A Single Eye by Susan Dunlap

years younger, honey-haired, plump in a way that looked sweet to probably everyone but her, was carrying cauliflowers to a bin one head at a time. The cartons of cauliflowers stood on the counter and I was surprised no one pointed out the disadvantage of her method. She kept stopping, touching the apple-stasher’s arm, murmuring things I couldn’t hear. He nodded brusquely as if the dictum of silence were already in place.
    I’ve been in my share of sesshin kitchens before sesshins. It’s always as if everyone’s hopes, plus their unnamed fears, have materialized in the lettuce and apples, the lines of milk cartons, the cauliflowers. Workers are scurrying to compress all the perishables into one refrigerator; they’re talking about their inbound flights, bemoaning the loose ends at home, throwing anchors to their normal lives. Paradox reigns: those are the lives they’ve come to sesshin to see through but suddenly are terrified of losing.
    I didn’t know any of these people, and yet I knew these circumstances intimately. The setting, here in the woods, was the last that would have comforted me, but the underpinnings of sesshin were so familiar they gave me a feeling of “home.” I was an old hand at sesshin preparation, and as such I wanted to put an arm around the girl’s shoulder and give her a hug of encouragement. It would be a hard two weeks physically and mentally. We’d all come here to cut loose from our moorings. I watched as she touched the boy’s arm again and he gave another curt nod with his monk-shaven head. There was no way to assure her that she was not the mooring he would be cutting.
    â€œYou here to help?” the tall blond woman called out as she stacked boxes of green-tea bags. At sesshin, it doesn’t matter if you’re a waiter or a CEO, groceries need putting away and toilets need cleaning.
    I glanced at the wheelbarrow and said to the woman, “I just brought up the cacao beans for the roshi. He would like a cup of cocoa. He figured I might get a cup, too.”
    â€œTake them up to the next door. You’re in the peasant half of the kitchen here; you want the next door, the regal chocolate preparation parlor.” She laughed. “Barry!”
    â€œHuh?” a man called from the better half of the kitchen. I executed another classy turn and shoved the barrow up five yards and into the next door in time to hear the blond woman call to him, “You’re supposed to give this woman some cocoa.”
    â€œWhat, Maureen? Who says so? I don’t have time to be making cocoa now.”
    â€œRoshi says so.” She winked at me. “The woman hauled your beans up. It’s the least you can do.”
    â€œI said I don’t have time. The way it’s been raining the last few weeks I’ll be lucky if the road holds out till Thursday and I can get out to . . .” His voice trailed in the fashion of one who’s walled himself in with his own worries and is startled to find someone else’s words actually breaching that wall. He looked from Maureen to me, then his eyes lighted on the barrow as if it was Santa’s sleigh. “My beans are here! My criollos !”
    I couldn’t keep from smiling at the big guy’s kid-like glee. He was in his midforties, and twice my size, with bare muscled arms I would have killed for on those wall-climb gags. His black monk’s robe had sleeves hooked back at the shoulder for work, and those big arms were already hoisting the hundred-and-thirty-pound bag up onto a metal table that looked uncomfortably like one on which I’d once seen an autopsy. His face was round, his head shaved so close I couldn’t have guessed the color of his hair. His eyes I couldn’t make out at all. They were only for the beans. He stood planted like a huge solid Buddha in the center of the altar. And, from what I could tell, that altar was his chocolate kitchen. I