A
version of this memoir was published in the literary magazine,
“Pilgrimage: Story, Place, Spirit, Witness”. Volume 31, Issue 1,
Crestone, Colorado, 2006, It also appeared in the Dark House Press Anthology "What We Talk About When We Talk About It" Vol.1, 2019.
She Who Hears the Cries of the World
Winter Ross
It was not a good day to die – It was too beautiful. The Denver smog was behind us. Before us was the pass, it's peaks snow-capped even in July. I'd driven 1,200 miles to deliver my two children to their father for a summer visit. The Boyfriend, along for the ride, had entertained the kids in exchange for an opportunity to get away from the humidity of the East Coast. My sadness and anxiety about being separated from my little ones had motivated me to schedule a retreat at a Zen Center within a day's drive of them.
We drove by a group of people on the side of the road. A flat tire, I thought, as I glanced in the rear view mirror. But the reversed image reflected the truth. Startled, I recognized the posture of a man performing CPR and braked. Boyfriend, who'd been keeping his eyes closed against the sting of gritty contact lenses, looked over at me from the passenger seat in surprise. It was no time to slow down. The van needed momentum to climb through the thin air.
“Someone's hurt back there,” I explained.
“Nothing we can do about it.” He pulled at his beard.
“You know I was an EMT. I'm going back.”
He shrugged, “It's up to you.”
Taking a deep breath, I swung the wheel of the van hard to the right to gain extra road for a U-turn. Still, the wide turning radius of the vehicle brought it close to the mountain's edge.
The complaining tires flung sandstone into the canyon below but the van obeyed. I pulled into a wide space across from the gathering and got out. Brushing the hair out of my face, I glanced both ways for traffic and ran across the road to the fallen figure.
He was a big man in his late 50's, stretched out on his back in the red soil. I took in the twisted bike on the ground nearby. Too old and out of shape to be biking up a mountain, I thought. Should've known better...probably a heart attack.
A young man, blond hair obscuring his face, knelt at the bicyclist's head, breathing for him through a plastic mouth guard. A middle-aged man in a Department of Wildlife uniform, leaned hard into the bicyclist's chest. I bent between them. “ I'm an EMT if you need help.” Both men hesitated. The younger stopped for the count and looked up as if to make way for me. “No. Don't stop!” I said, “Unless you have to. You're doing fine.”
I'd come from sea level and could barely breathe for one. I knew I couldn't put air into those dying lungs as effectively as the 20 year-old across from me. The body on the ground was heavy and solid. I could see it took all the government man's weight and strength to reach his heart. I wasn't strong enough to help much in that position either.
I slid my palm beneath the bicyclist's neck, made sure the airway was open, then felt along the soft jowls for the carotid artery. “I think I can feel what you're doing, but no pulse,” I murmured to the man grunting beside me. He glanced sideways and nodded. Sweat trickled through his thinning hair and down into the collar of his uniform. The broad chest beneath his hands barely rose between compressions.
“You need to breathe a little harder,” I coached Younger. “That's good. If you get dizzy, stop and I'll take over, ok?”
“Thanks, I'm alright.” he whispered over the bloated face between us.
So I just crouched there between the struggling men, trying to be helpful, my fingers on the bicyclist's damp wrist. I never felt a pulse. I could have checked his pupils but I didn't. I didn't have to. I didn't want to look into a dead man's eyes.
I found myself looking, instead, up into a sky of such deep blue that I could sense the stars behind it. A chill came over me as I imagined the bicyclist looking down on us: three strangers kneeling in the desert dirt around his body, agonizing over our inept attempts to bring him back. Was his lingering consciousness comforted by the compassion of these strangers?
Forcing myself to take a breath of my own, I looked around. Vehicles were parked haphazardly; I noticed another bike flung on the ground. A thin man, watching through tears, twisted his biking hat between his hands; a man in jeans stood with a ten-year-old boy squatting near his patched knee. I looked for Boyfriend. He leaned against a stray U-haul trailer with his arms folded, a spectator. Bluejeans picked up the bikes and put them in the trunk of an old Buick where a woman waited behind the wheel. The boy didn't move.
“Ambulance and sheriff are coming,” the wildlife officer gasped, nodding toward his green pickup. Its radio antennas shone in the sun. “It won't be long.”
Almost as he spoke, a white truck with a gold star laminated on the side swerved into the pull-off. Clouds of dust and gravel tore from the wheels. The sheriff banged open the truck door and ran toward us. “Hey, Bob! Let me take over for you, there.”
Wildlife shook his head, sweat spinning into the dry air. He had a grimmace of irony on his face. “No, man. I have so much adrenalin going, I'd explode if I quit.”
“You sure?”
“I'm sure.”
“You ok, son?”
Younger nodded and kept breathing.
The sheriff noticed my fingers on the bicyclist's wrist and raised his eyebrows. I shook my head.
He turned back to the truck to report to the ambulance coming along behind him somewhere in the rough forest at the bottom of the pass.
The ambulance crew, two men and a woman, were from the village. Although they toted high-tech equipment and wore orange jumpsuits, it was clear they weren't used to handling life or death situations every day. An IV had to be inserted twice by hands that were visibly shaking. Their patient vomited reflexively and the tube pressed down his throat had to be readjusted. Electrodes hastily taped to his skin wired him to a red box full of gauges.
“Everybody back! Clear!”
The big body stretched out stiffly, convulsing. I looked away. I saw the ten-year-old, his eyes wide and face as white as the dead man's, still sitting in the dirt unattended. I moved to block his view and caught the kid's eyes with my own. I heard the next “Clear!” behind me.
“This is not something you need to watch. Go back to your mom and dad.”
With a look of relief, the boy got up and headed toward the Buick without a word. I watched him, wondering at parents who'd leave their child to witness this and thinking how amazingly easy it was to order someone else's kid around and get an unquestioning response. My own would have ignored me.
“Clear!”
From the corner of my eye I saw Younger, standing now, sway. Both hands covered his face. I walked over to him, put my arm around his back to steady him. We stood together silently, averting our faces at the next “Clear!”
“What am I going to tell his family?” the thin man moaned. “What am I going to say to his wife? It was my idea to ride today. How can I face them? The ambulance was too late! It's taking too long!” He turned a tear-streaked face to me. “He's dead, isn't he? Don't you think he's dead?”
“I think so.” I answered hesitantly, trying to soften the obvious. “Don't blame yourself. It's not your fault.”
One of the paramedics shot me a hard look. “There will be a counselor at the hospital to talk to him,” he said in a tone that told me to shut up. “Let's get the gurney.”
It took six of us, straining, to lift the bicyclist's body onto the gurney, the gurney onto the ambulance. We almost lost him once, tipping at the step up to the wide orange doors. The body rolled toward me, the blue-white lips brushing my arm. Finally the gurney slid in. I gave one paramedic a hand up into the back and slammed the doors after her while the other two climbed into the front. The ambulance arced onto the road, its' siren screaming down the mountain air. The sheriff, his yellow lights whirling, drove after, followed by the tearful man and the family in the Buick.
After the echo faded, Younger wandered the turnout, stooping to pick up bloody pieces of gauze, bits of white tape, strewn tubing. His companion, who had waited quietly in their Volvo, packed up their first aid kit. Younger looked at me, then up at the sky. “All this...and for nothing. What good did we do?”
“You did the best you could do. That's good enough.”
“Yeah, I guess you're right. Thanks.” He'd removed all evidence of the tragedy. The pull-off was pristine as an environmentalist's campsite. He ducked into the Volvo and waved as they headed on over the pass.
I scuffed across the road to the van where Boyfriend had resettled himself. Mica twinkled in the black asphalt at the road edge. I walked around the van and skidded down the bank toward a low wall of willow. Puffs of red earth drifted away from my feet, rabbit brush scratched at my knees. I couldn't see the stream but knew willow grew only beside water in this dry country. I pushed my way through the narrow-leaved branches and squatted as close to an eddy as I could. With my hiking boots sinking into the sand, I washed the dead man's drying vomit from the back of my hand and forearm. The shallow water was fast, clear, and cold enough to numb. Beyond my reddening fingertips, fool's gold sparkled in the sandy bed. I reached to touch it, but wavelets caught the sun and threw painful shards of light into my eyes. I turned stiffly, shook my hands. Rainbow prism droplets flew, evaporating before they hit the ground. I ran my palms across my eyelids and into my tangled hair. Sighing, I lurched back up the bank and hauled myself into the driver's seat.
Boyfriend sprawled on the passenger side, head back, eyelids clamped. “My eyes are killing me,” he whined, opening one a fraction to regard me. I ignored him, reached for the keys in the ignition, and glanced in the rearview mirror. The road and turnout beyond were eerily empty – as if the past had been a mirage. Already it seemed a shimmering dream in the day's heat. It had to have happened, I told myself. The van was facing the valley we'd already traveled. I cranked the wheel laboriously to turn back uphill.
At the top of the pass, I looked out across the plain below to another mountain range: the Sangre de Cristos. Legend has it that two hundred years ago, a priest, mortally wounded by natives, took refuge on a raft in some lake down there. He had watched the snow on the peaks turn deep pink with alpenglow as the sun set behind him. “Sangre de Cristo”, Blood of Christ, were his dying words.
Down valley, we drove past a pink stucco cafe and I spotted a pay phone on the outside wall. “Do you wanna stop for breakfast?” Boyfriend prodded. Eat? Is it still morning? My shoulders ached, my hands gripped the wheel as if they were melted on.
“No. I need to talk to my kids. I need to hear their voices.”
“What do you mean, 'No'? I'm starving!” Boyfriend glared at me from his eye slits.
“We're expected for lunch at the Zen Center,” I reminded him. “You can wait.” I parked in front of the phone. I dropped a quarter in, but all I got was the ex's voice on an answering machine.
Up in the Sangres, junipers and ponderosa pine stretched out their arms and waved alongside the four wheel track to the center. I knew this road. I'd dreamed about years ago. A carved wooden sign said, “Welcome to Dharma Sangha”. We left the van in a small parking lot, climbed the path, unlatched a gate, crossed a tiny lawn and opened a rusty screen door to the back entry. Low shelves were lined with shoes and sandals. We slipped out of our boots and padded into the kitchen.
“Welcome! Welcome! Come in and sit down!” A monk in T-shirt and shorts bowed formally, giggled, then gave us both hugs. His shirt was decorated with a portrait of Yoda, the wise little master from Star Wars, and the words, “May the Force Be With You.” I couldn't imagine him in a long black robe. He rubbed his shaved head. “Is something wrong?”
“Put me to work!” I pleaded. “Give me something to do. I can't sit.”
“Sorry, hon. That's what we do here!”
I tried to laugh, but I felt too dried out.
“You won't believe the morning we had!” Boyfriend interrupted cheerfully. “This woman is a hero!” The other two monks in the kitchen put down their knives and hurried around the counter to hear his story. Their salad preparations would be postponed by speculations of exactly which mountain pass had claimed the life of the bicyclist. Surrounded by craggy peaks that regularly took the lives of climbers and hikers, they were keeping score. Boyfriend had hooked his audience. “They musta shocked the guy five times...”
I backed out of the kitchen, left the performance behind, and entered the open space of the monastery's main hall. Giant ponderosa logs formed the ceiling vigas. The vigas supported a long room that jutted from an earth berm to the open hillside. I blinked in the white light coming in through the windows. The entire southern wall was glass. Black paper cutouts of swallows were taped high on each pane to warn real birds away. A painful crack, running from ceiling to floor in one panel, was either testament to the futility of communicating with nature or a memorial to a pre-cutout casualty. I could see past the lawn, beyond a tangled garden of herbs and poppies, to the sagebrush floor of the valley. If I squinted off into the distance, I could just make out the Great Sand Dunes nestled at the foot of the mountains.
Silent children. Seas of sand. Corridors of dreams. Bleeding mountains. Gold for fools. A dead man's kiss. Suddenly I felt like a bird hitting the window, feathers scattered, stunned. The light flared in rhythm with my pounding head. I had to shut my eyes and turn away.
When I opened them again, I saw a figure begin to emerge from the shadow of the north wall. It seemed to move toward me as my eyes became accustomed to the dimness. It took my complete attention, finally, and filled my frame of vision. Before me stood a life sized statue poised on a low pedestal. Kuan Yin, the Buddhist goddess of compassion, gazed serenely at me from the darkness. The lustrous eyes were not heavy-lidded and inward looking like those of the Buddha. Instead, she stared steadily out from the shade to the harsh landscape beyond the monastery. The flowing robes, cast in black patina bronze, glowed with polished detail. Her left hand held a budding lotus. Prayer beads trailed down the folds of her gown and ornate hems lapped like waves around one bare foot. Her right hand held a small pouch from which flowed a stream of water. Slender fingers opened gracefully toward the ground in a gesture that suggested both offering and acceptance. She seemed to be waiting patiently for whatever the desert brings. Waiting, with water, for whoever crosses the pass.
I felt the peace of this Bodhisattva flow over me like a cool wave. The images of the panting wildlife officer, the little boy wide-eyed with horror, the trembling hands of the paramedic, the young man swooning in my arms, and the tears of the thin man, faded as I met the deep gaze of the goddess known as “She Who Hears the Cries of the World.” I brought my palms together before my face and bowed. The taste of salt tears brought me back to myself.
When Yoda-monk entered the hall with a vase of flowers for the table, I straightened and quickly brushed at my cheeks, embarrassed.
“May I help?” I asked.
“Sure, sweetie. Come back to the kitchen. You can grab the kettle and cups. We'll make tea.”
