Leadville: 300 Days Away

by Kara Skye Smith

  "Here goes!" she says and walks toward the house, unannounced and unassuming. The door is opened by a child; a girl.

  "Well, hello!" Mary Beth says, smiling. "Is your mother here?" The little girl points a finger out and to the side of the house. "Is she outside?"

  "Uh-huh," she nods.

  "Around back?" Mary Beth asks.

  "Ye-s," the girl answers.

  "Okay if I go back there and see her?" But the girl does not answer. "Close the door!!" comes a shout; a boy's voice or maybe a man's. "Krissy! Shut the door!!" It says.

  "I can't," she tells him, "a lady."

  "Is that your brother?" Mary Beth asks the girl, her voice shaking, her breath rapid with sudden nervousness.

  "No," she says. "He's Stephanie's son. He thinks he's impotent. That's what my daddy says."

  Mary Beth chuckles, "You mean important?"

  The little girl shakes her head, 'no'.

  "O, well," she bends toward the little girl, "is Stephanie's son named after James Dean?"

  "No," the girl shakes her head.

  "What's his name?" she asks, sounding like she might cry.

  "Piss head," the little girl says and giggles.

  Mary Beth looks over the girl's head. She looks into the room that seems dark from the brightness of the Colorado sun outside. She sees his shadow, but nothing more.

  "Can I see him?" she whispers and the little girl smiles. She opens the door rather wide a beam of light flooding the orange and brown rectangles of linoleum against brown shag carpet in a half circle forming the fake foyer. And suddenly, Mary Beth sees him. A boy, slightly taller than herself, slightly thinner than she expected him to be, looking straight at her, flatly, as if she were annoying him with this interruption of his T.V. program.

  "It's like looking into a mirror, ain't it?!" comes the booming voice of Stephanie from the open archway between the front room and the kitchen.

  "Hi Steph!" Mary Beth says, her hand to her chest, "it certainly is."

  "O and he can act it, too, believe me," she starts, "you'd better know what you're dealing with with this one."

  "Mo-om! Do you have to talk in here?" he whines.

  "No," she says, "but we will. Come on over here and meet your... your... Auntie?" Stephanie asks her and gives her a wink.

  "Sure," says Mary Beth, "I'd like that." And Stephanie beats her boy with her garden gloves on the shoulder until he gets up and goes to the doorway giving Mary Beth a 'quick' hug. But, when it comes time to let go, Mary Beth doesn't. She squeezes and squeezes, closing her eyes, inhaling a breath that wishes for a lifetime with this boy and worries that it only has this minute.

  "Um, mom?" he says, prying Mary Beth's arms from around him, "here." He says, and steps back behind Stephanie, looking at the lady with an awkward expression.

  "Go on, now, honey," she says to him, "while I fix Mary Beth one of my 'special' ice teas. Looks like you could use it," she says taking over where he left off and hugging Mary Beth with all the gusto she needs, at this moment, just to keep standing up.

  1959 Tibet.

  Tenzing is dropped off by the driver of the truck, in the pitch dark, middle of a Himalayan mountain pass, on the road to Nepal. "Mustang!" the neighbor of Danthra's had said. It was bedlam in Kham and Lhasa had so many Chinese lurking around corners it was difficult to speak with many about his plans. He had learned this at Camp Hale. He is careful not to divulge where he has just arrived from to any passerby; and he is careful not to ask too many questions of those whose alliances he does not know well. But Danthra's neighbor had been there, the night of the attacks, too limp in one leg to fight; but he had helped the Khampas gather weapons, and recently, he told Tenzing, he had helped distribute guns and ammunition dropped over Litang by the CIA. Tenzing is told that many of the Khampas of Cushi Gangdruk have retreated to Mustang, the hills between Tibet and India, to form and strengthen a faction there. He looks around him. Blue light, the darkness of morning, surrounds him like the deep blue ocean and he thinks of Mac's saying, 'sink or swim'.

  He can almost hear Mac's voice, "This is where you sink or swim, boys!" Tenzing sighs and gathers his wits about him. He takes the pack he has brought with him from the army training camp and hoists it to his shoulder. He walks until he finds a scout. He is lead back into a camp and told there had been a radio message to keep an eye out for him. Tenzing is grateful and sad at the same time. The radio message must have come from Danthra and thinking of Danthra makes Tenzing think of Tiyo. Tenzing is not in a hurry to radio back. He does not want to feel the pain. He does not dare to think of the debacle, the tragedy, and what must have - could have - happened. Tenzing becomes very involved and wrapped up in the decisions of the Khampas of Mustang. He teaches them what he has learned, at Camp Hale, as he sees they have indeed been outfitted with big guns and ammunition from the Americans, the CIA; and Tenzing does not ruffle feathers. He does not take over the radio, and he does not find fault nor restructure their plan.

  He does, however, fight with venegance for the love of his younger brother, for the love he has for 'home', and for a love he does not know, yet, but thinks about in quiet spaces: hide-outs and scout stake-outs, "Could she, Matseidha, still be alive?" he often asks himself, or god; and lately, Tiyo, where ever he may be and what ever form he shall return in. And, so far, every time he questions this, the answer which he asks for emerges as 'yes'.

  The Resistance force of Mustang becomes a strong one. The fighters not only protect the Mustang borders but they often move set-ups out of the hills toward Litang or Lhasa to kill Chinese. A fighter Tenzing helped to train, a monk, could not even shoot a gun the morning Tenzing walked into his camp.

  He overhears him, one day, telling Danthra on the radio, "When I kill Chinese," he says, "I do not think of it as evil or wrongdoing. Instead, I bring him to my mouth, like an animal whose den he has invaded, and I snarl to show him my contempt." Tenzing begins to think of Mustang as his new home and he thinks of Tibet as his den or his cave. He thinks of how god watches the wolf attack the rabbit and he thinks, "What wolf would not attack and kill the rabbit if the rabbit tried to move into his home?" This way, Tenzing makes his peace with god; and he, not unlike the wolf, becomes a killer. Defending his home has become his survival.

  As quickly as the sun drops below the mountaintops, a biting chill is felt in the wind. It numbs Matseidha's fingertips, and tingles in her toes. The bike messenger has left her, reluctantly turning back toward Litang after having nearly pedaled himself exhausted. He is almost all they have of a postman lately, he tells her; and he knows he must be back in town, up early for morning deliveries. Matseidha feels she has been a burden already, and urges him to drop her off at the sight and sound of his tired panting, his slumped, exhausted shoulders, and the constant questions of where will she go. Matseidha, done with crying for the time being, figures she will walk a while and figure out her direction as she goes. But, this does not work well for her. It is nearly dark, and Matseidha has not 'arrived' anywhere that she can take her rest at night. She has not boarded a train or found a ride in a car. She has wandered past the edge of town, and she wants, very much, to turn back and go to her warm, little house, no matter the consequences.

  Matseidha does not have much money as the business at her market booth has been slow during the cold spell; but she does have some, and she wonders, suddenly if it is too late to catch a train to India. She also wonders if she will be 'caught' there, in the train station, if she were to actually get to one, by the Chinese who are looking for the letter. She searches her pockets and her bag for the letter, wanting at this time to be close to Tenzing already; but she can not find it, anywhere. She is suddenly filled with anger and sadness; and resentment, at the bike messenger boy for telling her Lhasa would not be where she'd want to go. In Lhasa, Matseidha would know where to go. She goes there often with her wares. She could go to the train station she thinks, but then remembers the number of Chinese s
oldiers she saw the last time she went there. Matseidha sits down, at the edge of the road, helpless, as evening falls, searching again in her knapsack for her letter. She does not find her cherished object nor the comfort that it brings her, and once again, Matseidha begins to cry.

  When Matseidha finally looks up, facing a different direction than she had been walking along the road, Matseidha sees the giant drops of red upon the hillside, and she sees a line, a pilgrimage of people, walking past the large, red spots. Matseidha's heart rejoices at the sight.

  "People!" she thinks, "there will be help, there." Matseidha stands and picks her knapsack up off the road and with that she picks herself up, her spirits, and her belief that although this is the worst moment she could possibly have imagined, she can survive this; and she nearly runs to join the crowd of people circling 'round the big, red dots.

  Matseidha's joyous feelings are short lived. As she arrives at the tail of the procession of people, some walking past the red parachutes and some carrying out blessings of the dead, she senses that the commotion is not lighthearted. She looks closer. She sees blood, and bodies. There has been a battle. Some families and individuals continue past the burial rituals in process, walking up the steeper grade into the hills. Matseidha sees a seller she has met before, at the market. She touches her arm.

  "What happened here?" Matseidha asks, and the seller pulls Matseidha to the side, out of the way of the traveling people.

  "The Chinese and the Khampas - fighting. Men came from the sky, to help us, they say. But, they were shot down, by the Chinese. These were the umbrellas. Many Khampas fought, but more were killed."

  Matseidha gasps, "O, no! No! A sign from the sky," and Matseidha recites a part of the letter she remembers, "'You will see me like an eagle over Litang', he said, but I did not see him. How many? Were they all killed?" and Matseidha holds her breath inside a moment, biting her lip to keep from wailing out loud. This is not the moment for which she has waited. This is not the moment for which she has rejoiced; and this, she nearly prays upon the next words of the seller, is not the moment she envisioned seeing Tenzing home again.

  "I don't know," says the seller, "I have been sick. By the time I heard it, there were not many who would venture out. Most were fleeing or staying inside their homes. Eventually I saw the people filing out here and the burial."

  "Where are you going?" Matseidha asks.

  "I am going home to my house," she says, "but, the attacks are sending many fleeing to India. My sister and my daughter -," she nearly cries and pats a brilliant, blue cloth against her lips, "O my daughter - are going to Darjeeling." She tells Matseidha, "I am ill. Too weak to travel, but my daughter... I want her to be safe."

  "What about your mother? Can she make the journey?"

  "She must," the seller tells her, "I cannot. A young girl," she says and her eyes plead with Matseidha's to understand her meaning here.

  "I know," Matseidha tells her, "and I am going there. I would like to travel with your daughter and your mother if they would be so kind to me."

  "Yes!" the woman says exasperated and assured that Matseidha has understood that her daughter will be better off enduring an uncertain journey than sold to a Chinese invader while her mother dies at home.

  "I, too, am like your daughter," Matseidha says and nods her head knowingly, "but I am older than your daughter and stronger than your mother. I will help them make this journey. I was alone," she says admitting, too, she was in need of help to make the journey.

  "The men, ahead, are going too. You must follow. No time to lose!" the woman tells her. "Tenizia!" she calls , but her daughter and her mother are too far up ahead immersed in the flow of people to hear her.

  "Go quickly! Tenizia is her name." And with that she motions Matseidha into the crowd where she hurries ahead to find the seller's daughter; calling out the name.

  1959 Darjeeling.

  Lhosta swishes the mop, throwing it out and then drawing it back. He watches the water swirl around the dusty, tiled floor sending the pattern of the tiles into brightly colored, almost new looking tiles. His 'break' has turned into a type of work-release as Danthra has instructed him, helping create a refugee center, funded by the CIA, set-up and run at the instructions of the Dalai Lama's brother. The sight of more and more Tibetan refugees has become a concern in Darjeeling and with the Tibetans themselves. Lhosta feels honored to assist the Dalai Lama's brother and the refugees, feeling it brings him closer, somehow, to the Dalai Lama himself.

  The emphasis of the refugee center, the UUN, is to be about preservation of the Tibetan culture and education, while aiding the refugees in securing places to live and the essentials of life as they seek refuge in the city of Darjeeling. Lhosta is troubled to see, since the four had left Danthra's living room in Lhasa, that day for Camp Hale, the number of Tibetans turning up through the escape route over the mountain pass.

  "Things must not be well; the invasion not settling down," he thinks, since the fifteen he knows and trained with's date of descention into Tibet. For, he is aware of, or imagines, anyway, the difficulties of such a journey, on foot, crossing Nepal from the area of Mustang, to seek safe haven into Darjeeling. Yet many, he sees, are entering India every day during his stay there. The center is not yet open, but each day, as he arrives, there are people waiting at its door.

  The center is being renovated from an old, abandoned site for dances and banquets and the floor is an intricate and colorful design that Lhosta watches as he cleans, imaging life of the Bodhisatva, his kingdom and his wealth, and what it must have been like in his kingdom, before he found enlightenment. This is Lhosta's first time in India and he is taken with all the colors, sights and smells. He is happy here, happier than at Camp Hale, but he knows he must return, to train the others, continuing the fight. Never forgetting the goal to go back home, the home for which he longs to return to the sanctum of the monastery under the guidance and protection of the Dalai Lama.

  Lhosta never returns to America; however, he never goes back to Camp Hale. The number of refugees arriving in need of 'help' at the center increasing daily during his stay, Lhosta completes each task as he is asked. By March 21st, there are 80,000 refugees, literally, at India's door requiring seeking aid at the UUN.

  March 17th, there had been an uprising in Lhasa; the Dalai Lama, pressured by the Chinese to leave the city. Three hundred thousand Tibetans surround the headquarters of the Dalai Lama, resisting the evacuation efforts and a battle ensues. Three days later, March 19th, eighty thousand refugees flee the city of Lhasa, led out under the direction of Antoine, head officer of ST Circus, while Danthra and Mac take over the radio transmissions from Camp Hale into Tibet. Antoine enlists each fighter of the Resistance to secure the safety of the journey - the Dalai Lama forced to evacuate, leaving Tibet for Darjeeling - through the mountains of Mustang and the region of Nepal. On that day, four hundred thirty thousand Tibetans lay dead in the city of Lhasa after three days of fighting.

  Lhosta and every Tibetan alive are overcome with relief and gratitude; however ever possible after such tragedy, as the processional of the Dalai Lama, his holiness unharmed, enters Darjeeling safely, crossing the border from Nepal.

  Seeking refuge, too, is Tenzing. Tenzing has been with the Dalai Lama's procession, under Mac and Danthra's guidance, every step of the journey, and once into Darjeeling, he nearly collapses at the center's door. Letting his guard down, Tenzing's body slumps against the door. The Dalai Lama is removed from his protection and the protection of the other Resistance Fighters of Cushi Gangdruk and of Mustang; rushed by the Lama's of a Darjeeling monastery into solace and a secret whereabouts until his safety can be assured. Tenzing feels a rush of gratitude, watching his holiness whisked away, and a sadness he has never known. A sadness that should never be known around the world, a civilized world of nearly 1960; the desolation, isolation, the tragedy of genocide. Tenzing has escaped for the third time in his life of thirty three years a death t
hat seemed to reap each one around him, over his head and to his side. Death after death taking life after life all around him, yet not his own.

  To Tenzing, at this time, the last few days of the three day passage, on foot, guarding the most holy and precious of passengers on elephant, seem a blur. And, as Tenzing slumps there, almost in a slumber, but without sleep coming to him, Tenzing hears his name being called. For a moment, Tenzing wonders if this is 'his' time to go, his time from which he can not escape, but then he is shaken, 'awoken' from a sleep that has not taken him and Tenzing lifts his eyelids to a sight more life-affirming than he has ever known.

  "Matseidha has found me," he thinks, but he does not speak the words out loud.

  He hears her saying, as if through a misty fog, "He can't talk. Get him on a stretcher. Get him to a bed. Come and find me once he has rested. Give him water," she says and scribbles something on a clip board that she holds in her hands, something Tenzing can not quite make out in his mind, before he passes out and is transported on a gurney. Matseidha gets back to business, others in need of attention ushered in by the droves. She has no time to think of her good fortune at this 'meeting'. There is no good fortune in this incidence of genocide. There is no good fortune in not owning the homelands of one's own home. There is no good fortune in survivors flooding into an unknown land save the grateful knowing that the door through which to 'flood' is open, the way back to the homeland, obviously unavailable.