I SPENT THE next couple hours voice commanding my computer and listening to it talk back to me. I learned all I could online about Keenan Powell and Blank Slate Capital, LLC. Which was surprisingly little for an investment firm that supposedly handled hundreds of millions in investments. Blank Slate Capital had only been around since 2010, so it came after the market crash and derivatives mess of 2008. Founder Chuck Baxter’s bio described him as a self-made millionaire who was a financial advisor before he started day trading in the stock market and eventually starting his own hedge fund.
Keenan Powell’s Blank Slate Capital bio said he got his law degree from the University of Idaho and was an avid outdoorsman who worked on a cattle ranch when he was a teenager. Powell had been with Blank Slate Capital since its inception. The only other information I could find on him was that he went to the College of Southern Idaho for a year before earning a degree in finance from Boise State, and records of his marriage license, divorce, home ownership, and his Idaho, Nevada, California, and New York Bar licenses. No mention of membership in any attorney associations or organizations. That seemed unusual to me. All of the lawyers I knew were in some sort of association. The American Bar Association being the most prominent.
The best thing that came from my search was that I could make out the dark outline of my laptop and the blur of light that made up its screen. I squinted my eyes down into slits. The outline of the computer sharpened, but I could still only see fuzzy light in the middle. No images. No words. No individual colors. Just gray light.
I still had a long way to go. Hopefully. But I stopped betting on hope a long time ago.
I walked Midnight on our horseshoe trek around the block ten times, then took him into the backyard and threw the tennis ball with him. Something my neighbor’s daughter, Micalah, did with Midnight four times a week after I’d pay her to clean up his poop. Now I threw the ball and could see a blur of black streak across the gray. Huffing wolf breaths as he sprinted back and forth. He dropped the saliva-soaked ball into my outstretched hand again and again. This was one day the glop on my hand didn’t bother me at all.
I hit my garage gym next. Arms, legs, core. Then the heavy punching bag hanging from the rafters that I still had from my teenage Golden Gloves boxing days. Its outline bent out away from me at forty-five degrees by my rapid left-right combinations. I could have made solid contact with my eyes closed or completely blind. One final digging left hook and right cross and I bent over and dropped my hands to my knees. Sweat rolled off me and my breath huffed in and out. The physical expenditure felt good. Necessary.
I hit the bag most days for a workout and to keep my reflexes fresh. Today was different. More power and ferocity, unmatched since my boxing days. I was working something else out. Something internal. Visceral. But unknown.
I trained like I was going into battle, but I didn’t have an enemy. Not one that I could see. But I sensed one out there. The Invisible Man wearing the Dove deodorant? Was he even real or just a figment of my vision-starved imagination? A combination of three or four innocent men who crossed my path and my own fear? Maybe. But something deep inside me that I couldn’t fully comprehend or describe told me to get ready.
For war.