Rosalee kept her eyes on her quick-cutting knife. “He’s more than a character, he’s a, a—force of nature. Johnny Faye—he’s like your Shivo. Dangerous, in a skinny lawbreaking kind of way. You watch out.”
“Oh, Johnny Faye wouldn’t hurt a fly. You should see him with the birds. He could talk one off its nest.”
“It’s not him I’m telling you to watch out for. I know what I’m talking about.” A loud burrrr sounded in a nearby tree. “The first katydid of the summer. I hate that sound. You hear one of those, winter caint be far behind. I think a lot about that story you told about the woman who rides the lion. I liked that story—you don’t hear stories like that around here, where the woman comes out on top. You got to ask yourself—why would a smart woman like Durga take up with a rounder like Shivo in the first place?”
“I’ve never thought about that. Durga marries Shiva, we take that for granted.”
“Well, there aint nothing you can take for granted. I hope your Durga was in love with the man. I hope she had that much.”
“Were you in love when you married?”
A shadow on Rosalee’s face, a cloud drifting across a summer-blue sky. “No way. I knowed it was a mistake from the first but I went ahead, I was young and dumb and had got myself in a rough patch. Seemed like he would be my security, him with the police and all. That might have been when I learned about the little voice.”
“What little voice?”
“The little voice that tells you what to do. Least, it does for me. It always tells me what I ought to do. Problem I have is paying attention. I can always find some reason not to pay attention. Johnny Faye—he’s a summertime lake.”
Meena smiled. “Yes, lovely. Though I might have said a river.”
Rosalee tightened her lips and raised her eyes to Meena’s. “You can drown in a river just as easy, maybe easier than in a lake. I know, I come close. If I’d had the money—” She turned back to her peaches. “That’s enough of that.”
Meena dumped her sliced peaches into the kettle and sat her bowl on the ground and leaned forward. “Would you mind if I shared a bit of news? I have no one else to tell and a good story wants to be told. Mr. Johnny Faye is just an—amusement. A companion for a forest walk. I have a real suitor. I have been asked for—a date. Thirty-three years old and I have never had a date. In my country this was not how we accomplished such matters—there the family arranges everything. I am so—nervous.”
“And who might be your beau?”
Meena spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. “Mr. Vetch, the county attorney.”
“Hunh. No surprise. What I’m wondering is what you see in him.”
“Mr. Vetch organized the benefit to buy equipment for my office. He’s well-connected and prosperous and he’s an attorney.” Meena smiled. “One cannot help but find some attraction in a law degree. Even a doctor can dream, yes? It makes so much sense.”
They finished the peaches in silence. After the last peach Rosalee put her knife in her bowl and set it atop the kettleful of sliced peaches. “I really hate to go home. Peaceful here and safe. I expect that’s why Matthew Mark comes over so much. Can’t blame him. I’d do the same if I wasn’t married.”
“You may come over any time. Night or day.”
“That’s awful kind of you but I’m a married woman and I got my responsibilities. For better or worse I said it out loud with my hand on the Bible. And I wouldn’t mind so much but I feel like I’m missing something important.”
“You have Matthew Mark.”
“Thanks be to you and I thank God for him. But that’s not the same. You know that.”
“I do know that.”
Rosalee shook Matthew Mark’s shoulder. “Come on, now, sugar, you’re too heavy for your mamma to go lugging you around like she used to and we got to get that pie out of the oven before it burns up.” She gave Meena an apologetic look. “I guess you’ll have to wait til tomorrow morning for your pie. I’d ask you over but my husband will be home any time now and he’s not much one for company.”
“I shall look forward to my pie,” Meena said. “And in any case I took my pleasure from watching you and Matthew Mark put it together.”
After she left Meena sat alone on the darkening patio until the katydids fell silent.
And now he came to mind at times not of her choosing. She would be talking to a patient when in an instant Johnny Faye would be so present to her that she had to excuse herself to collect her thoughts so as to drive him as far from them as possible, as if she were a ruminant cow and he a pesky fly. Not a happy feeling, not at all, a disease in its own right, if only she knew a pill that could make it go away and give her back her calm and untroubled indifference to the world. In her native country wise women understood this. The family would take charge of a woman suffering from this disease and isolate her until she had recovered. She would be kept at home and fed well and tenderly ignored until enough time had passed and she had regained her good sense.
Once Meena had been a lake, now she was a restless river.
Enough of this and she resorted to reading novels, in whose pages she had always found solace, an entrance to a dreamland that was not her dreamland. She took up this book or that and every fabricated tree and table called forth his ropy veined arms, the moles across his broad shoulders. What was going on? She must be lonelier than she had ever been, in a life filled with times and journeys alone. This was nothing but obsession, a trick of the hormones, a flaw in the logic. And still he was there. Something sweet.
Chapter 18
Meena was following Johnny Faye from the statues to the Rock House.
“Careful of the poison ivy.” He pointed with his stick. “I can knock down spider webs and scare away snakes but you got to watch out for poison ivy on your own.”
“As a child I played in jungles inhabited by leopards and crocodiles. I am capable of watching out for myself, thank you.”
“Suit yourself.” They continued down the path. “If this was winter I could show you a sight. There’s a holly tree on the edge of a creek, ever year loaded with berries and ever year this flock of cedar waxwings comes through and shows up right when the holly berries have froze and thawed and set to fermenting and then the day comes, they figure it out ever year, and you’ll see that tree covered with those little guys duded up in their party clothes, ever limb with a cedar waxwing on it like they’ve come together for a big party and all sitting on that green tree with the bright red berries like they was posing for a Christmas card. And then what do they do but eat the berries for the buzz, you know, for the alcohol from the fermenting. They get so drunk I seen them fall to the ground and wobble around like they been swilling whiskey. There’s a red fox come ever year and hangs out at the bottom of that tree waiting for Christmas dinner to fall into his lap. Prettiest drunks you’ll ever see too, look like they put on a hat and coat just to go out on the town and get plastered. Not that they’re the first to do that.”
“You, for example, smoke ganja more than is good for your health, physical or mental.”
“When I want advice about my health, physical or mental, I’ll pay for it.”
“This taking of drugs is a question of escape. Wanting to escape suffering instead of confronting and engaging it.”
“But I aint suffering and I like a cold beer and a hit of pot as much as the next guy.”
Meena stopped in mid-stride. “I have to ask myself why I am doing this.”
“I been asking myself that selfsame question.” Johnny Faye kept walking. “I expect we’re both interested to find out the answer. Now just down this little creek we’ll come to the Rock House, big overhang that’s always dry underneath and with a little spring in the back. There’s a red-tail hawk that shows up, there’s a pasture left from an old farm just over the ridge, mousey heaven, he orders up his supper over there and then flies over here to chow down.” He turned around then. “You coming along or what? See, you just got to ask the right quest
ions. You got to put yourself in the place of the bird—you got to be the bird instead of yourself. You got to look for the little things that hardly nobody sees except for the birds. They don’t miss a lick. All animals are curious. Except people.”
“Mr. Johnny Faye. Why do you suppose I am interested in all this chatter?”
“You’re here, aint you. If you ask me it has to do with getting closer to God.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Taking drugs.” He pointed skyward. “We don’t call it getting high for nothing. The problem is you get too close to God and you caint find your way back or you don’t want to, amounts to pretty much the same thing. I seen a lot of people lose their ways. I come pretty close myself.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Look. Turn around, slow.”
She turned around and saw only the dark line of the water seep at the rear of the overhang. She turned to him. “You mean over there? Nothing. A waste of—”
A great flapping of wings so close to her head that she ducked. Johnny Faye placed his finger against her lips and then his hands over her ears and slowly turned her head toward the far end of the great overhang. “I don’t see—” And then she did see, the slate-blue bird grasping a faintly struggling smaller bird.
His voice at her ear. “I’ll be damn, it aint a redtail, no, this one’s a sharp-shin, a female, I’d say, they’re bigger. And she’s caught herself a goldfinch.”
The hawk began to pluck its prey, starting with the top of the head and working its way down to the breast. Turning its beak from one side to the other, the bird seized a mouthful of feathers, yanking them loose with a twist of the head. It devoured the smaller bird’s head, neck, wings, legs, feet, leaving a small pile of feathers. Then it turned to cleansing its talons, splaying its claws to grasp each in its beak, plucking them clean as if here indeed was the greatest delicacy.
They watched in silence. The light failed.
“I am telling you, you caint just see, you got to look. And you got to look for what’s there instead of what you want to find. Especially if what you want to find is nothing.”
“Please. I would like to return to the car.”
They turned to go. “You don’t have much stomach for killing?”
“I am trained to heal—to help people recover and to stay well. That is my focus.”
“You ever thought about healing yourself?”
“I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“Neither do I but I like getting a rise out of you. That was the goal—that was the objective, like the U.S. Army taught me to say.”
“I aint the U.S. Army.”
“You could of fooled me.”
They moved down the path.
“But you still got to have a objective. Knowing what you’re looking for don’t mean you’ll find it but it sure improves the chances.”
She quickened her step to catch up with him, touching his swinging arm so that he turned around. “And what are you looking for? What is your objective?”
She had been drawn to his dark eyes for their openness and transparency—now they grew narrowed and clouded with secrecy. “I don’t rightly like to say. You?”
“I am looking to immigrate. Since my first day at the Medical College I have thought of and worked for nothing else. No, that is not correct. I have thought of it since the day I saw my first American movie when I was ten years old, alone in a Calcutta cinema.”
He resumed the path. “You got to want something bigger than that. You got to want something that’s yours, not theirs. You go wanting something that’s theirs, that’s a sure ticket to hell. You got to want something they caint take away from you.”
Matthew Mark presented himself to her thoughts.
“My mother told me that we meditate at dusk or dawn because that is when good mixes with evil, light with dark. Everything is a part of the whole, including illness and death, that what we call good and evil are different sides of the same coin, dependent on each other. Night and day, life and death. And though we are to strive for the good we are also to know that our effort is part of a turning wheel too large to comprehend. Our job is to submit to the wheel. Submit and accept. But I could not submit and accept. Everything I have achieved, I have achieved by refusing to submit and accept.”
“You seem pretty accepting of the deal with Officer Smith over that boy. Sorry, I caint let it go. I got my own share of bullheadedness.”
Meena sighed. “The situation is not as simple as you believe.”
“It never is. Maybe that boy is your fate, to put it your way. Maybe he’s been put in your life to teach you something. I was mad as hell at the U.S. Army until I got old enough to see that maybe for a independent warthog like myself a few lessons in obeying orders wasn’t such a bad idea. One person I learned to obey was myself. You might give that a try. There was this time, a priest was saying mass and he asked me to throw a camouflage tarp over a pile of mortar rounds to make a altar and it was no big deal except that I got to thinking about that altar, what we were going to use it for, and sure enough not a half hour later—”
“Please. Finish your story.”
“Naw, I want to hear your story first. Here we are at the statues.”
That night he came to her in her dreams.
Chapter 19
Dr. Chatterjee was making her first rounds of the monastery infirmary—the abbot had appointed her visiting physician. She accompanied Flavian as he listened, cajoled, and ministered to his aged brothers. She busied herself elsewhere when he sneaked a beer to Brother Zaccheus from a stash concealed in the medications refrigerator but insisted that he take one away from Brother Dismas who had diabetes and no business drinking. She listened as Brother Wilfred, lost to Alzheimer’s, told the same anecdote three times. She stood by as he plumped pillows for Brother Eustache, who needed his bed cranked up so he could watch the changing light.
Their last patient was Brother Zaccheus, immobile and obese from multiple sclerosis. Flavian handed her the blood pressure cuff, which she looped around the great ham of Zaccheus’s arm. She pumped and released the bulb—a pneumatic sigh.
“A priest, a rabbi, and a minister were walking down a street in San Francisco,” Zaccheus said, “when they ran into a prostitute carrying one of those yellow plastic bananas that squeak when they’re pumped.”
Flavian put his finger to his lips. “Later with that one, Zack.”
“Your pressure is marginal, the dipstick shows you spilling protein, we need to check that further. We’ll do a blood test—I may need to change your medications.”
Zaccheus placed the back of his hand on his forehead and rolled his eyes upward. “She’s the reason my blood pressure is up. How about a sponge bath?”
Flavian tucked the cuff into his tote bag. “Sorry, for that I need a second pair of hands and Adrian’s stuck with the cows.”
“She could help.” Zaccheus gave Meena a beseeching look. “Puh-leeze.”
Meena patted his puffy hand. “I’m afraid that’s not my job. But do save your joke for my next visit. I want to know what happens to that banana.”
“No you don’t,” Flavian said. “Take my word for it.”
Zaccheus cupped his hand at Meena’s ear. “Adrian won’t show up because the abbot brought in a woman doctor.”
“Oh, so that is the story.” Meena laid down her clipboard and pushed up her sleeves. “Perhaps I may lend a hand after all.”
Flavian was already at the door. “Not to worry. Zack can wait on his bath.”
Meena was poking in the closet, pulling out towels. “Brother Flavian. The abbot has appointed me physician in residence. That means all the monks are under my care, including those who may not want to be under my care. As attending physician, I shall require Brother Adrian to perform his assigned tasks. But for today I will take his place.”
A thumbs up from Zaccheus. “The boss has spoken.”
Meena looked at her watch. “The paperwork will require ten min
utes. Enough time for you to draw water.”
She returned to find Zaccheus shirtless and sitting on the edge of his bed. Together she and Flavian levered him from his bed and into the bathing chair. Flavian began sponging his great folds of flesh while Meena changed the linens. “Brother Zaccheus,” she said, “what do you think the abbey should do with its cows?”
“Big Macs,” he replied promptly. “With cheese. Good old American cheese, too, not that smelly French stuff we make around here.”
Meena took a sponge and began soaping his back. “What if we understood that the cows and the trees and rivers are God’s ways of making herself known to the world? Is it so hard to see each of these creatures as one of the infinite aspects of God? Consider how much they give us and how little they ask in return.” She wrung out her sponge and soaked it in rinse water. “Must compassion always yield to efficiency?”
“Everywhere except in a monastery,” Zack said. “Or so I’d like to think. By any standard of efficiency, the abbot would have parked my ass in some cheap nursing home ten years ago. Instead here I am being hand-washed by a gorgeous woman.”
Meena squeezed her sponge over Zaccheus’s back. “If the choice must be efficiency or compassion, then perhaps we should prefer compassion.”
Flavian dropped the soap, splashing water into Zack’s eyes. Consternation and confusion until Meena flushed Zack’s eyes and Flavian regained his composure. “That’s a new tack coming from you,” Flavian said. “Last time we talked you were in the Big Mac camp. ‘Institutions must make difficult and unpleasant decisions.’ And so forth.”
“That is correct.”
“So what changed your mind?”
Meena considered. “A little bird.”
“Women change their minds,” Zaccheus said. “That’s what they do. They’re the river, we’re the rocks. And we know who wins that war.”
Meena tested the water with her elbow. “Too cool. More hot water, please.”
The Man Who Loved Birds Page 17