Gay Hendricks - The First Rule of Ten

He came back with two icy-cold beers. I knew I liked this guy. He sank into his recliner with a contented grunt. We sipped in silence.

The room seemed to darken a little.

I glanced over at John D.

He was deep in thought, and that thought was making him sad. I just waited. None of my business. He turned to me.

“I wasn’t lying,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“I wasn’t lying, not completely. I did have a son called Charlie, and he was in the Navy Reserves.” I wasn’t sure how to respond, so I said nothing.

“Little bits of him are all over some godforsaken road in Al Asad,” John D continued. “The rest is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. He got blowed up, making the world safe, at least that’s what I used to think. Now I don’t know what to believe.”

I felt the ache of his loss, resonating deep in my own chest. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“So am I, son. So am I.” Then John D folded the grief tight and tucked it back in, wherever it was he stored it.

“So, Ten, you never did tell me what our robe-wearing friends did to get you to come all the way out here. Anything I oughta be worried about?”

I told him my Barbara Maxey bedtime story, taking my time. I was curious to see what he thought. He mulled it over, frowning as he drew the same conclusions I had.

“You’re thinking they might have sent someone after her,” he said. “Maybe kilt her because she broke away?”

“I don’t know,” I answered. “I don’t have any evidence to support that scenario.”

For the second time tonight, a vivid image invaded my cerebrum.

Flat, spatulate thumbs, pressing, squeezing, crushing the life out of Barbara’s fragile neck as she stared up in horror at a hirsute face and crazy, leering eyes.

I shuddered. Maybe my brain didn’t know enough yet, but my gut sure did.

“You figure something out?” John D was watching me.

“No. Maybe. I don’t know.”

We lapsed into a second silence, lost in thought.

“You ever see things?” I asked John D. “You know, with your mind’s eye?”

He thought about it. “Sometimes I see these streaks of light, like ghosts. Floaties, I call ’em. That what you mean?”

“More like actual visions,” I said.

“Can’t say that I do. Why? Do you?”

I was too far down the road to turn back. Anyway, for some reason I already trusted this man.

“Before I was a cop, I spent a lot of time in a monastery.”

“No fooling. You were a priest?”

“Not that kind of monastery. A Buddhist one. In India. My father’s a practicing monk over there. Anyway, my teachers encouraged me and my fellow novices to notice any pictures that sprang to mind-you know, visualizations that arose without even trying. The more I noticed them, the more they seemed to happen.”

“You talking about ESP?”

“It’s more like staying attuned to what’s happening beneath the surface, and somehow picking it up in visual form.”

“Like dowsing for water,” John D said. “Only it’s your mind that’s bent like a branch.”

“Exactly. One time, I was maybe seventeen, I was called to the bedside of an old monk. My father thought it would be instructive. The monk was somewhere around eighty-he didn’t know exactly when he was born-and deep in his final passage.”

“You mean dying?”

“Yes. Dying. He was lying in bed, with his eyes closed. I was only allowed the briefest of visits. I sat cross-legged on the floor next to him. I started chanting from one of our traditional liturgies for the dying. All of a sudden, the clear image of a snowball fight flashed across my mental screen; you know, just a bunch of little Tibetan boys, lobbing snow at each other. It was like I was there. The monk must have sensed a change in my concentration. His eyes flickered open, and he turned to look at me. ‘Describe,’ he said.”

“No kidding. You tell him what you saw?”

“Yes. I told him. After a minute, he smiled. ‘That was the day I became a monk,’ he said.”

“No kidding,” John D said again.

“He described how a lama showed up at their little village that snowy afternoon and invited the boy to come live with him in the monastery.”

“And his parents agreed?”

“Well, it’s a great honor, to have a monk in the family. And they were very poor, so it was one less mouth to feed.”

“Hunh.”

“Anyway, then he started to weep. I was astonished. I had never seen a grown man cry, much less one of the monastery elders. He said, ‘I’ve always wondered what my life would have been if I hadn’t left my friends that day.’”

“What did you say?”

“I … I told him that his life had been full of merit, one I could only hope to emulate. After a moment, he just motioned at me to continue with the prayers, and closed his eyes. He crossed over later that night, sitting upright, surrounded by the senior lamas.”

John D cleared his throat. “You ask me, sounds like that’s a fine way to go.”

I was flooded with sharp longing for my own friends, Yeshe and Lobsang, so very far away. They knew me like no others, sensed my every mood. They loved me, without judgment. They nourished my being.

John D seemed to register the press of grief in my chest. He walked over to the mantel and returned with a faded photograph.

I looked down at the photo. A young man and two strapping boys posed side by side, grinning amid a thick grove of blooming almond trees. The older boy sported a cowboy hat and a carefree grin. The younger was looking up at his big brother, his mouth serious, his eyes ablaze with admiration. The trees were mostly swathed with snowy white blossoms, though here and there one boasted a frothy explosion of pink.

“That’s me with Charlie, and my other son, Norman. Back when their mother was still alive. Back when we were all full of hope.” John D rubbed his callused thumb across the picture. “Things don’t always work out the way we want them to, Ten. Don’t mean they’re not working out the way they’re supposed to.”

I handed the picture back. I touched his arm lightly.

“Thanks. I’d better get going.”

“Hang on, hang on, young fella.” He bustled back into the kitchen and returned with a small paper bag, which he pressed into my hands. “Take some of my almonds with you. Case you get hungry on the way home.”

Visions are well and good, but sometimes the simplest deed will warm the cold places in our heart when we least expect it. As I drove away, I vowed to someday return John D’s act of kindness.

As I cycled through my morning maintenance rituals, I was all too aware of the conflicting jumble of feelings inside. Each one vied for my attention, like siblings at a dinner table: excitement over the many tasks ahead; anxiety at the possibility of failure; concern for John D. Woven through all of these was a thin but familiar thread of dread-the sense that I was about to volunteer to be berated, yet again, by a woman I liked. I had to call Julie back, deal with the disastrous call of the night before, but I kept putting it off. This uncharacteristic procrastination told me I’d already assigned my heart in some way to this woman. After one dinner. How had this happened?

I picked up the phone, looking over to Tank, asleep in a patch of sun.

“She probably won’t pick up anyway, right?” Tank didn’t answer.

She did, on the third ring.

“It’s Ten. Is this a good time? Can you talk?”

She snorted. “Gee, thanks. Rub it in, why don’t you?”

I swallowed. “Julie, I’m sorry I snapped at you before.”

“A girl steps outside after a long night of work, sees the full moon, gets up her nerve to call a boy about it, and bam! You put me off my feed, Tenzing, and I’m not happy about it. Nothing puts me off my feed.”