A Single Eye by Susan Dunlap Read Free Book Online Page A

the words out. “Omigod, Leo, it is you, isn’t it?’
    Leo nodded. “Me.”
    Relief washed over me. Then delight. And then I was just pissed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
    He shrugged. “You had questions needing answers. You couldn’t have asked the roshi.”
    His answers about Garson-roshi, about himself —It was himself he’d been so hard on. I’d have to rethink everything he’d said.
    Another clutch of students hurried by, one of the men pausing for a “Hello, Garson-roshi. I’m looking forward to this sesshin.”
    It was Leo I had to deliver Yamana’s warning to. Suddenly, it would have been worlds easier to give the warning to self-absorbed Rob. But Leo, how could Leo be planning anything Yamana-roshi considered so dangerous? I wanted to look away, to be no part of this message. I maintained my gaze.
    â€œLeo. Yamana-roshi didn’t send me to this specific sesshin. He has recommended your sesshins in the past. When I told him I was coming he thought it was exactly the right thing for me . . . initially.”
    â€œBut?”
    â€œBut when he heard you were leaving and that this sesshin was going to be in honor of your student, Aeneas, he said to tell you that, that—” I swallowed, then repeated the words verbatim. “He said, ‘Tell Garson I know what he is planning and he must not do that.’”
    Leo didn’t move, not his body, not his expression. He looked neither chastened nor surprised. Whatever his reaction he was not reflecting it back on me. He stood there in the failing light of the November evening; he could, I realized, have been Yamana-roshi. At this moment he wasn’t Leo, he was the roshi.
    Then he turned back to the wheelbarrow. “Time’s short. If you’re going to take that bag of beans up the hill and get into the zendo by seven, you’re going to have to make some tough-broad moves with that wheelbarrow.”
    â€œLeo—”
    He seemed to draw into himself and become not exactly larger but majestic in a way Rob had not. He said, “You don’t contradict the teacher.” Then he grinned, as if switching back from roshi to Leo, as if nothing had happened. “Since you’re Yamana’s student, I’m giving Rob a new job assignment. You’ll be my jisha.”
    â€œYour assistant! How could you—?”
    â€œYou don’t contradict the teacher. If Yamana trusts you, so do I.”
    I started to speak and realized I couldn’t get words out. And shouldn’t, for that matter. This, too, was not all that surprising, at least not in the context of Zen. Masters can be inexplicable. Ours not to wonder why . . .
    â€œDarcy, when you dump that bag of cacao beans, see if you can get the cook to make me a cup of his fine cocoa. I’ll just have time for it before we get to the zendo.”
    My head was spinning. I was glad to have something as concrete as pushing a load up a hill to anchor me to reality.
    â€œAnd Darcy?”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œHave him make you a cup, too.”

    Leo, Garson-roshi, slumped back against the truck bed. It was the New York student’s trust that got to him. She should be able to trust him, it was the least she should expect, to trust that her teacher wouldn’t put her in danger. But had he done just that?
    He had given the wheel of dharma a big turn when he set up this sesshin—his last sesshin. His students each had an opinion as to why he was suddenly leaving Redwood Canyon Monastery with no future plans for either it or himself. The skeptical, he was sure, assumed he was back on the bottle, the hopeful hoped that, after his long exile in the woods, he’d been offered a city post he couldn’t mention yet; the wiser focused on Aeneas and figured after six years things had finally caught up with their teacher.
    A man is being chased by a tiger. He runs as fast as he can, as long as