Roadside Bodhisattva (24 page)

But not until I settled the score with Sid.

I flopped down on my bunk, but I never slept all that night. Sid didn’t come back to the trailer. I pictured him and Sue curled up in bed until the image was burned into the undersides of my eyelids. When it got light, I walked up Route 1 until I came to a payphone outside a donut shop. I dialed the number that was painted on the side of the police car parked there.

Al Vakharia pulled up about half an hour later in his own cruiser. We went inside the donut place.

When I was done talking, he looked at me without saying anything for a long while. Then he lifted up his mirrorshades and stared hard at me. His eyes were blue, like my Dad’s.

“Why you doing this, Kid?”

“Because he’s committed a crime. I’m just reporting a crime like any good citizen.”

Vakharia lowered his shades. “If you say so, Kid. I just hope for your sake you can make yourself believe it.”

I stayed with Vakharia for the rest of the day. Cops have a pretty interesting job, but it’s not for me.

Vakharia brought a whole squad of cops with him to Deer Park that evening. I guess he figured this way there’d be no possibility Sid and Sue could argue about a frameup.

I stayed outside when the cops busted into the rental office from front and back. There weren’t any sounds of a scuffle. I guessed Sid and Sue knew they had been caught dead to rights. I heard a few words, words I recognized from my talk with Vakharia earlier that day. “—statuatory rape—minor—right to be silent—” Then they marched Sid out, half-dressed with his hands zipstripped behind him. Wrapped in a blanket, Sue followed, escorted by a policewoman. I guessed they’d be taking her to a hospital to get evidence that her and Sid were having sex.

I didn’t hide. I wanted them to see me.

When Sue spotted me, she started to swear and shriek and spit at me, until the policewoman got her into the cruiser.

But Sid didn’t freak. Sid only looked sad and tired, calm and kind, ready for whatever came next, more or less the same as the night I had met him under the tree. He even smiled weakly at me, and that lousy smile hurt more than any curses he could’ve made.

Then he spoke.

“When you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him. Classic move, Kid.”

Those words got inside me like bees, like thorns, like the smell of flowers, and everything twisted inside-out in my head, during one forever moment beyond what any clock could measure. I seemed to wake up to a different world.

I saw everything I had done, knew it was inevitable, knew I could never undo it, knew that the me who had done it was no longer around. Knew that the person who stood here watching was just born, but carried the old dead me forever inside.

As they loaded Sid into the cruiser, shielding his head so he didn’t whack it on the roof, I thought of how the Prophet climbed onboard the mystery ship and sailed away at the end of that book. And so I whispered, “A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me.” I wasn’t sure Sid heard me.

Officer Vakharia was handing me my pack from his cruiser. “You’re not gonna be too popular around here, Kid. I’ll give you a ride outa town.”

I took my knapsack. “No thanks. I’ll walk.”

I waited until all the cop cars had pulled off into the night, their tail lights shrinking away, taking Sid to wherever he had to go next. Then I did what Jack did when his time on the mountain was over. I kneeled down and gave thanks through my tears, thanks for all the good and all the bad. Then I stood up and walked away, hoping everyone and everything would understand, walked down the trail and back into the world I had made for the very first time.