Brad Felver - The Dogs of Detroit

“Holy shit!” I say because the little mohawked guy is a real-life ninja.

“It’s called Brazilian jiu-jitsu,” Jared says. “Its strength is when you’re on your back and someone is on top of you.”

I like the sound of that, a more defensive art form. Jared needs that.

I don’t remember standing up, but I am. I’m breathing hard, and there’s sweat beaded on my forehead. It’s a strange and brutal sport, I think, one that awakens those contradictions that drive the hordes: the primeval lust for violence and the hope that we might tame it by locking it in a cage. And I admit that at that moment, I am one among the horde.

When I tell Jared that I’m pulling him from wrestling and putting him in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, he grins like it was his idea. He knows he’s a crummy wrestler, so he needs to learn how to fight off his back. All the successful fighters can. I do my homework. Lots of them study Muay Thai. A few karate fighters but not many. Everyone agrees that you shouldn’t be studying Tae Kwon Do or Kung Fu if you don’t eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or make shitty Hollywood movies.

Jared takes to the jiu-jitsu easily. He’s a quick study, his instructor says. All legs and arms, and when he learns to use them properly, they’ll act like a shield for his body. Within a year, he boasts, Jared will bend his appendages like rope around his opponents. His arms will be nooses, his legs boa constrictors.

His instructor is a Brazilian about my age. Thiago Rodrigo Pereira. He’s from Curitiba, which is where his family still lives, and he has a heavy Portuguese accent. Ears so cauliflowered they look like big heaping boogers clinging to his head. He’s fought all over the world and could clearly beat me up and ride a unicycle at the same time. But he’s an incredibly calm man, stub-legged and full of little wisdoms: An opponent’s hips are gateways to success or defeat in fighting , he says. Or, Look at man’s eyes when first time you punch, and you see if he’s been punched this way before . One of his maxims has something to do with the fiery soul of an iguana, and I can’t make sense of it. He runs a mixed martial arts center in town, one that focuses mainly on his form of jiu-jitsu. His gym, which is tucked in between a Dollar General and a KinderCare, even has a full-size steel cage for sparring. The place reeks of armpit.

“I’m all for toughening Jared up,” I tell him. “But this cage fighting, I can’t see him succeeding in it.”

Thiago nods slowly. “I understand this,” he says. “And you are right for worry. But humans are fighting. The more we practice, the more deathly we become.”

“But should we encourage him?” I ask. “Do we need him getting punched in the spine?”

“No,” he says very plainly. “But he will find other ways then. Humans do violence. Is natural way of things. I feel better with cages over them. Cages are for protections. Cages are good. Safer than parking lots. Better to give instructions than let them do weapons on each other.”

Then I ask him if, perhaps, there is a cultural divide with fighting.

Thiago looks puzzled, and I can’t tell if he’s offended or working out the translation.

“It just seems,” I say, “that many of these fighters are from South America or Asia.”

“Ah,” Thiago says. He nods. “Cultural divide. Yes.”

“Then you agree?”

“No, my friend. All people fight.” He stands up as if to signal his seriousness. “Forgive me,” he says. “Who are best fighters of all?”

I don’t know, and I fear offending him by suggesting the wrong group. “The Japanese?” I say. “The Chinese? Your Brazilians?”

“No, no,” he says. “We are good fighters, but we are not best. This was Romans.”

Thiago lowers his head, bowing to me. “Praemonitus, praemunitus,” he says. “Forewarned is forearmed. Best prepared fighter wins victory. Romans were always best prepared.”

I think the Visigoths might disagree with his assessment, but I understand his point.

“If your son prepares best, he will win victory,” Thiago says. He claps me on the shoulder. “You will feel proud.”

Jared sticks with the jiu-jitsu. If he’s going to do this, I want him prepared. It’s not uncommon, Thiago tells me privately, to have kids his age come in and claim they want to become cage fighters. Almost none of them end up doing it. I don’t know if he tells me this as encouragement or consolation.

Jared advances quickly, working ten hours a week with Thiago. They roll on the mat, Thiago shouting commands about hips and wrists and posture. “Elbows in!” he shouts often, and Jared seems to struggle with this because his arms are so long. “No give up wrists!” he shouts when Jared tries to block punches. “Pancake!” he shouts when Jared gets the top position, and my son flattens out, squishing Thiago into the mat.

At home, he shows me what he learns, practicing moves on me: rear naked chokes, triangle chokes, armbars, kneebars, legbars, omoplatas, Kimuras. We move the couch and grapple each other in a Greco-Roman clinch. He slides his long arms down my chest and wraps them around my armpits, twists his hips, and chucks me to floor. He lies on the carpet and pulls me on top of him to practice his guard, wrapping his legs around my torso while I mimic punches.

“He is improving rapidly,” Thiago tells me. “We must prepare more full.”

I remind him that Jared already has two years of Tae Kwon Do. He looks away and grins. “Tae Kwon Do- not ,” he says, shaking his head. “This one is, like you say, very Fisher Price.”

He assigns Jared a striking coach, which I have to pay extra for. He teaches Jared to keep his hands high, bounces his lead knee to block kicks. He learns basic stances to complement what he learned from the hippie Tae Kwon Do instructor: orthodox, southpaw, semi-crouch, Muay Thai. His reach is impressive—nearly that of a light-heavyweight—but his fists still seem to crumple like papier-mâché nuggets whenever they land.

He works his leg kicks on me and drives his shin bone into the meat of my thigh, and pain ripples over my whole leg like a sonic boom. I limp for two days. In the shower, I stare at the purpled bruise, push on it to feel again the newfound power of my son. Thiago is correct: I feel proud.

I pull the Acura from the garage and lay wrestling mats on the concrete slab. On the wall I stick a length of duct tape and write on it: Praemunitus, praemonitus . Thiago starts making house calls, and when he sees this, he scolds me. “You get them flip-side, my friend,” he says. “Is not ‘forearmed is forewarned.’” He shakes his head, steps on to the mat, and tries to tackle my son. I feel like a blundering, stupid American, and so I draw an arrow to signal the order needs to be switched.

Before I even realized it’s happened, Thiago becomes a fixture at our house, eating dinner with us, sometimes drinking gin with me until late, when Jared is already in bed. More than once, he stays over in the guest bedroom, and they roll on the garage mats before school. His family is in Brazil; my ex-wife is in Oregon. We meet new people, use them to putty over the holes in our families.

I show him my bruised thigh one night when I’ve had too much to drink. He smiles broadly. “Jared is spirited fighter,” he says. “You raise him well. You feel pride, yes?”

I look down and drink more gin and nod.

In early November, Jared dislocates his knee. He writhes on the mat, moaning. His face burns red as we race him to the hospital. Thiago and I stay in the waiting room while the doctor resets it. I pace back and forth, and he sits still, legs crossed.

“He will be a-okay with time, my friend,” Thiago says. “This happens to me many times.”