The Devoted

by Blair Hurley

  Will you turn toward me?

  I am lonely too,

  This autumn evening.

  —Basho

  They snuck into a YMCA in Michigan to shower, and when she was in the girls’ locker room, slowly pulling on her threadbare jeans, a crowd of elderly women in floral swim caps surrounded her. “You look like you’re lost, hon,” one said.

  “I—” The women looked at her, the faces all alike in their bathing caps, the council of the wise and motherly. She was surprised to find tears crowding at the backs of her eyes. “There’s just somewhere I have to go.” She pushed the tears away.

  “Your mother is shedding a tear for every moment you’re gone,” said one woman, clasping her shoulder. Nicole wondered how they knew she had run away. She remembered the times her mother had taken her bra shopping and had looked over her body appraisingly, tugging a strap here or there, ownership in her eyes. You’re mine, she might as well have said.

  She found Jules and Eddie on the basketball court, playing with a bunch of local Vietnamese and Somali kids. The Vietnamese kids, two brothers, were short a player, so she joined in, glad to forget herself in the game. The boys called to each other in Somali, in Vietnamese.

  After they told him about their quest, one of the Vietnamese boys brought them all to his local Buddhist temple. She mumbled her way through the prayers she’d read in books. Women came with paper bags of wet fish, the bottoms of the bags transparent with oil, and offered them to the golden Buddha at the front of the deep red room. The boy who brought them there said, You can only visit this front room; the back rooms are for the members only. She was kind of a member, wasn’t she? But she had no witnesses, no one who would believe her. She didn’t have anything to offer. She dug through her dirty pockets and found a single green penny. She dropped it in the offering box; a monk bowed his thanks. She looked at him wordlessly, begging with her eyes, not sure what she was begging for.

  Afterward Anh and his brother, Van, brought them home for dinner and their mother served bone-marrow pho in little palm-sized bowls. She, Jules, and Eddie ate like animals, ravenously, without speaking. The boy’s mother peered at Nicole over her bowl. “Homeless? Homeless?”

  She shrugged, and the mother shook her head. “So young. Too young for homeless. Parents?”

  “Yes, parents.” The woman’s stilted English was contagious; it hid greater profundities within.

  “Why leave?” she asked. “Argument? Do drugs?”

  “We’re only taking a trip. Then we’ll come back.”

  “That’s what I said to my parents in Vietnam,” remarked the father gently. “By the time I returned, my father was dead. Don’t wait too long.”

  After dinner, Anh and Van’s mother touched the top of Nicole’s head; she was praying for them. “Careful, okay?”

  Nicole clung to her flowery apron. The last stop for warm kitchens with magnets on fridges. Last chance to grab hold. But Jules pulled her arm. “We can make Nebraska by morning.”

  “Okay,” she said. She let go.

  They passed JESUS SAVES signs and old men walking alone on the side of the road. Fast food chains lit up late at night, eerie glowing islands in the darkness. Employees leaned on counters, laughing without sound. The dark country knew her. She was ready to be known; soon it would take her up, claim her once and for all.

  Somewhere in Nebraska they got a room in a Red Barn Inn; they needed showers. There were two double beds in the room, and after a quick spliff she crawled in with Jules in her sweatshirt and underpants. In the dimness she saw Eddie’s shape in the floral bedspread beside them, still as a log. She tried to push Jules off but he made a whining sound and wrapped a leg around hers, and before she knew it they were rocking gently together.

  In the morning, gray light awakened her, striping her body through the vertical blinds. Jules was splayed across most of the bed like the overindulged family dog; Eddie was gone.

  She found her underwear, her sweatshirt, her tattered jeans. Standing at the window, she saw that the car was not in the lot. The motel was right on the highway, and she watched a car whine past into the gray horizon with a clutch of panic.

  She waited in the parking lot, wondering what to do, but after twenty minutes Eddie pulled into the spot next to her, leaning out the window. “What? Thought I’d left you here?”

  “Yeah,” she said, relief making her honest.

  He held up a paper bag, his face expressionless. “Doughnuts.”

  When you were cold and hungover and your stomach was pinched with emptiness, doughnuts could seem like a religious experience. She ate three, getting powdered sugar all over her face. Eddie laughed. “You’re an incompetent geisha.”

  “Pinko.”

  “Hare Krishna.”

  They drove back to the doughnut shop for more and sat outside on the curb, eating them. With only the highway near her, the sky seemed enormous, a cloudy white bowl cupping her near its rim. Eddie sat with his bony back to her, the knobs of his spine showing through his plaid shirt. “Can we keep the screwing in front of me to a minimum?” he asked.

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  “You know, I was fine with it in my parents’ basement. Really. But I always wondered if you were. I wondered if Jules wasn’t just being a jerk.” He looked at her sidelong; her mouth was full, and she couldn’t respond. “You know, I always hoped—”

  “God, Eddie,” she snapped, spitting crumbs. “You need to get a girlfriend.”

  “You left me,” he said. “That night with Willa.”

  Many times in their basement year, he had appealed to her in the middle of an argument with Jules; he’d always appreciated her intelligence and tried to draw it out of her. He had this lonely sensitivity that she often forgot about. When they’d stumbled back out of the trees that night, she’d heard music drifting out of the house: it was Eddie, playing Chopin on the piano.

  Thinking about the night with Willa always made her ashamed; she covered it with anger. “You wouldn’t come with us. You missed out.”

  He pressed his lips together; for a moment she thought he might cry. “You can be a real bitch,” he said.

  She realized she had really hurt him. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Yeah, well.” Eddie picked at something on his shoe. She remembered his bright museum of a house back in Boston, and the basement cave he had carved out for himself, and the way he opened the bulkhead door each night, inviting them inside hopefully.

  She pulled Understanding Buddhism out from her bag and flipped to a remembered page:

  Although they may play with my body

  And make it a source of jest and blame,

  Because I have given it up to them

  What is the use of holding it dear?

  Therefore I shall let them do anything to it. . . .

  And when anyone encounters me

  May it never be meaningless for him. . . .

  May I be an island for those who seek one

  And a lamp for those desiring light,

  May I be a bed for all who wish to rest

  And a slave for all who want a slave.

  May I be a wishing jewel, a magic vase,

  Powerful mantras and great medicine,

  May I become a wish-fulfilling tree

  And a cow of plenty for the world.

  —from the Bodhicaryavatara, the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives

  A Buddhist seeking enlightenment must follow the Noble Eightfold Path. Dharma, the teaching, is the wheel that must turn, and the eight parts of the path are the eight spokes of the wheel. That summer and fall, these were the things she learned:

  RIGHT VIEW: when it is night somewhere in Iowa and you are driving down a farming road in a car with rapidly fading headlights, watch the road, even when someone has his hand up your skirt. Otherwise you might get confused, and crash the car into a fence, and find yourself suddenly surrounded by a herd of curious donkeys, all of them ghost white, drifting about the black field
like the spirits of jackasses past, present, and future that you are doomed to meet.

  RIGHT INTENTION: When you are in a bar in Columbus, flirting so that you and your weary friends lurking in a booth can get drinks, don’t take it too seriously. Don’t smile too deeply or feel a pleased flutter in your chest when a young man in a silly denim vest tells you you’re beautiful, like some honest-to-goodness flower child. Don’t imagine what his story might be or why he might like someone like you. Otherwise your boyfriend might come over from the corner of the bar and ask the poor sweet boy to step outside, and someone’s mouth will get bloodied.

  RIGHT SPEECH: When you are in the car afterward, refusing to help clean his face, don’t say, “Why can’t you just grow up?” or “You fight like a girl. I saw you go for his eyes.” It will be a mistake. You can yell at Eddie. Make fun of his politics. It’s always okay to make fun; he can handle it; he absorbs insults like bread. But watch what you say to Jules. He takes in everything you say; he believes everything fervently, good or bad. He, too, is waiting to see what redemption the Karmapa can provide. So the next day, when you are all sitting outside a barbecue-and-pork-belly restaurant with miraculous one-dollar ribs and Eddie is impressing the local kids you’re hanging out with, talking politics, and the air is thick with lightning bugs, the ones that had faded and grown fewer with each year in New England, tell Jules about what you’ll do when you get There. Tell him you’ll get jobs at the monastery, and listen to the Karmapa’s lectures, and lead pure lives, but not too pure—pride, after all, is a sin whether you’re a Catholic or a Buddhist. And it might not be cool to say it, but you will be loved. The Karmapa tells us we must learn how to love so that the beloved feels free, and that’s exactly what we’ll do. When Jules presses, asking how long can we honestly keep that up, tell him, Forever. When you get old you’ll just be a couple of monks sweeping together in the temple.

  RIGHT ACTION: When you are passing through Kansas on a bright, cool day that hints at autumn, do follow signs for the Renaissance Faire. Spend the last of your money on fruit pies, tickets for the stained-glass workshop, and old tomatoes to throw at the smiling man in the stockade. All these odd, cheerful people seem to enjoy transforming themselves, treating the day with the same concerted seriousness of children playing dress-up. Drink sour home-brewed beer from wooden mugs and watch the jousting, the archery, the strangely anachronistic Ferris wheel. Ride to the top, look out on the green country reddening with the approach of fall, and know how far you still have to go.

  In the dusk, when the bonfire has been lit, ooh and aah with the others, and when it has died, accept the Buddhist certainty of this death. Jump over the ashes hand in hand with your lover, feeling old, ageless. You are eighteen but you have already lived more than one life.

  RIGHT EFFORT: Try to call home. Listen to your brother’s voice, or your mother’s, or your father’s. Try to gauge from their hellos whether they are all right, how many trick-or-treaters came to the house, whether the first snow has fallen. Try to speak; try as hard and as often as you can.

  RIGHT LIVELIHOOD: Remember that your job, your purpose, is to leave home. You are beginning to realize that this—leaving home—is what you will be doing for the rest of your life.

  RIGHT MINDFULNESS: Be aware of everything. When you are high or drunk or coldly sober, be aware of all the smells and sounds. Read the maps and mark where you have been, the strange detours you have taken. Record things, the way you see Jules scribbling in his notebook.

  RIGHT CONCENTRATION: At some point you’ll find yourself lost in a city whose name you’ve forgotten, but it’s close, very close to There. You’re in the middle of a raging party in a warehouse somewhere and the place is packed with grinding bodies. You and Jules have palmed a few pills crushed into the drinks someone bought you. Somewhere in the third song, the bass vibrates its way into your chest, and your body expands, becomes a galaxy, large beyond all knowing. Your people are below you, your mother and father, Paul. You can wrap them all up in the folds of yourself. You’re Indra’s net, the web of the universe, and all the connections are you.

  Stumble out of breath into the back room, where people are sitting on pillows on the floor and passing around the nozzle of a hookah. “It’s so nineties out there,” someone says. Even though you were exhilarated a moment before, agree. This is better, much better. In here the weather is 1968 or so. The girls lay their long-haired heads in the boys’ laps. The dancing is limp-armed, vague, and white beyond belief. A couple is relentlessly making out in the corner.

  Tell them where you’re going. Righteous, one girl says, and smiles dreamily.

  You never really had a strong enough stomach for drugs. Sometime later, puke in the alley out back. Now it’s time to find the car, but it’s not where you left it. Someone has stolen the car. You’re too sick, too stoned to go to the police. All you can think is to wander, dragging through the empty streets, the three of you getting colder, hugging each other. You stay instinctively in the rough chewed-out part of town, knowing that the car is likely to be there, and that you don’t belong anywhere else. Here the street murals are spattered with bullet holes; human feces drift by in the rain gutters. You’re too sick to stand. You want to lie down, but you must concentrate on finding the car, you must keep walking. Jules helps you up. You’re scared that you’re not cut out for this, but you can’t think about that now. Keep going. Concentrate.

  And you do; somehow, in the early morning, you find it. Kids or junkies stole the car for a joyride but left it half on the sidewalk, out of gas, the radio taken.

  Climb into the back seat, which now smells of piss and liquor. Press your head to Jules’s shoulder while Eddie turns the engine. Jules is gamely duct-taping the window. A gray false dawn is creeping past the unfamiliar buildings. On the sidewalk next to the car, a thin old woman has settled onto a bus stop bench for what looks like a long wait. “Read your Bible! Read your Bible!” she brays at you without warning. You must look sorely in need of salvation. “It’s not too late,” she pleads. “No one can read it for you. You’ve got to read your Bible. It’s the only way.”

  Dig and scrape through the car seats for coins. Call Paul’s number, and hear his voice, and finally say, “It’s me.” But don’t let him talk. Just say, “I’m okay. But I need money.”

  Tell him about the quest. Remember? The Karmapa? It was this thing you had to do, but now you are on your way home, your trip is over, you just need the money to make it back. Promise you’ll be on the doorstep in days if he’ll only stay quiet a little longer. Your parents will never understand, but you and Paul have always had your secrets.

  Let him absorb the lie. Wait, hunched miserably in the graffitied phone booth. Wait for him to demand your whereabouts. Wait in the beating silence. And give the address of the nearest Western Union when he quietly agrees. Wonder if he’s as trusting as you hoped, or if he knows the lie and is going along anyway. Poor dupe.

  Lie in the back seat of the car and cry because you have failed, you are not truly independent, not liberated at all. Silly girl with your stupid dreams: the minute things get tough you go begging for help, lying and deceiving for cash. Then Jules will be there, sliding into the seat beside you. He’ll hold you quietly, he’ll make no demands upon you, he’ll not tell you you have failed. He’ll tell you instead how brave you are, how far you’ve come together. He promises you that you’re the girl he’s always wanted. You are just as wild and free and dangerous as you hoped to be. Be glad of the principle of impermanence. Feel a small comfort that your shame will not last. Your eyelids grow heavy; he’ll soothe you into sleep, watch over you, love you.

  Three business days after the phone call, Paul’s money arrived. It was enough for five cheeseburgers and three Cokes in the booth of a Burger Shack at nine in the morning; enough for a motel room for the night with a hot shower and cable TV showing Gunga Din and The Dirty Dozen; enough, even, to let her put aside some, to get her where she needed to go. In the cold mornin
g, she huddled under blankets while Jules and Eddie slept and read her book on Tibet. Time to bone up now that they were so close. She drank in the photos, familiar as friends, telling the faces of the smiling monks how close she was. The Karmapa beckoned, his face creased and glowing, like cracked amber.

  For the first time, she paused on the page to read the photographer’s commentary.

  At this time, the Karmapa had a serious case of kidney stones, but to the amazement of all around him, he seemed to feel no pain from this frequently agonizing condition. His doctors, in particular, expressed astonishment that His Holiness remained his smiling, affable self. “I may be witnessing a minor medical miracle,” said one. By the spring of 1980, he was back to leading sermons. This would be his final world tour.

  The spring of 1980.

  Of 1980.

  She looked at the other photo taken of him. Fall 1975. Then she flipped to the copyright page: © 1982. For some colossally stupid reason, she hadn’t thought to check the date of the book until this moment. It was Scripture; it was timeless. The monk would always be there for her, waiting on the mountaintop; he could be nowhere else.

  She pulled on her jacket. Have to go to the library, she wrote on a hamburger wrapper.

  She’d seen a city branch when they were wandering the streets two nights ago. At the card catalog, she searched for Karmapa. Her book came up, along with one other: The Life of the 16th Karmapa.

  She found the book near the bottom of a tiny, pathetic shelf labeled EASTERN RELIGION. It was crisp in its plastic dust jacket; no stamps on the card. She flipped through its pages and found the beloved photo, the one showing the wise, crinkled smile, the ridiculous golden miter. “His Holiness, fall 1980,” she read, “shortly before his death in 1981.”

  She slid to the floor, clutching the book, and didn’t move for a long time.

  Even now, she struggled to tell this idiocy to Jocelyn, this laughable oversight. She wasn’t using the Internet much then, she said. It wasn’t the first thing you reached for when you were digging into ancient texts and secret dharmas. Someone must have written a page on the Karmapa, all the information was there waiting for her, but she hadn’t thought to check. You could only believe everything you read in books. The Karmapa was as alive, as dear, as real as Ishmael, Huck Finn, Holden Caulfield.