice of the martial arts and has been banging around the
dojo
for more than 30 years. He has trained in the martial disciplines of aikido, iaido, judo, karatedo, kendo, and taiji. He has
dan
(black belt) ranks in both karatedo and kendo.

John has a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. His doctoral dissertation on the cultural aspects of the Japanese martial arts formed the basis for his first book,
The Forge of the Spirit
. Fiction became a way to combine his interests and
Sensei
, the first Connor Burke thriller was published in 2003. John Donohue resides in Hamden, CT.

Also by John Donohue…

Novels
(Connor Burke Martial Arts Thrillers)
Sensei
Tengu
Kage

Nonfiction
The Overlook Martial Arts Reader
Complete Kendo
Herding the Ox: The Martial Arts as Moral Metaphor
Warrior Dreams: The Martial Arts and the American Imagination
The Human Condition in the Modern Age
The Forge of the Spirit: Structure, Motion, and Meaning in the Japanese Martial Tradition

BOOKS FROM YMAA