LITMIR.BIZ

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family.”

      * * *

      I tell the purple-haired girl with three rings in her lower lip, I’d like a twelve-ounce French Roast with cream and a chunk of their crumb cake. I’ve always found crumb cake to help the decision-making process. I maneuver my pickup out of the narrow drive-up lane and into the street and head toward Davis Street Baptist Church. I called Chris Graham, “Padre,” after talking with Mark and told him I was coming by. He has an office there where he does his minister business.

      After my school burnt to the ground, Padre and several of my black belts helped me fix the basement into a passable martial arts school. Padre finagled some old wrestling mats out of one of his parishioners, a high school principal, I found four tattered heavy bags in my garage attic, and a friend who operates a hung gar school in Gresham, loaned us a dozen hand pads, three rubber guns, five rubber knives, and a medicine ball.

      Three of my black belts from what I call my “Bloody Dozen” taught the six weeks I was involved in court proceeding after the shooting, as well as during my stay in Vietnam. The drilling and grilling by Internal Affairs and the Grand Juries were so intense I barely had enough energy to stretch a little before I went to bed. I had hoped to train with Mai and my father in Saigon, but except for some demonstrations by my father and his teacher, the only “training” I had were the times I had to literally fight for my life.

      “How was Vietnam?” Padre asks, after we shake hands and do the man-hug thing.

      “Hot, so very, very hot. Incredible city, though, wonderful people and fantastic food.” I’m not about to tell him or anyone else besides Doc Kari and Mark about what went down there. I follow him down the aisle between the rows of pews. “How are things here, the church and the school?”

      “Up here, it’s going well. Some wonderful families have moved into the area and we’re in the black for the second year in a row. Downstairs, the school is going good too. We lost some kids after your … you know, the incident. But ninety percent of the students you still have. One of your new students is a soldier who just got back from Afghanistan. He’s got a black belt in kenpo. Nice enough guy, an American Indian, I believe. Quite intense. If I had to guess, I think he might be having problems from his time in the war.”

      “Thanks for the heads up,” I say, following him down the narrow, wooden stairs to the basement. It’s a large room, twelve hundred square feet. The church removed all their accumulated junk so we have the entire room at our disposal. My black belts have made a third of the room the grappling area. They have hung my old heavy bags after duct taping the heck out of them, and brought in a few chairs for spectators and parents. Someone, probably Alan, who we call “the scrounger,” got a couple of large mirrors, six by ten feet, at least.

      “Must have been fun bringing those down the stairs,” I say.

      Padre smiles. “We had the white belts do it just in case the mirrors broke and the jagged shards pierced soft tissue.”

      I laugh, though I know everyone wrestled them down. “You’ve all done a wonderful job. How about the church elders? They still okay with us being here?” Padre was concerned, especially about one elder in particular, who thought it might be unchristian to teach martial arts in a church.

      “We’re good. I convinced Ben Waters we were actually teaching people alternatives to fighting as well as self-defense. I told him we teach the proper use of self-defense has to do with wisdom, understanding, and tact.”

      “Very good, Padre. You’re going to make a wise black belt.”

      “Thank you, Sensei. I have wonderful teachers. Ben liked it too, so all is okay.” He smiles. “The elders also like the five hundred dollars a month you’re paying us.”

      “I still say you’re charging me way too little. I was paying three times more a month on my school lease.”

      He shrugs. “It’s five hundred dollars a month we weren’t getting before. Plus it helps you while your insurance company drags their feet paying you, and it’s sparked an interest in some of the young people in the youth group. Three have joined and three from the community joined with the agreement they …” he grins sheepishly. “Okay, I leaned on them a little. They joined the school with the agreement they would come to church too.”

      I slap his shoulder. “You’re good, Padre, yes you are.”

      We turn at the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs. A short wall conceals the top of the stairs so anyone descending is progressively revealed. I see feet wearing sandals.

      “Oh, it’s N uh r t uh n ah,” Padre whispers. “Good, you can meet him.”

      N uh who?

      Next I see legs in blue jeans and a brown hand gripping the straps of a workout bag. Then a black polo shirt covering a hard torso, lean but muscular arms, a strong neck, and a face straight out of a western movie, with cinnamon-colored skin, straight black hair to his shoulders, prominent cheekbones and nose, and a broad face in which sit penetrating dark brown eyes. He’s at once extraordinarily handsome and dangerous looking. I’m not sure why I perceive him as dangerous, but I can definitely feel it, like heat off a radiator.

      His eyes do a quick body scan of me and settle on my eyes. There is a degree of haughtiness in his bearing, but not like conceit or bravado. It’s more stoic, regal. Yes, that’s it, regal.

      He nods. “Sensei Reeves?”

      “Yes,” I say, extending my hand. “Call me Sam. Padre was just telling me about you. But you will have to help me with your name.” His hands are soft, his grip light.

      “Nate.”

      “Nate?” I look at Padre. “I thought you said something else.”

      “Nate is a nickname,” the man says. “My full name is N-uh-r-t-uh-n-ah. It means ‘makes others dance.’ Apache.”

      “Beautiful name,” I say, meaning it. “I want to master it.”

      He nods, studying me. “Nate is fine.”

      “I’m going to leave you two,” Padre says. “I have an appointment coming in shortly and a class down here in forty-five minutes. Will you lead it, Sam?”

      “I wasn’t planning on it but, yes, I will. It will be good to see everyone and to scrape some of the barnacles off my hull.”

      “Great,” Padre says. “I look forward to it.” We shake hands and he nods at Nate before heading up the stairs.

      I toe off my shoes. Nate does the same. “Let’s sit for a moment.” I indicate a couple of folding chairs along the wall. “Padre says you’ve been training for a while. A black belt.”

      “Kenpo.”

      “Excellent. I’ve always liked the art. And you’re a veteran of Afghanistan?”

      He sits ramrod straight, hands on his knees. “I am. Fourteen months in Iraq too.”

      Minimum responses and he has yet to break eye contact with me. A shy man wouldn’t make such intense eye contact. Perhaps he is just a man of a few words.

      “How long have you been back?”

      “Four months.”

      Not only has he not looked away, I don’t think he has blinked. Okay, this is weird.

      “I’m glad you made it home safely. How long were you deployed?”

      “Nine months in Afghan,” he says, blinking rapidly.

      Curious. His manner didn’t change, and his face remained neutral, but the eyes reacted. To what? My question or his answer? Best to change the conversation.

      “Where did you study your kenpo?”

      “Oklahoma City. I trained with Albert Madison for nine years. I earned my black belt before I went into the Army three years ago.” No blinking. Clearly, he’s more

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