“He ain’t hurt,” Jay said. He didn’t look embarrassed or anything. “You hurt?”
Clyde didn’t know whether he was hurt or wasn’t hurt. What hit him, he now realized, had been Jay’s foot. But it had barely touched his cheek. “He looks pretty damn stunned to me,” Jan said.
Tina came over. “What’d you do to poor Clyde Twitty, Dad?”
“Stunned he is,” Jay said. “You can stun a guy with a well-chosen word, mama. But hurt? I don’t think so. Get up, boy, come on now.”
Clyde allowed Jan and Tina to help him up. Jan growled at Jay, “You have to go around kicking everybody you meet?”
“Careful, mama,” he said.
Now that he was standing, and knew what had happened, Clyde calmed down. “He’s right. I ain’t hurt. Just surprised.” He didn’t like to have everybody’s eyes on him so he said, “Hope I didn’t wet myself,” and they all laughed.
Jay threw some kicks and punches in the air, his sleeves and pant legs making snapping sounds. “I just wanted to see what he was made of.”
“Flesh and blood,” Jan said. “Like everybody.”
“Not everbody,” Jay said, throwing combinations with more speed now. “Wanted to see if he’d trained maybe.”
“Uh, yeah, I think you got your answer,” Tina said.
“Trained,” Clyde said.
“Karate.” Jay pronounced it kara-tay. “I looked at you and I thought to myself, He looks like somebody who knows how to handle his self.” Jay stopped and stood in front of Clyde, held his hands out to shake like before. “So solly, Cryde-san.” They shook and Jay bowed.
“That’s okay,” Clyde said. “I, uh, I used to play baseball.”
“I know.” Jay put a fingertip on Clyde’s chest. “Never trained karate, though?”
“Uh, no sir.”
“Want to?”
Tina and Jan stood watching. They wore the same expression, an uneasy mix of wonder and dread.
Jay put an arm around Clyde’s shoulders and turned him away from the women, like J.D. had, leading him into the flat even grid of Liberty Ridge, the sun shifting overhead. Jay talked about training, hard training, training his way, the Jay Smalls way. “This ain’t sport karate,” he said. “Ain’t a workout. Ain’t exercise. Ain’t about vanity, looking good, having lots of muscles to impress the ladies. This about life an death.” He raised a fist and squeezed, the muscles on his thick forearm rippled. They walked on and Jay asked Clyde if he knew the history of the martial arts. Clyde didn’t know much. The Japanese, Jay told him, had invented karate, which, by the way, meant both “open hand” and “China hand,” out of necessity, centuries ago, to fight the invading Chinese bastards. Them Chinese, Jay said, all of ’em knew kung fu. But the problem was, kung fu takes years to master. Years. “You can’t generate no power whatsoever in the first, oh, four years of training kung fu. It’s all,” Jay let go of Clyde and jabbed him with his fingertips a few times in various spots. Clyde laughed. “Gotta study anatomy and train ten, twenty years ’fore you can put somebody through a wall with a finger.” He wrapped the arm back around Clyde’s neck, talking close to his ear, making fists, making eye contact, throwing punches. “So finally the Japs, after getting whooped too many goddamn times, after watchin too many wives and daughters get raped in rice paddies, finally realized they had to learn how to fight, uh, today. Not next week. They didn’t have no twenty years to perfect their technique. In twenty years the whole country’d be gone, the babies all half-breeds. That’s when they came up with karate. The practical application of the martial art. China hand. The hand that will kick China’s ass. Forget sticking a finger in a lymph node. We gonna put a fist through your goddamn sternum.” Jay drove a slow punch into Clyde’s chest, just enough to shove him. Clyde felt Jay’s swollen knuckle there. “Gonna dislocate your knee with a kick. Collapse your throat, gouge your eyes, knee your balls, drive my fingers into your guts, snap your neck.” In front of Clyde, Jay executed these techniques at half speed with hands and feet, his whole body rotating, the black belt slapping side to side. “They figured out where the power is,” Jay said. “It’s in the hips. Everything, Clyde, everything everything everything in karate comes from the hips. Just like fuckin.” They walked on, Clyde’s chest warm, his head buzzing. He could have listened to Jay talk all day.
“Karate is just the ability to do,” Jay said. They passed open foundations that stank of standing water and filth, basements poured to be topped with houses that never arrived. Clyde squinted at the bright day and let Jay lead him. He wasn’t sure if he really got what Jay meant by “the ability to do.” Maybe you had to train to understand something so basic. As if Jay could read Clyde’s mind, he said, “Modern man don’t git it. The ability to do? All I need ‘to do’ is the money I got in the bank. A nice-looking wife, no buck teeth or lazy eyes, a couple kids who, uh,” Jay slipped into a funny voice, “play by the rules. A good job at a respectable company, fine neighbors, a supportive community.” With each phrase Jay’s voice grew more ridiculous until he finally made a retching sound and snickered, his moustache curling. “Save that bullshit for the suckers. I’m building an army,” he snickered, “to fight against the stupidity of the modern age. Karate men, Clyde, we’re super-human.” Clyde huffed and Jay nodded. “Superhuman don’t mean we can dodge bullets, leap tall buildings, although, if I trained hard enough,” Jay laughed. “You wanna jump a house, you figure out how, then you train, then you do it.” Jay wrapped his arms around Clyde again and led him on. “Just means what it means. Super. Greater than. The way we train, it’s true. With karate, Clyde, like nothing else on earth, man can perfect his character—if he wants to bad enough. You ever hear how we only use about ten percent of our brains, Clyde?”
“Yeah.”
“Most men these days only using about ten percent of their character. It’s the same. Modern man is stuck in a rut. We been castrated. By society, by our wives, our mommies, our job. And we don’t even know it!” Jay laughed. “Well, I know it. But I is in the minority.” He snickered and looked around quickly, as if someone was coming. “In more ways than one.” Clyde grinned. “Let me tell you something you may not know, Clyde Twitty. There’s no better mirror than training. People say mirrors don’t lie. The hell they don’t! Half the goddamn mirrors out there are made to lie. That’s their purpose. Make you look thinner, make you look fatter, make you look dumber, depending on what the mirror maker wants from you. But the mirror of hard training does not lie. You train hard, you train with conviction and an open heart, you learn things about yourself you never knew. You never would know, your whole life.” Jay shrugged at this simple fact. “Dojo koan says it all: we will train our hearts and bodies, for a firm unshaking spirit. We will pursue the true meaning of the martial way, so that in time our senses may be alert.” Jay nodded and they walked on.
After not speaking for so long, Clyde’s voice broke when he tried. He cleared his throat and said, “Can you break boards and stuff?”
Jay ran ahead, looking around an abandoned lot until he found a brick. He laid it between two upturned cinderblocks, drew a long breath through his nose, raised his right hand so far over his head his thumb touched his back between shoulder blades, and brought it down with a loud “Yah!” The brick snapped in two and fell in the dirt and Jay stood up.
“Damn,” Clyde said. His grin was huge. He’d never seen anything that impressive.
“Train with me,” Jay said, “you be able to do that.” He stepped into the street and Clyde followed. “Hell, Clyde, my daughter can break a board. Breaking boards is nothing.” Jay held up a finger. Clyde saw that it was bleeding. “Know why karatekans break boards?”
“No