As Joshua and I entered the temple to begin our meditation I said, “When the time comes, and we know that the time has come for us to leave, I am going to lump up his shiny little head with a fighting staff.”

“Meditate upon it,” said Josh.

“I mean it. He’s going to be sorry he taught me how to fight,” I said.

“I’m sure of it. I’m sorry already.”

“You know, he doesn’t have to be the only one bopped in the noggin when noggin-boppin’ time rolls around,” I said.

Joshua looked at me as if I’d just awakened him from a nap. “All the time we spend meditating, what are you really doing, Biff?”

“I’m meditating—sometimes—listening to the sound of the universe and stuff.”

“But mostly you’re just sitting there.”

“I’ve learned to sleep with my eyes open.”

“That won’t help your enlightenment.”

“Look, when I get to nirvana I want to be well rested.”

“Don’t spend a lot of time worrying about it.”

“Hey, I have discipline. Through practice I’ve learned to cause spontaneous nocturnal emissions.”

“That’s an accomplishment,” the Messiah said sarcastically.

“Okay, you can be snotty if you want to, but when we get back to Galilee, you walk around trying to sell your ‘love your neighbor because he is you’ claptrap, and I’ll offer the ‘wet dreams at will’ program and we’ll see who gets more followers.”

Joshua grinned: “I think we’ll both do better than my cousin John and his ‘hold them underwater until they agree with you’ sermon.”

“I haven’t thought about him in years. Do you think he’s still doing that?”

Just then, Number Two Monk, looking very stern and unenlightened, stood and started across the temple toward us, his bamboo rod in hand.

“Sorry, Josh, I’m going no-mind.” I dropped to the lotus position, formed the mudra of the compassionate Buddha with my fingers, and lickity-split was on the sitting-still road to oneness with allthatness.

Despite Gaspar’s veiled warning about our moving on, we again settled into a routine, this one including learning to read and write the sutras in Sanskrit, but also Joshua’s time with the yeti. I had gotten so proficient in the martial arts that I could break a flagstone as thick as my hand with my head, and I could sneak up on even the most wary of the other monks, flick him on the ear, and be back in lotus position before he could spin to snatch the still-beating heart from my chest. (Actually, no one was really sure if anyone could do that. Every day Number Three Monk would declare it time for the “snatching the still-beating heart from the chest” drill, and every day he would ask for volunteers. After a brief wait, when no one volunteered, we’d move onto the next drill, usually the “maiming a guy with a fan” drill. Everyone wondered if Number Three could really do it, but no one wanted to ask. We knew how Buddhist monks liked to teach. One minute you’re curious, the next a bald guy is holding a bloody piece of pulsating meat in your face and you’re wondering why the sudden draft in the thorax area of your robe. No thanks, we didn’t need to know that badly.)

Meanwhile, Joshua became so adept at avoiding blows that it was as if he’d become invisible again. Even the best fighting monks, of whom I was not one, had trouble laying a hand on my friend, and often they ended up flat on their backs on the flagstones for their trouble. Joshua seemed his happiest during these exercises, often laughing out loud as he narrowly dodged the thrust of a sword that would have taken his eye. Sometimes he would take the spear away from Number Three, only to bow and present it to him with a grin, as if the grizzled old soldier had dropped it instead of having it finessed from his grip. When Gaspar witnessed these displays he would leave the courtyard shaking his head and mumbling something about ego, leaving the rest of us to collapse into paroxysms of laughter at the abbot’s expense. Even Numbers Two and Three, who were normally the strict disciplinarians, managed to mine a few smiles from their ever-so furrowed brows. It was a good time for Joshua. Meditation, prayer, exercise, and time with the yeti seemed to have helped him to let go of the colossal burden he’d been given to carry. For the first time he seemed truly happy, so I was stunned the day my friend entered the courtyard with tears streaming down his cheeks. I dropped the spear I was drilling with and ran to him.

“Joshua?”

“He’s dead,” Joshua said.

I embraced him and he collapsed into my arms sobbing. He was wearing wool leggings and boots, so I knew immediately that he’d just returned from one of his visits into the mountains.

“A piece of ice fell from over his cave. I found him under it. Crushed. He was frozen solid.”

“So you couldn’t…”

Joshua pushed me back and held me by the shoulders. “That’s just it. I wasn’t there in time. I not only couldn’t save him, I wasn’t even there to comfort him.”

“Yes you were,” I said.

Joshua dug his fingers into my shoulders and shook me as if I was hysterical and he was trying to get my attention, then suddenly he let go of me and shrugged. “I’m going to the temple to pray.”

“I’ll join you soon. Fifteen and I have three more movements to practice.” My sparring partner waited patiently at the edge of the courtyard, spear in hand, watching.

Joshua got almost to the doors before he turned. “Do you know the difference between praying and meditating, Biff?”

I shook my head.

“Praying is talking to God. Meditating is listening. I’ve spent most of these last six years listening. Do you know what I’ve heard?”

Again I said nothing.

“Not a single thing, Biff. Now I have some things I want to say.”

“I’m sorry about your friend,” I said.

“I know.” He turned and started inside.

“Josh,” I called. He paused and looked over his shoulder at me.

“I won’t let that happen to you, you know that, right?”

“I know,” he said, then he went inside to give his father a divine ass-chewing.

The next morning Gaspar summoned us to the tea room. The abbot looked as if he had not slept in days and whatever his age, he was carrying a century of misery in his eyes.

“Sit,” he said, and we did. “The old man of the mountain is dead.”

“Who?”

“That’s what I called the yeti, the old man of the mountain. He has passed on to his next life and it is time for you to go.”

Joshua said nothing, but sat with his hands folded in his lap, staring at the table.

“What does one have to do with the other?” I asked. “Why should we leave because the yeti has died? We didn’t know he even existed until we had been here for two years.”

“But I did,” said Gaspar.

I felt a heat rising in my face—I’m sure that my scalp and ears must have flushed, because Gaspar scoffed at me. “There is nothing else here for you. There was nothing here for you from the beginning. I would not have allowed you to stay if you weren’t Joshua’s friend.” It was the first time he’d used either of our names since we’d arrived at the monastery. “Number Four will meet you at the gate. He has the possessions you arrived with, as well as some food for your journey.”

“We can’t go home,” Joshua said at last. “I don’t know enough yet.”

“No,” said Gaspar, “I suspect that you don’t. But you know all that you will learn here. If you come to a river and find a boat at the edge, you will use that boat to cross and it will serve you well, but once across the river, do you put the boat on your shoulders and carry it with you on the rest of your journey?”

“How big is the boat?” I asked.

“What color is the boat?” asked Joshua.

“How far is the rest of the journey?” I queried.

“Is Biff there to carry the oars, or do I have to carry everything?” asked Josh.

“No!” screamed Gaspar. “No, you don’t take the boat along on the journey. It has been useful but now it’s simply a burden. It’s a parable, you cretins!”