THE ESCAPE

Rachel was dead.

I heard it on the radio somewhere in western Massachusetts, and then I heard it again on every station I turned to, until it seemed the whole country was saying it to me at once, in stereo, through the cheap speakers of a rented Ford.

I turned the radio off.

It did not help. The silence said it too.

Depression. Guilt. Shame. Horror. Grief. None of the words came close. I had given Rachel the story. I had begged her to run it. I had told her it would save my life, and it had cost her hers.

As far as I was concerned, I had killed her.

At first, I had not known where I was going. Now I began to think that driving straight into the Pacific Ocean might not be the worst idea I had ever had.

The hours passed, and so did the miles. Small towns. Cities. Endless stretches of nothing at all. I stopped only for gasoline and the occasional restroom, and then I drove on, west, always west.

Somewhere in Nebraska, the storm of feeling burned itself out, and what replaced it was worse. A numbness so complete that I could not have said what I felt, or whether I felt anything at all. For the first time in my life, I had no plan. No direction. No idea who I was.

Who am I?

A killer? A fugitive? A man with three hundred thousand dollars in his pocket and nowhere to spend it?

Or simply a lawyer, the kind Shakespeare had in mind when he wrote the most famous line ever spoken about my profession? The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers. People quote it as a joke. Few remember who says it: Dick the Butcher, one of Jack Cade’s followers. Shakespeare was not mocking lawyers. He was warning what happens when no one is left to defend the law.

I had not defended it. I had sold it by the hour.

All I had left was the road in front of me, unrolling endlessly toward nowhere.

But every road ends somewhere. Mine ended in Redding, California, in a small diner off the interstate, where I sat at the counter with a drink I did not want and stared at the man in the mirror behind the bar.

The bell over the door jingled.

A small, lean man with a shaved head came in and took the stool two seats down from mine. He did not order. Without a word, the bartender set a small salad and a glass of water in front of him.

The stranger looked at me in the mirror.

“There’s a great deal more to you,” he said, “than what you see in there.”

I looked at him dully. My eyes were red from three days without sleep.

“What did you say?”

“There’s no black and white. Not in the world, and not in you.” He picked up his fork. “If you believe the man in that mirror is one thing or the other, then you’ve already traded the joy of being alive for hell.”

“Who are you?”

He smiled. “My name is Deshan. And you are clearly in hell.”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“He knows more about you than you do,” the bartender said. He had been listening the whole time. “That’s a Zen master you’re talking to, mister. He can see through you better than an MRI.”

I looked back at the stranger, but he had stopped looking at me. He was eating his salad.

I knew nothing about Zen masters. I knew even less about Eastern philosophy. But this man had just told me exactly what I needed to hear, and I could not have said how he knew to say it. So I moved to the stool beside him, introduced myself, and began to tell him my story.

I did not get halfway through.

Deshan raised his hand.

“I don’t care about your story. Everyone has a story. Everyone has his drama and his unnecessary suffering.” He wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and stood. “If you enjoy your drama, you’re welcome to it. But if you’re ready to stop looking in the mirror, go up the mountain and find me.”

He laid a few coins on the counter and walked out.

The bartender let out a low whistle.

“You’re a lucky man. Roshi Deshan doesn’t invite anybody.”

“Invite me where?”

“To his monastery. Dharma Mountain. Up north, toward Shasta, a long way back into the hills. He’s only got five students up there.” He picked up Deshan’s plate. “Looks like he just offered you a sixth spot.”

I had nothing left to lose except the wish to end my life.

So I asked him for directions.

When I closed the car door, the Taurus greeted me with the smell that every rental car on earth seems to share: new vinyl and old cigarettes. For a moment I sat with my hands on the wheel and considered what I was about to do. Drive into the wilderness to look for a monk I had known for five minutes in a diner. It sounded insane.

Then the fear passed. I turned the key.

The bartender’s directions had made the trip sound simple. It was not. Somewhere I missed a turn, and within an hour the pavement had given way to gravel, and the gravel to dirt, and I was climbing through dense forest with no sign of another human being. The road narrowed until it was little more than a ledge cut into the side of the mountain. On my left, there was no guardrail, no shoulder, nothing but loose stones sliding over the edge into empty air.

I did not look. I shifted into low gear and let the engine claw its way upward.

Then, abruptly, the mountain leveled into a broad plateau, and on the far side of it stood something that did not belong there.

A wall.

It was made of rough timber, thirty feet high, and it ran in an enormous circle around the center of the plateau. The Great Wall of China, I thought, absurdly.

I parked the dusty Taurus near what appeared to be a gate. Beside it, a copper bell hung from a wooden post. I pulled the rope. Twice. Four times. Three more. Each stroke rang out across the plateau and echoed back from the trees.

The gate did not open.

I rang it until my arm ached and my ears hummed and a headache had settled behind my eyes. Nothing.

I was exhausted, thirsty, and starving. Behind me, the Taurus sat with its fuel needle resting on empty; I had watched it fall the whole way up the mountain. I was a hundred miles from anything I would have called civilization, and night was coming. Walking down was out of the question.

I pounded on the gate with both fists.

No one came.

I sat down with my back against the wood and waited. After ten hours, I made a decision. If the gate did not open, I would die here. If I had to end my life, at least I would end it at the gate of redemption.

What I did not know then is that I was keeping a very old appointment. For centuries, Zen monasteries in Asia have turned away those who come to their gates. A would-be monk might be left outside for days, kneeling on the stone in the rain, to see whether he truly wanted what was inside. Most go home. The few who stay are let in.

Twenty hours passed. Thirty.

At forty hours, I had gone without food, water, or sleep, and I could feel myself fading. The shame and terror that had pursued me all the way from Boston began to fall away, one piece at a time, like a coat I no longer needed. I did not know whether I was dying. I found that I did not mind.

Then a hand touched my shoulder.

“Now you may come in,” said a gentle voice. “You have started to look past the mirror.”

Roshi Deshan and two monks lifted me and carried me through the gate. They gave me water, and later broth, and later still a bed.

And as my strength came back over the days that followed, I felt something I had no word for yet, something as still and unmovable as the mountain itself.

It felt like being called home.