The Five Buddha Ring   Jack still heard the accordion pumping back in the plaza, still saw the laughing dark- eyed girls with swirling skirts watched by brown, slack- limbed men with cowboy hats and beer. The stars shine brighter in Chihuahua, the guidebook explained, here under the one bare bulb, here in the cleanish little hotel. He took a pull of tequila and tried to clear his head. He lay back and played with the knife -- a folding pigsticker, half-sprung, hard-used, ground murderously sharp. Jack had found it five days before, in Baja. How could he lose the Five Buddha ring? How to get it back? He flipped through the guidebook, wondered how many times will you put yourself through this, Jack? Finding the page that mocked him now, again he read that riff on generosity -- how the Mexicans give freely, how one must be cautious with compliments, must be aware that to admire is to run the risk of receiving -- if, say, you praise a Mexican's wedding ring, or his dog, he will think that you want it and, unfazed, give it to you at any sacrifice to himself, a gift you must not refuse for fear of shaming him, and yourself. Such good people, the book went on -- people whose hearts are pure . . . and shouldn't we all be much the same . . .                 As the book had promised, the canyon was spectacular that morning, vast and half again as deep as the Grand, topped with ponderosa pines. At half past seven the sun had cut the chill and far below the Rio Fuerte lit the thick mist like an incandescent filament. So the book, Jack had to admit, was right -- no wonder they believe in God. He nodded at the guide he'd hired, a man named Omar who spoke no English, who nodded back, pointing down -- ¿Abajo?                                                    The canyon was everything Mexico -- hot, cool, linda. They hiked all day, saying little till, tired and happy as the shadows grew long and dust hung unmoving in the still mountain air, Jack seized upon the moment. ¿Tienes esposa? he asked, worded wrong but no matter. Omar just shrugged and went on a few steps, stopped, and resumed a song he'd been half-singing, half-mumbling all day, anillo de compromiso -- something about a ring -- and maldita mi fe -- here the song had a particular sting -- On a half-considered impulse Jack yanked the Five Buddha ring from his finger, gave it to Omar, who muttered words of thanks, unsmiling and unimpressed. It will save you, Jack said. Ello te salvará -- but the man just poked it into his pants. No comprendo, he said.                                Those two words still cut into Jack's ragged heart that night, and though tequila dulled the hurt he knew he'd failed that boy, a life and an ocean away, that skinny refugee kid, Khmer, who'd tailed Jack for hours, back on that very first day in the camp, approaching at last, his face electric with need -- Sir! Hello Sir! My name Monirith! Have no money, no place for home, no mommy, no papa -- Khmae Rouge, they killing everybody, Pol Pot people, they kill everybody, now I all alone, I want to go far far, not my country, not Cambodia, Sir! I want to go America, you help me, you be my sponsor, you be my papa, Sir! I give you this ring, Vietnamee cannot shoot! Sir! This ring have five Buddha, Vietnamee bullet no good, no kill you have this ring! What you name! You be my papa! Sir! Delivered of this, and still staring, the boy grabbed Jack's hand by the fingers and slid the Five Buddha ring onto his pinky. Sir! I want to go America! For days the kid would cling to Jack, shadow him through the camp, and though Jack told him he was just a kid himself, he couldn't sponsor anybody, couldn't adopt anybody, had no pull with the government, still the boy wouldn't hear it -- America! Where you go, you! Have ring have five Buddha! And then one day the shadow disappeared, and no one knew what happened to him. Or they wouldn't say.   Jack touched his finger, felt the circle dent where the ring had been for more than two years: the camp, and Bangkok, till a message meant home, and he had to put in an appearance, too late to mean anything, and pay a call on a woman whose longing for him, it happened, was no match for the way he thought he had longed for her, and the more he thought so, the more he took to the road, to San Francisco, Phoenix, and now Creel, hitchhiking through Mexico to a show- down with . . . what? the final vestige of feeling? maybe to kill the word why, for once and for all? or to run from that kid, and what the kid meant?                                   In the morning the sun sat heavy in the sky when, as they'd planned, Jack found Omar there in the little plaza, this time with a boy whose laughter turned to stone as Jack approached. Mira, Papá, he whispered. El Gringo. Omar turned, murmured something to the boy, to Jack said Buenos días, and Jack made his little speech, the one he'd hashed out, a petition strained through his dad's dictionary into each word of schoolboy Spanish: Ayer, that ring, no regalo para hombre, instead, en lugar de, para tí, just the thing, este cuchillo -- and with that Jack said no more but produced the old folding knife, presented it to Omar like a priest presenting the body of Christ -- this life for your life, and this bread for your feast, eat, hokus corpus. . . . Omar frowned, appraised it, took it for the worthless thing it was, and tossed it to the boy, who beamed and raised it up, Excalibur, a prize because this was to be his. Omar snarled something and the boy's smile faded. Then he sighed, jammed his hand into his jeans, retrieved the ring, flipped it back to Jack. No gift for a man, Jack thought, as he paid his grácias and stuffed the Five Buddha ring into his pocket. ¿Donde vamos? Omar asked. Jack had seen enough canyons, and struggled for the words for going to the Valley of the Monks alone.     © Michael Fleming Brattleboro, Vermont February, 2011