Andrew Klavan - The last thing I remember

Mike was the teacher on duty that Wednesday. After some warm-up exercises and some katas, he set me to sparring with Lou Wilson. Now, the main thing you have to understand about Lou is that Lou is big. Very big. Not very tall or anything, just about my height, but broad and thick and heavy and strong. If I had to compare him to something, it’d probably be a cement mixer. When you’re sparring with Lou and he comes at you, it’s like standing in the middle of the road while a cement mixer comes barreling your way.

That said, I’d always had good luck sparring with Lou. I generally got the better of the fight. Lou is a really nice guy, really friendly and all, but, just being honest here, you’d have to say he’s not all that strong in the brains department. Doesn’t have a lot of smarts, not in school and not when it comes to fighting. He comes at you like a cement mixer all right-and you dance out of his way and pepper him with punches and kicks. And then he comes at you like a cement mixer again and you do the same thing again. And that’s pretty much the way our sparring usually goes.

Only not today.

Now, we always try to do things safely in the dojo, and sparring’s no different. We wear soft gloves and a helmet and shin pads and, of course, a hard cup for protection. Sure, you can get bruised ribs or a fat lip on a bad day, but in general, no one’s going to hurt you too much.

The one exception to that rule would be if you were to-oh, let’s just say for example-get run over by a cement mixer. Which I was. Or at least it felt as if I were.

I’m not sure exactly how it happened. When we started out, it was the usual scenario. There I was in my sparring gear, and there was Lou in his. Sensei Mike stood between us, wearing his black gi and his black belt with four red stripes-a very high ranking. He had Lou and me face each other in the front position. We bowed karate-style to show that we respected each other and that we were working together to learn karate and not trying to do any real damage.

Then Sensei Mike said, “On guard.” We both leapt back and put up our fists in fighting position.

Sensei Mike lifted his hand between us. Then he dropped it and said, “Go!”

And, as always, here came Lou the Cement Mixer. Rumble, rumble, rumble. And I did my usual dancing out of the way, peppering him with a couple of good jabs to the side of his helmet and one sharp roundhouse kick into his stomach above his belt. And then here came Lou again, rumble, rumble, rumble. And again, I danced out of the way and hit and kicked him.

Now, mind you, the blows didn’t bother Lou any. If you wanted to bother Lou, I really think you’d have to sneak up behind him and hit him with a brick. That might annoy him a little, anyway. As it was, I got to show off my karate style-and Lou just came a-rumbling at me again.

And I remember thinking to myself: Boy, if Beth could see me now, she would be really impressed.

Then, right after that, I remember thinking, I wonder why I’m looking up at the ceiling with stars twinkling in front of my eyes and birds twittering in my ears?

As nearly as I can reconstruct it, what happened was this:

Once again, Lou came at me, rumble, rumble, rumble. Once again, I was getting ready to dance out of the way. But instead of dancing out of the way, I started thinking about Beth and how impressed she would be if she could see me dancing out of the way. Lou, finding to his delight that instead of being somewhere else I was standing in front of him thinking about being somewhere else, decided that this might be a good opportunity to throw a roundhouse right to the side of my head. Which he did. Whereupon I went down on my backside, and cue the twinkling stars and twittering birds.

Of course, I jumped back up to my feet right away- just as soon as I realized I had left them. I didn’t want Sensei Mike to think I couldn’t take a punch-even if it was a punch from a cement mixer. I started dancing around again immediately with my fists up in front of me, trying to pretend that a chorus of boings and dings wasn’t still going off inside my head.

Luckily, about two seconds after that, Sensei Mike stopped the fight. He laughed and slapped me and Lou both on our shoulders.

“All right, chuckleheads, good job. Salute the flag and go get dressed.”

Lou and I punched our gloves together-a way of shaking hands.

“Nice punch,” I said. “You really tagged me with that one.”

Under his helmet, I could see Lou beam with pride. Then we both turned and gave a karate-style bow to the American flag.

There’s a changing room at the back of the dojo, just big enough for one person. I waited for Lou to finish, then I went in and stripped my gi off and climbed back into my street clothes. There’s no shower or anything in there, so I don’t usually wash up until I get home and my mother gets a whiff of me.

When I was dressed, I walked across the dojo, carrying my karate bag. At the edge of the anteroom, I turned and gave one last bow of respect to the dojo. Then I walked out.

Lou had left already. Mike was sitting in the office behind his computer, typing up some notes.

“Thanks, Sensei,” I called in to him.

“Hey, chucklehead,” he said without looking up. “Get in here.”

I walked in and stood in front of the desk. Sensei Mike finished whatever he was typing. Then he sat back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, and looked up at me.

“How’s your gray matter?” he said. “That was a pretty good one Lou got in on you.”

“Yeah, it was a good shot, I gotta admit,” I said. I didn’t sound happy about it, and, in fact, I wasn’t. But the truth is the truth. It was a pretty good shot.

“You want to be careful with that head of yours,” Sensei Mike said. He hid his smile by bringing one hand around and smoothing his mustache with his thumb and forefinger. “Brains are more important than fists, you know. It’s no good learning karate if you get knocked stupid in the process.”

I tried to laugh it off. Sometimes you win in sparring and sometimes you lose, and you have to get used to that. But-again, the truth is the truth-I don’t much like losing. I don’t suppose anyone does. “I just forgot to duck, that’s all,” I said.

“Sure,” said Sensei Mike, still smoothing his ’stache.

“I guess you just got distracted by all your math homework.”

I didn’t know what he meant. “Math homework?”

“Yeah,” said Mike. He swiveled back and forth in his chair, smoothing his mustache, hiding his smile. “You must have a lot of math homework, seeing as you ran out of room in your notebook and had to start writing the numbers on your hand. I guess it was thinking about the numbers on your hand that distracted you.”

I looked stupidly down at my hand for a second. Then I got it, and I felt the color rising up into my face.

Sensei Mike laughed. “Don’t sweat it, chucklehead. I’m just giving you a hard time.”

I rolled my eyes, embarrassed.

“The fact is,” said Sensei Mike, “you’ve been distracted around here a lot lately. I guess I was just wondering: is that all about… your math homework?”

I shrugged. “I guess so,” I said.

“Nothing else.”

I shrugged again. “Well, there’s a lot of stuff. You know, school and whatnot.”

“You gonna tell me about it or am I gonna have to beat it out of you?”

“Well…” I wagged my head back and forth. I didn’t really want to talk to him about it. I didn’t want to talk to anyone about it. But before I knew it, I heard myself saying, “There is one thing…”

I was sorry the minute the words came out of my mouth. I was sorry, and, weirdly enough, I was kind of happy at the same time. Because there was this one thing on my mind that I’d wanted to bring up to Sensei Mike for a long time. It was this secret ambition I had that I hadn’t told anybody. The reason I hadn’t told anybody was because I wasn’t sure it was possible. If there was anyone who would know, it was Sensei Mike.