Instead of following our usual route to Wildwood again, we jogged across the Harvey Taylor Bridge, in the direction of my home in Camp Hill. I got nervous when a cop car passed us and casually tugged my hoodie a bit tighter, but in truth, I wondered what sort of real manhunt could be generated by a suburban police force. It’s not like there were wanted posters out or anything. We jogged up a hill and came within a half mile of the Perkins where my mom would be working the night shift later. I thought about how she got meals at half price during her shift, and the way I’d often find chicken tenders in the fridge, wrapped in napkins. Was she still bringing food home for me out of habit? I had no doubt my mom was worried sick about me, and I felt the strong urge to see her, tell her I was doing just fine. That this wasn’t entirely truthful didn’t matter.
We weaved through a neighborhood to get to Seibert Park, where there’s a city pool and a playground and even the stadium where the high school plays football. We jogged down the steep hill my dad brought me to when I was in second grade to go sledding, and past the ruins of the old stone cabin where we took a break. He pulled chocolate granola bars from the pocket of his thick winter coat, and this seemed like magic.
Khajee ran us deeper into the isolated forest and we crossed over a creek. Like every kid in Camp Hill, I knew the trail well. It followed the wandering path of trickling water down to the Conodoguinet, nestled between two slopes covered in trees. Something about this place, the way the branches overhead interlaced to form a canopy maybe, helped make the woods feel like an empty cathedral, serene and sacred. I don’t know why, but I’ve always felt the presence of God more when I’m alone than in any crowd. Khajee jogged down the center aisle. Finally she stopped by a park bench somebody had put up in honor of “Cecelia, who loved walks in the woods,” or so the plaque announced.
“We heading down to the water?” I joked. “Gonna hunt crayfish?”
Her face shifted, softened somehow. Wistfully she said, “My mother and me, we went tubing on the Conodoguinet a few times, just floating along under the sun. Once, we even saw a bald eagle.”
“That sounds like a nice time,” I said, weighing each word.
The muscles in Khajee’s face tightened. Something was being balanced carefully. Then she shook her face, and her expression went back to normal. “How’s your hand?” Khajee asked.
Rather than ask about the place she just mentally visited, I looked down at the tennis ball I’d been gripping. Had I squeezed it constantly? For the most part. “Good,” I told her. I smacked that forearm muscle. “I got a decent burn.”
“It’s about to get worse,” she said, and then she bushwhacked into the woods, making her own winding trail in the thick brush. I followed her for about a hundred feet, and we came to a sheer rock wall that stretched straight up, tall as a three-story building. Above, I knew there was a ritzy neighborhood where I used to trick or treat when I was a kid. The rich families there gave out whole candy bars, not just the mini ones.
Without saying anything, Khajee approached the wall, reached up with one arm and found a handhold, then hoisted herself off the forest floor. I watched her scale the stone face, pausing here and there to look at her options, digging her bent sneakers into cracks, searching for purchase with her fingertips. At first I got beneath her and readied my arms to catch a tumbling body. But Khajee didn’t need my help. In fact, when I finally stepped back to just watch her, she looked like some female version of Spider-Man, zigzagging up a skyscraper.
In less than ten minutes she reached the top, turned, and looked down at me from the edge. “Now you,” she said.
“You’re out of your mind,” I yelled up.
“That may be,” she replied. “But you’re still going to come up this wall. Try.”
I flashed back to the rope climb in the high school gym, Coach Gallaher telling me not to use my legs as I struggled to get to the bell at the top. Climbing’s never been my thing. But Khajee’s green eyes burned down on me, and I made my way to the base. From the bottom, the wall seemed ever taller, and I stretched one arm up high for my first grip. With a heave, I began my ascent.
At first the climbing wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d thought it would be. The rock was cool against my face. Sure the skin on my fingers got rubbed raw by the sharp edges, and I scraped my bare knees against the stone till they stung. But my shoulders and arms felt strong, and I found I could shift my weight to whichever hand or foot had the best hold. My body learned pretty quick that this was the only way up, to take the weight off whatever arm or leg you wanted to move — and move it quickly. The tension in my body increased, tightening my muscles until I felt like all of them were connected, like everything from my delts and lats all the way down to my quads had fused into one single tendon.
Sweat slid down my forehead, biting my eyes. But I could only blink away the burn, unable to waste a hand to wipe. Every time I boosted my body up farther, I found it a bit harder to find a good anchor. I started to feel less confident stretching my arm out far and reached just a little ways. My progress slowed and I saw Khajee to the side, sliding down the leaves of a steep bank next to the wall. From beneath me now, she said, “You’re doing great. That’s almost a third of the way. Don’t stop.”
This shocked me. I’d thought I was much nearer to the top. But when I glanced down, the leafy carpet of the forest was only ten feet below me. Clinging by my fingertips and toeholds, I cursed silently and said, “I’ll never make it.”
“I did,” she reminded me.
“You’re smaller than I am.”
“Yes,” she conceded. “And so are all my muscles.” Something jabbed me in my rear and I craned my neck. She’d found a long branch and was poking at me. “Up,” she said. “Break time’s over. Don’t think about getting to the top. Just focus on the next thing you have to do. No matter how mighty the task we face, we do so one choice followed by another.”
“That from some lame self-help book?”
“My uncle.” She thwacked me with the stick, nearly dislodging my left leg. “If he were here, he’d be throwing rocks at you by now. Seriously though, it’s no different than a match. Take it one move at a time.”
I took a few short breaths, then spied a slim ledge a foot up from my left hand, diagonally. That seemed like a good next step. I strained for it, secured my grip, then shimmied my left sneaker along until the sole latched on to some tiny outcropping. Next I scanned for another ridge. Moving like this, I scaled higher, paying for every inch with pain. The burn in my muscles began to glow brighter, sharper. It was good to be focused on a physical task, absorbed by something uncomplicated and pure. Again, I wondered about what Than found in the darkness when he meditated.
All the constant gripping took a toll, especially on my hands. It got harder and harder for me to take hold with any confidence. I relied more and more on my legs to take my body’s weight, and that wasn’t without consequence. My right calf began to twitch and tremble, the way muscles do before they cramp up. I lifted it and tried to shake it out, but the extra strain on my hands was too much. “I’m going to fall,” I said.
“That’s one possibility,” Khajee said calmly.
“What should I do?” I asked, fifteen feet up and losing my grip.
I heard her shuffling back, away from where I might come to earth. “I’d recommend avoiding the large boulders.”
As best I could before my arms surrendered, I gave a heave to propel myself away from the rock wall. But really, gravity just took me, and I dropped. With my right leg out of commission, I collapsed when I hit the ground, crashing to the earth amidst the sticks and leaves and mossy stones.
When Khajee appeared over me, the wall loomed above her and the sky beyond. She said, “You fall pretty good.”
I rolled off a grapefruit-sized rock lodged at the base of my spine and sat up. “I’ve had practice.”
Khajee said, “You need more,” then took one of my hands in both of hers and tugged me to my feet. She high-s
tepped back through the vegetation, over a decaying tree on its side, and led us back to the trail. At Cecelia’s bench, we took a seat. Above us, birds fluttered from branch to branch. And the thin stream rippled along, burbling over rocks, swirling in small eddies.
“Water always makes me feel peaceful,” I said.
Khajee stood unexpectedly. “Not everybody feels that way.”
I couldn’t tell what land mine I’d just stepped on again, and Khajee was clearly tense to have snapped like she did, so I deliberately moved us to safer territory. “We should work on my kicking.”
“You don’t need to kick. That long-range stuff, it takes years to get right. We’ve got two more days till your match. You’re better off staying up close and personal.”
This made sense, but I still wanted to learn something new. “I know, I know. Ground and pound. C’mon though. When do we get to the scene where you reveal some secret ancient kick-ass move that makes me invincible?”
She turned her head with a face that had gone deadly serious. She returned to the bench, sat next to me, and placed a hand solemnly on my leg. “Climbing the wall will show me you are worthy. Only then can I reveal to you the secret Tiger Claw Strike.” Here she crooked all five fingers and scratched at the air. “The truth is that it has been passed down from King Sri Saan Petch, through the bloodline for thirteen generations, but my uncle has no male heirs. He and I dreamed the same dream. You are the chosen one.”
I stared at her, and she didn’t blink for half a minute. Then a wide smile bloomed across her face and she said, “You watch too many Hollywood movies.” Her laughter sounded sweet in the forest.
“Well,” I told her, “it didn’t hurt to ask.”
“Hit them harder than they hit you. That’s the secret.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Good,” she said. “And next time you’re watching one of those stupid movies, ask yourself why the chosen one is always some lily-white kid.”
This caught me off guard, and Khajee pressed her opening. “Seriously, you ever wonder how come it’s not someone like me who gets to save the world?”
I thought for a minute before offering, “Could be Hollywood likes formulas and what’s familiar? They’re afraid to take chances?”
“I know,” she said. “I get it. That’s just the way the world is. Over and over. Doesn’t make it right. Last spring at school —” Khajee caught herself, drew her lower lip in between her teeth.
It was a weird silence, one that made me feel awkward. I shrugged and said, “I guess I don’t think it’s right either. It’s not something I’ve thought about a lot.”
“No,” she said, looking at the ground. “Why would someone like you have to?”
I inhaled and folded my hands. “So what, you think I need to apologize for being the lily-white kid?”
She faced me and grew sober. Too quick for me to react, she drove her right palm up into my nose, snapping my head back. As I brought it down again, she shot to her feet and slapped my cheek with a darting left. “No,” she said. “I think you need to apologize for being slow and not being able to kick worth a damn.”
We laughed together, pretty hard. I sneezed from her blow and rubbed at my stinging face. In a quiet voice she said, “I don’t expect you to fully understand, but it’s nice Mac, nice that you’re at least listening. It’s more than most guys like you. Maybe there’s hope for you yet.”
What Khajee was saying made sense, but I could tell from her tone that she didn’t have specific suggestions on how that hope may translate into action. In the silence, I found myself wanting to ask her what happened at school. But Khajee reminded me of a wrestler protecting a lead in the third period — she was content to keep her distance, not interested in offering any easy openings. Just then, two joggers appeared at the head of the trail. They padded toward us then passed between Khajee and me, heading for the Conodoguinet down below. I sensed something building up in Khajee, and I thought it was about what we’d been talking about, but instead, she went in a different direction. “Mac, about last night —”
“I’m not proud of that,” I said. I wanted to forget about Leonard.
“I didn’t say you were.”
“But?”
“But it worries me. All day long at school today, I kept thinking about it, the way that you —”
“I was there,” I said, interrupting her again. “You don’t need to describe it to me.”
Khajee dragged a heel along the trail. “It’s just …” She hesitated, then started again. “To fight well, you need passion. And sure, a bit of anger can fuel a fighter. But hate, rage, whatever animal instincts settled over you in the boxcar, those things can blind you. When you’re not seeing clearly —”
I stood up and took two steps toward the creek. “That rage helped me win over a hundred wrestling matches in four years.”
“Fine then. Think of it as a fighter you’re facing. You control him or he controls you, right? I’m only wondering where this rage comes from, and worried about where it might lead you.”
With this, she moved to my side, and when she put a gentle hand on my forearm, I jerked away. Then I turned back to her and said, “What do you want to hear? That my old man lost his cool and things got out of hand? That finally the cops had to lock him up? It’s not a complicated story.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “I’m sorry about your dad. Really. How long since you’ve seen him?”
Was she apologizing that he was in prison or for what he’d done?
“Eight years,” I told her. “Eight birthdays. Eight Christmases. Not like I’m counting.”
She was quiet, then asked me, “So have you ever like, visited him there?”
I shot her sidewise eyes that had the same effect as a slap. But before I could apologize, voices turned our heads up the trail. Three kids, grade school boys, were coming our way. Two had walking sticks and the third was looking at his phone. They passed without comment and disappeared below.
Khajee let them get out of hearing range. “I’m not asking you to tell me your life story. It’s just … look, this sounds damn cheesy, but the guidance counselor at my school has this sign up in her office. It says ‘Life is like monkey bars. You can’t go on unless you let go.’ ”
The muscles in my forearms were still knotted up from the wall. I took turns rubbing at each and said, “I can’t believe you had me try to climb that freakin’ wall.”
She stepped in and massaged the tightened flesh, easing it till it relaxed like an unclenching fist. “Good news,” she told me. “It’ll be here tomorrow, and we can try again. That’s the thing about walls like that.”
“What?”
“They always give you another try.” With that, she started jogging back up the path at an easy pace, knowing I would follow. We wound back through the park and I realized I was unnerved by our conversation. I didn’t like that I’d let her see me so upset about my father. Usually when I run my mind sort of goes blank, but thanks to Khajee, I couldn’t unhook from just how screwed up my life was. How I’d failed my mother, botched up all through school, what I did to that ref at states, this massive mess with Sunday. It all felt like a wall a mile high, one I could never get to the top of. My life was the one broken thing I couldn’t seem to fix.
We cut through the hospital complex, took a shortcut back toward the bridge, and over the rise I saw the tip of the huge American flag they fly outside Perkins. I thought of my mom, just what her life must’ve been like the last few days. And even though I had no idea how I’d climb the whole wall, I had a pretty good idea of the next step. “Hey,” I shouted ahead of me. “I might need a favor tonight.”
When we got home, Than was in the living room but asleep in his chair. Judge Judy was on the TV. Khajee slipped into the shower, and while it made me feel like a stalker, I found myself lingering, listening. Sure enough, not long after the water started blasting, there was a soft humming. The humming rose into a song, somet
hing soulful and sweet I’d never heard before. There was pain in Khajee’s voice, pain and sadness. But above that, this ferocious determination.
The shower shut off and, nervous that I’d be caught, I took Rosie for a walk. When I got back I cleaned up while Khajee microwaved a frozen bag of beef and broccoli. The food seemed to revive Than some. I wanted to find a way to compliment her singing without sounding creepy, but Than and Khajee kept chatting in Thai. Now and then, they would look at me together. Than would nod and purse his lips, looking concerned.
As we were finishing, he turned to me and said, “So Eddie, my niece thinks you could use some anger management classes. What’s the deal with that?”
I didn’t like holding back on the old man, but I wasn’t sure how to explain the long story of my mom’s lazy eye and how my childhood was more nightmare than fairy tale. “Maybe I just got a rotten heart.”
He drew a fork from his mouth, shook his head. “You have a heart like Rosie.” At her name, the dog unfurled from her spot on the floor and rested her face on the old man’s lap. Than went on. “Fierce, but also loyal and soft.”
I banged my water glass. “Don’t call me soft.”
“Easy,” Khajee said, setting a hand on mine. “He meant it as a compliment. Like gentle.”
Than was unrattled by my outburst. He patted Rosie’s head and said, “Anger’s like fire. A little fire can cook your food or warm you up. But a fire out of control can burn down a house, a neighborhood, you know? A fire can scorch a mountainside.”
I stood up and grabbed my bowl. “No offense, Father Than, but I already got this sermon back in the woods. Can somebody just give me my penance already?”
I stomped to the sink, and behind me Khajee said, “If somebody’s preaching at you, maybe there’s something you need to hear, Mac. And just for the record, we’re Buddhists.”
I had no response to that.
After dinner, Khajee flipped through a book she got from the school library — 50 Great Careers in Medicine. Then she dug into more SAT prep (did I know the difference between corollary and ancillary?). Meanwhile, me and Than watched some fights. The color in his face started to look better, definitely improved over the day before, and he really got into a couple, shouting at the TV in Thai. I tried to find an opening to apologize for losing my cool at dinner, not that Than seemed bothered in the least.
Brawler Page 9
