Читать книгу In the Course of Human Events - Mike Harvkey - Страница 14

By the time Clyde got to the house, it was twenty after seven and he was seriously questioning what the hell he was doing. Fucking Esther! There were a couple cars in the street and the front door of the house was standing open. Clyde could hear the TV on somewhere downstairs and women’s voices. He knocked and Jan came up. When she saw Clyde she shook her head and laughed.

“I know,” Clyde said.

“Half hour left?” Jan took him down through the TV room and opened a door in the back that led to the basement. Noise rushed up: Jay keeping count, people shouting kiai.

Tina said, “You are not coming to class an hour and a half late.” She was sitting on the floor with a box of Amway products between her legs and a black binder in her lap.

“He gonna be pissed?” Clyde said, and Tina nodded deliberately. Then, he thought, she winked at him.

Jan said, “When you get to the bottom of the stairs, say ‘osu’ and just kneel down until Jay says otherwise.”

Clyde saw J.D. first when he got down there. He was in his street clothes, sitting in a folding chair in the corner holding a spit cup. When J.D. saw Clyde he laughed.

“Well well well,” Jay said, and Clyde saw the look of exaggerated surprise mixed with real disappointment. “Class starts at six p.m., white belt,” Jay said.

Clyde said, “Osu,” and knelt with his fists pressed into his hips like they’d done Sunday.

There were three men from Tina’s Amway event and J.D.’s scrawny little brother Dale. They paired up and Jay said, “Little conditioning,” which Clyde saw meant punching each other in the chest, forearms, and stomach while Jay swung a bamboo stick into their legs that made a loud whap. “Ain’t gonna know what it feels like to be hit by slapping each other like girls.” Jay finally said, “Clyde, get changed.” He hurried into his workout clothes and then stood there. “Sit in seiza again,” Jay said. Clyde knelt watching the men kick each other in the stomach, shins, and thighs.

From his position he could see the door open at the top of the stairs and Tina sneak down a few steps. She sat with her chin on her hands. Clyde tried not to catch her eye, but he did, and she held a finger to her lips. He couldn’t help but smile. Jay yelled, “Tina!” without even looking at the stairs. “This ain’t the goddamn Dating Game!” She ran up giggling and slammed the door. “Clyde, if you’re done flirting with my daughter, you can bow in,” Jay said, then, “Git back down in seiza.” He knelt before Clyde. “Look how I do it.” He came up on his right foot and then rose to standing, knelt again, and pretended to grip a sword on his right side. “This why we do it this way,” he said, getting to one foot and pretending to draw the sword. “Always ready. We direct descendants of the samurai, Clyde, part of the warrior class.” Jay ended class right then and Jay said, “Good spirit, everbody, see you all tomorrow. Everybody but Dale and Clyde free to go.”

It was already after eight, but Clyde followed Jay and Dale to the front yard. Dale stood in a karate outfit that was yellow, grass- and blood-stained, with his hands in fists near his hips. Clyde stood to his left. Jay said, “Little light kumite.” Dale bowed and turned to Clyde, raising his fists and yelling his kiai like he was furious. Clyde raised his fists and wondered when Jay would give instruction. All Jay said was that he didn’t believe in wearing gear or padding when they sparred, thinking that protection was a barrier to truth. He made a noise that must have meant start fighting, because Dale kicked Clyde in the stomach, hard.

Clyde tried to get his breath as Dale came at him throwing kicks at Clyde’s thighs and punching him in the chest and stomach. All of it hurt and Clyde flushed with panic. What the fuck? Dale drove him across the yard and Jay ran up behind Clyde and physically kept him from backing up. “There’s no retreat in training!” he yelled, shoving Clyde at Dale. The picture window at the front of the house framed the women, cheering silently behind glass. It was like Dale wanted to hurt. “You gotta enter the mai, Clyde!” Jay yelled. “Can’t win a fight if you ain’t in it.”

“Osu,” Clyde grunted, his heart fluttering like a rabbit’s. Clyde had never had a father to teach him the fearlessness a boy needs if he wants any respect at all.

“Heaven’s found an inch beneath the blade,” Jay said.

Clyde landed his only good punch when Dale turned before running into the street. “Hey!” Jay said. “We ain’t done!” Clyde saw where Dale was headed: a group of boys were crossing the Ridge. “Ahh,” Jay said. “Dale don’t like them Molasses Gap boys.” Clyde’s chest heaved, the lungs struggling to take air. Blood rushed in his ears like he was being dragged underwater. “My nephew’s about as sharp as a turd, Clyde, but fierce.” When the boys saw Dale coming they scattered like catfish, leaving three who stuck to their course. “They like to cut through here to get to the Colonel’s down the hill.” Jay gave Clyde a little shove. “Think he needs backup.” Clyde huffed. He thought Jay was kidding. “Fight’s over there, Clyde-san,” Jay shouted, shoving him again. Clyde had never been in a real fight in his life, and he hardly ever encountered black people. Jay shoved him from behind. “We still training, Clyde-san, I train at work, when I’m driving, watching TV. Anything can be training, whatever I say is training is training.”

“Osu,” Clyde grunted.

“Look,” Jay said, and Clyde saw Dale surrounded, swinging arms and legs. “Sempei needs assistance.”

Clyde said, “Osu,” but the vicious beating Dale had just given him didn’t make him too eager to help the guy out.

When those boys saw Clyde and Jay coming, they bolted, leaving Dale with a black eye. “This our property, niggers!” Dale yelled, throwing a rock.

They flipped him off and started down the hill. One of the boys yelled, “We gonna come back with a nine millimeter!”

“Good!” Jay yelled. “It’ll be a fair fight!”

Dale said, “Thanks for the help, white belt,” and walked back to the house touching his face. “I got to get to work.”

Clyde watched Dale stomp off touching his face and felt what Jay had seen in him the other day—anger. What he felt right now was fury. He did not think he’d ever hated another human being as quickly or completely as he hated Tina’s fucking cousin. Clyde had hardly trained at all and Dale had shown no mercy, and called him “white belt” like it was pathetic. Clyde’s ribs were sore to the touch, his left thigh hurt bad enough from a kick that he had to limp, a wrist was strained, both ankles, the bones where his thumbs came off the hand were twice their normal size. If this was the way everybody learned karate there would be only one tough fucker at the top of the mountain and everybody else gone home.

Jay wrapped an arm around Clyde’s neck, hot and sweat-slick. “In Japan,” Jay said, “uchi deshi guard the training ground. They live at the dojo, train, keep the bad guys from getting in. Back then students would go around challenging your karate. Uchi deshi was the first line of defense. If they let a challenger beat ’em, challengers got in the dojo.” Jay shook his head to indicate how bad that was. Ahead, Dale entered the yard, the house. “People who don’t train, Clyde, they don’t understand. This.” Jay made a fist. “What it’s all about. Outside this, nothing but distraction. Job, friends, even family, whatever it is people worry about. Money, sex, religion, none of it matters when it comes to this. You tell other people the way we train? They gonna question you, think it’s brutal. Too macho for our modern times. But let me ask you, when the day comes to defend yourself or your way of life, and it will come, only a matter of time, what gonna matter then? Shit goes down, I mean really, all them doubters are the ones suckin pee-pees for a slice of bread. And that’s the lucky ones with their pussies still ripe.” Jay sniffed the air like a dog and slapped Clyde’s chest. “But you and me, Clyde-san, we’s warriors. Five hundred years ago we woulda been respected, part of the warrior class. I’ve trained with you only twice now and I can tell how strong you is.” Jay tapped Clyde’s sternum. It was also sore, bruised from a punch. “I train every day. Door’s always open to warriors.” They were in the yard now. The sod felt good on Clyde’s bare feet. The sun was down, but a few hundred street lamps around Liberty Ridge laid hard shadows around everything.

Dale came out of the house in his tattered poncho. Tina followed in a gray Mickey Mouse sweatshirt that ran to her knees, an enormous glass in both hands. Jan stood behind the screen door. “Osu, Uncle Jay,” Dale said, getting in his car, a twenty-year-old, dented, rusted Chevy Nova, and drove off, belts slipping under the hood.

“Did he know this was my second class?” Clyde said to Jay, low enough that Tina wouldn’t hear him.

“Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. You don’t like it? Hit him back. This how real men communicate, Clyde.” Jay looked at Tina and said, “Cigarettes.” She threw a pack that he caught without hardly looking. He slipped out two, handing one to Clyde, and lit them. “Just like after a good fuckin, nothing like a smoke after hard training.” Jay sucked deeply and said, smoke leaving his mouth with every word, “Karate men built different than normal men. Stronger lungs. Better blood cells, scare the shit out of cancer.”

Clyde nodded and took a drag. His second cigarette in two days. His throat burned, already raw from class. Jan came into the yard and lit her own cigarette and Tina sipped her drink. Clyde wondered if it was a clean version of what her parents drank, or if Jay and Jan let their sixteen-year-old daughter drink booze.

“He do good?” Jan said.

“Yes, he did,” Jay said, winking at Clyde. Then Jay slapped Clyde’s stomach. “We leave you two lovebirds alone,” he said.

“Dad!”

Jay snickered, went with Jan into the house. Tina dropped her face into her hands and shook her head, Clyde stood in the grass and finished the bitter cigarette. When she looked up, she said, “Want a margarita?”

He’d never had a margarita before. Tina went in and fetched another big glass, salt around the wide rim, full of phosphorescent mix.

“Cheers, buddy,” she said, clinking his glass carefully. He sat beside her and she said, after a minute, “You’re warm.” He nodded. “Try that shampoo yet?” He shook his head. “You’ll like it. It smells real good.” Tina launched then into a steady stream of words about her business dreams, telling Clyde about trying to start a publishing company when she was fourteen, selling Herbalife when she was fifteen, studying for but never taking her real estate license exam. Amway was a new thing, and she thought it was going good.

“I never done nothing like that,” Clyde said.

“My dad thinks you’re gonna be really good, by the way.”

“Hardly done anything yet,” Clyde said.

Tina shrugged. “Just telling you what he said. Says you’re like really good clay. Got tons of raw potential.” Clyde used to hear that word pushed his way back when he’d played baseball and it hadn’t amounted to anything, so he didn’t get too excited. It was usually more about the person who saw the potential than the one who supposedly possessed it. Tina smiled at him in a girlish way, folding over her legs. “Do you have a girlfriend?” she said. It was funny, a question that a little girl might ask on the playground. But he had to admit that there was something sexy about a female being that direct.

“Huh uh,” he said, thinking about Esther.

Tina grinned with all her little teeth and pushed into him with her hip, she dropped her head. “Do you think I could be your girlfriend?”

Without really thinking it through, Clyde answered her. “You want to?”

Tina put her glass down, took Clyde’s glass and put it next to hers, leaned in, and kissed him with a sticky, cold, open mouth. Her tongue pushed in, running across Clyde’s teeth. She stroked his face. After kissing a while, she nibbled at his earlobe and whispered, “I’m gonna blow your mind,” before returning to the mouth, then the other ear. “You ain’t never had nobody like me.” Her cold, wet tongue filled his ear.

“Hands on your heads!” Jay yelled, and Clyde and Tina jumped off the porch, spilling drinks.

Tina covered her face and stood with her back to the house. “Oh. My. God,” she said, about ten times. Clyde pursed his lips and flushed red.

“Clyde and Tina, sittin in a tree,” Jay sang, his arms and legs moving in the doorway in some kind of loose-limbed jig.