Jeff Brackett - Half Past Midnight

By the time Andrew blurted all that out, I was out of breath. I didn’t know whether to laugh at his nervousness, thank him for respecting me enough to ask my permission, or to try to get him to loosen up a little. For a few seconds, I simply stared at him in surprise.

He licked his lips nervously, shifting from foot to foot, and I finally realized that if I didn’t say something soon, the poor boy was likely to implode.

“You want my permission to date, er, court Megan?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And if I understood all that, you intend to marry her if she’ll have you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What would you do if I said no?”

The poor boy’s mouth fell open. “Sir?”

“What if I tell you I don’t want you to see my daughter, and I forbid you from ever coming around here again?”

“But… you can’t, I mea… you wouldn’t, would you? Sir?”

I simply stared at him.

“But we love each other!”

Still, I remained silent.

Finally, Andrew straightened his shoulders. “Mr. Dawcett, Megan and I have spoken about this a few times. We know how we feel about each other, and we both know that we want to continue seeing each other, and we felt you and Mrs. Dawcett deserved to know. But with all due respect, sir, if you were to tell me I couldn’t see her anymore,” he paused and swallowed nervously, “well, I guess I’d end up sneaking around behind your back. I ain’t saying it’s right, but I don’t think I can just stop seeing her. It’s like I said, I love her.”

I raised my hand to rub my chin, and nearly laughed aloud when he flinched at my movement. “Well, Andrew, if you’re determined to see her no matter what I say, then I guess I’d better not forbid you, huh?” I grinned at his dumbfounded expression.

“Hell, son! You don’t think I’m going to try and tell that girl she can’t see you, do you? She’d probably hurt the both of us!”

Andrew shook his head as he finally realized he’d been had. “Yes, sir, I guess she probably would.”

“Just one thing, Andrew.”

“Yes, sir?”

“If you’re planning to marry Megan, I think you’d better learn to stand a little stronger for what you believe in.”

“Pardon me?”

“If you never planned to stop seeing my daughter, you didn’t have to pretend you needed my permission to see her. You’re both adults. I appreciate you wanting to let me and Mrs. Dawcett know, and I definitely approve of your motives, but it would have been just as good if you’d simply told me your intentions as a matter of respect, rather than go through all the rigmarole of pretending that anything I had to say would make a bit of difference in the matter.”

Embarrassed, the young man nodded. “Yes, sir. I see what you mean.”

“And you’re really going to have to learn to stand on your own two feet if you plan on marrying a headstrong woman like my daughter. It’s one thing to love her; it’s another to let her walk all over you. She’ll never respect you if you do that.”

“Yes, sir. It’s just that it’s a little different talking to you, sir.”

I grinned. “Why don’t you drop all the ’sir’ stuff?” I stuck out my hand. “Just call me Leeland. If you’re planning to marry my daughter, we’re going to be seeing a lot more of each other.”

Rejas was nudged onto the path to war on August fourteenth, though at the time, we were unaware of where we were headed. For me, it began as I lectured a group of my students on knife fighting and personal philosophy.

“So what makes this stuff you teach any different than the old taekwondo I took when I was a kid?” Rene Herrera had started classes a year ago after her husband had been killed during a skirmish with a band of looters. A fierce, determined woman, her attitude sometimes bordered on belligerence. Her fighting style was aggressive, but effective. In Rene’s particular case, I was less concerned with her fighting techniques than with her mental and emotional self-control. So when she asked a seemingly insolent question, I usually chose to ignore the tone and address the question itself.

In this instance, I had a ready answer since I had often been asked the same thing when I spoke with prospective students back in Houston. “It’s a different way of looking at things. Let me ask you something. If a rattlesnake attacks you, what do you do?”

“Get out of the way”

“And if you can’t? Say, if your back is to a wall, and there’s just no place to run. Then what would you do?”

“I guess I’d try to kill the snake.”

“All right. So what if you were back against that same wall, and you were being attacked by a mouse?”

She chuckled. “What?”

I repeated, “You’re in the same corner, nowhere to run, but this time it’s a mouse coming after you.”

“I think I’d probably wet myself laughing!” Many of the others laughed, too. I smiled with them as I paced.

“Why? What’s the difference? Why are you more worried about the snake than the mouse?” I turned back to Rene. “I know it seems silly, but there is a point to this.”

The young woman looked at me like I was crazy. “’Cause the snake is poisonous?” Her uncertainty made it seem as if she was asking a question.

“So what if I tell you that the snake isn’t poisonous, and the mouse is? Then which one are you more worried about?”

“The mouse, of course.”

“So it isn’t the snake you’re afraid of, it’s the bite, right?”

“Okay,” Rene conceded cautiously, apparently wary of being caught in a trap.

“Now, what if you’re being attacked by the same rattlesnake, but he hasn’t got any fangs? Are you still afraid of him?”

Her answer was firmer this time. “No. If he can’t bite me, he’s just dinner.”

“Exactly! If you take away his fangs, he’s no longer a danger. So if you and I are fighting, and everything about us is equally matched-skill, speed, weapons, reach, determination-are you afraid?”

“Not if everything is equal. Sounds like a standoff.”

“That’s it. But what if I lose my weapon? I’m just like that rattlesnake, right? No fangs. In Kali, we learn to de-fang snakes. The difference in this and what most martial arts teach is simple, but it’s important. If a man punches at you, and you’ve studied a traditional martial art, you’ll more than likely block or parry, then counterattack, usually by punching or kicking to the head, legs, or torso.

“If the same man punches you, and you’ve studied Kali, your block is your counterattack, and it’s usually aimed at whatever he is attacking you with. If he’s punching, you try to injure his hand so he can’t punch you again. If he’s kicking, you injure his foot. If he’s using a weapon, you take away his ability to use it, either by injuring the hand that holds it, or by simply disarming him. No matter what he does, your goal is to take away his fangs. If he’s no longer a danger, the fight is over.”

It was time to move on to the next part of my lecture. “There are very few things you can count on in life. The pre-D saying was that the only two things you could count on were death and taxes. But I haven’t seen the IRS in quite some time.”