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LOUD kiai shouts punctuated the noise of the Saturday crowd and reverberated off the walls of the large high school gymnasium. Asbjorn let the noise wash over him as he surveyed the scene of yet another regional karate tournament. There were too many age groups and too many categories to fit into the day – and as a fourth-degree black belt, he was obliged to volunteer as a judge and help with cleanup after closing.
Early to rise and late to bed had become a motto he didn’t mind. It was certainly no worse than the Navy. At least now he had some control over his schedule and activities, and the responsibility for the lives and the wellbeing of those around him no longer rested on his shoulders.
A kata competition with weapons was going on to his left. Weapons whistled through the air, pressed uniforms rustled, and the competitors punctuated their killing blows with a strong kiai. The most common sequence of techniques the beginners performed showed only minor stylistic differences from one school to the next, which made their performances easy to compare. He wondered whether his students’ more advanced and less familiar “Harachi no bo” would be to their advantage or to their detriment. Not many ventured deep into old weapon forms. Thorpe-sensei – Tiger – used to teach both.
Asbjorn felt a keen sense of loss at not being able to teach his old sensei “Sakugawa no bo”, an ancient, obscure form he learned in Okinawa. Tiger had likely never seen it before.
Tiger would have appreciated it, savored it. He would have explored the destructive potential of its every nuance with efficient yet effortless grace. He would have grasped the bo staff’s probable original use – as a way to make use of nantubo, an Okinawan fishing spear – and he and Asbjorn would have worked the moves until it all clicked...
Fuck. He’s dead. Tiger’s gone.
“Everybody line up!” The segment was over and the competitors were called to bow to the judges en masse. Asbjorn took a drink from his water bottle and honed in on the announcements.
“...and you are welcome to stay for an Aikido demonstration by the MIT Aikido Club.”
A volunteer brought lunch. Asbjorn asked his students to help set it up, except old memories made him forget where he was.
He barked commands as though onboard ship again.
He startled when he saw their alarmed expressions.
He softened his tone and started handing them drinks out of the cooler. It occurred to him that he was less maternal than Nell and less mischievous than Dud. Conscious of his body language, he forced himself to relax. He smiled and silently hoped he wouldn’t drive most of them away.
They sat and ate, keeping an eye on the sparring ring. A slight man stood, solid and immovable, in the center of the padded ring floor as though he anchored the very fabric of space around him. His waffle-weave cotton gi was the heavy kind, and its natural yellow color had been bleached into pristine white through many years of use. When he moved, his black hakama flowed around his ankles in graceful sweeps.
“He don’t look like much,” Dud snickered into Asbjorn’s ear.
“Just wait,” he replied, yielding to a grin.
Burrows-sensei didn’t look particularly large or powerful. He didn’t need to be. His opponents attacked with a fury of grabs, punches, and kicks. He treated them with equality – they all fell. Yet they did not fall hard. They rolled with the ease of long practice only to stand up and attack again. Two, three, four at a time. It didn’t matter.
“It’s gotta be rehearsed,” Dud rasped just as the impressive aikidoka faced his audience. His previous lecture demonstrated the principles of using the force of the opponent’s attack against him, and he stressed the importance of the mind and body acting as one in an instinctive, natural manner.
Extend ki, relax completely, and keep one point were phrases his audience heard, absorbed, but failed to quite comprehend.
“I will ask for volunteers now.” The calm words of Burrows-sensei carried in a clear and mesmerizing voice. “Everybody please come and attack.”
And they did. Eager black belts from surrounding karate schools lined up to either debunk the graceful visitor or see what they could learn from him. Their students followed and were thrown with a degree of force commensurate with their belt color and their attitude. Most of them didn’t know how to fall right.
“You going, Bjorn?” Dud asked. His voice hummed with excitement.
“Don’t call me that.” Asbjorn’s response was reflexive. His Danish name could be twisted to produce unfortunate nicknames in English, and he had bloodied many a snotty nose over the issue in his youth. He made the rule against nicknames to protect his dignity many years ago, and unfortunately, that meant his friends didn’t get to call him “Bjorn,” either. He noticed the hurt expression on Dud’s face and softened. “Sorry. Didn’t mean it that way. You go. I’ve seen it before.”
Before Dud got his turn with the visiting instructor, Burrows-sensei stopped the action and introduced a slightly taller and much younger man. “This is Sean Gallaway, who leads the MIT Aikido Club. If you’re interested in trying what you see us do up here, make sure to look up their schedule on the website.”
Asbjorn watched Sean attack and be thrown a few times before Sean turned to the rest of the waiting karate men and women and bowed to them. It was Sean’s turn to do some throwing.
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LATER THAT NIGHT, THE numerous Aikido tribes invaded a large restaurant. To Sean it felt like being back home again.
Burrows-sensei and his sister, Casey. Sean’s friend Gino and numerous visitors from other schools. Sean felt warmth bloom in his chest when he sat down between his sensei and Casey.
If he did well enough, he’d attract more students.
If he attracted enough students, his dojo would grow.
If his dojo grew, Burrows-sensei would be pleased.
If Burrows-sensei was pleased, he might let Sean date his sister.
He glanced at Casey. Their eyes met, and she smiled and looked away. He didn’t know if that was good or bad. He noticed her boyish, wispy hair tickle the pale skin of her neck, and he wondered what it would be like to lean in and kiss the place where her graceful neck met the set of her shoulders. Her hair was as black as her brother’s and almost as beautiful as it curled around the delicate shell of her auricle. He loved the rare moments when her mouth turned up just a little bit, just like her brother’s. She would meet his eyes with a thoughtful, sweet gaze, and he’d almost lose himself in the warmth of their unconditional friendship.
He thought back to when they worked together this afternoon. He had grabbed the lapel of her gi in an attack. She put her small, delicate fingers over his much larger hand. The sight made him feel strangely protective.
Then she shifted her weight, twisted her hips, and threw him. Sean was airborne, soaring for just a brief, adrenaline-infused second while her hands guided his body with firm confidence. He landed on his belly, breaking his fall with a free hand. He felt her apply a joint lock. He tapped on the mat when the stretch turned to pain. She gently lowered his curled arm to the small of his back. Separate and standing once again, it was her turn to attack him, and he threw her with the same rough tenderness.
He loved falling for Casey almost as much as he loved falling for her older brother.
Burrows-sensei’s voice disrupted Sean’s daydreaming. “Your students are looking good, Sean.” His baritone was mellifluous and hypnotic and, once again, Sean felt caught under his spell. Sean focused on him as though the rest of the whole world fell away from them.
“Tomorrow is our last day. We will do the testing and the promotions then.”
“Thank you, Sensei. It is an honor to have you to stay this long,” Sean said.
He saw his teacher pause. “It is no duress to visit a student who truly believes in the universal truth of what we teach. There is no situation in life where Aikido would fail to be of use.”
Sean lowered his eyes as he pondered these words, searching for every ounce of meaning in that message. He felt a surge of warmth toward his teacher, a kind of warmth he never felt for the man’s sister. He suppressed it with practiced ease.
Just hero-worship.
It would pass – it always did.
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DUD COOKED A MEAN LASAGNA and Asbjorn was happy to be invited to Nell’s place for dinner. Her place smelled of cheese and spices as they sat in the warm dining area of her apartment and talked shop. The current discussion revolved around his most recent pet peeve, brought on by the recent aikido demo.
Asbjorn’s students didn’t know how to fall. It bothered him. Of all the skills his various martial arts had taught him, knowing how to fall was surely the most useful one. Flipping over the handlebars of his bike, falling on skates, slipping on black ice, stumbling on ship deck, being flipped in basic training, being tripped in a dark alley.... Asbjorn knew how to fall.
He tucked into a roll going forward, or slid into a backward ukemi. He never landed on his hands, never risked breaking his wrists. When push came to a shove and the going got hard, he bit the bullet and did a breakfall.
Breakfalls covered all sorts of “fall back and punt” situations. Being caught unaware. Falling too fast or too hard.
They hurt.
They left hip bruises and could cause a whiplash, but they had kept him alive and in one piece. When a situation called for a breakfall, survival was what mattered.
His students didn’t know how to fall, but he would remedy that, starting with soft ukemi rolls from the knees, progressing to flying over an obstacle only to roll and get up on the other side and then to a breakfall on a hard concrete surface. It was Asbjorn’s responsibility to teach his students well, to keep them safe. To do that, he needed the orange mats so jealously guarded by the wrestlers and by the Aikido club. Besides, it wouldn’t hurt to freshen up his falling skills and see how others taught them.
He said so.
“James actually wanted to do that,” Nell said. She smiled as she bounced little Stella on her hip. “He wanted to work with the Aikido club, to cooperate. After he... well, after he died, Dud managed to get into a spat with their club president. Sean Gallaway’s his name.” She wiped a bit of white spit-up from Stella’s little mouth. “If you can get on Gallaway’s good side, you may be able to mend fences a bit and get to use their mats at the same time.”
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TWO DAYS LATER, ASBJORN climbed the stairs to the antiquated, third floor gymnasium. The smell of sweat and cotton starch in new uniforms made him smile as old memories of long gone classed flashed through his mind.
He signed in, took off his shoes, and bowed before he stepped onto the coveted wrestling mat. He wore his old gray sweats and a blue T-shirt. Gone was his gleaming-white karate gi. Gone was his black belt, so worn from constant use that white threads softened its outline and turned it ragged and nearly gray.
He had to suppress the air of confidence and command he had projected both as a Recruit Division Commander in the Navy, and which he now had as a sensei one building over on karate nights. Asbjorn did his best to look studious and geeky and not very apt.
He introduced himself to a buxom young woman with long braided hair, who had him fill out a short introductory form. Under “previous martial arts experience,” he wrote “Navy.”
Asbjorn sat seiza at the end of the row with the rest of the beginners, waiting for the instructor to enter. The third-floor gymnasium was so old, the building didn’t even have a separate ladies’ room, but it had mats.
Sean Gallaway appeared, toed his flip-flops off at the edge of the mat, and bowed as he stepped on. He was the only one wearing a hakama over his thick cotton gi. Asbjorn was taken aback by his fierce, light brown eyes and by the focus with which he surveyed the waiting students.
Sean sat seiza, spun on his knees, and bowed to a scroll with Japanese kanji on the wall. The class bowed with him. He then turned around and bowed to them. “Good evening.”
“Good evening, Sensei,” Asbjorn replied, copying the others.
The warm-up and stretches were pleasant, the ukemi practice less so. Asbjorn already knew how to fall, and it truly rankled that he couldn’t show off at least a little bit. Yet he was undercover –
an agent in enemy territory – and his mission was to infiltrate and either corrupt or subdue his adversaries.
In other words, he was there to make friends.
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“SENSEI.” ASBJORN’S partner seemed confused. He’d been training for a full year and was starting to “get it,” yet somehow he had trouble throwing the newest student.
Sean approached. He watched Pete struggle in an effort to loosen the new guy’s grip on his wrist so he could take his balance and gently deposit him on the mat.
“What’s your name?” Sean struggled to remember. “Asbjorn?” He surveyed his new student’s posture, noting the pale buzz cut and a pair of attentive blue eyes. He stopped for just a moment and lost his train of thought. Those eyes were so deep, so incredibly –
Sean kicked his brain back into gear. “Sorry... so, the idea isn’t to see how hard you can hold your nage. Pete here is your nage, he’s the one who throws. You are the uke now, the one who falls. Your job is to help the nage improve, and when it’s your turn to throw, he’ll help you improve too. So I want you to go with it for starters, okay? Here. Let me show you.”
Sean stood with his right foot forward and offered his right hand. Asbjorn grasped the proffered wrist. Sean twisted his hand, pinky up, and next thing Asbjorn knew, Sean was holding him by his neck from behind.
“So here, if you control the head, you control the body. Like this – can you feel how I’m taking you off your center and you’re starting to move forward?”
“Yeah.”
“And once you move him forward” – Sean addressed Pete – “you reverse direction to up, then back... and he will fall.”
And Asbjorn fell.
To Sean’s surprise, he was catching on pretty fast.
Sean observed the newest guy from afar even as he made his way from one practicing pair to another. There was something about him. A feeling of balance, of poise. Maybe it was having been in the military. Maybe the guy was a natural. Sean felt an odd stirring of hope that this particular newbie would actually stick around and not quit like the four out of five people who stepped on the mat to give aikido a try. It wasn’t for everybody, but this guy exuded fun. Sean was surprised by the relaxed poise of his movements. Sean wanted to throw him, and he wanted to be thrown by him. He wanted to see him stay.
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AS ASBJORN HELPED THE others put the mats away, he realized he had had a surprisingly good time. He saw no good reason to reveal his identity as the new karate club teacher. Not yet. Staying incognito for a little while longer appealed to him, and Sean Gallaway caught his attention as someone... interesting. There was a sense of centered power within him, a sense of playful relaxation which Asbjorn had encountered only a few times in his fifteen years of martial arts training. He found he wanted to like the guy. His heart flared with hope that Sean Gallaway was not one of those “all flash, no substance” one-trick ponies.
He knew he should have introduced himself like a civilized human being and negotiated the use of the mats for his class, but the memory of his body being guided unwillingly in a circle and then falling on his back haunted him.
He liked it.
He shivered at the memory of Sean’s light touch, his warm, long fingers on Asbjorn’s neck. Sean threw him onto his back with merely a twist of a hip and a sweep of a relaxed arm. Asbjorn knew, deep down, that this shorter and smaller man had the ability to wipe the mat with him almost as readily as Tiger had done all those years ago.
His desire to remain incognito was further fueled by the knowledge that Thorpe-sensei had wanted to cooperate with this Sean Gallaway, see what he could learn from him. It would take just a few weeks before Asbjorn would get a handle on the timing behind these simple throws. Just a few weeks during which he would be just another guy to this Sean Gallaway of the wild, sunshine hair and molten brown eyes. He didn’t know why, but when he thought of being thrown by Sean, of sparring with him, his breath quickened and he felt a feral grin form on his face.
Suddenly it wasn’t just about the mats anymore.