There were so many emotions wrapped up inside that idea, I could spend a year untangling them and still not fully understand.
I sighed and looked down at the pile of maps on my lap. I never really had the opportunity to read a map before. I suppose when I was in grade school we colored in different countries on a blank picture of the world, but finding directions without using a computer was beyond my pay grade.
To be real, I didn’t even want to work that hard. My brain was already filled up with too many other things to give ‘reading a map’ any room. Besides, I figured Sanjay could use the brain stretch.
“So Sanjay? Are you ready to find those directions for us now? I have maps and I even know where we are.” I looked down at the top map and read the address off a little sticker affixed to the lower right hand corner with an address printed in block letters on it that had probably been painstakingly written out by Billy’s mom or dad.
It said, ‘Property of Bloody Brook Gas and Snacks, 500 Rattle Snake Gulley Road, South Deerfield, Massachusetts.’ I gathered the maps together and passed them over to Sanjay. “The address of where we are now is on the top map,” I said. Then I pointed to the Peace Pagoda brochure that was sitting on the empty seat at his side. “We want to go there.”
Sanjay took the maps and stared at the address for a moment. Then he opened up the first one and started flipping through the pages. We had played this game before. He would have the directions to the Peace Pagoda in no time.
“What’s going on?” Trina finally said as she nervously massacred her nails between her teeth while peering out the window at the front of the gas station. The door had swung open and Billy, tied to his wheelchair, appeared in the doorway, being pushed by Jimmy.
Trina immediately stood up.
“Let him be,” I said to her.
“He can’t push . . .”
“Yes, he can, and you know it.” I said to my sister, and she immediately stopped. Instead, she slipped into the closest seat and plastered herself to the window as Jimmy struggled, wheelchair to wheelchair, to push Billy out the front door. It didn’t take him long. A minute later he had the snarling poxer sitting right up against the road in front of the Bloody Brook Gas and Snacks sign.
We watched as Jimmy took an envelope and stapler from his lap, reached up to Billy’s collar, but not close enough that Billy had a shot at taking a bite out of him, and stapled the envelope to the poxer’s shirt. Jimmy stared at him for a long moment, then spun around on his wheels, chucked the stapler into a bramble of dying bushes exploding with autumn colors that grew up against one side of the garage, then wheeled his way back to us.
“What was that all about?” Trina asked him when he got back to the bus and maneuvered himself up the stairs and inside like he always did.
“I left a note,” he said. “It’s all good. I feel better now.”
Prianka stood and went to Jimmy. She stopped in front of him and squeezed one shoulder. He reached up and put his hand over hers and smiled.
“What did it say?” asked Bullseye. He was sitting across from Sanjay with Whitby half on and half off his lap. The scrawny dog was busily licking his face like it was an oversized lollipop out of Swifty’s candy display.
“You can read it if you want,” said Jimmy, who was now completely back to his old self. “It’s not a secret. I meant every word I wrote.”
In the end, all of us except for Sanjay who was busily flipping through maps, and Jimmy, who no longer needed to be anywhere near Bloody Brook Gas and Snacks, filed off the bus and went over to Billy. I gingerly reached for the envelope that was stapled to his collar while the wheelchair-bound poxer gnashed his teeth together.
Inside was a folded piece of paper. This is what it said:
To the people who created Necropoxy:
My name is Billy and I had a right to live.
I had a mother and a father who ran this gas station. They loved me very much and they had a right to live, too.
I also had a service dog named Whitby. She was the best dog in the world.
I might not have looked like you, or walked like you or even talked like you, but I loved my family.
I loved Whitby.
That love was my purpose, and that was enough for me.
Why wasn’t it enough for you?
Billy
We all read the note in silence before folding it back up and slipping it inside the envelope for someone else to find.
Way down deep, I hoped that ‘someone else’ was Diana Radcliffe, not that it mattered.
She might have looked like she was living on the outside, but inside, where normal people have feelings, she was completely dead.
18
LEVERETT, MASSACHUSETTS.
If I thought Amherst was the land of tie-dye and tofu, I was sorely mistaken. Every driveway we passed had a sign out front advertising organic something or other, and almost every one of those driveways led to a farm.
The pumpkins were fat in the fields and there were rainbow flags everywhere.
Again, Littleham was just an hour away from here. I think I grew up in a vacuum or even a vacuum bag inside of a vacuum. Who knew a place like this even existed?
There weren’t too many poxers on the road, but any we passed, staggering aimlessly around, looked like they were refugees from a hippie music festival.
The dudes were wearing psychedelic tee-shirts and appeared as though they hadn’t seen a razor since before razors were invented, and the girls all had long braided hair, and sunflower dresses colored for autumn.
Oh, and everyone was barefoot.
“Is there a costume party or something going on?” I asked Jimmy.
“Hey,” he said. “These are my peeps.”
“They’re not peeps,” said Bullseye as we passed by a group of three uber-hippie dirty hippies. “They’re dead.”
“Okay, so they’re my Grateful Dead peeps,” he smiled and laughed. “Good one, right?”
“Grateful Dead peeps,” chirped Andrew, and there was a general chuckle that moved throughout the bus.
Sanjay was standing next to Trina up at the front. Whitby and Newfie were with him, both staring up at his soft brown face as he gave last minute directions to my sister because I think we were close. Every other second, the whippet turned her head and stared back at Bullseye.
She was totally in love.
“It’s pretty up here,” said Prianka as we sat together in the middle of the bus. “Do you believe we’re still in Massachusetts? I feel like a foreigner.” Once again, I felt like Prianka was setting me up for a joke. I mean, how easy would have been to point out the obvious? Still, I refused to take the bait. Without another thought, I reached over and brushed her long dark hair across her forehead and tucked some of it behind her ear.
“It is pretty up here,” I said. “I can’t believe I wasted so much time not noticing.” Wow. Those were the actual words that came out of my mouth. They worked perfectly. Behind her mocha complexion, I saw a swath of red bloom across her face, and a hint of a smile tug at the edge of her icicle lips.
“Don’t be an ass,” she said, because it was probably the only ball she could lob back at me.
“I’m not,” I said as I leaned in and gently kissed her cheek. “I’m playing truth or dare, and right now, I think telling the truth is working pretty good for me.”
“Oh, you think so?” she said slyly.
I just nodded my head.
I earned a kiss for that. It was a good one, too. Hell, it was a great one, because I hardly noticed that Trina had maneuvered the big bus to the right, and we were steadily climbing up a steep road with trees hanging over both sides.
A minute or so later, while I completely forgot that there was anyone else in the world but me and Prianka, T
rina pulled into a driveway on our right and stopped the bus.
“What the hell is that?” she said, and we all peered out the side windows. She was talking about a tall, golden statue of a woman that looked suspiciously like something you would see inside a Chinese food restaurant. Her gentle, delicate hands were pointing to a big sign leaning up against a boulder. The sign was hand-lettered in an ever-changing array of colors, and the words, meticulously written by someone who obviously had trouble staying between the lines during penmanship class, sloped downwards and to the right.
Not that it mattered. I had no idea what they said.
“Is that English?” asked Bullseye.
I didn’t have a clue.
“What’s . . . what’s . . . NA MU MYO . . . um . . . what?” he stuttered.
Jimmy let out a belly laugh. “It says Na Mu Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo.”
“Say what?” I murmured.
“Yeah, what he said,” added Bullseye.
Sanjay stepped past the dogs and addressed the bus like we were on a fieldtrip and he was our guide. What was even weirder was that he held his hands at waist-height with his thumbs and forefingers forming a diamond.
“Na mu myo ho ren ge kyo is a Buddhist pledge never to yield to difficulties and to win over one’s suffering,” he said. “It is also a vow to help others understand this pledge.”
Okie dokie, Buddha.
Obviously we had arrived at the Peace Pagoda.
19
TRINA SLOWLY DROVE the bus up a shallow dirt road which opened into a gravel parking lot. Thankfully, there weren’t any cars parked there. That meant that we had a pretty slim chance of running into any poxers.
Necropoxy started on a Friday night. Unless there were people looking for a heaping helpful of Buddhist spirituality when they should have been celebrating the start of the weekend, no one would have been hanging at the Peace Pagoda when the disease broke out.
My shoulders relaxed a little bit. Phew. No poxers for the moment. That was good news. The other good news was that there was no way anyone could see the bus from the road, or even from the air. The parking lot was surrounded by tall trees, still fat with leaves. We parked under their bloated shadows. Most of the trees were strewn with multi-colored flags. I didn’t know what the flags meant, but it made the whole place look a little festive.
Festive was good, right? Who couldn’t do with a little bit of festivity?
“So where’s the pagoda?” asked Trina. “All I see are happy trees.”
“Open the door,” Jimmy chimed. “I’ve been here before. I’ll show you.”
Trina pulled the handle, and the bus door folded in two so that we could all get out. Immediately, Whitby took off running, and Newfie lumbered after her. She yipped and jumped like she had never been allowed to run before. Newfie tried to copy her exuberance, but I wasn’t too sure that Newfoundlands were built for athletics. I think they were made for brute force.
“Whitby’s happy,” Bullseye said as he watched her race across the parking lot, chasing an invisible rabbit around a track.
“Sure looks like it. Besides, what’s not to be happy about? We’re at the Peace Pagoda.” I held the brochure in my hand. I handed it to Sanjay but he shook his head and pointed over to a corner of the parking lot where there was a series of large bulletin boards filled with flyers and handouts.
A minute later we were staring at dozens of announcements advertising upcoming events like group meditations promoting global unity, organic farmer’s markets, and even some apartment shares for the University.
In the middle of them all was a gentle but firm warning about how guests to the Peace Pagoda were expected to treat the area:
‘Welcome to the New England Peace Pagoda. This is the first Peace Pagoda erected in North America. Please be respectful of our land and help us preserve our natural setting by walking instead of driving to the Peace Pagoda up the pathway to your right.
Those who are physically challenged or elderly are welcome to drive up the path.’
At the bottom of the sign it said, ‘Bowing deeply with palms together.’ Before I knew it, all of us took the sign at face value and deeply bowed with our palms together as though we were praying.
When we were finished we didn’t say anything. Bowing deeply with our palms together felt like the right thing to do. The ground beneath our feet almost seemed like holy ground.
As we turned to the pathway, Jimmy jutted his chin out toward me and said, “What, no remarks about how I could drive up there in the bus because of my wheels?”
I sort of nodded and said, “Hey, I act a little challenged myself sometimes, and you don’t see me driving, do you?”
“Where’s Tripp Light and what have you done with him,” he chuckled then gave me a high five.
Meanwhile, Whitby and Newfie were on the other side of the parking lot, both inspecting the same rock and both repeatedly peeing on it like they were leaving messages for future dogs to find. Sanjay turned and put two fingers to his mouth and whistled louder than I thought he ever could.
Immediately, Whitby raced across the parking lot, three times faster than Newfie was able to move, and dropped to the ground at Sanjay’s feet.
“When did you teach her that?” Bullseye asked with his eyes wide. Andrew, who had been up in the trees, also responded to the sharp whistle and flew down to land on Sanjay’s shoulder.
“According to multiple articles on the subject, service dogs are trained with specific auditory and visual commands so they can best serve their owners.”
“But you whistled,” I said. “How did you know she’d come?”
“I guessed,” he shrugged as Newfie finally caught up to the rest of us, his tongue hanging out of his mouth and his sides heaving up and down. Sanjay spun around on his feet and started heading up the path with the dogs at his side.
I turned to Prianka. “He guessed, I guess.” She smiled and held out her hand to me. I easily slipped it in mine and pulled her along beside me as we followed her little brother and the dogs. Bullseye had already caught up to Sanjay and was excitedly talking to him about service dog commands like they had been friends forever. Trina walked next to Jimmy as he eagerly pumped his wheels along the bumpy path. Shades of walking through the woods at the Quabbin Reservoir came back to me, but the Quabbin had awful things lurking in the trees. Besides, there had been a site at the end of the path at the Quabbin. There was no site here. I could feel it way down deep. All that was here was a sense of calm and tranquility, both of which we all sorely needed.
Every twenty or thirty feet up the gentle slope, we came across more golden statues like at the entrance when we first pulled in. Some of the statues were of men and some were of women. They were all adorned with leaves and flowers. A few were sitting with their legs crossed and others were standing, or like the sign said, bowing deeply with their palms together.
There were more brightly colored ribbons and flags hanging in the trees and everything smelled fresh and alive. In a place like this, it was easy to forget why we were here, or that Necropoxy ever happened.
A few more minutes up the slope, past a small potter’s shed with lots of tools and a wheelbarrow leaning up against the outside wall, the trees thinned and the path widened into a beautiful meadow that was meticulously maintained by whomever was responsible for taking care of it.
Whitby and Newfie took off into the field, barking at nothing and snapping at thin air. Andrew stayed on Sanjay’s shoulder, probably in as much awe as the rest of us.
There was a small building at the far side of meadow, but standing in the middle of the field, and way bigger than I would have expected, was a giant round dome, painted white, with a golden peak on its top.
The Peace Pagoda. We were finally here.
20
OUR TIMING W
AS perfect. Uncle Don’s watch said 12:05 which meant it was time to eat.
It didn’t matter that all of us had been munching on junk food that we had brought with us on the bus. The sky was heavy and gray. The air was crisp and cool. If autumn had a smell, I was smelling it now. It was the smell of mature leaves changing colors at a record clip, and high grasses finally ready to turn from green to tan, and ultimately flatten into the ground for the winter.
This had always been my favorite time of year. Being here, in the shadow of the giant, round, Peace Pagoda, eating sandwiches and sour cream and onion potato chips, I felt normal.
I felt better than normal. I felt alive, which is more than I can say for a majority of the rest we had encountered.
We sat on long, wide steps that led up to the front of the Peace Pagoda. At the top of the steps, situated in an indentation in the dome wall, was a huge statue of a golden elephant with too many arms. The elephant sat cross-legged on a concrete couch and stared down at us with flat, unblinking eyes.
“That’s Ganesha,” said Jimmy absentmindedly as he followed my gaze to the large statue of the elephant.
“Ganesha,” I repeated. “Is that what all the cool college kids are saying these days when something’s really awesome? Like, that’s really Ganesha, dude?”
Jimmy smirked and shook his head. “Ganesha is the god of success and the destroyer of evil.”
“If you say so.” I shrugged. “You learn something new every day.”
Prianka was sitting next to me, eating a peanut butter sandwich. She smiled and swallowed what she was chewing. “I think Sanjay could have told you that one,” she said.
“I don’t doubt it.”
Meanwhile, Bullseye had gone up to the top of the steps and started walking around the dome. Andrew wafted down from a tree and landed on his shoulder. He didn’t even flinch. In our new world, having a crow land on you was normal. Hell, having an elephant with a dozen arms watching over you was normal, too.
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