Free A Single Eye by Susan Dunlap

or just plain untrue. I needed to see through the Roshi and recapture my buddy in the truck. Desperately, I tried a line that had worked for me on a weekend visit with friends near Lake George.
    â€œI’m a city girl; I know the woods are full of dangers. Walking in alone, it’s like asking for a separate canoe in Deliverance . Anything could happen. Crazed survivalists. Bears, cougars . . .”
    â€œCougars wait all year for a tasty New Yorker.”
    â€œNo, listen, I’m not kidding. I don’t do woods.”
    He was laughing.
    â€œLeo! You’ll just have to find someone else to—”
    He lifted his cup and poured the cocoa on the floor.
    I stared, stunned into silence.
    He refilled his cup from his thermos and sipped as if nothing had happened. He sat there in his robes, his gaze downward: 0% Leo; 100% Roshi.
    I was so shocked I just stared. I looked at him with fury, but I was damned if I was going to give him the satisfaction of seeing my panic. It took all my restraint, but I waited, forcing him to make the next move.
    A full minute passed. The aroma of cocoa, wasted cocoa, filled the room like thick, noxious smog. Finally he pointed to a corner cabinet. “The cleaning supplies are in there.”
    I said nothing. I did not bang the door open, or slap the rag on top of the brown puddle as I started to mop it up. I didn’t dig my fury into the floorboards with each push, not did I bang or even leave open his outside door when I took the sodden rag out to rinse in the rain spitting off the gutter.
    I am no stranger to choking back anger. Movie sets are aflame with egos, and the first in Me first is never the stunt double. But even considering the provocation now, it was frightening how furious this man made me.
    â€œOne thing to watch out for,” he said.
    One thing? Just one? But I didn’t say that.
    â€œOnce you leave the road, the path forks in half a mile. And you remember, I know my forks.” He paused, watching me till, in spite of everything, I almost smiled at the thought of his collection of plastic utensils and the two of us laughing about them. Then he flashed a grin. “The right tine goes uphill to the fire-watch tower.” He paused, looked me square in the eye and said, “It would be a mistake to take that.”
    I started to speak, but he put out a hand. “After tonight’s zazen, Darcy, give me about ten minutes—I like to get in the bathhouse before the late-night rush—then meet me back here and we’ll talk about tomorrow.”
    He didn’t say don’t bang the door on the way out , not quite. He certainly didn’t say he’d reconsider about the walk in the woods, but that door seemed open. After all, he had mentioned the paper not arriving some days and the gift of disappointment. Still, I hated the thought that gift would be coming from me.
    As I walked down his steps into the thick gray of evening, it shocked me how quickly the light had vanished. In the dusk the valley seemed narrow and deep. I pulled my jacket tighter around me against the cold rain. My feet splatted with each step. I almost didn’t hear the sobs as I passed another cabin.
    Maybe I shouldn’t have stopped. In sesshin we face our own problems alone. We don’t speak, don’t make eye contact, don’t give encouraging pats on the shoulder, don’t offer distractions. The support we give one another is that we, too, are facing ourselves silently moment after moment, day after day. But sesshin hadn’t quite started and I did stop long enough to see the girl who had been hauling individual cauliflowers in the kitchen. She was sitting on the steps under the porch roof. Her long honey-colored hair was wet, her face was blotched red. “I can’t—” she muttered. “I just can’t.”
    I sat down next to her on the step and said nothing. Two weeks is a long frightening time.
    She wasn’t