Читать книгу Legacy of the Grand Master - William Speir - Страница 10

When Jamie turned sixteen, her parents decided to teach her how to shoot. They enrolled her in the “new shooters” class that the club taught, and they started taking her to the gun club once or twice a week. As expected, Jamie excelled at this.

She started with pistols, and the first time she shot at the target, all of her shots were in the middle three rings. As she shot at targets farther away, her grouping pattern in the target stayed consistent. Tom and Emily were impressed, as was the club owner, who commented that few first time students could shoot so well.

After a while, Jamie’s aim improved, as did her scores. She wasn’t as good as her parents, but she was enjoying herself too much to worry about trying to beat them yet. After all, they’ve been shooting for years and years, and I’ve only been shooting for a few weeks.

Once Jamie had reached a level of proficiency with pistols, Emily started teaching Jamie how to shoot long arms. They started with one of Grandmom’s carbines to get Jamie used to the feel and the kick. Emily taught Jamie how to aim the rifle both with and without a scope.

Tom watched from the bleachers as Jamie shot his mother’s rifle, and he felt that Tracy would have been pleased to know that Jamie was learning to shoot with her favorite one. That carbine had won dozens of club tournaments, and Tracy hadn’t been beaten by anyone, other than Emily, when she used it. Emily had selected the rifle for that reason, and she knew that it made Tom happy to see it used again.

Jamie entered several of the club’s Juniors Tournaments and did well in the beginner and intermediate category. But the real test, Jamie knew, would be when she was allowed to shoot in the annual family tournament, which was still a family tradition and the only time that she was able to see her cousins after they had moved away.

The older Jamie got, the more beautiful she became. Because of her sports activities, she had an athletic body – tall, lean and toned, but still feminine. She turned heads wherever she went, but she never flaunted her looks or tried to use them to her advantage. She was a natural beauty, and her down-to-earth personality made her even more popular. She had lots of dates, but few real boyfriends since they either couldn’t manage to keep up with her or only wanted one thing.

Shortly after Jamie turned eighteen, she earned her third-degree black belt in Tae kwon do. She entered one of the regional tournaments and won it easily. She represented her region in the state tournament and won it as well, earning her the right to represent her state at the national tournament two months later – three weeks after her high school graduation and one week before the family annual gun tournament.

Jamie practiced almost daily for the Nationals. She had to balance her final school projects and exams with her training and her shooting, but she was determined to do well at all three. Her parents decided to let her try and didn’t say anything to her other than to let her know that they trusted her and were proud of her.

One Saturday at the martial arts studio, shortly before the tournament, Jamie approached her teacher and made a special request. “I’d like to change the way I spar today.”

“Oh,” her teacher said. “What do you want to change?”

“I want multiple opponents.”

“At the same time?”

“Yes, sir. I need to make sure that I’m ready for anything.”

“How many opponents do you want?”

“How many will fit on the mats?” she asked, referring to the padded mats on the floor designed to make falling down hurt less.

Her teacher looked at her for a moment. “Let me talk it over with the owner and the other senior black belts, and I’ll let you know what we decide.”

The teacher walked upstairs to talk to the owner. He found the owner sparring with Tom and Emily in the room reserved for special students. As the teacher watched, he recognized that they were using a technique that the owner called Em-An-Jitsu, named after Emily Anderson since she had created it. Em-An-Jitsu blended fencing, hand-to-hand combat, and other weapons disciplines into a single style of fighting that was difficult to learn and even more difficult to defend oneself against. Jamie had started learning it but was focusing on Tae kwon do to get ready for the tournament.

The owner saw that the teacher wanted to talk to him and stopped the sparring session. When the teacher told the owner what Jamie wanted, the owner looked amused and called Tom and Emily over to hear the conversation.

“Your daughter wants to spar with multiple opponents at the same time,” he said when Jamie’s parents walked over. “She thinks that it’ll help her get ready for the tournament.”

“Are you going to do it?” Tom asked.

“Do you object?”

“Not at all,” Tom replied, looking at Emily who was nodding. “If that’s what she thinks will help her training, then I’m all for it.”

Turning to the teacher, the owner said, “Okay, if she wants to do this, find some volunteers to go up against her. Start with some of the black belts at her level and work up the ranks. Keep it at fewer than six for now until we see if there’s enough room down there.”

The teacher nodded and went back downstairs. The owner motioned for Tom and Emily to stand over at the window so they could watch their daughter.

The teacher started with two black belts who were at the same rank as Jamie. His plan was to add an additional opponent every few minutes, and each new opponent would be a higher-ranking belt. He knew that Jamie was testing herself and wanted to stretch beyond what she had mastered before, so the teacher was determined to push her hard. He spoke to each of the opponents he had selected and told them what he wanted them to do. This was to be as close to live combat as a martial arts studio could get while ensuring the safety of the participants. The teacher told the rest of the students to clear the floor and instructed Jamie to move to the center of the mats.

Tom and Emily watched their daughter move into the center of the room. Even from that distance, saw a look of fierce determination in her face as she readied herself for what was coming. Her parents were surprised at her expression, even though they knew how competitive she was. They were even more surprised at the way she responded to her first two opponents.

She started with her head down and her arms hanging loosely at her sides. She seemed to be ignoring the two opponents approaching from either side, but when the one on her left moved in closer, she struck. She leaped into the air and caught the opponent on the left with a spinning kick to the head. She curled herself into a ball, rolled toward the second opponent, and unleashed a blinding series of punches at his midsection as she jumped back onto her feet. She turned and blocked an attack from the first opponent while kicking the second opponent with her heel to the stomach, sending him backwards onto the mats.

The third opponent joined the fray, and soon Jamie was surrounded on three sides. Somehow, though, that seemed a bigger disadvantage for the three opponents than for Jamie, who attacked her opponents relentlessly. The fourth opponent joined in, but none seemed able to get the advantage. Finally, the fifth opponent, who was a Tae kwon do master, joined in.

Jamie had sparred with the master before, but she had never done well against him. This time, though, Jamie seemed to be in a zone that she had never attained before. She did a flying split kick that sent the original two opponents falling onto the mats, and then she leaped forward and challenged the master face-to-face.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” the owner said softly as they watched Jamie from the room above. “This is a level of combat that should take years to achieve!”

Tom put his arm around Emily as they watched their daughter dodge strike after strike while she continued to attack her opponents. She never once took a defensive posture, preferring to keep her opponents off guard and unable to coordinate their attacks against her. Conventional wisdom would suggest that an opponent who was outnumbered should fall back and counter any attack with a defensive maneuver, but Jamie had thrown convention to the wind and was forcing her opponents to take defensive postures to try to prevent her from winning the match.

Sparring is a well-defined and well-controlled activity. Hits, whether from the hands or the feet, constitute points, and a certain number of points are required to win the match. Since Jamie was sparring with multiple opponents, she had to score the requisite points against each opponent individually, while fighting them all at the same time, in order to win. The teacher had four assistant teachers helping him keep score, and Jamie’s speed made it next to impossible to count with accuracy the number of hits that she made and received.

After a while, the teachers determined that some of the opponents had enough points scored against them to make them withdraw from the match. Soon, only the master and Jamie remained. Both tried to slip past the other’s defenses, but neither could gain the advantage. Both were growing tired, but neither was prepared to yield. Finally, the teacher stopped the match and declared it a draw. Jamie bowed to the master and to the other opponents, who returned her bow and came forward to congratulate her on an excellent match.

The owner motioned to Tom and Emily, and they all walked downstairs to congratulate Jamie. When they reached her, she was sweating profusely and breathing hard, but there was a look of absolute triumph in her eyes. She had taken on multiple opponents, including a master, and hadn’t been defeated. No one at the studio had ever done anything like that before, and no one so young had ever reached a draw with a master.

The master turned towards Tom and Emily. “That was one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen in my life,” he said. “She’s more than ready for the Nationals, and, frankly, I’m not sure that I want to go up against her again!”

Jamie finished her school assignments and exams, and graduated with highest honors. She missed being the valedictorian by less than one-half of one percent, but that was fine with her. The person named valedictorian was one of her best friends, and Jamie was happy for her.

The morning of her graduation, Tom and Emily gave Jamie a new car as her present. They had planned to get her a smaller one, but given all the gear she had to take to her various sporting activities, and since she’d be going to college in the fall, they felt that she needed something with more space.

Jamie was thrilled with her gift and couldn’t stop hugging and kissing her parents. They all went to the graduation ceremony in her car, letting Jamie be the chauffer for the first time. The ceremony was a happy event, and afterwards all of Jamie’s friends came back to the house for a well-deserved party.

A few weeks later, Tom and Emily took Jamie to the national tournament. There would be one winner for each of the belt ranks, and everyone at a particular rank had to go up against everyone else before the round robin eliminations began. There were two other state representatives from her martial arts studio competing at different ranks, so at least there were some familiar faces for her to support.

The tournament took several days, and on the last day, it came down to Jamie and another third degree black belt from Oregon for the national title. Jamie had considered changing her style and letting the other opponent make the first move, drawing him out and setting him up for the defeat, but she realized that her more aggressive style had gotten her to her current position, and the finals were no time to be experimenting with something new and unfamiliar.

When the referee announced that the match had started, Jamie moved so fast that her opponent barely had time to register that she had moved before she struck him the first time. He recovered quickly, but he was off balance and unable to get to a defensive posture to ward off her attacks. When the referee blew his whistle to declare the match over, not only had Jamie won the tournament for her rank, but she also set a new record for the fastest win in tournament history.

Tom and Emily clapped and cheered as Jamie received the trophy – her largest trophy yet! Jamie held up the trophy with both hands and winked to her parents. She was happy that they were there to share her victory. Unlike many of her friends, whose parents rarely had time to come to their events because of work or other commitments, Jamie’s parents made it to all of her competitions and at least one of them came to most of her practices as well. She knew that they had retired early so they could spend more time together as a family, and it made her feel valued and supported that her parents thought coming to watch her compete was so important.

When they got home a couple of days later, Jamie looked for space for her trophy in her bedroom. Once she had it where she wanted it, her eyes fell on the “book” on her bookcase titled “Legacy 18.” It wasn’t that she had forgotten about the letter and the box, but she had been so busy preparing for graduation and the tournament that she put out of her mind the fact that she was now old enough to open them.

Part of her wanted to read the letter and try to open the box immediately, but she knew that the family gun tournament was only a couple of days away. “I’ll open the letter after the gun tournament,” she decided to herself. “That’ll give me the rest of the summer to figure out how to open the box.”

That weekend, all of the family met at the gun club for the annual tournament. Jamie did well, but was eliminated in the second round for pistols, only beating Ian who hadn’t practiced much and was using a pistol he borrowed from his father. As usual, her parents went into multiple tiebreakers before Emily finally won the match.

In long arms without scopes, Jamie managed to beat Ian, Alex, and Liam. Her dad was the next one eliminated and soon it was between Emily and Sophie. Emily won, as usual. In the long arms with scopes category, Jamie was eliminated quickly, and the final round once again came down to Emily and Sophie. Sophie was still a good shot, but she was no match for Emily, who won that round also.

After the tournament, everyone came back over to Tom and Emily’s house for the traditional feast. Jamie like getting together with her cousins, and this year there were some new babies in the family for Jamie and the other women to play with.

Just before dinner, Jamie’s parents asked her to bring out her trophy and tell everyone about the Tae kwon do national tournament. Jamie could have used it as an opportunity to brag, but she had inherited her dad’s humility and talked about how well the other competitors did and how well her teachers had prepared her.

Tom told everyone about watching her take on multiple opponents just before the tournament, and related what the master had said once the match was over. Jamie blushed at the praise, and she was happy to put the trophy back in her room so the conversation would move on to another topic.

“I want to thank everyone for coming this year,” Tom said as everyone was serving their plates for dinner. “Even though our family is getting bigger and more spread out, it’s important for us to keep coming together each year to remember who we are, where we come from, and what makes this family so unique and special. I hope that we never stop having these tournaments, and I hope that we never stop having everyone in the family attend.”

During dinner, Alex asked, “So, what are your plans for the fall, Jamie?”

“I finally decided to follow in Dad’s footsteps,” she said, looking at Tom, “and go to the University of Alabama.”

Everyone in Sophie’s family congratulated her on her decision. Tom and Emily had known for several months, but they wanted to let Jamie tell everyone herself.

“I’m going to study Industrial and Computer Engineering,” she continued. “It seems logical to be an engineer since both of my parents have engineering degrees, but I want to do something a little different.”

Tom and Emily both looked surprised at this. They didn’t realize that she had finally made up her mind about what she wanted to study at college. Jamie had always been interested in computers, as well as understanding how things flowed from one point to another, so the combination made perfect sense. They both added their praise for her choice, which made Jamie happy.

A couple of days after the gun tournament, when both Tom and Emily were out of the house running errands, Jamie took the book titled “Legacy 18” off the bookcase, sat down on her bed, and carefully removed the covering that had kept the box and letter hidden for the past four years. The wax seal on the back of the letter had a small red silk cord running through it and into the box. She tried to pull the cord lose, but it was attached to something inside the box and wouldn’t move. So Jamie carefully peeled off the wax seal allowing the envelope to come free of the box, remembering that her grandfather had cautioned her not to break the seal. The wax seal attached to the cord now hung loosely against the side of the box as Jamie placed it on the bed next to her. She opened the envelope and took out the letter.

As she opened the letter, she saw her grandfather’s handwriting on the paper. Good handwriting was almost a lost art, and her grandfather came from an age when this particular art form was considered extremely important. She leaned back against her pillow and started reading.

My Dearest Granddaughter Jamie,

If you’re reading this letter, you’ve reached the age of eighteen, and I am no longer with you. I wish I could be there to see the remarkable young woman that I know you’ve become. In the few, short years that we had together, I knew that you were special, but how special you’ve become I cannot even imagine.

By now, I would have already told you about your parents and the part they played in world events that are now part of history and legend. Never forget that it was their dedication to justice and freedom that compelled them to act as they did. But it was also their love for each other and for you that compelled them to restrain their dedication so they wouldn’t risk you having to grow up without one or both of them. They did this without hesitation or reservation, and it’s an indication of their ability to balance their passions so that they did what was in the best interest of all, rather than what was in the best interest of a single one.

This is their legacy to you – passion and dedication coupled with the wisdom to know when to intervene and when to take a different path. It would be good if you were to learn this and make it your own. It’ll serve you well as you go forward in life.

But I have a legacy for you as well. It’s a legacy that comes from the very core of my being. Put simply, I need for you to take up the work that I started. I reached an age where I can no longer help people personally anymore. I chose to guide others to help people on my behalf. Your parents took up that legacy, and for many years they helped thousands, if not millions, of people – most of whom they never even met. Their contribution to this legacy is without measure, and yet even they have succumbed to the tempering of age. They reached the point where they had to choose between helping others, which could risk your upbringing, or taking the path that I took and guiding others who help people. They wisely chose the same path that I took, and the young woman you’ve undoubtedly become is a testament to the absolute correctness of their decision.

The contributions of your parents to the Order of the Saltire cannot easily be counted. Your father took up the torch that I laid down and lifted it higher than I could have ever dreamed. Your mother, standing resolutely at his side, brought new techniques and new technologies to the Order that have improved its ability to help others beyond my wildest expectations. Put simply, they did more than I ever imagined, and they were the right people in the right place at the right time to advance what I started into what it has become.

But all of this is well and good, except for the fact that no member of my family is actively involved in personally helping others anymore. Of all my grandchildren, only you possess the same spirit as I did at your age and as your parents did when they were younger. You need the Order to understand who and what you are, and the Order needs you to help it continue my work.

So this is the challenge that I lay upon you. Join the Order. Take a step into a larger world – a world where you’ll be in a position to advance the cause of justice and freedom at every turn. Help others who need help getting justice for themselves. You won’t have to look too hard to find people like this. They’re all around you. Help them without any expectation of praise or acknowledgment for what you’ve done. Be prepared for law enforcement to view your actions as suspicious, but don’t let that deter you from doing what needs to be done. Work as an extension of the law, not as a replacement for the law. Then, when you see how it feels to truly help others in a meaningful way, you’ll be ready for what’s inside the box.

OK, let’s talk about the box. By now, you’ll have realized that it isn’t an ordinary box at all. It’s called a “puzzle box”. I hope that you didn’t break the wax seal or cut the cord that’s attached to it. The seal is the key and the cord is part of both the key and the lock. It may take you a while to understand how the key and the lock work together, but in the end, you’ll have a Crowning Success. The contents of the box will help you on the final steps toward membership in the Order. If you have no interest in joining, please cut the cord and destroy the box, but I think that you won’t do that. If you’re the granddaughter that I believe you to be, you’ll open that box and complete the beginning of your journey. The Order will take you the rest of the way.

Remember that, no matter where I am or the number of years that have passed since we were last together, I love you with all my heart and hope for nothing but the best for you.

Yours Fondly,

Granddad James

P.S. If you choose to take this journey, please keep this letter secret, revealing it to your parents only after you’ve opened the box and are ready to complete the beginning. If, however, you choose not to take this journey, please destroy this letter at once and never speak of it to anyone.

Jamie put down the letter and reached for a tissue to dry her eyes. She heard her grandfather’s voice as she read his words. In her mind, she saw him sitting at the desk now in her dad’s study, holding a glass of scotch and talking to her in that quiet, gentle voice of his. It made her miss him even more, and yet she felt that she held the better part of him in her hands. The letter was part of him, and now it was also part of her.

Her grandfather had issued quite a challenge for her, and she wasn’t one to back down from challenges. She picked up the box and examined it carefully. There were no visible seams anywhere. In fact, apart from the hole where the cord entered the box and the faint image of the cross on the top, there were no markings or blemishes on the box at all. It looked like a solid piece of wood. She re-read the letter carefully, looking for any clues in it to help open the box. Seeing none, she carefully placed the book camouflage images back on the box and letter and returned the “book” to her bookcase.

Even before she finished reading the letter, she knew that she’d accept her grandfather’s challenge. I’ll make you proud of me, Granddad! As she got up to go into the kitchen and get something to eat, she thought that she heard her grandfather’s voice in the back of her mind saying, “I know you will.”