CHAPTER 41
Cass was exhausted. His feet were sore with blisters, his face and neck were burned by sun, and every step he took sent a sharp pain through his right knee. His pace was half what it had been when he started, and the distance was only becoming longer as he detoured into side roads or fields to avoid being seen by traffic. All he could do was stumble on walking as fast as he could so as not to attract attention, pretending that he knew where he was going.
But he couldn’t pretend much longer. He needed somewhere to rest up. The phone was dead, his water was gone, and he was hungry, thirsty, and dirty. His trainers and socks had holes, and he felt disorientated and confused, as if it was all a bad dream.
Who exactly was Roger? Why was Kurt in Thailand, and where was he? And what was this about a private investigator? Whose side were they all on? Could it be that they were all being bribed, hoodwinked, deceived, or tricked by Khan just as he had been?
Sheer monotony was making matters worse. He was on a narrow concrete track bordered by uncut grass that ran alongside the highway with just a long stretch of straight road ahead. Flat fields, dotted with dilapidated wooden shacks, lay on his left. Forested hills were in the far distance. There were no shops, buildings, houses, or turn-offs ahead, but cars, trucks, motorcycles, and buses roared past, heading both north and south.
He checked the phone. But why? The thing was dead, so should he just hurl it into the field?
“Move on, Cass. Overcome fear through your own courage. Take refuge in the Buddha.”
He had told Ajahn Lee he didn’t understand.
“Understanding is not sudden, like a bolt of lightning. Understanding is gradual. The long road to understanding is like a sandy beach, a gradual slope that may go on for many miles until the sudden drop into the deep ocean. It’s self-discipline. It’s self-training and slow progression, with the final understanding coming only after a long road.”
This was certainly a long road. He wasn’t climbing a mountain like the snail, but it felt like it. “He was slow and the mountain very high, but he knew that if he persevered, he could make it. Whatever you do, wherever you go, remember the snail, Cass.”
“Did the snail die before he reached the top?” he’d asked jokingly.
During the night, as he sheltered in a ramshackle tin-roofed hut in a field close to the roadside, a torrential storm with thunder and lightning had swept through with a wind that rattled the hut. In an hour, he’d gone from sweating to shaking with cold and wet. By daylight, the storm was gone, the sky was blue, and the sun was as hot as ever.
He passed a small copse of banana trees, and when he pulled on a hanging bunch of the fruit, cool and clear rainwater cascaded from above. He caught as much as he could in his hands, let it run over his head and arms, and then ate the freshest, most delicious bananas he’d ever tasted.
As he sat, peeling bananas, he checked his trainers. The soles of both had peeled back like a banana. At every step, a thin slice of rubber scuffed the ground, and when he held his foot up to examine it, it dangled. He put some bananas in his bag, re-joined the road, walked on, and then passed a length of blue nylon cord that might have fallen from a truck. He walked back to it and picked it up.
“Fools wait for a lucky day, but every day is lucky to an industrious man.”
He wound it around the worst of his shoes. It was far too long, and scissors would have been useful. With scissors, he could have fixed both shoes. A piece of broken bottle glass sorted that. He sawed at the cord until it snapped and wound it around the other shoe. He was two inches taller now, and that, in itself, felt good, but he knew it wouldn’t last.
By mid-afternoon, the flatness of the countryside disappeared. To his left, the west, the forested hills had become closer, and in the far distance, set into the hills, he saw a huge white-and-gold Buddha.
“In this bag is a letter. It is signed by me and requests the Ajahn in charge of any temple you pass to help you. Remember, Cass. The way forward is not written in the sky but in your heart.”
He found a rough, overgrown track that looked as if it might lead towards the temple, and so, with his backpack on one shoulder and Ajahn Lee’s bag across the other, he started walking again.
“Take refuge in the Buddha.”