The flyer was coming off the telephone pole at the edges. It was faded up while we were laying tar out on the interstate in a field where there was not anything for miles except corn and thick buzzing clouds of swarming bugs like dust. See the world. Become awakened. Leave your small life behind. Transcend, it said. And it had, I could see, the shape of Tibet and stairs on it. So I took that flyer down and folded it in my pocket.
Beneath my drafting lamp, I could see it more defined. There was small print and a mention of twelve stairs at the top of which a man could find enlightenment. I grew up in the sixties. I remember seeing a man take a gasoline bath and light himself up. And I laid tar. Some days I laid tar so that old blisters opened up, becoming fresh blisters. It was the life I could lead but maybe there was a reason I took that tar laying job today–Sunday which is my usual day for sleeping and going to the movies. I was bored so I worked it. I said to myself, what have I got that I might lose from leaving to go to Tibet and climbing up twelve stairs. And I better do it now before my legs give. So I worked it out with my foreman. I would use all my overtime and sick days for the rest of the year on this, then I would come back to be on his crew around the clock. Totally transcended. I would not take any more movie days. Would not need them.
A few times I got lost, on account I did not know the language. We moved up these foothills that were foggy and that shone gold when the sun come up and burned the morning off em. It looked like giants, these hills. At night I slept on the ground beside our sherpa. None of us got any sleep on account the cold was in my lungs. Since I was a boy I had trouble with them. I would wake up drowning in my bed, turning blue with my dad looking scared and wild. Beating me in my back until I was awake. Breathing. Alive.
By the third day it was raining, I found the steps. My sherpa, a hard man in a wide brim hat who owned a ranch at the bottom of the valley, pointed at my flyer and pointed at these steps leading up onto a plateau. I went up careful, with my knee already beginning to grief. And when I stood up on the top, I just went back down. Nothing to it. I just felt heavy as hell and dumb. It takes a special kind of fool to go half the world over on account of a piece of faded trash. I swore I would never think of Tibet again. I would never be foolish again. Or think about the hills I had seen or the way the light looked different there than here.
When I got home from work, it was late but the landline was ringing. I turned on a light in the hall and another down in my sister’s kitchen. My leg giving me worse hell than ever. And the phone line was dead but I knew what it was. And I busted up crying. Like someone was pulling a line out from the bottom of me and all of the sadness I never cried about was coming out. I don’t want you to tell anyone. I will not include my name here. I am only writing to inform the mayor’s office that there was a sign on I-92 out by Short road advertising enlightenment. I lost it but it should be replaced. It read as follows: There are twelve steps in Tibet and a sherpa at the bottom of the valley who will take you there. They aren’t much to look at. But if you run up them you will transcend. FDM
El Golpe Avisa 