Chapter 5 / Page 2

His opponent came with a double round kick, but Jim was no longer where he had been. The kicking leg dropped. Jim stepped in and back punched—not full power, but enough to remind his student not to make the same mistake again.

“Combinations—kick punch or punch kick,” he explained.

The brown belt nodded and turned towards him again. He tried a back fist and punch combination, but Jim slid sideways. He delivered a round kick to his middle and dropped a hammer fist inside the shoulders next to his ear. Again, the brown belt turned.

“Remember to fake next time.”

He came with a kicking blitz that looked more like a one bladed helicopter than a trained fighter. This time Jim blocked the kicks with his front hand. The brown belt made a common mistake of most young fighters. He was so intent on kicking high and fast that he forgot to cover his stomach. His rear hand was waving behind his hip in an effort to keep balance. Unfortunately, this opens up an enormous target called the body. Jim swung under the leg and struck with a double punch.

“Control your hands.”

The fighters danced for another twenty minutes. Jim did little more than counter or jam. Occasionally, when the opportunity was too great to pass up, he landed a sidekick on the brown belt’s hip. Sometimes he rolled left and sometimes right. A few times straight in with a hand blitz or a backhand ridge hand. The odd ax kick or turn sidekick. When finished, they stopped, bowed, and clasped hands thanking each other for a good fight.

A good fight usually meant a soaking wet T-shirt and sweaty hair as the cage masks came off. The front windows steamed up from the heated bodies. Jim popped the Velcro tabs holding his rib guard, and started walking towards the locker room at the end of the school.

The slow, ponderous clap from behind the half wall, where parents gather to watch Johnny and Suzy learn how to kick, caused him to turn. A man in his mid fifties stood with a topcoat slung over his arm. The faded blond mustache and bear-like paws belonged to Louis Edwards. The men on either side of him were the same two Jim had chased off earlier that day. His eyes narrowed and his pulse quickened. These people were not supposed to be here. This part of his life was over, and was never to follow him again!