Andrew Klavan - The last thing I remember

Now the thing about Sensei Mike is: he tells you the truth. He’s not one of these happy-talk guys who’ll say what you want to hear or what he thinks you’re supposed to hear because he read it in some article or something. He’ll tell you his best opinion, flat out, without mincing words. So I was happy because I wanted to know his opinion. But I was sorry because I was afraid of what his opinion might be.

So I took a deep breath. I went into a side pocket of my karate bag and wrestled out a battered old paperback book I kept hidden there. I’d found it in a box at a fundraising book sale they’d had at the public library. I’d been reading it and reading it in secret for weeks now, cover to cover and back again. I kept it in my karate bag because sometimes my mother goes through my school bag to clean out the half-eaten lunches and so on. But she leaves my karate bag alone. I didn’t want her to find it because, like I said before, I knew it would drive her crazy with fear and I’d never hear the end of it. And I knew if I asked my father about it, he’d tell my mother, so I couldn’t talk to him either.

I held the book out to Sensei Mike. It was called: To Be a U.S. Air Force Pilot.

Sensei Mike took the book in one hand and glanced down at it.

“What do you think?” I said. “You think I could make it as a fighter pilot in the Air Force?”

Sensei Mike pulled the book close to himself. Leaning back in the chair, swiveling back and forth, he opened it, paged through it.

“Cool,” he murmured. “Cool jets.”

He glanced through a few more pages, then shut the book and held it out to me. I took it and stuffed it back down into my karate bag.

I stood there, nervous, waiting to hear the answer to my question.

“You wanna be an Air Force pilot?” he asked me.

I managed to nod.

“Really tough. Really tough training. Very selective, very elite. A lot of guys don’t make it. Even some of the best. Just not that many slots open.”

I went on nodding. I already knew all that.

Sensei Mike folded his hands on the knot of his black belt. “You know, a lot of guys, teachers and so on-they’d be happy to tell you that you can be anything you want to be, anything you set your mind on. You go to them, they’ll tell you you should feel good about yourself, that you’re special and all that stuff.”

“I know that, Sensei Mike. That’s why I didn’t go to them. I asked you ’cause I want the truth.”

“The truth is: you can’t be anything you want to be. All that talk is garbage. I mean, I could try till my ears smoked, but I couldn’t write a symphony-not a good one, anyway. I couldn’t throw a baseball ninety-five miles an hour or hit one out of a major-league park. I want to do all those things, but it doesn’t matter how hard I try-I just wasn’t given those abilities.” Sensei Mike came forward in his chair, leaned forward, and looked up at me hard. “But this is also the truth: if you try your best and better than your best, and work and push yourself until you think you can’t go on and then push yourself some more-then-then if you have a little bit of luck on your side-then you can be all the good things God made you to be.”

“Well, I’d do that,” I said. “You know I would. You’ve seen me. I’d bust my chops for this.”

“Yeah, you would, that’s true.”

“So what do you think? Could I do it?”

He turned it over in his mind one more second. Then he said, “Absolutely. With your brains, your reflexes, and the way you work… assuming you meet the physical requirements, the eyesight and all that… I think you got Ace written all over you.” He pointed a finger at me. “You’ll still be a chucklehead-but you’ll be an Ace chucklehead.”

“I don’t know, Mike,” I said. “You gotta get a congressman to nominate you and everything.”

“Don’t sweat it. I know plenty of congressmen. I know some Air Force brass too. Finish your education, pull down the big grades, and you’ll get your shot, I promise you. And hey… meanwhile, try to keep your mind on what you’re doing. You can’t fly jets if Lou Wilson splatters your brains all over the dojo.”

When I walked out of the karate studio that day, I felt like I was about ten feet tall, a giant among men looking down at the world from high above. My mind was racing over all kinds of things, over everything that had happened that day. The karate demonstration and the way all the kids shouted and applauded. Beth coming into the cafeteria the way she did, and the way we talked and she wrote on my hand and everything. And now, Sensei Mike: I think you got Ace written all over you…

I had this feeling-this incredible feeling-that it was actually possible that I could turn my daydreams into reality.

It was just like Sensei Mike said. My mind was totally in the clouds. I wasn’t paying attention. I was completely unprepared for what happened next.

It was getting toward evening now, around five o’clock or so. On the far side of the mall, in the gap between the Pizza Kitchen and the movie theater-beyond where the movie theater parking was-I could see the sun turning red as it reached the tops of the far hills. I took a deep breath of the cool September air. I wished I could get in my mom’s car and drive out to those hills and look out from the top of them toward the setting sun and see my future out there-see what was going to happen and what it would be like, and end all the suspense I felt inside me.

I guess it’s a good thing I couldn’t do that. If I had seen what my future was really going to be like, I would’ve gone home that night and hidden under the bed.

Anyway, I had to get back for dinner. Plus I still had my history paper to write.

So I started walking across the parking lot. I’d parked the car in back of Paulson’s, the mall supermarket. That part of the lot wasn’t the nicest place in the mall. It was where the garbage Dumpsters were. It was also where the homeless guys hung out-the crazy ones and the alcoholic ones who pawed through the Dumpsters for food. Kids hung out there sometimes too. Everyone knew there were some checkout people in Paulson’s who would sell you beer without checking your ID. So sometimes kids bought a beer in Paulson’s and drank it in the back by the Dumpsters after the police patrols had passed through.

What I mean is: that rear area wasn’t a great place to be, especially after dark. But on a busy day like today, when the parking lot was practically full, it was easier to find a space back there because the shopping moms avoided it. Anyway, I knew I’d be out of karate before dark, and I wasn’t worried. I went down the narrow lane next to Paulson’s and came around the back. I reached my car. Opened the hatch. Threw in my karate bag.

Then I stopped. Stopped with my hand on the hatch door, about to push it down.

I had lifted my eyes to scan the area, make sure nothing threatening was going on. As I was turning away, I spotted a group of kids slouching against a brick wall near the Dumpsters. There were three of them. They all had paper bags in their hands. They were lifting the paper bags to their mouths and lowering them again. I knew there were beer bottles in the bags.

One of the kids was Alex Hauser. He was glaring at me. He lifted his paper bag to his lips and lowered it again. I waved to him. He didn’t smile or wave back. He just tapped one of his friends on the shoulder. He pointed me out to him.

With that, the three kids pushed their way off the wall. They tossed their paper bags into one of the Dumpsters. They started coming my way, with Alex in the lead.

They didn’t look friendly.

Alex Alex had changed a lot since our best-friend days. He almost looked like a different person now. He used to be a kind of happy, open-faced, round-faced guy, but now his face looked narrow and hungry; sullen too. His mouth was set in a permanent frown, like the mouths of those bass I caught in Lake Wyatt sometimes. His eyes seemed to flash with anger. He was wearing a watch cap and a blue tracksuit. His two friends were also in tracksuits. One, a dark-skinned guy, had a red bandana on. The other had his blond hair cut to the nub. I guessed they were from Alex’s new school. I didn’t know them, anyway. Frankly, I wasn’t looking forward to an introduction.