getting up, eating eggs and toast from Mrs. Gregorson's old clinking chinaware, hurrying to class, sitting there with his hand under his chin, listening for important statements. He wanted to fling these babbling gods against the wall and see them shatter like pieces of Mrs. Gregorson's brittle, pretentious chinaware. Then he would whirl around and scream in defiance, in the night, or in the middle of the day, it didn't matter. The benign gods of thought and silence and ritual would be started, and notice him for a moment. Yes, he would do something that was meaningful and significant, even if it was something puerile like cutting a class. Mrs. Gregorson came out with the plates, giving one to each of the three students who were seated at the old fashioned mahagony table, and one to her own place. Then she brought out the silverware, the glasses, the sugar bowl and the jam bowl. Duane and Giraurd were talking about baseball and about girls they had seen on campus, their eyes glistening with remembered images of titillating female bodies. The spaghetti was steaming in its simmering red sauce when Mrs. Gregorson carried it out in the big white casserole dish with the flowers painted on it. She finally sat down and smiled in self-approval as she looked over the table. Her slender patrician nose seemed to twitch slightly, her eyes were dull gray. They looked at her, their heads bowed slightly, waiting to give thanks. It was one thing she never forgot. When she turned her head Caulden could see the place in the back where her frosty gray hair was pinned together, in the style of many years ago. "Duane, will you please give thanks," she said in her girlishly cultivated voice. Duane bowed his head and mumbled monkishly, "Oh Lord, we thank Thee for this sustenance which has been prepared" Caulden was in one of his distracted, estranged states. If he weren't so inhibited he would have been on the verge of doing something outlandish. In fact, he had gone to meditate once. Up on a hill, just like the real mystics. He had become intrigued with this popular preoccupation, Oriental religion, the search for Nirvana, the revelation of self-annihilation, the eradication of cultural illusions. He hiked for some distance, wanting to make sure that no one would see him. The sky was a scintillating blue. There were buzzing, sticking flies that he brushed away, some of them with glistening green bodies, lots of scaly black flies. He walked for a long way on an ill-defined dirt path with rocks and holes to trip you up. Then he left the path and started climbing in a place where the bushes were thick. The hard-barked branches snapped back when he pulled them apart and let go, the flies would sometimes swarm up and land on his skin when he disturbed them. He found a place where the weeds were soft fibered and there was a lot of wide-bladed green grass. He felt slightly conspicuous and thought that it was foolish because no one could possibly see him. He sat down, crossing his legs, pulling them back under him and rocking into a comfortable position. Here was his mind sitting here and gazing into the glowing air. There were the rocks, trees, hills, and many distinct objects, but as he stared longer he imagined that he was hovering over the brush-entangled ravine that he had climbed out of a few languishing minutes ago. He wondered if he really could become One with everything, and he realized that he had forgotten about the distinct objects that he had seen at first when he sat down. They seemed to have been dissolved in an expansive awareness of consciousness. Then he heard voices and rustling branches, and he stood up abruptly. "Hey, buddy. Whatchya doin', tryin' ta fly?" A high pitched female laughter came from the bushes behind him. Caulden felt silly. It was a tall kid with muddy blond hair that was cut and oiled. He snagged his gray, wide-striped shirt on a bush as he stepped into the clearing. He yanked, but it wouldn't come loose. A girl came behind him from out of the bushes and untangled it. The first thing that Caulden noticed about her was the bright red mouth. The bright red lipstick on her mouth made her short, well-rounded body look sensual, accentuating the olive tinge of her skin and the black shimmering of her long silky hair. Caulden hadn't stayed to talk; no one would have expected him to. He had walked back down the hill, listening to the chirping and rustling sounds and looking at the tangled green trees and the blue scintillating sky. The fact was that Caulden was a very conventional person, even when he wanted to be unconventional. It disturbed him more than a little. Sometimes he felt like a hopeless rodent, sniffing around in a dark, deserted alley for pieces of meaningful garbage to carry home. Maybe he should have been sweeping a floor or emptying garbage instead of being mystical. "Hey, how's the Buddhism comin' Caulden. Are ya really flippin' out on that stuff?" Giraurd was looking at him. He asked it in a matter of fact tone, but his mouth was curled into a grin and he seemed to be somewhat bemused. "Oh, yeah, I'm still reading about it," said Caulden perfunctorily. "That's pretty Good," said Giraurd, his voice going high on the last word. He was from New 24 Jersey, and he always seemed to slur his words. Caulden had always thought that his father must be a steelworker, and that he must always have been very shy because he stuttered and balked a little bit when he talked. "Say, isn't Buddhism what all those Hippies believe in," said Mrs. Gregorson. Caulden looked at Duane with a suppressed guffaw. Duane had his hand over his mouth to hold in laughter and was pretending to be choking. Caulden saw that his skin was slightly flushed where it wasn't covered by his hand, the moderately chunked upper nose and the somewhat square forehead well exposed within the surrounding hemisphere of combed down, cleanly cut, azure brown hair. "Yes, they like Buddhism because it teaches them to blow up their minds," said Caulden, grinning sheepishly at Duane. "Well, my word, I don't think people should believe in anything that Destroys the mind. I think that the human mind is one of the most wonderful things there is. And you know, you hear so much about these things nowadays." Mrs. Gregorson's pointed nose swaggered sternly as she stated her views on the decadent state of the world. They were sententious views, the kind that you don't hear any more. This old lady sitting here in the twentieth century, talking to the avatars of the future, the hope of America. She was antique like her ornate wallpaper and her patriotic ladies' clubs. The three students chuckled to themselves while they ate her well spiced spaghetti. "You've really been readin' a lot on that stuff havenchya?" said Giraurd, still grinning and leaning shyly to one side as he talked. "Yes, I've become quite interested in Buddhism," said Caulden. In fact, he had been sitting in his room at night reading the doctrines of Buddha when he should have been studying. It was quite a lonely pursuit, and he would sometimes listen to the heat vent clattering and whirring. He would look up from the stodgy little desk and stare at the wall for several minutes at a time. Duane seemed to be concerned about him at times. Sometimes when he came into Caulden's room for a talk he would seem strangely distracted. Sometimes he would be staring at the wall or the ceiling. Mrs. Gregorson would have been concerned about him too if she hadn't been such a dense old lady. Caulden stood up and pushed back his chair. "Well, I guess I'll go down to my room now," he said as if announcing something. Duane looked at him inquiringly, and his forehead was wrinkled. "Why donchya stay and shoot the bull a while Caulden?" "No, not tonight. I guess I'll go read." Caulden was not to be detained when in pursuit of transcendental serenity, the depths and the heights of Nirvana, the perfect vibration of the One. When Duane went down half an hour later Caulden was sitting cross-legged on the dusty gray concrete floor in the little alcove next to his bedroom where he studied. The bare yellow light bulb cast a harsh halo in the air above his head, casting an irridescence on the olive lustre of his skin, the black sheen of his hair, and the slightly delicate mold of his face. He looked like a dark skinned Catholic priest praying in a corner at midnight. Except for the yoga position and the colored, intertwining flowers in the black robe. He was still and intent, staring at something that was inside of him. His dark panther eyes were like glistening marbles. Caulden woke up, and he knew that something was going to happen, something that would involve him. Lying there in the dark in his monkish robe, on top of the bedspread. There was only one thing, the fuzzy crayon black, the ringing sound of darkness. Only a sharp gray shadow in the corner of the ceiling, the only light. The fuzzy darkness began to solidify into sharp edges and solid objects, the gray concrete wall, the hanging interconnected pipes, the rectangular chest of drawers, the gray, subtly distinct outlines that were indifferently familiar. Then it came back to him, the feeling of austere profundity, of impending enlightenment, effulgent salvation, deep experience. Caulden had had a vision in the night, and it was irrevocable. The sun would be coming up over a cold, wind rustled hill, giving light to the disciples of Buddha, giving warmth to a quiescent, dispassionate mind. He reached up behind his head, twisting his neck, to turn on the jaded little lamp on the stool beside his bed. The thin plastic switch pressed into his thumb; there was a click and the little shade covered lamp came on. He sat up. His sandals were on the floor right by the bed, so he reached down and picked them up. They slipped on easily. He pulled out one of his wooden drawers and found his special polarized sunglasses. They fit snugly on his nose, against his face. He turned off the lamp and walked carefully with his arms stretched out as he entered the big bare room where there were only washing machines and trunks and old pictures on the walls, Mrs. Gregorson's old pictures. His hand grasped the cold, round metal doorknob that let him into the stairway. He climbed the stairs stealthily, one by one, like a burglar stealing in the night. The door at the top of the stairway, the cold round doorknob turning smoothly, the latch on the screen door stuck, the screen door yawning and screeching as he pushed it open. 25