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Enlightenment for the Enlightened
The crumpled scrap of notebook paper inched across the worn wood of the picnic table as the breeze caught in its torn folds. It moved erratically, like a seizure, twitching one way, then the other, then stopping completely for half a second before bolting across the grain. Mirroring the scrap’s movements, Paul flinched, his arms moving part of the way to the paper each time it moved, then retracting as the scrap came to rest. It yearned to fly away into the rain-scented air, but just hadn’t found the right updraft yet. Straddling the picnic bench to avoid the dried circles of pigeon droppings all over the bench, with his long brownish-orange robe hanging down on either side, Paul was ready for whenever the moment of escape might arrive.
Boaz stood a few feet away from the picnic bench, his sandled shoes buried in the ankle-high grass. In this late July, the grass was brilliantly green from the mild Northwoods summer. It curled in between Boaz’s chapped toes, hiding the broken, yellowed nails. “I still don’t understand why they need a new parking lot here. They’ve completely cut this park in half. You can barely see the trees, there’s so many of those yellow machines. It’s the Northwoods, for Chrissakes -- there are supposed to be trees.”
Paul’s mind had wandered from the conversation as he had concentrated on capturing the paper scrap. Boaz’s last sentence snapped him back though, and Paul cringed at the obscenity the Lord’s name had been turned into. In his heart he knew he should not condemn Boaz -- the older man had long ago told him about his distrust of organized religion. Of course, then the outdated hippie’s only name had been Starchild68@aol.com. New to his computer because of his thirty something years in the monastery, Paul had stumbled into a chatroom about Medieval combat reenactment and found himself chatting with Starchild68, an intelligent, if a little odd, conversationalist who soon turned into e-mail friend, and who happened to live not too far away.
Now Boaz stood just a few feet away from him, brightly tie-dyed, with his once-blonde braid hanging down past his waist.
“Too many tourists,” Paul said. He loved northern Wisconsin, but not the well-developed areas like this “Snowmobile Capital of the World” Eagle River.
“I hear ya there, man.” Fiddling with the pouch attached to the belt-loop of his faded but clean overalls, Boaz crossed to the other side of the table. “There’s only one good thing about these tourists -- they come to my store. You think there are many vegans, or even vegetarians, up here? Nope. The only business I do is from the tourists.”
The scrap balanced on the splintered edge of the table. Paul jumped to grab it before it could fly away. The frayed bottom of his robe caught on a protruding splinter from the bench, but did not prevent him from catching the paper. It nestled softly in his hand, its wrinkles matching the lines of his skin. The handwriting had started to fade into the folds, the black now more gray, but it was still legible enough to read the names and websites he needed to remember. As Paul looked back toward Boaz, dust filled his nostrils, its chalkiness obliterating the perfume of the summer wildflowers. The construction site that surrounded the park was extra noisy today, as the yellow monsters pushed piles of dirt in every direction and sent the dust through the park.
Paul folded and unfolded the paper between his fingers. “I’m surprised you do business at all.”
Boaz pulled a purple guitar pick from his pouch. He twirled it around in his fingers and then began to use it to pry the dirt out from under his nails. “That’s what a lot of people say. But I’m the only veggie-friendly place up here, so when these big-city people come up here to snowmobile or hide from their cell phones, they come to me. I think it’s in style to be vegetarian in the big cities, or something like that. And there’s that Jewish camp up in Conover. They can’t eat a lot of normal food, so on their days off the staff come to me. There’s a pretty decent rabbi guy who comes pretty often. He plays the blues like no one else I know.”
Paul’s mind focused on the grain of the picnic table, having a difficult time conversing with this man without the filter of e-mail. Knots dotted the wood slats, now graying from age and weather, probably from trees older than he and Boaz combined. Random splinters stuck out on the edges, but as he ran his hand over the middle of the table, the wood was as smooth as if it had just been sanded, quite a contrast to the rough skin of his aged hands.
Words still fell from Boaz’s mouth, with topics switching so quickly Paul could not keep track. Paul returned to the point when he had still been following the conversation. He had seen staff members from that camp before too, at night while he was reading his newspaper at Burger King -- Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays he saw them -- and not all of them were as pious as Boaz assumed them to be because they ate the greasy food there. Sometimes they talked to him because they saw him there often, curious about the rope tied about his waist or the old monk’s clothes he still wore or why he enjoyed sitting at Burger King, one of the uglier places of the world. But most of them just ignored him, or at best, stared at him. The scrap of paper ripped under the stress of Paul’s continued folding as he said, “I know that camp.”
Boaz nodded. “Strange thing to have a Jewish camp up in the middle of the Northwoods. It adds some diversity though. We don’t have enough of that here.” As an afterthought, he added, “And it must teach the kids some good morals. There’s not enough of that anywhere.”
This time Paul answered right away, cutting off Boaz, whispering but insistent. “Amen.”
As Boaz stuffed the guitar pick back into the pouch, he pulled out a silver harmonica. The late afternoon sun glittered off the metal, sending golden sparks through Boaz’s eyes. He lifted the harmonica to his mouth, his lips closing over it like a kiss, and played a soft melody to accompany the birds in the trees nearby.
The notes sung back to Paul the hymns and chants that once filled the sanctuary in his monastery. His eyes closed with the distant memory, enjoying the silence from conversation. Colors flashed behind his closed eyelids in time with the song. When Paul opened his eyes, Boaz’s lips curved into a smile around the instrument, echoing the smile on Paul’s face.
