Karateman (2-3)

First of multiple posts this week. I owe ye!
-JA

Find part one here (it's been a bit).

Karateman 2

Look, we say to Karateman, me and Johannsen, we don't want any trouble. We just want to rob you. No need to get up off the recliner and fly at us sideways through the air with your foot out like a spearhead or sever our jugulars or induce severe cranial impact.

Still he says nothing. It occurs to us he may be paralyzed, still holding the remote in front of him, like he's trying to vaporize or banish us so he can get back to watching - what's he watching? Karate films? No it's just the news. What news does Karateman watch? Local, turns out. Sinclair. Here's the aftermath of a car chase in San Leandro.

We're at an impasse with Karateman. Johannsen says: let's just do what we came here to do. Karateman doesn't move. What if he's gathering his strength, I say. Powering up to release and obliterate us right here in his living room. They won't even arrest him for that. We'll get no justice. We broke into his house to steal his shit, Johannsen says, and oh yeah there's that.

*

The people who were really into Sanchin-Ryu in the '80s didn't have much else going on. Certainly not culturally. They didn't respect the form's Japanese origins, of course, wouldn't have been polite about it, either, if an Asian student showed up to one of the classes. They took long drives out into the sticks, places like Owosso and Ithaca, to attend these random classes in cafeterias and gymnasia and now that I think about it I wonder if Sharon had something going on with one or two of those instructors. It didn't make sense that she'd drive us out down these dark country highways in December like that when we had weekly classes in our own town unless she was getting something else out of it.

Here's one of the moves we learned. If you're surrounded by multiple attackers, you drop to the ground, prop yourself up on one elbow, and kick your one leg up in scissor fashion to ward them off, rotating on the elbow. It was called the Fort Apache, and it doesn't work. We knew this one kid who would just drop to the sidewalk or the grass on the playground and yell it out: FORT APACHE! FORT APACHE! He got his ass kicked a lot.

*

Now we're concerned. What if Karateman is sick? This is a moral dilemma. If he's having an episode he needs help, and we are nothing if not ethically nuanced thieves. Are you qualified? I ask Johannsen. I'm not qualified, he says. Are you? I'm not qualified either, I say.

He moves toward Karateman, frozen on the recliner. Like he's approaching an opossum curled up in the corner. Like Karateman could spring to life and bare rows of sharp fangs and a full set of dangly teats.

Careful, he could be rabid, I say. That's when I notice how quiet it is in here. The tv is on but there's no sound coming from it. There isn't even a hum from the refrigerator, or the old clock on the wall with a deer drinking from a creek on it. Johannsen and me are the only things making noise in here, quiet as he's trying to be, but if Karateman can see, even with the way he's staring at some fixed point on the other side of the living room, there's no way he doesn't know we're here.

Johannsen creeps closer. His black Jansport backpack is empty so we can fill it with treasure and stolen goods and it swishes against his coat with each step.

Karateman remains transfixed. No sign of movement, no sign of breath.

The rest of the room comes into focus. On the table next to me is a valuable-looking item, a cup with a corrugated metal base. Maybe platinum or burnished silver. I should be able to recognize these things, being a thief, but I'm new to the trade and these are unusual circumstances.

I slide the cup along the tabletop. The clock springs to life with an old fashioned cuckoo that gives my heart a jolt. I can sense Johannsen's movement before I see him - he jumps backwards with a shout, a sort of ha-ha shout, very high pitched, like he's surprised but not necessarily in a bad way, that it will be okay, but that's when I see now that Karateman is upright, standing on top of the recliner, and that he is very much not paralyzed at all.

Karateman 3

More history of Sanchin-Ryu. These were the worst people I knew but they lived in relative luxury. They had HBO. I had to stifle the urge to pee we were laughing so hard at Andrew Dice Clay the first time we saw him. To get up and go to the bathroom while he was telling dirty nursery rhymes was unthinkable. This same kid, call him Milt, introduced me to NWA, 2LiveCrew, Boogie Down Productions. He was obsessed with Michael Jordan and he wore a Bulls Starter jacket to school. He and his whole family were also savagely racist. This was his way of rebelling against them, against his older brother who'd already gotten a girl pregnant at sixteen, who smoked in the house, who took LSD and we watched him and this guy Eric who said fuck all the time give a ritual burial to a frog they found dead on the shoulder of the highway in front of their house. Digging a grave in the gravel and giggling so hard they cried. We watched from the upstairs bedroom where the dirty magazines were. Sometimes we threw frozen hot dogs at cars.

*

Karateman has the sweetest moves. The sweetest, and the fastest. So fast you can't really tell what's going on so Johannsen and me we have to interject with witty repartee in order to have some sense of order and understanding. 'Didn't order that for breakfast!' Like a Marvel movie. Karateman is silent save for the thwaps, the boofs. He strikes to disable, not to harm. But underneath the stoicism is a genuine enjoyment. He's been waiting for this.

*

Milt became a chef in Florida. Of course he did. He posts on social media selfies with more famous and successful chefs, Tigers ballplayers who come by the restaurant during training camp, him with his gut hanging over the side of a boat with a pair of paid companions with their arms interlaced with his. I remember now he had a weird relationship with his cousin. She was part of the Sanchin-Ryu family too. He made fun of girls for getting their periods. He picked on everyone he thought he could beat in a fight, which was most of us, what with him being a black belt and everything. I'm surprised he's not on Trump's cabinet. No. Personal chef. Bearer of fried food buckets, pourer of Diet Cokes.

*

My training as a brown belt from thirty-five years ago doesn't help much against Karateman. I'm able to block a jab or two at the face but only because he's clearly pulling back, making a point, sparring with us like we're shadows and not a real threat. If he had his way one of us would be dumb enough to pull a weapon out, give him the excuse to do what he really wants, decorate the beige carpet with the insides of our throats, maybe our whole spines attached to our heads with our mouths gaping open like the Borg Queen or wherever else I've seen that image.

Johannsen pretty much sits down after the first flurry of blows. I'm glad about this. When we were kids he was willing to put up with a great deal of physical punishment, sought it out, even, calling bullies out on their bullshit, getting mobbed sometimes while all the rest of us could only watch and pray they found something else to focus their attentions on. Even those of us with Sanchin-Ryu.

This all happens in a minute or less. We're on the floor, both of us ashamed and humiliated more than hurt. Trying to run would be a very bad idea. Karateman stands over us.

*

There were others in that circle too. Local jerks who shined under the cafeteria lights at night. All part of the Grand Master's inner circle. They made the rounds, all over Michigan, and when they showed up there was a lot of half-assed approximate bowing, knuckles in open palms. Reverence. We didn't have that for anyone else. Not our teachers, certainly not our administrators. Not the cops. Maybe for the librarians and the local artists or in my case the older guys who taught basic programming and D&D at the community center downtown, and Bill Richards, who kept the whole system alive for decades. But when one of these thirtieth-degree blackbelt types showed up at your class the idea was that you were in for a real lesson, when what really happened is they would stand there in their gi like the rest of us, arms folded and whisper-gossiping with the other instructors, while we went through the fluid motions and showed off our skills. We were in the presence of greatness and the only time I saw Milt cry was when he thought he'd screwed up a kick on a longer routine when I was sure the master wasn't even watching.

*

Thank you for the lesson, we say to Karateman. Will you teach us your ways?
He appears to consider this. He breathes, in through the nose and out through the mouth. He relaxes his stance.
Fools, he says. Get out of my house.