Eliot Pattison - Bone Mountain

Gang's wife collapsed onto the bench beside Shan. "He came with the People's Liberation Army, a teenager then, in 1964." The woman quickly explained that Gang had arrived as a young corporal with the occupation forces and after serving his term had accepted land from the army, and won a bonus for marrying a Tibetan woman. "It was my sister he married," the woman explained in a sad tone, "and they settled near the northern road to Amdo. They had a son and there was much happiness. Gang became a Buddhist. Once, when his son was very sick, a medicine lama from Rapjung gompa came and saved the boy's life. After that, Gang came to help the lamas with the special herb plantings whenever he could, always a week or two in spring to ready the earth and a week in the autumn to help with the harvest and drying.

"But then those children came" the woman continued, "after they had destroyed Rapjung. The Red Guard," she said ominously. "Gang's wife had feared for our father and went with their son to help the family flee into the mountains. But the Guard caught up with them. They held a trial on the spot and condemned the family for being members of the oppressive landowner class." She glanced at Shan and looked toward the ground. "Those judges pronounced sentence and made my nephew carry it out," she said in a near whisper.

Shan's head slumped down. He held it, elbows on his knees, fighting a choking sensation in his throat. The woman meant the Red Guard had forced the young boy to execute his mother and grandfather.

"Then they took that boy away," she added in a hollow voice.

Such survivors of political undesirables, if not killed immediately, had often been sent back east to special political indoctrination schools, so they could join the Chinese proletariat. "We never saw him again."

"They say Gang went crazy," Lhandro continued the story, "that he started ambushing and killing Red Guard. No one knew for certain. But the Red Guard became scared of certain places in the mountains and began pulling back from the area. The sister of his wife returned," he said with a sad glance at the woman, "and was assigned to the collective that took over their old family estate. Gang came down from the mountains after a couple of years and worked there. Eventually they became husband and wife. When the collective broke up they came here, to be alone and because of the debt Gang felt he still owed the healers who had lived here." Lhandro cast his look of apology toward Shan again. "I forgot about Gang and his problem with the Chinese. We never…" His voice drifted away.

Nyma completed the sentence for him. "In Yapchi we never had a Chinese friend before."

By the next morning Padme was alert and talkative, hungry enough to eat two bowls of tsampa.

"You saved my life," the injured monk said to Shan and Lhandro several times. He sat by the fire, a blanket over his shoulders against the chill morning wind, sometimes intensely studying the reconstructed shrines, making notes in a pad he kept in his belt pouch, sometimes staring at the flock of sheep that grazed by the stream. "But I don't understand why you bring your herd here," Padme said to Lhandro. His gaze fell upon Winslow, who was walking along the stream.

"We were going north when we found you," Lhandro said. "You could not travel so we sought water and shelter."

"That young girl with you, she said those bags the sheep carry are filled with salt." Padme kept staring at the American as he spoke.

Lhandro nodded. "From Lamtso."

The young monk searched Lhandro's face. "That is a very old thing," he said in an odd, uncertain tone. It almost sounded like he was chastising Lhandro. "It could be contaminated if you just take it from the soil."

Lhandro looked at the monk, perplexed, even worried, wondering, Shan knew, if in all their years without monks the Yapchi farmers had forgotten something important. "It is good salt," the rongpa said. The monk shrugged, and accepted another bowl of tea from Gang's wife.

"But there are rules about salt. There is a government monopoly on salt," the monk said in his tentative voice. "I would hate to see you accused of-" he paused, then shrugged and did not complete his sentence. "If there was no caravan I may not have been found for many hours." He turned and gazed at Shan.

"Why?" Shan asked. "Why were you on the plain? Were you expecting to meet someone?"

Padme explained that he and a group of monks from Norbu sometimes roamed the lands neighboring their gompa looking for religious artifacts. They had not visited this remote plain before and when they arrived upon it they had realized that they would need to split up if they were to explore it all. Padme had walked to the far end of the plain and had just come upon a small cairn and was examining the area when he was attacked by the giant with the staff.

"Did you see who left this?" a deep voice interjected in Mandarin. Winslow appeared in front of them, holding the yellow vest left by the American woman. "Did you see an American?"

"No," Padme replied slowly. "It was just there. By that little cairn."

The American sighed and handed it to the monk. "Take it. Might as well do someone some good."

Padme extended his arm hesitantly, dropped his blanket, and pulled on the vest. "Has this foreigner been gathering salt, too?" he asked Lhandro in Tibetan.

"Just along to enjoy the fresh air," Winslow quipped in Tibetan, and the monk stared at him, his eyes wide with wonder.

"An American who speaks Tibetan?" he exclaimed, and looked back, with intense curiosity, at Lhandro and Shan, as though the news somehow changed his perspective on the party.

They would stay at the ruins until the next day, Lhandro announced, while the Yapchi men probed the surrounding land by horseback. The next morning the caravan would continue north while some of the party returned Padme safely to his gompa. The monk expressed his gratitude and led the Yapchi villagers to the base of the wall, out of the wind, where he sat to lead them in mantras to the Compassionate Buddha.

A quarter of an hour later the Yapchi riders trotted away, each in a different direction. Nyma stepped to the door of the house, speaking to someone inside, then bent to tighten the laces of her shoes. Gang's wife appeared and pointed to a worn dirt path that ran along the outside edge of what had been the outer wall of the old gompa. No, not to the path, but to someone on the path: Tenzin, walking at a slow, contemplative pace toward the far end of the ruins.

"A kora," Lokesh said as recognition lit his eyes. It was a pilgrim path. Many old shrines and gompas had such a kora, for circumambulation by pilgrims as a way of acquiring merit and paying homage to those who resided there, or had resided there.

"Past the wall at the north, to an old hermit's cave," Gang's wife explained, gesturing past the reconstructed buildings as if the wall still existed, "then up past the drup-chu shrine," she said, meaning a shrine by a spring of what the old Tibetans called attainment water, believed to impart blessings and health on those who drank from it. Lokesh bent and tightened his own laces, looking up expectantly at Shan. Shan grinned and stepped away to retrieve a water bottle from the stack of blankets by the wall, where the caravan party, except Dremu, had slept. The Golok, as usual, had chosen to sleep apart, hidden somewhere, but close.

When he returned Lokesh was staring in confusion at Lhandro, Nyma, and Anya. The three Yapchi villagers had begun to walk down the kora path, but to the east, to the right, in a counterclockwise direction. Lokesh twisted his head in curiosity. From behind Shan heard a disappointed sigh and saw Padme in the doorway, bracing himself with an arm on the frame, staring after the trio.

"Why didn't we know this?" Shan wondered. Only as Lokesh turned to him did he realize he had given voice to his question.