Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (48 page)

When Chris comes out I show one to him. It moves slowly like a snail across a leaf. He has no comment.

We leave and breakfast in a town off the road called Weott, where I see he's still in a distant mood. It's a kind of looking-away mood and a not-talking mood, and I leave him alone.

Farther on at Leggett we see a tourist duck pond and we buy Cracker Jacks and throw them to the ducks and he does this in the most unhappy way I have ever seen. Then we pass into some of the twisting coastal range road and suddenly enter heavy fog. Then the temperature drops and I know we're back at the ocean again.

When the fog lifts we can see the ocean from a high cliff, far out and so blue and so distant. As we ride I become colder, deep cold.

We stop and I get out the jacket and put it on. I see Chris go very close to the edge of the cliff. It's at least one hundred feet to the rocks below. Way too close!

``CHRIS!'' I holler. He doesn't answer.

I go up, swiftly grab his shirt and pull him back. ``Don't do that,'' I say.

He looks at me with a strange squint.

I get out extra clothes for him and hand them to him. He takes them but he dawdles and doesn't put them on.

There's no sense hurrying him. In this mood if he wants to wait, he can.

He waits and waits. Ten minutes, then fifteen minutes pass.

We're going to have a waiting contest.

After thirty minutes of cold winds off the ocean he asks, ``Which way are we going?''

``South, now, along the coast.''

``Let's go back.''

``Where?''

``To where it's warmer.''

That would add another hundred miles. ``We have to go south now,'' I say.

``Why?''

``Because it would add too many miles going back.''

``Let's go back.''

``No. Get your warm clothes on.''

He doesn't and just sits there on the ground.

After another fifteen minutes he says, ``Let's go back.''

``Chris, you're not running the cycle. I'm running it. We're going south.''

``Why?''

``Because it's too far and because I've said so.''

``Well, why don't we just go back?''

Anger reaches me. ``You don't really want to know, do you?''

``I want to go back. Just tell me why we can't go back.''

I'm hanging on to my temper now. ``What you really want isn't to go back. What you really want is just to get me angry, Chris. If you keep it up you'll succeed!''

Flash of fear. That's what he wanted. He wants to hate me. Because I'm not him.

He looks down at the ground bitterly, and puts his warm clothes on. Then we're back on the machine and moving down the coast again.

I can imitate the father he's supposed to have, but subconsciously, at the Quality level, he sees through it and knows his real father isn't here. In all this Chautauqua talk there's been more than a touch of hypocrisy. Advice is given again and again to eliminate subject-object duality, when the biggest duality of all, the duality between me and him, remains unfaced. A mind divided against itself.

But who did it? I didn't do it. And there's no way now of undoing it. -- I keep wondering how far it is to the bottom of that ocean out there. --

What I am is a heretic who's recanted, and thereby in everyone's eyes saved his soul. Everyone's eyes but one, who knows deep down inside that all he has saved is his skin.

I survive mainly by pleasing others. You do that to get out. To get out you figure out what they want you to say and then you say it with as much skill and originality as possible and then, if they're convinced, you get out. If I hadn't turned on him I'd still be there, but he was true to what he believed right to the end. That's the difference between us, and Chris knows it. And that's the reason why sometimes I feel he's the reality and I'm the ghost.

We're on the Mendocino County coast now, and it's all wild and beautiful and open here. The hills are mostly but in the lee of rocks and folds in the hills are strange flowing shrubs sculptured by the upsweep of winds from the ocean. We pass some old wooden fences, weathered grey. In the distance is an old weathered and grey farmhouse. How could anyone farm here? The fence is broken in many places. Poor.

Where the road drops down from the high cliffs to the beach we stop to rest. When I turn the engine off Chris says, ``What are we stopping here for?''

``I'm tired.''

``Well, I'm not. Let's keep going.''

He's angry still. I'm angry too.

``Just go over on the beach there and run around in circles until I'm done resting,'' I say.

``Let's keep going,'' he says, but I walk away and ignore it. He sits on the curb by the motorcycle.

The ocean smell of rotting organic matter is heavy here and the cold wind doesn't allow much rest. But I find a large cluster of grey rocks where the wind is still and the heat of the sun can still be felt and enjoyed. I concentrate on the warmth of the sunlight and am grateful for what little there is.

We ride again and what comes to me now is the realization that he's another Phædrus, thinking the way he used to and acting the same way he used to, looking for trouble, being driven by forces he's only dimly aware of and doesn't understand. The questions -- the same questions -- he's got to know everything.

And if he doesn't get the answer he just drives and drives until he gets one and that leads to another question and he drives and drives for the answer to that -- endlessly pursuing questions, never seeing, never understanding that the questions will never end. Something is missing and he knows it and will kill himself trying to find it.

We round a sharp turn up an overhanging cliff. The ocean stretches forever, cold and blue out there, and produces a strange sense of despair. Coastal people never really know what the ocean symbolizes to landlocked inland people...what a great distant dream it is, present but unseen in the deepest levels of subconsciousness, and when they arrive at the ocean and the conscious images are compared with the subconscious dream there is a sense of defeat at having come so far to be so stopped by a mystery that can never be fathomed. The source of it all.

A long time later we come to a town where a luminous haze which has seemed so natural over the ocean is now seen in the streets of the town, giving them a certain aura, a hazy sunny radiance that makes everything look nostalgic, as if remembered from years before.

We stop in a crowded restaurant and find the last remaining empty table by a window overlooking the radiant street. Chris looks down and doesn't talk. Maybe, in some way, he senses that we haven't much farther to go.

``I'm not hungry,'' he says.

``You don't mind waiting while I eat?''

``Let's keep going. I'm not hungry.''

``Well, I am.''

``Well, I'm not. My stomach hurts.'' The old symptom.

I eat my lunch amid the conversation and clink of plates and spoons from the other tables and out the window watch a bicycle and rider go by. I feel like somehow we have arrived at the end of the world.

I look up and see Chris is crying.

``Now what?'' I say.

``My stomach. It's hurting.''

``Is that all?''

``No. I just hate everything -- I'm sorry I came -- I hate this trip -- I thought this was going to be fun, and it isn't any fun -- I'm sorry I came.'' He is a truth-teller, like Phædrus. And like Phædrus he looks at me now with more and more hatred. The time has come.

``I've been thinking, Chris, of putting you on the bus here with a ticket for home.''

His face has no expression on it, then surprise mixed with dismay.

I add, ``I'll go on myself with the motorcycle and see you in a week or two. There's no sense forcing you to continue on a vacation you hate.''

Now it's my turn to be surprised. His expression isn't relieved at all. The dismay gets worse and he looks down and says nothing.

He seems caught off balance now, and frightened.

He looks up. ``Where would I stay?''

``Well, you can't stay at our house now, because other people are there. You can stay with Grandma and Grandpa.''

``I don't want to stay with them.''

``You can stay with your aunt.''

``She doesn't like me. I don't like her.''

``You can stay with your other grandma and grandpa.''

``I don't want to stay there either.''

I name some others but he shakes his head.

``Well, who then?''

``I don't know.''

``Chris, I think you can see for yourself what the problem is. You don't want to be on this trip. You hate it. Yet you don't want to stay with anyone or go anywhere else. All these people I've mentioned you either don't like or they don't like you.''

He's silent but tears now form.

A woman at another table is looking at me angrily. She opens her mouth as if about to say something. I turn a heavy gaze on her for a long time until she closes her mouth and goes back to eating.

Now Chris is crying hard and others look over from the other tables.

``Let's go for a walk,'' I say, and get up without waiting for the check.

At the cash register the waitress says, ``I'm sorry the boy isn't feeling good.'' I nod, pay, and we're outside.

I look for a bench somewhere in the luminous haze but there is none. Instead we climb on the cycle and go slowly south looking for a restful place to pull off.

The road leads out to the ocean again where it climbs to a high point that apparently juts out into the ocean but now is surrounded by banks of fog. For a moment I see a distant break in the fog where some people rest in the sand, but soon the fog rolls in and the people are obscured.

I look at Chris and see a puzzled, empty look in his eyes, but as soon as I ask him to sit down some of the anger and hatred of this morning reappear.

``Why?'' he asks.

``I think it's time we should talk.''

``Well, talk,'' he says. All the old belligerence is back. It's the ``kind father'' image he can't stand. He knows the ``niceness'' is false.

``What about the future?'' I say. Stupid thing to ask.

``What about it?'' he says.

``I was going to ask what you planned to do about the future.''

``I'm going to let it be.'' Contempt shows now.

The fog opens for a moment, revealing the cliff we are on, then closes again, and a sense of inevitability about what is happening comes over me. I'm being pushed toward something and the objects in the corner of the eye and the objects in the center of the vision are all of equal intensity now, all together in one, and I say, ``Chris, I think it's time to talk about some things you don't know about.''

He listens a little. He senses something is coming.

``Chris, you're looking at a father who was insane for a long time, and is close to it again.''

And not just close anymore. It's here. The bottom of the ocean.

``I'm sending you home not because I'm angry with you but because I'm afraid of what can happen if I continue to take responsibility for you.''

His face doesn't show any change of expression. He doesn't understand yet what I'm saying.

``So this is going to be good-bye, Chris, and I'm not sure we'll see each other anymore.''

That's it. It's done. And now the rest will follow naturally.

He looks at me so strangely. I think he still doesn't understand. That gaze -- I've seen it somewhere -- somewhere -- somewhere. --

In the fog of an early morning in the marshes there was a small duck, a teal that gazed like this. -- I'd winged it and now it couldn't fly and I'd run up on it and seized it by the neck and before killing it had stopped and from some sense of the mystery of the universe had stared into its eyes, and they gazed like this -- so calm and uncomprehending -- and yet so aware. Then I closed my hands around its eyes and twisted the neck until it broke and I felt the snap between my fingers.

Then I opened my hand. The eyes still gazed at me but they stared into nothing and no longer followed my movements.

``Chris, they're saying it about you.''

He gazes at me.

``That all these troubles are in your mind.''

He shakes his head no.

``They seem real and feel real but they aren't.''

His eyes become wide. He continues to shake his head no, but comprehension overtakes him.

``Things have gone from bad to worse. Trouble in school, trouble with the neighbors, trouble with your family, trouble with your friends -- trouble everywhere you turn. Chris, I was the only one holding them all back, saying, `He's all right,' and now there won't be anyone. Do you understand?''

He stares stunned. His eyes still track but they begin to falter. I'm not giving him strength. I never have been. I'm killing him.

``It's not your fault, Chris. It never has been. Please understand that.''

His gaze fails in a sudden inward flash. Then his eyes close and a strange cry comes from his mouth, a wail like the sound of something far away. He turns and stumbles on the ground then falls, doubles up and kneels and rocks back and forth, head on the ground. A faint misty wind blows in the grass around him. A seagull alights nearby.

Through the fog I hear the whine of gears of a truck and am terrified by it.

``You have to get up, Chris.''

The wail is high-pitched and inhuman, like a siren in the distance.

``You must get up!''

He continues to rock and wail on the ground.

I don't know what to do now. I have no idea what to do. It's all over. I want to run for the cliff, but fight that. I have to get him on the bus, and then the cliff will be all right.

Everything is all right now, Chris.

That's not my voice.

l haven't forgotten you.

Chris's rocking stops.

How could I forget you?

Chris raises his head and looks at me. A film he has always looked through at me disappears for a moment and then returns.

We'll be together now.

The whine of the truck is upon us.

Now get up!

Chris slowly sits up and stares at me. The truck arrives, stops, and the driver looks out to see if we need a ride. I shake my head no and wave him on. He nods, puts the truck in gear, and it whines off through the mist again and there is only Chris and me.