18. Eudora’s Knight

The rhythm of the rain reminds the roaming reminiscing romantic that the tree top fog had dissipated. Some other pilgrim may notice the change in weather. Clouds coast along the night sky, mysterious and emancipating simultaneously. Sometimes some wet wanderers are not aware how or why their cigarettes remain lighted in the rain. While others still unknowingly puff away at rain soaked butts, unlit , as they gradually fall apart. The river runs rapidly and the banks can wash away any indication of the previous presence of once welcomed wrestling lovers and nested geese. The great space that once allowed vessels of various sizes flow freely under the bridge to nowhere can be narrowed by the rising waters only permitting the passage of a lonely log drifting aimlessly downstream.

 

Sundance dashing from the bedroom to the fridge for two more beers for himself and his momentary lover asked Isabella

 

“Where’s Jake?”

 

“Oh, he went out for one of his famous walks in the rain” she said annoyingly looking up from her textbook.

 

Sundance grabbed a third bottle of beer and squeezed himself onto the couch where Isabella lay. Making sure the bedroom blanket adequately covered his lower half of his body he gifted the third beer to Isabella.

 

“To Jake!”

 

She raised her bottle half-heartedly in response.

 

“I guess.”

 

Sundance continued,

 

“Ya know I remember one night last fall when it was pouring so hard my family frantically scrambled to look for Noah’s boat design in the bible when all of a sudden there was a ring at the door bell. There stood a drenched worn down pilgrim who had just walked seven or eight miles during that precursor to the probable great last flood. He looked like a pathetic puppy abandoned along some unmarked county road in the middle of Nowhere Ville, New Jersey. And, yet…I couldn’t believe it …and yet…there he stood with his big silly grin standing in the doorway as my mother answered the door and he says ‘Hi, Mrs. Cassidy is Sundance home?’ Good ole vagabond soaked Jake standing there just as if it were a same as any other night.

 

My mother looked around and didn’t see his car and as she invited him in she inquired ‘ where’s your car? Did someone drop you off?’

 

He wiped his feet and responded

 

‘No ma’m. I walked.’

 

My mother called out for me and demanded that I get him some dry clothes while she made some fresh hot chocolate. Though I apologized for my mother Jake was unusually grateful. My younger brother thought Jake was cool and my sister just said ‘weird’ and both left us alone in my room. He didn’t say much of anything about why he was there, something about butting heads with his father again. I tried to change the subject and soothe him by playing the song ‘Yesterday’ for him. I was proud that I had just figured out all the chords. I am not sure but I think I saw his eyes well up as I played my rendition of the song.”

 

Isabella listening intently now touched Sundance’s hand

 

“ I know about that night. “ she said and continued

 

“Jake did tell me about that evening was how welcoming and hospitable you and your family were. I know he is still grateful for your friendship. But at the same time that’s Jake. It seems like he is drawn to walking alone in the rain almost as if there are voices calling he can’t resist.”

 

Sundance took a swig of his brew as he heard Diana’s voice call from the bedroom

 

“Where’s that beer sweetie?”

 

“Well, duty calls and I am here to serve you know. He’ll be ok. He always is isn’t he?”

 

Isabella smiled

 

“Yeh , I am not worried. Now go live up to your duty and I can get back to my studying.”

 

Isabella was quick to get lost again in her studying and the next time she looked up from her books three hours had passsed since Jake had made his departure. Coincidentally, as she checked her watch again to see if the time was really what she thought it was as she heard the front door open slowly. Jake was not too effective in being inconspicuous squishing his way across the parquet floors leaving big duck like wet footprints.

 

He saw Isabella awake on the couch

 

“Hey, you ok?”

 

Isabella smirked

 

“I think the question is ‘Are you ok?”

 

“Yeh, just a little wet. I need a drink. You got any smokes?”

 

Sometimes certain exchanges are better off not to pursue or to continue the path down a certain line of questioning. Sometimes silence is the best course of action. She was totally aware that if Jake wanted to talk about where he had been and so on he would have presented himself at her feet immediately upon passing through the portals of Diana’s castle giving full report of his short pilgrimage with accompanying eight and a half by eleven black and white glossies if he could.

 

He grabbed a beer, found a communal cigarette pack on the kitchen table and chugged the bottle and smoked a butt all in what seemed to be one big inhale.

 

Isabella couldn’t resist and succumbed to her nature

 

“Are you sure you are ok?”

 

“I think me and Sundance need to head up to Walden Pond tomorrow and spend some time there before I head back home.”

 

“Ok. I wasn’t really expecting you guys to be here in the first place. You talk to Sundance about this? “

 

Isabella sat up and continued

 

“This is kind of abrupt isn’t it? Anything happen out there?”

Jake slowly began to lie down on his back finishing off his cigarette.

 

“ I don’t know. It’s weird ya know. There I was walking along the Charles River when I saw this dark figure standing on the outside of the railing on the bridge that crossed the river. I went up to this person and it was a girl. Actually she looked a lot what I imagine my sister would have looked like if she had lived. So I asked this girl if she was ok. She mumbled something of how her fiancé’ was MIA in Vietnam and how no one could give her good answer or any hope. I think she was crying. I really couldn’t tell with all that rain. When I asked she said her name was Jen and I reached out to help her back to the walkway side of the bridge. Without any discussion we both just strolled together, just talking about general stuff: weather, Boston  …you know. I saw a coffee shop still open and asked her if she would like a cup. We went in and just like that this girl just went on an on talking for a couple of hours about nothing specific, just talking bout stuff. I just kept pouring coffee trying to keep awake and listening while she went on about this and that. When we walked out the coffee shop she squeezed my hand, said ‘your sweet’ and gave me a quick peck on my cheek. She turned left and walking up a hill disappeared from view and I came back here. I have no idea who she was, where I was, how I got there or how I got back. It’s just all very strange, ya know. I felt like I should have a catcher’s mitt or something. “

 

Isabella joined the speculation

 

“Maybe this incidental encounter is one of those mystical planned coincidences as to why you came up here with Sundance in the first place. Maybe that’s why you ended up at Diana’s. Maybe that’s why you felt called to go out and walk in the rain. Maybe you were meant to meet that girl and in some way save her. You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind’s blowing, so let it be.”

 

She was teasing him but Jake took everything she said seriously, as always. Jake bent his head rubbing his eyes and answered

 

“Yeh , but maybe it was all a dream. ”

 

“Well don’t over-think or over-analyze it like some populist pundit philosopher or fledgling English professor! You might hurt yourself.“

 

Isabella thought twice about her curt remark and then leaned over to the floor where Jake was lying down and whispered in that sweet seducing soft voice to Jake

 

“I am sure you were helpful to that girl .You do give good ear, Jake.”

 

“Wha?”

 

“Jake, you must be tired. Let it be.  Get some sleep and maybe you are right …maybe you need to just head home tomorrow.”

 

Jake was almost completely asleep on the floor by the time Isabella could get back to the couch. She picked up her books and muttered

 

“Ah, just another night in paradise.”

14. Gaia’s Koan

Recent renegade revisionist recorders of history report how the rivers that ran from the northeastern Green and White Mountains of the Appalachian range became highways for inland treks for lost exile pilgrims trying to find a home away from the sea.  Also noted that local native inhabitants reported how these 17th century wandering sojourners would travel against the flow. Jake and Sundance didn’t worry about either perspective. Jake just liked to keep moving while Sundance felt he had to move towards something with some purpose in mind. But sitting in the shadows of Bunker Hill their own revolution was brewing. They just needed to find a cause.

 

A shadow slowly became lost her darkness becoming clear through the faded misty morning fog. Jake’s heart thumped as Sundance sought solace of a sanctuary somewhere away from the forthcoming encounter.  The muse slowly made her way to the two souls sipping warmed over sludge. It was Isabella. Her brown eyes brilliantly pierced through the filthy ground to ceiling windows of the pancake house zeroing with laser accuracy on Jake’s own eyes. Like a lost Labrador he put down his head and Sundance noticed how Jake’s ears flopped back at that moment as Isabella made her way through the restaurant’s doors. Jake, confused as usual, didn’t know what to do. His instincts said

 

“Run up and hug her!”

 

His ego said

 

“Let her come to you. She’s the one who walked out on you this time.”

 

Still debating on his course of action, since he had not thought this through in advance at all Sundance was already on his feet hugging Isabella and she was smiling and hugging him in return.

 

Sundance whispered

 

“You’ll need to forgive Jake. He didn’t think you would really come down to see him”

 

Isabella pushed back gently glancing at Jake, who was pretending not to notice this scene,

 

“Well, I am always in the state of forgiving Jake.”

 

“Well, come on over, sit down and have a cup of tea or something since I can’t recommend the coffee here.”

 

Jake finally stood at the booth where he was sitting, reached out for Isabella’s hand and she let him gently pull her to him as he kissed her on the cheek.

 

“It is so good to see you,” he said while sitting and waving his hand for the waitress for another cup.

 

Isabella looked to the same half attentive waitress and said

 

“I think I’ll have tea.”

 

“That’s new isn’t it? The drinking tea I mean.”

 

“Well, sometimes it takes a while for people to change and sometimes it only takes a split second.”

 

“Well, you look the same to me. Actually you look better than when I last saw you.”

 

Jake was really thinking

 

“Is she going to bring up the squirrel thing or the poem? Just be cool don’t get excited.”

 

Talking to himself usually calmed him down and he would either drift or it would help him focus. The problem was that sometimes he wasn’t always a good listener even to himself.

 

Isabella laughed with Sundance as they jointly smiled at Jake. Isabella responded,

 

“Jake, we all are in a constant state of change. Besides, you are just a horny bastard.”

 

Not wanting to lose control of this moment or their exchange Isabella quickly continued….

 

“So, Sundance here tells me you are on a mission.”

 

Jake excitedly jumped in at the opening, as he also really didn’t want to admit to an ulterior motive for coming to Boston and began one of his long stories about the weekend so far.  He glossed over the events at Babe’s Tavern and the Yale party and spent his breath explaining about Kerouac, Salinger and Walden Pond. He threw in discussions about Fenway Park and Yastrzemski for good measure. Sundance half listened has he now thumbed mindlessly through the stolen phone book pretending to look for Salinger’s or Kerouac’s address as he secretly listened to Jake’s fable.

 

Jake ‘s roundabout tale sounded much like the explanation of a child late to dinner responding to a mother’s concerned query,”Where have you been?”. …Or the response of an unfocused travelling salesman who files a travel report with no orders for sales to his manager.

 

Isabella finally jumped in asking

 

“So you guys staying anywhere in Boston or is this just a day trip?”

 

Jake delaying his response lit another Marlboro and exhaled

 

“I thought of calling your friends Riley and Ben and maybe stay at their place here in Kenmore Square.”

 

“Don’t you ever pay attention? “

 

Isabella’s annoyance stared to surface.

 

“I had told you that Riley’s mom had passed away and that they would be in New Hampshire for a while cleaning up her mother’s affairs.”

 

Sundance interjected

 

“What? Who?”

 

It was the first he had heard any of this but he wasn’t surprised.

 

Jake tried to explain

 

“Riley is one of Isabella’s former roommate’s. Riley is actually her maiden name that she kept as her surname after she married Ben. Ben is a Vietnam hero who is in law school at Harvard and….”

 

“Ok, Jake, I get it now…”

 

“Well then there’s Diana, my old neighbor. She is also at Harvard Law or something and she gave me her number just in case I was ever in Boston.”

 

“She what? What would you want with her number” Isabella challenged.

 

“Uh oh” Sundance thought we need to resolve this quickly so he added…

 

“Who knows we might not stay the day or we may end up sleeping at Walden Pond.”

 

Now there was the Sundance that everyone had come to know and love…the skilled mediator. The sparks that were about to fly were quickly diluted into some future that may never happen.

 

Though Isabella did make the point over and over and over that she had exams coming the next week and she could in no uncertain terms be distracted from her studies. She had worked so hard at convincing her father to free her from the Catholic all-girls college of Maryville to Boston University that she didn’t want to jeopardize his commitment to pay the extra tuition. She convinced her father by saying she decided to study Sociology and conveniently Maryville didn’t have that major. She had no idea what academic discipline of Sociology encompassed at the time or if it would prepare her for any viable career. Fortunately on her first visit to Boston with her father she didn’t admit that she didn’t know that Boston was by or near water. Even more fortunately she didn’t tell her dad that she wanted to major in Geography.  The transfer was just a good way to get her away from the Sisters of Good Intentions at Maryville. (This was the order of nuns that was rumored to have discovered Salt Peter for women during the 1950’s.) Boston would be the place to nurture Isabella’s own self-awakening and her own pilgrimage. Jake was convinced that no matter how many volumes are written on the relationship between fathers and daughters that these books would just about cover the tip of the iceberg of such a subject. He had no idea how prophetic that this observation would become. There was no way Isabella would compromise this good thing of getting to Boston and making the home of dirty water her new home!

 

It wasn’t too much of a task for the boys to convince Isabella to stay with them a while. Jake said

 

“Hey it’s the Sabbath somewhere in some religions today.”

 

Sundance worried where this might be headed.

 

“ I saw a sign on a brownstone on Back Bay coming over here and it was some type of Buddhist temple, church thingee and there is some type of service today and the sign said ‘Visitors Welcomed?’ So, let’s go visit.

I need some Karma!”

 

Both Isabella and Sundance were unsure about this somewhat great notion but then maybe it would distract Jake for a little bit. Sundance hoped that it might shut Jake up and Isabella thought she could use the time to think about how she was going to deal with her unplanned two visitors. Isabella preferred structure and plans though she admired Jake’s freewheelin’spirit.

 

Always the expert on everything, Jake reminded the two that he read Siddhartha at least three times. But, the only things that Jake really knew about Buddhism is what he had read in Kerouac’s books On the Road, Dharma Bums and Big Sur. He was proud that he memorized a few Buddhist Zen Koans. Actually Al and Billy originally shared these koans in their letters and yearbook inscriptions. But Jake was good at rationalizing and he touted how he had a copy of the Tao Tse Ching and something called The Upanishads. He figured if it was eastern in origin Jake believed it must be good.

 

Sundance succumbed

 

“Well, since I won’t be at mass this weekend at least I can say I went to some kind of church.”

 

Isabella never did get her tea as they headed out to Back Bay.This not quite holy trinity meekly wandered into this early twentieth century brown-stoned bay windowed temple and found three vacant spaces on cushions in the back of an over sized living room. Silence. No words. Shoes removed. Everything solemn unlike the reunion-like bantering amongst congregants found in Catholic churches before their officiants commenced the melancholic half celebratory liturgy.

 

“Gong, gong, gong”

 

A bald headed young man arises with hands in a prayer-like pose folded pointing to the full house that had gathered. Eyes closed, softly

 

“Om Mani Padme Hum. Om Mani Padme Hum.Om Mani Padme Hum.Om Mani Padme Hum…..”

 

Jake, Sundance and Isabella stare around the room…almost everyone present have their eyes closed and are slowly repeating these words in unison. One or two stare as if in a daze and no words slip from their lips.

 

“Ah, this must be what they call the mantra”

 

 Jake surmised. He wanted to whisper his awareness to his friends but chose the better path and closed his eyes. He could hear Isabella and Sundance’s soft voices. He imagined they would all become one. Then something discordant was happening as he leaned his right ear closer to Sundance hearing him muttering

 

“et cum spiritutuo”

Over and over.

 

“You can take the boy out of the church but you can’t take the church out of the boy,”

 

Jake smiled.

 

All the voices gradually dissipated easing into quiet no sound no air, no movement. The smell of a sweet incense sneaked through the air in the room. The souls were lifted.

 

Jake being Jake couldn’t help himself squinted peaking to see the congregation in unified truth-filled mindfulness. He glanced again at Sundance who’s head now bowed forward and became jealous of Sundance’s quick adaptation to this practice.

 

He thought

 

“Boy, is he into it!”

 

But just at that moment …..

 

“Chortle, chortle, grrmmpphh, harrumph, snorggle, chortle, chortle…”

 

Jake laughed to himself

 

“He’s snoring! He’s snoring!”

 

And as Sundance’s chortling became louder Jake could no longer control himself breaking the solace shouting out punching Sundance in the arm….

 

“You’re snoring! You’re snoring!

 

The congregation became quickly unsettled and annoyed. The peace that had almost instantaneously filled the room had burst just as quickly. Sundance slowly shook the cobwebs from his head and Isabella pinched Jake’s arm

 

“Did you see what you just did? Did you hear yourself?”

 

“But he was snoring! Sundance was snoring!”

 

Jake’s voice raised up louder and louder when the bald headed crimson robed leader made a firm yet soft motion with his hand pointing the trio to the door that they entered. They gathered their things laughing like three mischievous Our Gang characters running out the door and running and running - faster, slipping, falling, picking each other up, running until they realized that no one was chasing them.

 

The three meditation thieves found themselves on a grassy knoll on the banks of the River Charles huffing and puffing. The soft mindful breathing became a fast faded memory. The river’s banks had now become completely filled with people and activities of all kinds as the brownish-blue current reflected the sun’s increasing glow. Sundance and Jake automatically removed their jackets in unison to have something dry to sit or lie down on in the sun and watch the river flow. Isabella didn’t sit, saying,

 

“Look, let me get my books and a blanket. You guys need some rest. Wait here and I will be back soon.”

 

No objections could be heard from the two wearied worn-out wanderers curling up like terrible-two toddlers in dreamland as Isabella disappeared from the river’s edge.