Karate Lesson

I hear a crow, a distant sound, rasping caw-caw-caw through the windowpanes, which are cranked open on their rusted arms on all sides of the room. It’s July, and an occasional gust of air, carrying the smells of the country – honeysuckle, hay, daisies, and the sudden waft of manure – lifts the hair from our brows and rattles the colored papers on their corkboard push-pins. It’s evening, but the sun is still hours away from kissing the horizon, and the light slants through the stained glass windows fifteen feet above the floor, mounted there a hundred years ago by community-minded Protestant farmers. The rays pass through, red, blue, and green, turning the creaking hardwood floor where rows of pews once sat into a rippling Crayola seashore. My sensei steps back into a square of violet, and the outstretched hands of saints finger the sleeves of his gi.

“Again,” he says. “Sanchin stance.” We step into the millennia-old boxing stance, the left knee angled in slightly to protect the defenseless manhood, our bare feet sucking and sticking to the floor as we settle. Sanchin – Three Battle Stance.

“Chudan zuki. Middle punch. Ichi!”

A half-dozen hands snap out, hanging in space.

“Ni.” The right hand – always the first strike – flies back to our ribs. The left hand darts out, corkscrewing in the air, slamming into the solar plexus of an imaginary enemy.

“San.” Cotton robes pop with the strike.

“Shi.”

“Go.”

“Roku.”

“Shichi. I want to hear you at ten!”

“Hachi!”

“Ku. Ju!”

“Yahhh!” we bellow, the sudden shout ringing in the rafters with athletic rapture. And then we breathe, the stony balls of our fists waiting for a command.

Silence. An itching crawl of sweat slides from my hair, rolling into my eyebrows, tracing a path along my temple. At the front of the class, the sensei smiles.

“Good. Rei,” Our hands slap our thighs, and we bow, meeting his eyes like we were taught. You never drop your eyes, because anyone can be your enemy. Trust no one. It is foolish to leave yourself unprotected.

“Outside,” he says. “We run.” He jogs for the exit.

In bare feet, we run from the church behind the sensei. My feet are tough, and slap the dirt with machine precision. We pass through the graveyard, and I read the names: Wallace, O’Donnell, Bannon, McCracken. A hundred granite monuments testifying to lives lived, lost, and now forgotten. And then we are through the gates, running through a cornrow, our toes sinking into the rich earth, lightning bolts of black loam soaking into the rivulets of sweat on our legs, and kicking up behind our heels.

“Sprint! Until the fence! Hajime!”

And we charge, knees lifting to our chests for maximum power, heels pistoning into the dirt, arms scissoring past the sharp, reaching leaves of adolescent corn, our gis billowing in the wind, and green, blue, and orange karate belts flapping and popping behind us like the tails of kites.

At the end of the field, I see the lone crow I heard earlier in the church, head cocked and watching us stampeding towards its tree; and having seen enough, it spreads its ragged wings into the air, flumping for altitude. I try to catch up to it before it can get away from me, even though I know I’ll fail. But I don’t let that stop me because I am very young, and I can run as hard as I want to.