Bones of the Earth

by Eliot Pattison

  “Very astute. Took me two visits to figure that out,” Shan said, then gestured to a flat boulder where they could sit and told the American what he had learned.

  “Need a ride?” Pike asked when he had finished.

  Shan gestured up the darkening slope. “My truck is up in the mountains,” he said with a sinking feeling, knowing he would never find it in the night. As Pike opened the door to climb inside, he realized the American had not reciprocated. “You said you were a decoy. To distract them from what?”

  Pike grinned. “You have your ways and I have mine. China breeds the best talent in the world for surveillance of electronic communication. I used to pay a lot of Uncle Sam’s money to buy black-market surveillance software in Beijing. I kept my own copies, but Cao had even better ones. Kind of a hobby of his it turns out.”

  Shan remembered seeing Cao dash from the administration building. He hadn’t been sleeping, he had been waiting for someone to come out the side door, for a chance to sneak inside while the senior managers were distracted with Pike.

  Cao returned Shan’s inquiring gaze. “You’re just an archaeology student,” Shan said.

  “I’m just an archaeology student,” Cao repeated. A student, Shan reminded himself, who helped his professor keep records of work that would have been banned by the government if it had known.

  Pike held up a memory stick. “And now because of him we have a copy of all the office emails for the past six months.” He pulled his door shut and rolled down the window. “Oh, and right about now their communication link with Beijing is crashing. Probably take a day or two to recover.”

  * * *

  Shan paused to catch his breath on the steep climb up to the outcropping field. He could see the work site far below, where some equipment was still being operated with headlights on. In the distance a huge pile of toppled trees burned. Something still nagged at the back of his mind, a lurking question about his visit that he couldn’t quite articulate. Something else still tore at his heart, the destruction and burial of the ancient standing stones. He had begun to grasp the excitement the professor and the American woman had felt about the valley. They hadn’t been doing archaeology of long-ago tribes, they had been engaged in archaeology of the human spirit, at the place that anchored all the bones of the earth.

  He had to climb the final heights in short stages, pausing when his lungs strained in the thin air. At the next stop, as he looked down at the shadowed place where the standing stones had once stood, the engima of his afternoon found his tongue.

  “October 1!” he said out loud. October 1 was the day the stones had been destroyed. October 1 was National Day. National Day was when Tsomo, the old lama at Ko’s prison, had suddenly gasped, thrust his arms toward the north, and died.

  * * *

  Two hours later Shan sat at the campfire in the little sheltered flat below the stone talons and told Lhakpa and Jaya of his afternoon at the work site, ending with his realization that the standing stones and the old prisoner from the Larung Gar monastery had essentially died the same day.

  “The same hour,” Jaya said. “2:00 p.m. on October 1.” She knew. She knew more than Shan. “The mysteries of spiritual transmigration in Tibet,” she added, then saw the confusion on Shan’s face. “Yankay calls in hail and two soldiers die. They destroy the ancient stones and an aged lama dies. Maybe it’s true what the old Bonpo say. We are all puppets. The gods decree it all.”

  Lhakpa murmured something in a voice that had grown desolate, and Jaya kicked him. He gave his niece a stern shake of his head, as if chastising her. Shan did not react, acting as though he had not heard. But he had heard. Lhakpa had said I should have been the one.

  “On the road you stopped that white car, Constable,” Jaya said.

  Shan hesitated. The Tibetan woman seemed to spend much of her time watching the valley. “I discovered that I knew the visitor, someone from Lhasa,” he replied.

  Lhakpa stirred the embers of their dung-fed fire. “Tell me, Constable, are you investigating the death of Metok or the death of the gods?”

  Shan leaned closer to the fire. “I only have jurisdiction over the former.”

  “That is just the jurisdiction that other men give you,” Lhakpa replied, seeming to disagree.

  Shan, suddenly feeling very small and very cold, pulled his borrowed blanket around his shoulders.

  “There are many old statues of deities up in the hills above Yangkar,” Lhakpa continued, “toppled by the government. Marpa told me how on days off you go up by yourself with a shovel and bar to stand them tall again.”

  “Sometimes herders come and help me.”

  “And if Religious Affairs knew of this, or what you do below the streets of Yangkar, they would call Public Security on you. You talk of jurisdiction but you act based on higher duties.”

  Shan looked up at the Tibetan. Talking with the snow hermit was like talking with Lokesh. Nothing could be hidden.

  “So again, who was in the white truck?” Lhakpa pressed. “Jaya said it might be Public Security. I said no, because I trust you.” The two Tibetans stared at him with expectant, impatient expressions.

  “It was a student from Professor Gangfen’s dig. He was driving Natalie Pike’s father.”

  “Uncle!” Jaya cried out and threw a hand out to grasp Lhakpa’s shoulder. Shan’s announcement seemed to stun both Lhakpa and his niece.

  “He came from America?” Lhakpa asked at last. “What does he hope to do?”

  Shan thought about describing Pike but he was not sure how to do so. “He received notice that she died in a terrible accident. The government sent her ashes and they had a funeral for her. But he has been in law enforcement and possesses a great curiosity. And he lived in Beijing, knew the ways of Beijing and its police. He tested some of the ashes. They had sent him the remains of a sheep.”

  Lhakpa stared into the fire with a solemn expression. “A cruel thing to do to a father.”

  “He asked me where the crematorium was that had done it,” Shan continued. “Two nights ago he went there and locked the manager into one of the ovens for the night.”

  Lhakpa gave a surprised laugh and patted Jaya on the back, as if she needed comforting. Shan realized she must have been a friend of Natalie Pike. “I like this man Pike,” the snow hermit said. “He does what an old teacher told me the best lamas always did. He puts teeth in his virtue.”

  One of the horses tethered in the trees wickered and Jaya rose to investigate. Whispers came out of the darkness, and she returned with three Tibetans who eagerly accepted servings of the stew she had made. The two men, judging by their sheepskin vests and caps, were herders. The third, a sturdy woman of perhaps forty years, nodded at Shan as she accepted her bowl from Jaya. He had a vague sense that he knew her but could not put a name to her face. Only when one of the herders added sticks from the bundle of fuel he had carried into the camp did Shan make the connection, for the flames illuminated the big leather bag she kept at her side, clearly showing the painted image of Menla, the Medicine Buddha. The woman was the nurse who usually roamed the Yangkar hills.

  The matronly Tibetan woman remained silent as Jaya filled a small pot with stew and kept her head bent down in a melancholy expression. She did not eat, only murmured her gratitude to Jaya, picked up the pot and a bundle of incense that had been left near the fire, and stepped back into the shadows behind the wall of black felt.

  Ten minutes later a Tibetan man in the denim clothing of the construction workers appeared at the edge of the trees and Jaya and Lhakpa quickly stepped to his side, speaking with him in urgent, worried tones. Shan slipped behind the felt wall. At the end of the rows of artifacts, past a bend in the mountain, he discovered a smaller campfire. The nurse and two other Tibetans sat there, one an older man with long, ragged, graying hair that hung about his shoulders, the other a squarely built woman who was working a strand of prayer beads. The man looked up and cocked his head as if hearing Shan’s approach.


  The two women gasped as he stepped out of the darkness. The man’s leathery face lifted in a small, uncertain smile, though he did put one hand on the carved staff that leaned on a tree beside him.

  “He was talking with Lhakpa,” the nurse explained to her companions.

  “I was hoping to get better acquainted with the hail chaser,” Shan said, nodding to the old man.

  “The constable of Yangkar,” the nurse added in warning. The other woman grabbed the pot of stew and fled into the night.

  The hail chaser spoke in the quiet voice of a lama. “Come share our fire, Constable.” As Shan moved to sit on one of the flat stones by the flames, the nurse rose, lifted her medicine bag and a smaller, bulging leather bag of the kind used for collecting yak dung for fires, and disappeared in the direction of the other woman.

  “Such an effect you have on women,” the old Tibetan said with a low chuckle.

  Shan looked down the path the nurse had taken. She had always been standoffish with him. He did not even know her name, only that she was called the walking healer. The herders she served always praised her abilities.

  “I wouldn’t have thought the sick would stay so close to the Five Claws,” Shan observed as he extended his hands over the warmth of the flames. He glanced back toward the trail. There was plenty of firewood but the nurse had taken dung for fuel, which he did not understand.

  “There are many forms of healing needed on this mountain,” the hail chaser said. Shan saw that beside him were half a dozen bunches of juniper twigs, bound with vines.

  “I am honored to meet you, Yankay Namdol. I am called Shan. I regretted not being able to speak with you when I saw you released at the Shoe Factory.” Shan recalled the strange movements the hail chaser had made that morning. Now he realized part of the strangeness had been because the old man seemed subtly deformed. A hand was bent at a slightly unnatural angle. One shoulder seemed higher than the other. His left forearm was twisted, and his jaw seemed a bit off-center, giving his grizzled face a crooked appearance.

  The old man tightened his grip on his staff, which Shan now saw was intricately carved with Buddhist and Bonpo symbols.

  “I had never seen a man summon an earthquake.”

  Yankay’s smile showed a row of uneven yellowed teeth. “You’re mistaken. I don’t summon earthquakes. Earthquakes summon me.”

  “At precisely the moment of your release. I was deeply impressed. It was magical. I think the warden might have fled if the colonel hadn’t been there. And I expect the prisoners were treated with a bit more respect for a few days.”

  “You aren’t prepared to understand how the earth works here,” Yankay said, in the tone of a patient old teacher.

  Shan stared into the fire, weighing the man’s choice of words. “No,” he admitted, “I always thought as I grew older I would grow wiser. But I only learned how ignorant I am.”

  Yankay let go of his staff and extended his hands over the flames. “Good. The first step to wisdom.”

  “And the next?” Shan asked and realized he sounded like a nervous student.

  “Surrender to the wonder of it all.”

  “The wonder of men who would kill gods?”

  Yankay sighed and did not reply right away. “There is an ice cave near the top of the mountain,” he said eventually. “If you sit there long enough you can hear the vibration coming from the heart of the mountain. Like a heartbeat.”

  “Sounds cold.”

  The hail chaser seemed disappointed. “So you are one of those who has to be beaten into surrender.”

  “I tend to think that I am simply a survivor, hardened by long experience.” He looked up into the open, inquiring countenance of the disheveled man. “How does one become a hail chaser?” he asked.

  “You could never do it, Constable, if you couldn’t sit to listen to the mountain.”

  “You mean it is a gift. A heavy burden of a gift, I suspect. Men die in hailstorms.”

  Yankay grimaced. “There used to be shrines dedicated to those who died in hailstorms. The lamas always had a hard time knowing how to treat them. Those who died violently usually can’t attain a higher level of existence, but many people felt a man killed by hail had been called by the gods.” He stood and dropped more wood on the fire. “I never wanted those soldiers to die. Sometimes I think that Lieutenant Huan was right, maybe I had committed murder that day. If I hadn’t stopped the convoy, they would have lived.”

  “If they had worn their helmets, they would have lived,” Shan said. “If the trucks had broken down climbing the mountain, they would have lived. If Huan had not been in such a hurry and taken the shortcut, they would have lived. If they had left that morning ten minutes later, they would have lived.” He shrugged. “Murder is a construct of human law,” he observed. “I’m not sure those laws apply on this mountain.”

  “They don’t,” Yankay agreed.

  “Then one year in the Shoe Factory seems penance enough.”

  Yankay lifted a foot, showing a heavy boot. “Every graduate gets a pair of the army boots made there, did you know that? Best boots I’ve ever owned. Cost one year of my life. Sometimes I think I should put them on a shrine.” The old man sighed loudly. “But the stones of the trails are sharp, and my bones get weary.”

  Shan had so many questions, about how Yankay had become a hail chaser, about how he had sensed the earthquake, about how he had evaded capture by the authorities all these years, and what he knew about the sacred valley before the heavy equipment had arrived, but he said nothing. He felt like a nervous young novice in the presence of a renowned lama. Even after so many years of living in Tibet there were so many things about the land, about such Tibetans of the old world, that he didn’t understand. He knew Lokesh would say his compulsion to understand everything was Shan’s particular weakness, that he had to stop questioning and, as Yankay suggested, immerse himself in the wonder. But wonder was proving elusive in the Valley of the Gods.

  They sat in silence. A night bird called from the trees. The shadows shortened as the moon rose higher.

  “The ancient ways are always just beyond,” Yankay suddenly said. He seemed to be speaking to the fire, for he then nodded as if the flames had replied with something profound.

  “Once it was a noble profession,” he declared, lifting his eyes toward Shan. “Only very learned men would chase the hail. It took as many years of study as that for a lama abbot, with hundreds of long prayers to memorize. But all those teachers fell off the earth in the last century.”

  He raised a hand and pointed to the northwestern sky. A moment later a meteor shot across the heavens, exactly where he pointed. It had to be a coincidence, Shan told himself. There could be no explanation for it, just as there could be none for Yankay’s knowing of the earthquake at the Shoe Factory. He heard Lokesh’s whisper in his ear. Just accept the wonder.

  “There are many evil demons roaming the earth in our time. That was the true job of the hail chaser, to use lightning, hail, and earthquake to subdue the demons that sought to harm humans.” He poked the fire with a long stick. “The charm against the inner-earth demon is soil that has been fused by lightning. The charm against the lesser female water demons is hellebore. The charm against the more powerful ones is powdered copper and black sulphur mixed with soil from a crossroads. The list is long, and some charms are lost forever. I didn’t have the right training. The gods speak to me, they tell me about hail, and lightning, and earthquakes, even meteors, but I don’t really know how to speak back to them. I am a mute wandering alone in the house of the gods,” he said, with a tinge of anguish in his dry voice.

  The hail chaser shrugged. “I can always dance and have people think it is magic but it’s not magic. It’s the gods whispering in my ear. That day at the Shoe Factory, did you not hear all the dogs barking and see the mules bolting? There’s a special bark dogs have when an earthquake is minutes away. My early teacher taught me that much. All the birds had gone from the camp, though no o
ne else seemed to notice. There’s a vibration in the air just before the ground shakes, though most humans have forgotten how to feel that as well. Maybe I just have obsolete senses that have died out in other humans.” He sighed. “I hear that down in the lower lands there are actually rivers a man can’t drink from and air that makes a man sick to breathe. If that’s true, it’s because no one knows how to speak with the earth gods anymore. I’m just a miserable fool who can only hear them. Which makes it a curse, really.”

  The words pressed against Shan’s heart. Not for the first time he felt a deep loathing for what the world had done to such men. Why, he wondered, was Yankay confessing such things to him? And why was his old body so misshapen? He gazed into the shallow cave where Yankay stored his belongings and saw a dented helmet. “Tell me, Rinpoche,” he said, using the form of address reserved for learned lamas, “how many times have your bones been broken by hail?”

  A sad smile rose on the old man’s face. “You do me too great an honor, Constable. Maybe in the former world I would have become such but never in this one.” He shrugged, then began touching parts of his body and counting. His left collarbone, his right collarbone, his left radius bone, his right ulna bone, the back of one hand, the wrist of the other. He stopped counting at ten. “I tend to think of these as blessings, for each time the gods decided not to kill me. ‘Here we are!’ they are saying. ‘We have decided to let you live a while longer, you old fool!’” He touched his crooked jaw. “This one was just my stupidity. Never look up into a hailstorm.”

  The hail chaser quieted and added more wood to the fire. “How well do you know the dead?” he suddenly asked Shan.

  A chill ran down Shan’s spine. “I’m sorry?”

  Yankay motioned in the direction the nurse had taken. “Our walking healer says you are the constable of Yangkar. Surely the constable of the old gompa town must know the dead. They say the dogs there are always barking because more ghosts than humans live there.”