The Red Hunter(27)
“And if those people, the ones you walk away from, go on to hurt others,” I said. “What then? Are you not at least somewhat responsible?”
He put a hand on my arm, and his skin was bark against the sand of mine. His mother was Jamaican, his father Puerto Rican. She was a singer; he was an electrical engineer. He was a harsh disciplinarian; she used to take Mike out of school so they could play hooky at Rockaway Beach. Mike’s fighting style is a curious mix of precision and fluidity, almost predictable until it isn’t. It’s funny how two people meet and come together, and through their differences form someone unique with a whole new set of gifts and quirks.
Mike forced me to meet his eyes, leaning in front of me so I had to look at him. “What happened was not your fault. And you’re not responsible for anything that’s happened since. You were just a kid.”
“Well,” I said, gently unwinding from his grasp. “I’m not a kid anymore.”
I moved toward the locker room door.
“Revenge seeks chaos,” he said. “Justice seeks balance. That’s the difference.”
His deep, resonant voice bounced off the walls, and the sound of it caused me to pause at the door, my palm on the wood.
“That seems pretty vague to me,” I said. “Open to interpretation.”
“Okay, how about this: when you plan revenge, you should dig two graves—one of them for yourself.”
I decided not to mention that that’s been the plan all along.
? ? ?
THE FIRST TIME IT HAPPENED, it was an accident. Well, not an accident exactly, but unplanned. I was a freshman at NYU, eighteen years old, and I’d been fighting for four years, not to mention some informal earlier training from Paul—how to make a fist, how to draw power from your stance, in a street fight or to defend yourself, always go for the eyes and the groin.
I’d been studying at the temple for four years. There are no belts in kung fu, not at my school anyway. We earn degrees. The first degree came after two years if you passed a written and physical test. The second came a couple years after that. I’d just earned my second degree.
But I’d never been in a real street fight.
Don’t look for it, Mike always warned us, worried that young people overconfident in their own abilities would go out into the city looking for trouble. Some did.
Even I wondered if outside the temple I could defend myself. Sparring is not the real deal. We didn’t wear guards—except the men wore cups and the women wore breast shields inside their sports bras. But we took blows to the center body and limbs to learn what it feels like to get hit. And in sparring, we pulled our strikes to the head, vital organs, lower abdomen, tapping or slapping when a fist might do real damage, actions that taught control and discipline. But we still got hurt—a lot, marking each other with ugly black bruises, massaging each other when it was done. So I knew what it was like to take a blow. But when fear and adrenaline were part of the equation, what would that change? If someone had a real gun or a knife, was crazy, a gutter fighter, not following the rules of the kung fu temple, how would I fare?
The goal is never to find out, Mike answered when I asked.
It was late, that first time. I had spent my evening at Bobst Library, off Washington Square Park, studying and decided to walk home rather than cab it as my uncle would have preferred. It was early autumn, Halloween approaching, the air crisp but not cold. I wore my eternal hoodie, black jeans, and sneakers. It was the perfect invisibility cloak; tons of people in the city wearing exactly the same thing.
My parents had been dead for more than four years. I was constructed mainly of eggshells, emotionally speaking. I still couldn’t bring myself to talk to anyone but Paul, some of my teachers, people at the temple. So I’m sure I came off as a bit of a freak, hollow-eyed and shrinking (or trying to) into a slate-gray hood. The world, to me, seemed like a field of shadows, everything suspect, everyone untrustworthy. I felt safe only at the temple, among stacks of books, or with Paul. Otherwise, I was a field mouse staying out of sight, always watching for the wings of death.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” A shrill voice, young and frightened, startled me as I walked, heading east on Eighth Street. “Get away from me.”
“What the fuck? Do you think I’m stupid?” Brooklyn, big round vowels, hard-edged consonants. “Save yourself, kid. I’m warning you. Give it back.”
“You’re making a mistake,” the kid wailed. “Help!”
I came up behind them, the two men pushing a ratty-looking teenager up against a brick wall. The street wasn’t deserted, but people were crossing to the other side to avoid the conflict.
The boy, a stick-skinny Latino with a row of piercings in his ear and a kind of dirty, neglected aura, had the wild-eyed look of a cornered animal. I’d lived in the city long enough to know a street kid when I saw one. His thick-necked assailants were grown-up frat boys, twin-like with close-shorn hair, red faces, well dressed in auras of entitlement.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” said one of the men, a blond, as he moved in closer.
“Then don’t,” I said.
The two men both swung to look at me. I hated having three sets of eyes on me, took a step back.
“Let him go,” I said. I couldn’t believe the way my voice sounded, deep, calm. My pulse wasn’t even slightly elevated.