Fire Monks by Colleen Morton Busch

Author:Colleen Morton Busch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2011-06-09T16:00:00+00:00

Letting go of the idea they’d held collectively for nearly three weeks—that they’d be there when the fire came through—the residents enacted the one scenario they’d never discussed or drilled for: leaving Tassajara entirely.

Ten minutes of orderly chaos passed as the community scattered to attend to whatever individual tasks still needed doing and fetch personal belongings before meeting in the parking lot. In the stone room she and Graham shared, Mako stripped off her fire gear. She put on a pair of sandals, grabbed her backpack, and tucked a distressed, meowing Monkeybat inside a pillowcase, an impromptu carrier. Colin threw his bag in the lumber truck, figuring he would drive it out so it wouldn’t burn—they would need it if they had to rebuild Tassajara. Shundo recovered a small statue of Kuan Yin, the goddess of compassion, sitting on the back of the zendo altar—he’d noticed it there when they went to get the Buddha—and handed it to Stuart’s girlfriend for safekeeping, the statue’s, hers, and theirs. In the parking lot, the resident charged with making sure they were all accounted for consulted her clipboard and directed people to their assigned vehicles. Abbot Steve had radioed her that he wanted to be the last to leave, alone, in his own car.

Stuart had positioned his Toyota pickup at the top of the parking lot so cars could queue behind him. The fire captain’s countenance had shifted from extreme frustration to provisional relief. Just before six p.m., five cars had lined up behind Stuart’s truck: Shundo had four passengers in the Isuzu. Behind him were Tassajara’s two Suburbans. The first one, driven by Graham, held five passengers, including Mako and Devin. The other also held five, plus a driver. Colin tailed the second Suburban, alone in the lumber truck. Abbot Steve stood beside his Honda CR-V, last in line. Including Stuart and his girlfriend, the resident with the clipboard counted twenty-one heads. Everyone was present but the director.

“David, where are you?” she asked over her walkie-talkie.

After a brief delay, he answered, “I’m on the phone with Paul.” Paul Haller, Zen Center’s other abbot.

Some in the cars thought, Must this conversation happen now? A few speculated that Haller, who had installed the standpipe system after the Marble Cone fire, might try to talk David out of leaving. Haller could be a fierce teacher, in the confrontational style of the old Zen masters. He’d once shouted at Shundo in a student-teacher interview that Shundo was wasting his time—and Shundo is not the only one with such a story. Haller grew up poor in Belfast, Ireland. His Dharma name, Ryushin, means “Dragon Heart/Mind.”

After a few minutes, the resident responsible for counting heads raised David again on the radio: “David, we’re all waiting for you.”

“I’ll go get him.” Mako set Monkeybat on the front seat and jogged to the stone office in her sandals. Abbot Haller had ordained both her and Graham, giving them the same Dharma name, Unzan, or “Cloud Mountain,” though unintentionally. She wanted to talk to Paul herself, to make sure he knew what was happening.

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