Eliot Pattison - Bone Mountain

Then the line ended, near the entrance, and he was gazing into Jokar's face. The old lama was struggling no longer. He had come home. He had finished what he had set out to do when he left India. That's all it was, Shan knew now, with a strange, sad warmth. There had been no conspiracy. He had never intended to lead the Tibetans in resistance or stir up political controversy. There had been no motive other than to find closure to a long life well lived, to leave his bones in honored company, to give his bones to the mountain they all cherished.

Jokar wore a serene smile on his face, which was so peaceful he seemed only to be in slumber. Shan touched the lama's hand, wrapped around his rosary. The warmth had left it, but it was not yet cold. The lama's other hand was resting on the leg of the shriveled man beside him, a figure with short white hair and a small wooden mixing bowl cradled in his lap. Jokar had known him. Lokesh had known him, too. Shan's old friend had recognized the sandalwood dorje in the antechamber as that of his old teacher, Chigu.

He gazed back on the tomb. It had probably been only an hour since Jokar had placed the candle on the altar and lit the stick of incense. The lama had climbed onto the long stone bench with his colleagues, clasped his beads, and the leg of his old friend, then drifted away for the last time. Inside Yapchi Mountain treasures were buried, Dremu had said.

Shan used the last of his water to reverently fill the offering bowls on the altar, before he suddenly remembered the American. He paused by Jokar a moment, then walked, backwards, to the thangka, climbed back to the entrance chamber and stepped outside, into the dusk. Winslow was nowhere to be seen.

He searched frantically with the electric light, first at the deep crevasse beyond the stone pillar, then outside, on the path. There was no sign of the American anywhere. He must have dragged himself down the treacherous path, to make sure Shan would not risk his own life in trying to help him. The trail was empty but dim, with no more than a hundred yards visible in either direction. He stepped down the trail several yards, then peered over the edge with the light. Nothing was visible, nothing but blackness. It was nearly a thousand feet to the bottom.

Returning to the cleft, he extinguished the light and studied the sky. Stars were appearing overhead, and below. A wind blew, and he realized his cheek was suddenly cold and wet. He wiped away a tear then stepped back into the cleft and began searching every corner, every indentation in the rock wall.

Five minutes later he saw the tip of a boot, above his head, jutting out from a long, high crack in the rockface that ended a few feet off the ground with a flat rock like a shelf, looking out over the entrance to the cave. Shan pulled himself halfway up the rock and lit the shelf with the flashlight. Winslow was sitting on the small shelf, the rock wall pressing against each shoulder.

"We must go now," he called out urgently, but the American was studying the shadows beyond Shan's shoulder and seemed not to hear. Shan scrambled up the rock and reached out to wipe the froth from the American's face again, then pulled back with a shudder. The froth was cold. Winslow's eyes, still open, had gone beyond seeing.

He dropped to the American's side. A long wracking sob shook Shan's body. So many times Shan had wanted Winslow to return to his embassy, so many opportunities had come and gone for the American to find safety. Just a phone call, just a word at the Golmud base, just a request to Jenkins at the oil camp. He could have escaped. But each time he had chosen to stay.

After a moment Shan realized there was a bundle on Winslow's legs, wrapped in black cloth. And over the cloth, clenched in the American's hand, was a note. Shan gently lifted the paper out of the lifeless fingers. It was nearly illegible. The American had written it at the very end, in English, with trembling fingers, in the dark. Shan studied it for several minutes before he could decipher the words.

By all that's holy, leave me here to watch over them. Tell no one but Melissa. Let the others wonder, my last little joke on the world. It's not so bad, Shan. I think I'm getting the hang of this impermanence thing. This is where I belong this time. Every lama needs a cowboy.

Shan sat a long time, fighting the dark, hollow thing he felt inside. Death was an old acquaintance. Death didn't scare him, it just intimidated him, it made him feel so unprepared, so incomplete, so wasteful of what his Tibetan friends called the precious human incarnation.

He sat until the dark thing lifted from his heart, until he could bear to look into Winslow's eyes, until it seemed they were just friends silently watching the night fall. He studied the American once more, read the note again, and he knew that in his own way Winslow had found what he had been looking for.

At last he rose, pulled the bundle from Winslow's lap, crossed the American's lifeless hands over his legs, and pushed his eyelids closed. He hesitated a moment, then searched the American's pockets to find the tiny pouch of salt prepared by Jokar. He placed the pouch in Winslow's hand, closed his fingers around the true earth, then climbed down.

Winslow had realized what was behind the long thangka, where Jokar was going. He wanted to watch over the old ones. He wanted to stay by all that's holy.

Shan found himself wandering back inside the mountain with the bundle Winslow had been holding when he died, the bundle taken from Padme's satchel, switched by the American for the accounts that had proven Khodrak's lies. He felt as though he were being led, walking like a blind man toward the tomb chamber to deliver the bundle. It was Winslow's spirit, Lokesh would have said, asking Shan to show him the way to the lamas, to deliver a final offering. In that moment Shan would not have disagreed.

On the altar the candle still flickered, almost at the end of its wick. He set the book at the bottom of the ledge, studying the lamas again. The flickering light seemed to give movement to the faces of the old men.

"He decided not to leave you," Shan whispered to Jokar. "That American, he came far," he added, remembering the lama's words to Winslow at the mixing ledge. Afterwards Winslow, shaken by the lama, had told Shan of his dream, of flying through the air with Jokar. Maybe that's where they were now, floating over the mountain, laughing at the surprise they had dealt those below. Shan thought of the two geese he had seen soaring over the mountain.

"It's such a perfect place to finish," a deep, disembodied voice observed suddenly.

Shan gasped and stepped backwards, as though struck, his heart racing as he gaped at Jokar.

Then a tall, gaunt figure stepped through the door, his face so weary, his eyes so wide, so much emotion on his features, it took Shan took a moment before he recognized Tenzin.

The abbot of Sangchi pulled a candle from his pocket and silently stepped to the altar to light it from the dying wick of the one already there. Placing the candle on the altar, he turned and surveyed the figures on the ledge. "You found the chair," he whispered in an awed voice, and slowly walked down the line of dead lamas, pausing before each one, his lips moving in silent prayer, until he reached the far end, the oldest of the old ones, the one with the grinning skull and the sackcloth robe.

"What do you mean?" Shan asked as Tenzin studied the oldest of the dead lamas.

"Siddhi was the first," Tenzin replied, "the first teacher at Rapjung. Lepka told me something at the mixing ledge, after he heard those purbas talking about Jokar as a leader of rebellion. He said the purbas misunderstood, that Siddhi was a teacher who embraced the Medicine Buddha, that he didn't organize the people to fight the Mongols, he organized groups to be missionaries among the Mongols, to spread the way of compassion." He looked back at Shan. "Jokar would never allow his name to be used for violent means. When he said he would take the chair of Siddhi, this is what he meant."