Don Winslow: The Trail to Buddha_s Mirror

He stood on the Hong Kong side. Behind him were the New Territories, ahead of him was the People’s Republic of China. All around him were the barren brown hills. The only sound was the rushing wind, and he felt the quiet in eerie contrast to the incessant cacophony of Kowloon.

He watched as the guards checked the papers of a young man dressed in a sedate gray suit. They didn’t search the bundle the kid carried under his arm. Diplomatic immunity, Graham thought, as the emissary cleared the checkpoint and walked pigeon-toed down the road toward him. Graham stepped forward to meet him.

“Mr. Joseph Graham?”

The boy stole a glance at Graham’s arm.

Jesus, he’s young, Graham thought. Or maybe I’m just old. They say that grief ages you. They’re right.

“Mister Wu?” Graham asked

The boy bowed. “I wish to express my own sympathy and that of my government.”

“Thank you.”

“A most tragic and unfortunate accident.”

Accident, my ass, he thought. You pricks killed him. Graham wanted to punch him in the mouth, but most of the fight was out of him. Since they’d received the word of Neal’s death, he’d felt empty.

“Have you made any progress in recovering the body?”

The boy flushed. “Unfortunately, no. Please understand that the chasm into which Mr. Carey fell is not accessible.”

I’ll bet.

Graham didn’t answer. The boy proffered the bundle, wrapped in brown paper.

“Mr. Carey’s belongings.”

“He must have been traveling light.”

The boy flushed again.

“Can you tell me anything more about why Neal was in-”

“As you are aware, Mr. Graham, our arrangement specifically precludes any discussion of these circumstances. Suffice it to say Mr. Carey died in a climbing accident.”

“He was afraid of heights.” “Even so.”

Graham gave it up. Neal was dead, and it didn’t really matter why or how.

“Thank you for your help,” he said.

“You are welcome, and I am sorry for your loss.”

They stood looking at each other. The boy seemed to want to say more. Graham waited another moment, and then turned around to start back to the car.

Then he heard Wu say, “Mr. Graham.”

Graham turned around.

“Mr. Carey loved literature.”

“Yeah?”

“We had delightful conversations about Huckleberry Finn.”

So what?

“I’m glad,” Graham answered.

Wu pointed to the bundle. “Especially the scene on page ninety-four! When Jim meets Huck on the island.”

“Okay.”

Wu turned and walked back through the checkpoint.

Graham got back in the car and ripped open the brown paper. There was an old shirt, a pair of slacks, and a used paperback copy of Huckleberry Finn. He flipped to page ninety-four, and read the underlined passage.

He set the open book in his lap and started to cry. Then he read the passage again:

Well, I warn’t long making him understand I warn’t dead. I was ever so glad to see Jim. I warn’t lonesome, now. I told him I warn’t afraid of him telling the people where I was.

Graham jumped out of the car and ran back toward the checkpoint. He had never read Huckleberry Finn, but he had seen the movie. He remembered that Huck had faked his death and disappeared down a river on a raft. But he didn’t remember how it ended. He ran up to the chain-link fence and shouted.

“Hey, Wu!”

“Yes?”

“Did Huck Finn ever make it home?”

Wu’s smile was as clean and wide as the blue sky.

“Fuck yes!” he said, then he paused. “Oh, yes, Aunt Sally! He makes it home!”

Aunt Sally?! Graham thought. What the hell does that mean? I guess I’d better read the book. He got back in the car, told the driver to take him back to the airport, then started to laugh. He laughed for a while, then cried some more, then laughed again, especially when he read the last line of the book, the one about Aunt Sally.

Neal carried a bucket of water in each hand. The buckets were wooden and heavy, and the climb from the creek to the kitchen was steep. But he had made the trip twenty times a day for six months, and his leg and arm muscles were ropy and firm.

He didn’t even feel the cold of the snow as he crunched his way up the hill. His brown quilted jacket was warm, and the smell of the fir trees was wonderful. He passed through a side gate, across the small courtyard where some of the monks were sparring, and went into the kitchen. He poured the water into a large kettle suspended over a fire. Then he returned the buckets to the pantry, bowed to the head cook, and walked back through the courtyard.

He stepped outside and climbed the few steps up to a pagoda set on a small knoll. There were many such vistas in the Tiger Taming Monastery, but this was his favorite. The Himalayan peaks rose in the distance above a broad plain. To his left a rocky crag climbed toward the sunset. To his right a waterfall cascaded between groves of giant cedars.

He sat on a bench in the pagoda and watched the sun set. At first it was a fiery red ball above the Himalayas. Soon it fell behind the snowy peaks, leaving the sky a diaphanous sheet of scarlet, then rose, then orange.

He left before darkness fell, padding back through the snow into a long wooden building. He inhaled the incense smoldering by a statue of Buddha, then climbed the staircase and went into his cell, a ten-by-ten cubicle that smelled of pine, and sat down on his kang. He lit his kerosene lamp, took Roderick Random from under his sleeping mat, and started to read.