Mani He

by Joseph Carrabis

Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

part 6: conclusion

Mani He woke to the wind rushing past him and pains in his shoulders. He looked up and saw fierce talons piercing him. He followed the talons to the legs and further until he saw he was being carried by a great hawk. He peeked down and gulped. “Sparky? Is that you? Damn we’re high up. How high are we?”

“You know your voice doesn’t hide your nervousness at all, not one bit?” Hawk had a distinctly female voice, kind of like Mountain Lion’s but higher and whispier.

“Mrs. Sparky?”

She chuckled. Her laugh wasn’t bad at all. Her eyes closed and her beak opened. That was all. “’Hawk’ will do.”

They flew to a mountain. It was different from all the others he’d been on since Badger came and got him. It wasn’t like Mountain Lion’s and it wasn’t like Coyote’s. “Is this your mountain, Mother?”

“No, Mani He. It’s yours.”

“Am I going to meet my other teachers there?”

“You’ve met all of the teachers you have. I’m the last.”

“You mean, after I do whatever I have to do with that mountain, I’ll wake up?”

“No, Mani He. If you leave that mountain, you’ll sleep forever. The only reason you started on this journey was to get here. Remember what Hummingbird taught you.”

He was about to ask another question when Hawk let him go. He fell, but not down. He fell towards the mountain. As he neared the mountainside, he began to fly, like Hawk, up its side, gaining speed and feeling the wind move him until he was soaring scant inches above the mountain’s face up to its peak, flying even though his body walked.

When he thought he would shoot beyond it and be lost in the sky forever, he slowed and landed on the summit, a table of stone barely wide enough for him to stand upon. “What am I supposed to do up here?”

Hawk circled the summit below him. “You’re supposed to remember all your lessons.”

“But what am I supposed to do?”

“Look around you, tell me what you see.”

Mani He started to turn, but the narrow summit forbade him. “I can’t turn around to see what’s behind me.”

“What would you need to see all that’s around you?”

“Faces in all directions, I guess.” Mani He screamed as three more faces erupted from his head, one in each direction of the compass. “What kind of trick is this?”

“No trick. That would be Coyote’s job, and it won’t do here. Accept you’ll be given what you need when you ask for it. There’s no magic in that. Now, look around you. Can you see everything? Can you hear everything? Can you smell, taste, and touch everything?”

The four mouths answered in unison, “Yes.”

“What is there?”

He looked. He saw Thompson placing a gun into his mouth. He saw a young girl, someone no older than Grace when he first met her, punching her stomach and repeating, “You bastard, you bastard, you bastard,” feeling her blows in his own stomach as she learned her own ritual for destruction, an echo and an answer to his own. He heard some children crying because there was no profit in feeding them wholesome food. He heard some bankers helping druglords escape because cocaine was the only cash crop their countries had. He felt others dying because the companies where they lived were more willing to pay penance than finance safe industry. He tasted flesh eaten by others, the flesh of species as sentient and thoughtful as he, because it was cheaper to destroy than to preserve. He smelled gunpowder as explosions rocked the mountain where he stood.

There were other things, too. He saw a man holding another, someone the first man didn’t know, as the second died of AIDS, and felt the second man’s joy in knowing someone cared. He heard a rock singer who gave half his earnings to plant trees and saw the young shoots tear through the ground. He felt his belly fill as a woman ordered all the restaurants in her chain to give their daily leftovers to the homeless and helpless. He tasted the first harvest of some people who’d learned to cultivate their land with enough to provide for others, others who’d been their enemies through time. He smelled Grace, the first time they slept together, and remembered how it had been when there were horses to ride.

“I can tell you, Mother. I can tell you what’s there.”

“Yes, Mani He. Tell me. But not just me. You’re here on top of a mountain,” she cried up to him. “Listen to Spider, listen to Hummingbird, listen to Badger. What is Moose’s lesson for you here? What is your way to the West, the way Mountain Lion taught you? Remember Lizard’s words, Coyote’s, and Armadillo’s. Think of what I teach you.

“This is where everything comes together for you, Mani He. This is where you’re meant to be. This is where you’ve always wanted to be. You’re quite lucky, Little One. Most two-legs never know either the one or the other. If they do, they never know how to make them meet.”

“But how?”

Badger formed to the east, patted him on the back and said, “Hi, kid.”

Mani He said, “Hello.” Badger said, “Coming in!” and dove in Mani He’s mouth.

He felt a poke from the south as Moose spoke, “Glad you made it, Mani He,” and entered him.

Mountain Lion purred to his west and entered him. Next came Lizard from the north, followed by Coyote above, Hummingbird below, and he felt Spider’s webbing within. What he thought was a stone whacked his foot to his right, and Armadillo climbed in.

He opened his mouth and Badger called out, “Hey, Hawk, room for one more!”

“Use the abundance you have been given to give to others,” cried Hawk. “There are opportunities all around you, Mani He. All you have to do is use them.” She folded her wings and entered his chest.

Mani He, feeling Badger and Armadillo, hearing Moose and Mountain Lion, seeing all his teachers within, began turning his head, first right then left. Faster and faster, right and left, until suddenly it went all the way around. Then again. And again. And again and again and again. Faster and faster until his senses were finding out everything around him, everything that happened on the world far below.

All there was in the world filled him, building up in him, until finally his mouths opened and he spoke, telling all the world what he saw, sharing what he felt, describing what he heard, giving names to what he tasted and smelled.

* * *

His Rivier watch throbbed against his wrist, letting Tony know it was time to get up and head back to Boston, to Old Man Brumhall, to his corner office.

He sat up on the cot and scraped the sleep off his shoulders, having slept through the entire weekend. An hour later, the sky still dark, star-filled and with the moon climbing through the trees, he finished packing his car. The last thing was the rifle Brumhall had ordered him to use. Touching it, he remembered the Old Man’s demand.

As he held the rifle crooked in his arm, a mountain lion broke through the trees and landed on all fours, staring at him. The moon cleared the trees and cast its bright night light on Tony and the cat.

He asked himself, “What are you going to do?”

The rifle grew heavy in his arm. It was loaded. He knew he could snap it up and fire before the Mountain Lion moved either towards him or away.

“What are you going to do?”

The moon came up higher over the trees. The sky began to brighten as the sun made its presence known. Stars began to fade and the moon continued to spotlight the distance between himself and the mountain lion. The big cat didn’t move.

“What are you going to do, Morelli?” he said out loud.

He lifted the gun up, swung it like a baseball bat and smashed it against his car, breaking it in two and severely denting the hood and fender.

The cat sat down and cocked its head left, as if curious about this odd behavior and trying to determine what it meant.

“My name is Mani He, Mother. I’m having trouble finding my path and I’m afraid. I’m sorry I forgot and hope never again to forget your lesson.”

The cat stood, scratched the earth where it sat, circled and scratched the earth again. It ran off into the woods and Tony saw it had left some scat. He ran his hand over the damage to his car. “It was just a cat. A great big cat.”

A badger ran out from the woods, stopped about twenty feet away and sniffed in his direction, then continued on its way.

The sun came up and he realized there was going to be an eclipse. He hadn’t known about it. Surely someone would have mentioned it at work or he’d have heard about it on the radio. A hawk cried high overhead. When he looked up at it, it circled down and perched on a tree, some fifteen feet over his head. Something fluttered in the trees near it and he saw a hummingbird perch next to the hawk without fear, as if the hummingbird and hawk were old friends.

“Not quite the lion and the lamb, but close enough,” he said.

Somewhere down in the valley he heard a moose bellow. He asked himself again, “What are you going to do?”

He considered setting fire to the cabin and his car. “I don’t think that’s necessary, do you?” he asked the hummingbird and hawk. They continued to stare at him. “That’s what I thought.”

The woods grew quiet as the eclipse began. “Somewhere,” Mani He whispered, “stars are being made.”

At the eclipse’s peak, he felt wounds on his body, wounds where his teachers marked him with their lessons. He didn’t feel the wounds as pains. He felt them as lessons, memories, teachers, and time.

As the eclipse past, when the moon and sun gave each other their last kiss for this time of passion, he shaded his eyes and looked into the sky. “It’s a new day, Grandmother, Grandfather.”

He looked at the dents in his car and laughed, then laughed at himself laughing. He took off his Rivier watch, strapped it to the hood ornament on his car and laughed again. “Yes, Mr. Brumhall,” he said, “I killed something, all right.”

He got in the car and left.

Copyright © 2022 by Joseph Carrabis

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