The Zen Archer

The Zen Archer

The Pretty Bird makes its way through The Zen Archer’s garden, or what The Zen Archer thinks of as his garden.

And he thinks of all the gardens in this village as his because he is their keeper. A few months ago, he arrived in this small, quiet village, a haven for the rich from the filth and hustle of the large cities. High walls surround it and there is only one gate for entry and exit, guarded 24 hours a day.

Outside the walls, there are lush forests in which roam wild animals that further isolate the rich people of this village from those who would otherwise intrude on their quiet lives.

He has become a favorite of these rich people.

In fact, he has such a way with the flowers and bushes and soil that they dismissed all the other gardeners. The gardens have never looked so good, so colorful, so full of life and beauty. He smiles to himself because he knows they only think of him as a gardener, wondering what they would think of him if they also knew him as what he truly is: The Zen Archer.

He wonders this while watching The Pretty Bird, which has not yet learned how to fly. If things were different, then one day, it would have learned to take wing and soar on its own.

Sunlight shines on The Pretty Bird and gives it a golden glow. The Pretty Bird ignores The Zen Archer as he works in the garden.

Perfect.

The Zen Archer has become one with his surroundings and nature. So much so that even The Pretty Bird considers him to be just another part of the scenery. Something in the background, something to ignore.

The Zen Archer has spent these last few months not just becoming this village’s sole gardener, but he has also been using his guise as the gardener to select the finest wood for his secret art. He knows you do not wander into a small village like this carrying a bow and its arrows.

The Zen Archer has taken his time to ensure that the wood he selected is not only the proper wood for the task, but that it also has a more spiritual connection to nature than other pieces of wood. With his innate, special connection to nature, he can make this distinction easily, where others can never do so.

The previous night, he had finished stringing his new bow and sharpening the arrows. They had beautiful wooden shafts. He used no metal for the tips, but sharpened them by heating and honing the wood, forcing it back in on itself, making it denser than its nature intended it to be, to be the perfect arrows; complete with exquisite feathers that he has gathered while bowing and scraping and tending to the gardens of the rich people in this small and quiet village.

He has also spent the last few months eating the same foods as these people.

Sustenance? Yes.

Worthy of a Zen Archer, one who, one day, would be a Zen Master?

No.

None of that food had been as succulent as he imagined The Pretty Bird would be.

The Pretty Bird, like most things in nature, had a pattern to its actions, a routine. When the weather was beautiful, its owners would allow it out into the garden at midday as the sun was just getting to its zenith. While it was in the garden, one of the house servants would do her best to monitor it. But The Zen Archer had watched and spied and waited. And learned.

He saw the pattern, the routine of the house servant’s actions, and those of The Pretty Bird.

The Zen Archer would use this knowledge. He would use it to take The Pretty Bird.

Tomorrow.

Two days previously, he told a few of the villagers he was not feeling well and may need to take a day off. He could not live in the village. He was good enough to tend to their gardens, but not rich enough to share the air they breathe any more than was necessary for him to do his work.

His studies had prepared him for this. There are different ways of life; each serves its own purpose. His goal in life was to become one with the entire world. Not in the superficial, half-hearted way that he had seen in other Zen students.

That would not do.

Not for him.

He had picked this day because the forecast was for cloudy skies, but no rain. And the temperature was just right for The Pretty Bird to be in the garden.

He made his way through the forest where he had spent some of his weekends familiarizing himself with the paths through the trees in the woods outside the village; leaving his own spoor to let the wild animals know that these would be his paths, his way, and that they should keep their distance.

He could fool humans with his diminutive stature, his bowed head, his slumped shoulders, his subservient ways. But animals knew better. They could smell what he was, and they wanted no part of it.

He arrived at the wall and climbed the tall tree he had picked out for just this purpose. Besides his bow and the two arrows he carried, he also has a sack to stuff The Pretty Bird into. And he only carried two arrows because that would be all he would need. In fact, that should be one more than he would need. He brought the second arrow only because nature can sometimes play a trick or two on anyone.

Dropping from a high branch onto the village side of the wall, ensuring that no one had seen him, he made his way through the few yards and gardens to the house where The Pretty Bird lived.

And there it was: wandering through the garden, cooing, being attended to by the house servant through an open door as she prepared food for her masters.

The Zen Archer nocked an arrow and watched. And sure enough, after the servant finished cutting up some vegetables, she scraped the leavings off the table and into her apron to carry them away and discard them. The servant would only come back to the table after gathering the next handful of vegetables to prepare. As she turned, The Zen Archer raised his bow, aimed at The Pretty Bird’s head, and pulled back using only the slightest of pressure. There could be no blood. No trace that The Pretty Bird had in any way been injured.

The servant took one last look over her shoulder at The Pretty Bird and walked out of view.

He took his shot.

It went as he had expected.

When he showed up to tend his gardens the next day, there was much ado, much consternation about The Pretty Bird’s disappearance. He acted surprised when he was told the news. Those who came to look into this matter quickly dismissed him.

He had become the character he wished all to think of him to be: small, meek, afraid. The investigators concentrated on those who lived within the walls of the village. He also coughed and sneezed and apologized for not being in the village yesterday, but no one really paid attention to him.

He had taken The Pretty Bird back to where he lived and cleaned it. Then put the meat in the receptacle he had for preserving his food. He carried the bones and other unwanted parts back into the woods where the wild animals would find them. Search parties had found the gnawed bones, and this caused even more crying and sorrow and grief and wailing, which, on the one hand, he understood, but, on the other, he didn’t.

Not at all.

Nature is nature. It does what it will do.

These rich people have built up such a layer of invisible armor against nature, and the world, that he could easily fool them.

The Zen Archer understood that the people who had The Pretty Bird thought it was unique, but The Zen Archer knew that nature was full of Pretty Birds. He had seen them. He had taken this one only as a matter of convenience.

For the next few days, he enjoyed delectable meals made from the meat of The Pretty Bird. As he meditated on his actions, the joining of his nature with that of The Pretty Bird, he felt ready to take a step up to the next plateau on his journey.

He chose The Plump Hare because he would have to work harder at getting it.

The Pretty Bird was young and did not move as fast as The Plump Hare.

But, The Plump Hare?

It bounded and jumped and hopped across one of the other gardens he tended. This would be a test of his worthiness to move even further up the road to his destination. The only pattern The Plump Hare seemed to have was to always be moving with a few discernible patterns. Chaotic to an untrained eye.

But The Zen Archer had determined The Plump Hare’s true pattern and would use it when the time was right.

He had also chosen The Plump Hare because the garden in which he saw it belonged to a house where no one was home during the day most of the time. There were days when servants would come in and clean the house while its owner was in one of the big cities taking care of business matters, and he knew what days those were.

There were other challenges he would have to face with The Plump Hare. The first was that he knew that one arrow would might not bring it down, so he had to plan two quick, quiet shots. The second was how to remove The Plump Hare from the village. And he could not claim to be ill on the day that The Plump Hare disappeared. Someone may remember that he was also absent on the day that The Pretty Bird vanished.

So, he planned.

On the day before he wanted to take The Plump Hare, he worked in that garden. It was also one of the days when servants were there. He made sure they saw him as he smoothed the soil in the garden, only to have it tossed this way and that later in the day when The Plump Hare arrived. He shrugged at the servants and they shrugged back. The Plump Hare, as it always did, ignored him.

That night, he stole back into the village and worked on the garden he was to work on the next day. The owners of that house would not realize that he had already done the work. It was beneath their notice. And, like most of the other villagers, they were off in one of the big cities every day, so their house was empty for at least eight hours.

The next day, he saw them when he arrived in the morning, and, as always, they waved him into the garden and dismissed him as they left for their business dealings.

As soon as they left, he made his way over to the garden of The Plump Hare to lie in wait.

In the early afternoon, it rewarded his patience. The Plump Hare bounded out into the garden, scuffling the dirt, stepping on flowers, not caring that it disturbed the work of The Zen Archer.

It was in its own little world.

Its world ended as The Zen Archer stood up and fired one arrow into its head and one into its heart.

The Zen Archer dragged The Plump Hare back over to the house where he was scheduled to work. In that garden, he cleaned The Plump Hare.

Its blood seeped into the dirt and disappeared.

The Zen Archer had brought some wrappings to cover the meat and bones so he could shove them in with his tools. He would throw the unwanted fleshy parts into the forest for the wild animals to once again devour. He would give the bones to the dogs in the area where he lived. No one would ever know what happened to The Plump Hare.

**************************

Ian Davies remembered the two FBI agents from when the Chertoff’s 3-year-old son had gone missing. They were back again, standing in the middle of his office, now that Ms. Goodwin’s 15-year-old daughter, Miranda, had disappeared. Another reason he remembered them was that they both took their coffee the same way. He asked his assistant, Linda, to have it ready for them.

Ian wound up as Chief of Security here at Elysium right after he retired from the Newark, New Jersey, police force as a detective. He didn’t relish sitting around doing piecemeal work for the D.A.’s office, developing an even worse drinking habit. So, when one of his old friends told him about this place, he jumped at it.

His wife left him years ago, the kids were all grown up, and this was a job where he could sit on his ass collecting an even heftier paycheck than he did as a cop.

Elysium was one of those private, gated and, in this case, walled communities in California where you had to have a good eight figures in the bank before they’d even talk to you. The people who lived here moved and shook things in the business world Monday through Friday, 9-to-5, and then escaped to their own little world behind the walls of Elysium.

He had a glorified babysitting job.

Ian had been here for almost five years, and the toughest things he ever got involved with were drug and alcohol-related. Now he had two children missing, and the FBI was back in his office for the second time in two months.

Linda delivered the coffee to the agents. They accepted the cups and then sipped the coffee in unison.

Synchronized coffee sipping. It could be an Olympic event. In The Coffee Olympics.

“Could this be the same as…” Ian began.

The agents shook their heads. One of them was The Spokesman.

“No. We figured that some animal made off with the Chertoff baby, what with the remains that were found, although I still don’t understand what kind of animal could have made it past the guard. And no animal around here could jump that wall.” He looked back at his partner, who nodded in agreement.

“How about Ms. Goodwin’s former husband?” Ian suggested.

“You know where he is?”

“Nah. No one does. He cleaned out his house’s accounts, then his company’s accounts, and vanished.”

The Spokesman lowered his cup down. His partner didn’t, and that surprised Ian. That would cost them points if they ever competed in The Coffee Olympics.

“I know what you’re thinking, Ian. Ms. Goodwin’s ex came to Elysium that day, got in here somehow, and made off with his ADHD kid as she ran around the yard.”

“Something like that.”

“Any sign of a struggle?”

“The yard was always a mess, what with her…”

“You figure she would run off with him? No text messages, phone calls, or contact of any kind with any of her close friends since then?”

Ian wondered if the five years had dulled his detective senses. If so, he needed to get them back. Sharpen them up. He’d be damned if he’d let two Feebs come here into his backyard and make him look foolish.

The front door of the office opened. The gardener walked in, hurrying past Linda lest she say something to him. Ian tried to remember his name. It was something like Billy, Timmy. He walked over to Ian but did not look at him.

“Uh, uh, sir, I, um…” He swept his gaze from the top of his own shoes to the tops of the shoes of the FBI agents, then back to his. “If you’re busy, I can always, I can always come back.”

He punctuated his statement with two index fingers stuck up into the air. One of the FBI agents covered his mouth to keep from laughing.

Ian smiled at the gardener. “Nah, go ahead. Spit it out.” That made the FBI agents sputter.

“I have the, the bushes you want for your, your yard.”

Ian stood up, walked over to the gardener, put a hand on his shoulder, and led him back to the front door. He opened the door and gently shoved the gardener through it. “Great. Good job. Come over on Saturday.” He shut the door and walked back over to the agents. “We’ll have a beer,” he muttered.

Linda giggled. Ian pointed at her with his thumb. “She said ‘Hi’ to him one time. The poor guy turned as red as an apple and couldn’t breathe.” He sat back down and looked at the agents. “Now, where were we?”

The Zen Archer sat in his truck. Ian, like he, did not live in the village. The gardener had gotten business cards from the two FBI agents when they showed up the first time and talked to him.

He had tracked them down, knew where to find all three of them.

The Zen Archer licked his lips at the thought of both the meal he would have tonight and for many nights to come with the meat of The Plump Hare.

He would then move up to the next level of his journey: The Killing and Eating of The Mighty Buck.