Down Dog Diary

by Sherry Roberts

  As we stepped where bison had once lumbered, the big bluestem grass brushing my arm, I asked, “Ray, has a woman been here asking questions? Blonde, petite, about as polite as a rattlesnake.”

  “The Pink Lady,” Ray said immediately. He frowned. “Small in size and small in spirit.”

  “Was someone with her?”

  He shook his head.

  “What did you talk about?” Jorn asked.

  “She wanted to know about the special energy of Pipestone, wanted me to take her to spots where the energy swirls.” Ray motioned with his finger, drawing circles in the air, and rolled his eyes. I relaxed.

  “She even offered to pay me,” Ray said. That sounded like Sasha. “I told her I could use a new winter coat, but I knew of no such places.”

  “Did she tell you why she wanted to see those places?” I asked.

  “She said she was on a spiritual journey.”

  “You didn’t believe her?”

  “Please. My people know about spiritual journeys. We invented them.”

  After what happened to Nico, I was worried about Ray. So was Jorn. He asked, “Do you think she will be back?”

  “Hard as quartzite, that one. Too bright for my eyes.” Jorn and Ray exchanged grins, then Ray gave Jorn’s shoulder an avuncular pat. “She was not happy when she left. She won’t be back. She did not feel the spirit of Pipestone.”

  By the time we left Pipestone and started the three-and-a-half-hour drive home, clouds had begun to stack up in the sky. I saw Ray waving in the rearview mirror and thought of the story he had told us of a spiritual woman who morphed into a baby white buffalo. But, before she did so, she presented the people with a pipe and said, “When you pray with this pipe, you pray for everything and with everything.”

  I had felt this on the red stone cliffs of Pipestone. Here I was part of everything. Larry was right; it was a sacred place, maybe even a vortex. I knew Sasha had left here disappointed.

  I glanced at Jorn, who was staring out the passenger window, studying the shadows on the flat farmland and the rainbows in the tassels of roadside grasses. The western sun glinted through the car, sparking some copper in his choppy blonde hair and turning him golden. In Jorn’s pocket was one of Ray’s hand-carved pipes, a small one, a gift that had brought a smile to Jorn’s face. I had never seen him like this: at the end of the day, tired, satisfied that he had found the truth.

  “Why, Peter Jorn, I think you’re actually happy,” I said.

  He glanced at me, his face reddening. “I liked Ray. He was real. No pretense.” Jorn pushed his hair from his eyes. “Man, I love those kinds of stories. You know, he told me . . .”

  And for the next hour, Jorn talked and talked and talked. He made me laugh. He seduced me with his eagerness to know everything, to see everything, to touch everything. He told me stories of other people he had met, recounted conversations, did a miserable job of mimicking accents. Ray had turned a key and let out a Jorn I had never seen but always suspected was there.

  “Are you going to write Ray Grayfeather’s story?” I asked.

  Jorn lifted his shoulders. “The writing isn’t the important thing.”

  No, it wouldn’t be to a truth seeker and story collector.

  “Did you collect stories in Afghanistan?”

  I felt the temperature in the car drop.

  For a long time, Jorn didn’t say anything. In fact, I had given up hope of any further civil conversation. Then Jorn said quietly, “I found nothing but lies in Afghanistan.”

  Chapter 23

  When a Tree Calls for Help

  AS WE JOINED THE Saturday morning Memorial Day weekend crawl north on I-94, we were probably the only ones with no destination in mind. We only had a spot circled in pink on Sasha’s map, somewhere in nowhere central Minnesota. We weren’t headed for stale-smelling cabins on clear lakes, at least I didn’t think we were. We had nothing in common with the boat-towing, packed-to-the-gills, sweatshirt-wearing families bubbling with excitement, having waited so long for another Minnesota summer to begin.

  I drove again because, unlike Jorn’s rickety Jeep, my Subaru didn’t rattle over every rock and piece of paper we met. When Jorn limped to the car and eased himself into the passenger side, pain lines edging his mouth, I said, “You need to come back to yoga.”

  “Yoga isn’t the solution to everything,” he replied, pulling a Pop-Tart from the pocket of his fleece jacket.

  I handed him a travel mug.

  “Dare I hope?” he asked.

  “Caffeine is not good for you,” I said.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Jorn growled but still took the tea. His hair stuck out as usual, and I wondered if he owned a comb.

  The silence that had become de rigueur when traveling with Jorn was shattered as my phone rang. It was a hysterical Sadie. “Maya, come quick!”

  “What’s wrong, Sadie?”

  “It’s my tree.”

  “Oh, no, what’s it doing now?”

  “It’s dying.”

  “What?”

  “You gotta come fix it.”

  “David can help your tree,” I said.

  “No, he wants to chop it down.” There was a long pause punctuated with sniffles. “Maya, I need you.”

  This kid had been playing the auntie-sucker card since she was an hour old. Don’t cry, baby. Auntie is here. I’ll always be here. Without even thinking about it, I swerved onto the exit we were just about to pass, turned around, and headed back the way we came.

  Jorn sat up. “What the—”

  I explained that we had a tree emergency. He couldn’t believe it. “Really? We’re going back to Gabriel’s Garden? What about Sasha?”

  “Slight delay. She’ll keep.”

  “Yesterday you were telling me there wasn’t a moment to waste and today we have time to play tree doctor?”

  “Just eat your Pop-Tart.”

  As I pulled into the driveway at Heart’s house, Sadie came running down the steps. She dragged me out of the car and pulled me toward the black cherry in the front yard, the one that had created a sensation in the town by bursting into spring pink blossoms two months early on a snowy March day. It was May now, when all the other black cherry trees in Minnesota were flowering with new life and energy. The tiny flowers on Sadie’s tree were gone. Its leaves were drooping, wilting actually. I’m no botanist, but I knew this couldn’t be good. From the looks of a garbage bag by the porch, David had been raking up the leaves as soon as they hit the ground.

  “Can you fix it?” Sadie asked anxiously.

  “It’s a big tree, darling,” I said.

  Sadie put her hands on her hips and a stubborn look on her face. “I’ve seen you reiki plants before. You’re always saving Mom’s.”

  “Those are houseplants. This is a tree and one big bundle of stress. Sadie, magic takes a lot out of a being.”

  Jorn snorted behind me.

  “Just try,” pleaded Sadie with those eyes that always melt me.

  There was no choice.

  Heart and David joined us. My sister stood on the porch, her body leaning toward her husband. From her expression, I knew she was torn—she instinctively wanted to keep Sadie firmly tethered to the practical ground, but she also harbored some hope that the mystical world that was so strong in me could come forth and lift her child to happiness. “Sadie, Maya is not a miracle worker,” she said, but her voice wasn’t as firm as usual.

  I have been giving reiki to humans, plants, and animals since I was fourteen. I was trained by a reiki master at Whispering Spirit named June, who proclaimed with a smile that I was “a natural.”

  Reiki is pronounced ray-key, and it is gentle, healing energy transmitted through the hands. June called it “love from the universe, shared through the hands.” In Japanese, rei means spirit, divine, or miraculou
s. Ki means breath, force, or energy. “It’s divine breath,” June told me in our first training session, “a miraculous energy. Use it with love.” And the teenage me did. I gave reiki to everything: the plants in our house (they flourished), Zeke when he twisted his knee, a woman from a nearby farm who suffered from terrible migraines. I learned distance reiki so that I could help Martin, the old arthritic cat at Whispering Spirit; crotchety Martin never held still long enough for a good hands-on reiki session.

  Reiki became addictive. I got off on healing.

  But no matter how talented, a reiki practitioner cannot start a heart that has stopped or mend a broken bone instantly or save a dying tree. Sure, there are stories of people who have knocked out diseases with reiki, but it has never happened to me. I accepted my limits now and was no longer that teenage girl who was hell-bent on saving the world with the touch of her hands.

  So, I didn’t hold out much hope for the cherry tree.

  But David had planted this tree the day after Sadie was born. It was Sadie’s tree.

  David caught my eye. “We need to take it out, Maya.” He wanted me to turn Sadie down, not build up his little girl’s hopes. He nodded toward the tree’s miserable leaves. “The black cherry’s foliage, especially when the leaves wilt like this, is poisonous. If they fall on the ground and some animal eats them . . . it could kill a kid’s dog or cat. Not that one less cat in the neighborhood would be a loss.”

  “David.” Heart elbowed her feline-unfriendly husband.

  Sadie protested. “But it’s my tree.”

  “Your dad doesn’t want to do this either, Sadie, but—” Heart said.

  “No.” Sadie suddenly wrapped her arms around my middle and whispered, “Please do something.”

  I looked up into the tree towering above us then back down at my only niece. “Let’s give it a try, shall we?” I smiled at Sadie. “You can help. Place your hands here and here.” I positioned her hands near mine, flat against the broken, black bark. “Close your eyes,” I whispered. “Breathe. Become part of the tree’s life. Send love.”

  As soon as I touched the tree, I felt its pain. It slammed into me like a hockey goon, out of nowhere, full of unchecked power. It was jarring at first, but then I got used to it and began to pick up a faint pulling through my hands, a tiny ribbon of life. The tree was reaching for energy, using me as a pipeline to the universe’s life force. In yoga, the life energy all around us is called prana. This tree was a prana puller.

  The pull grew stronger. The tree was eagerly sucking energy now. I glanced at Sadie. She smiled at me, obviously feeling nothing. I kept the smile on my face as my hands began to burn.

  Eventually, Sadie grew tired and bored. She sank to the ground and sat with her back against the tree. Heart joined her. Sadie played with a twig on the ground; she snapped it in two and the scent of almonds spiraled into the air. I listened to mother and daughter talk about school and what color swimsuit Sadie should get this year and how some boy named Aaron was giving her trouble. Reiki does not require meditation or even concentration. I’ve carried on conversations about the latest movie while practicing reiki.

  On and on the cycles of energy ran, climbing, peaking, falling; one wave after another. The tree kept tugging. I was not doing the healing. The tree was seeking balance, self-healing, and I was just the conduit. Energy sparked from the air, raced through me to the tree. It was like holding a live wire.

  Finally, after about an hour, I lifted my hands from the tree.

  Sadie jumped to her feet. “Is it okay?”

  “We’ll see,” I said, exchanging a look with Heart. She shrugged. Neither of us thought the tree would survive. Reiki restores balance, but this tree had exerted so much energy in its unnatural and early flowering. It was one confused and tired tree.

  And it was a tree. Period. A big, living thing with a massive, near-death problem. How much help could the Band-Aid of reiki be? I could persuade a philodendron to perk up and reach for the sun, but a thirty-foot tree was another matter.

  Sadie gave the tree, then me, a hug and followed her mother into the house. I turned and found Jorn leaning against the Subaru. He’d been waiting all this time. He held out his hand, and I looked at him in surprise. He simply stared at me until I dropped the car keys into his care. Then he opened the passenger door for me.

  “You know that tree has a snowball’s chance,” he said, starting the car. “No matter what hoodoo-voodoo you try.” He pointedly looked down to my lap. “No matter what you do to yourself.”

  I looked down. My aching hands were curled into claws.

  Chapter 24

  The Llama Trap

  WE STARTED OUT AGAIN on Sunday morning, heading north, hunting Sasha and vortexes. We reached Itasca State Park by mid-afternoon. Sitting in the state park restaurant, as the hummingbirds buzzed outside the window and Jorn tapped on his laptop, I was at a loss where to go from here. This was the area Sasha had circled, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why. Itasca was a small lake compared to some of Minnesota’s other bodies of water. Its claim to fame? The headwaters of the Mississippi. Here a toddler could waddle across the mighty Mississippi River, fall down on her diapered butt with a splash, and pop up gurgling.

  I stabbed at my salad, mostly boring iceberg lettuce and a token leaf of spinach. My hands had recovered from the reiki session with Sadie’s tree. As the wail of a loon filtered in through the open window, Jorn paused in typing, grabbed his hamburger without looking, and bit off a chunk. Something caught his attention. He leaned closer to the screen, shoveling fries and burger into his mouth like a machine. Suddenly, without looking, he reached for his coffee, the one I had tried to persuade him not to order, and smiled.

  “How about that?” he said, spinning the laptop in my direction.

  I read: “Meditation walks. Tap your inner power with Betty’s llamas at the Pink Panther B&B.”

  “Sound like Sasha?” he asked.

  I smiled. “You’re a regular Clouseau.”

  EVENING WAS GENTLY UPON us as we drove up to the fuchsia front door of the Pink Panther Bed and Breakfast, a white clapboard farmhouse turned into “a spiritual retreat honoring the divine in all creatures, especially llamas,” according to the sign by the door. We reached it by heading east out of Itasca, following Highway 200 until we cut south on County Road 4 then turned sharply east again at a wooden llama. We drove for a good fifteen minutes on the winding gravel Panther Road, never meeting a car. Jorn only had to slam on the brakes twice to miss deer looking for dinner.

  As we pulled up, I searched the area for llamas, but the enclosure by the barn was empty. Before we could even get our doors open, the porch light sprang on, and Betty herself, I assumed, stepped out on the porch to greet us. With little girl rosy cheeks and a mouth stretched wide with perfect teeth, she tossed her long, reddish blonde braid over her shoulder and yelled, “Welcome.”

  “I don’t think Betty gets much business,” Jorn muttered as we unfolded ourselves from the car.

  I flashed Betty a smile.

  A big-boned Norwegian, Betty was a sequoia of a woman. She herded us inside, through a roomy foyer, and into a parlor. When she joined us, I discovered a man had been trailing behind Betty all along, a small fellow with a round face, slicked back hair, and a pencil thin black mustache.

  “I’m Betty, and this is Paul, my husband.” She motioned to the man who barely came up to her shoulder. “We own the Pink Panther. Bought it in 1999, lock, stock, and llama.” Betty and Paul chuckled to each other. “Thirty-six acres. We were looking for someplace to retire, and this place just spoke to us. It has a good feeling.”

  We all sat. The furniture was sturdy, Betty-proof, but not ugly. The upholstery was country florals in soothing shades of blues and greens, not a nauseating palette of pinks, I was happy to see. Paul plopped down on the arm of Betty’s cushioned chair, which brough
t his head close to the same height as hers. He slung an arm around her shoulders, barely spanning their width. “Betty’s my giantess,” said Paul with a swing of the leg and a British accent. “And my name is Paul, so it was like kismet.”

  “Kismet?” Jorn asked.

  “Yes, this land borders the Paul Bunyan National Forest. Paul Bunyan, get it? Like me. Big guy, just like my Betty. It was a sign.”

  “A sign?”

  “From the universe,” Betty said. “We love signs.”

  Vortex lovers always do. Paul wagged his head like a bobble-head doll. “We just felt right at home the minute we got out of the car. We hope you did, too.”

  “I felt a twinge,” I said.

  Jorn looked at me like I was nuts. Betty and Paul beamed.

  I said, “We’re interested in your meditation walks. Do you have a lot of people asking about them?”

  “We’re taking a group out tomorrow morning,” Betty said. “Your timing couldn’t be more perfect.”

  “Really,” I exchanged a look with Jorn. “I had a friend who was talking about meeting us here. Has she shown up yet?”

  Paul frowned. “Golly, no. We have two couples staying with us now, both older, birdwatchers. But we do have a single booked for the walk tomorrow.”

  “Maybe that’s her,” I said.

  Paul, who seemed eager to please, hopped up, scampered to the desk, and rummaged in the top drawer. He pulled out a spiral-bound appointment book and brought it back. Sitting on the arm of Betty’s chair again, he flipped through the pages, stopped, and ran his finger down one page. He scratched his head, then leaned closer to Betty, “Can you make out that name, love?”

  “Paul, my doctor has better penmanship than you.”