Kage: The Shadow

by John Donohue

  Time, Burke. Move fast.

  My escort’s knees had buckled and I took him down to the floor. I put him in a basic armlock and set my knee on his neck while I searched him for a weapon. I pointed with my chin to the other man.

  “Dead?”

  Yamashita feigned shock. “Dead? No. But he will be unconscious for a while.”

  “What happens when he comes to?”

  “He will have other issues to deal with. I broke both his collar bones. It will make using something like this,” he dangled the pistol in front of him, “difficult.”

  The man beneath me was stirring: I could feel the muscle tension build in his arm and neck. I found what looked like a .45 automatic stuffed in his waistband. I put the muzzle against the base of his skull and released the arm lock. His eyes rolled back as he tried to get a glimpse of me.

  “Get up,” I told him.

  Time. Don’t give them time to think. It cuts both ways.

  He was wobbly, but he managed to get to his feet by sliding up along the wall.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  He shrugged sullenly. I pulled the slide back on the pistol, the movement of metal loud in the little hallway. I ground the pistol up under his jaw and jerked my head in the direction of his friend.

  “You wanna end up like that? My friend here can make it so you never walk again.” He lived in a world where the threat of violence was not an idle one. He knew danger when he saw it. He could hear the fury in my voice.

  “The repair shop,” he mumbled grudgingly. His accent was thick, but it was clear enough.

  “Where?”

  His eyes moved to the fire door. “Out the door. Down the alley.”

  “They’re expecting me?”

  His eyes flickered from side to side as if searching for options, calculating his chances.

  I pushed the pistol so he gagged slightly. “Don’t,” I ordered. His eyes came back to me and he nodded in surrender.

  “I am to take you.”

  “Let’s go, then.”

  The alley featured a few battered dumpsters, shattered remnants of wooden loading pallets, and broken glass. It smelled of old cooking oil and the acrid grit of city air. At the far end, I could see the rolled steel doors of the bays of the auto repair shop. There was an entrance door to the right and a narrow drive leading down the left side of the building to the rear. We halted in the cover of a dumpster and I slid the shells into the shotgun. I racked the pump and put a shell in the chamber. Our escort had gotten some of his color back and that worried me.

  “Here’s the deal,” I told him. “You get us in the door and then leave. Don’t try to warn him. Don’t look back.” I gestured with the shotgun. “I see you again, I’ll kill you. Understand?”

  “Claro,” he answered.

  The three of us scuttled down the alley. Nobody spoke.

  Yamashita made a faint whistling noise to get my attention. “Ura, Burke.” he told me.

  “The back way? You think there’ll be a door?”

  “Burke, it is repair shop. It was not designed as a fortress. There will be a rear entrance.”

  I slipped down the narrow drive. There was a gate, a high chain link fence with plastic strips woven through it to block the vision of what was behind the building. I swung it open just enough to get through. I whipped around the corner, shotgun up.

  The kid leaning against the car was in the process of lighting a cigarette. When he saw me, his mouth opened and the cigarette fell to the ground, but the hand holding the lighter hung in front of his face for a moment. His eyes were wide.

  I kept him covered and tested the back door. It opened.

  I jerked my head toward the street. “Get out.” It took a minute to register, and then he nodded gravely, his hands held up in surrender, and scooted around the corner. He was still holding the lighter.

  I slid into the building. It was a dim storeroom lined with metal shelves filled with the jutting angles of auto parts. There was an old desk covered with papers. The few small windows were covered with pebbled glass and crossed with bars to prevent break-ins. I picked my way carefully across the floor to the door that led to the main area. It was wide open and I could hear voices.

  “Jefe!” Our escort’s voice announced himself.

  “Ven’ aqui.” The voice was thick and phlegmy.

  I scanned the sight before me from the gloom of the storeroom. Two bays with hydraulic lifts, the rails fully up like strange metal mushrooms. Walls lined with workbenches. The smell of old metal and oil. And in the stained cement strip in the center of the room, a woman tied to a chair, a small work spotlight shining on her and casting shadows in the dark shop.

  Even from behind, I could tell it was Sarah from the shape of her head and the slope of her shoulders. She had been stripped to her panties and t-shirt, barefoot and bound and gagged. I couldn’t tell whether she was conscious or not. I couldn’t even be sure that she was alive.

  That was when I almost lost it. But an internal voice cautioned me. Easy Burke. Go fast, but don’t rush.

  And I could not see Martín yet. He was there in the shadows somewhere, perhaps behind a pillar. The hydraulic shafts of the lifts broke up my line of sight. A deadly man. A cautious man. Wait.

  The front door opened and Yamashita came in, holding the plastic bag with the manuscript in it.

  “Who are you?” A voice came from the shadows, somewhere to my right. But I couldn’t pinpoint his location.

  Yamashita raised his arms from his sides as if to show he was harmless. He limped into the room, completing the picture of a broken down, old man.

  “I am the go-between,” my teacher stuttered, like a man afraid. His eyes barely moved, but I knew he was scanning the space, looking for our target. He didn’t react to Sarah’s presence, although I was sure that he had seen her. He shuffled another few steps forward.

  “Enough,” Martín ordered, and came into sight. He held a large, black automatic in his right hand “Where is Burke?” He was at the far right of the room, about halfway along the wall. From where I stood, Sarah Klein was directly in my line of fire. And Martín would be able to see me if I came through the door.

  Yamashita shuffled to his left to come closer to Martín. “He is waiting with your young men,” he explained. It appeared as if he was merely eager to talk, but I knew what he was doing. He was changing the angles. It’s what a good swordsman does. By coming left, Yamashita would force Martín to move out from the wall to free his gun hand to be able to continue to cover him. And if Martín turned, even slightly toward Yamashita, I’d be outside his peripheral vision. The Japanese call it the dead zone.

  Come on. I raised the shotgun and drew a breath.

  Behind me, the rear door clanged open and I knew that I had waited too long and it was all coming apart.

  The kid with the cigarette was back, and he was armed. It was some sort of machine pistol, with a long extended magazine jutting down from the handgrip. He came through the door wide-eyed and started firing before he even saw me. “Martín!” he screamed.

  I whirled toward him as rounds clanged off the metal doorjamb I was leaning against. The shotgun went off with a roar, but I didn’t stop to see if the first round hit him. I pumped another load up and shot him square in the chest. Behind me I heard a pistol shot. I wheeled back to the repair bay, hot and sick with fear for what I would find.

  Yamashita was nowhere in sight. Martín was moving toward Sarah. Bound and gagged in the chair, she was squealing in terror at the sight of his extended gun arm, a questing, ugly thing. But Martín moved like a man carrying a great weight, one who was no longer sure he could remember what he was doing.

  It gave me the time I needed. I moved into the room and he saw me, but it was too late. The shotgun blast caught him high in the chest; he spun around and down, the pistol spinning away into the grimy shadows. I shot him again.

  I ran to Sarah and pulled the gag off. “Oh God,” she sobbed.
>
  Yamashita ghosted up to the body on the floor. He rolled Martín onto one side and pulled at something. It was then that I noticed the throwing knife jutting from his neck.

  My teacher saw my surprised expression. “This one was not easy to distract. I used a more direct method.”

  “Oh God, Burke,” Sarah moaned.

  But I’m not sure He exists in Munenori’s world.

  24 Garden

  The faces on the line of blue-clad swordsman were different, but all the same: stolid, remote. Some were still flushed with recent exertion, the skin sweat-slick. Their eyes were dark spots, markers of hidden thoughts. They were still recovering from the endorphin wash of hard training and the pull of the lesson’s final meditation session, where the respiration and heartbeat are slowed and you are pulled down and away, deep into your core.

  “Sensei ni rei!” I ordered, and we bowed to Yamashita, a dolmen set among a field of polished wood and indigo uniforms. He set his palms forward and inclined his torso toward us, a grudging acknowledgement.

  “Otaga ni rei!” I called. We bowed to each other. “Domo arigato goziemashita. The polite, formal phrase of thanks. But it was mechanical, routine, a ritual murmur that did not connect us. Or perhaps it was that my mind was elsewhere.

  Sarah’s sister Deborah was pale with relief when we brought Sarah back, but her eyes widened with concern when she saw Sarah’s condition, and I told her some of what had happened. She took her from me, steering Sarah gently to a bedroom.

  Yamashita and I had sat quietly in the suburban kitchen. It smelled of coffee and the refrigerator was decorated with a child’s drawings—Sarah’s niece. Small magnets held notes and receipts, coupons, and the other detritus of everyday life. Mail lay unopened on a counter. From a distant room, the murmur of conversation as Deborah conferred with someone on the phone, probably her husband. Other calls followed and arrangements were made. I heard a shower start up.

  After a time, Deborah came into the room. “I’ve called some people,” she began. “The doctor will want to see her—a counselor I’ve got connections with…” she bit her lip and looked past me out the window.

  “The man who did this…” she began.

  I shook my head. “He won’t ever hurt her again.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Deborah,” I answered bleakly. “I’m sure.” She saw the look on my face and awareness filled her eyes.

  “Good!” she said with a touch of vehemence, but then her hands flew to her cheeks in horrified surprise. There’s a dark beast in all of us, and it’s never pleasant when it breaks the surface.

  “Can I see her?” I asked.

  Deborah shook her head. “She’s very fragile, Burke. I can’t imagine what she’s been through.” She paused. “It might be best to wait awhile.”

  I stood up. “Deborah, I’m sorry.” I went to touch her, but she backed away. The look in her eyes told me that she held me responsible for the abduction and the assault, the trauma. But there was more. She knew what I had done and approved of it some way; in that she was complicit and it frightened her. Her face was stiff with anger and concern and confusion. Blaming me wasn’t a completely rational reaction on her part, but I understood it. She lived a tidy life and now it was as if I’d yanked back a curtain and the wild forces that churned just out of sight were brought into shocking view. She had to blame someone. Might as well be me.

  “What can I do to help?’ I asked her.

  Deborah swallowed. “Leave,” she told me. You can leave.”

  “Burke,” Yamashita said. I focused once again on the broad, wooden floor of the dojo, students bowing out, racking weapons. I was still in seiza, the formal seated posture. My sensei loomed above me like an angry god. “You are not focusing.”

  I felt a deep surge of anger. “I am focusing,” I answered. “Just not on what you want me to.”

  I didn’t know what to expect from Yamashita when I answered like that. He doesn’t show anger; the most you notice is a faint narrowing of the eyes, an unnerving stillness. A warrior who leaks emotion is not much of a warrior.

  Surprisingly, my teacher sighed audibly and sank down next to me. He sat sideways, gazing across the front of my body, looking intently at something only he could see. In the West, direct eye contact is often a sign that something important is being said. For the Japanese, it is just the opposite. I waited as the students unobtrusively, but quickly, left us alone, my eyes lowered to the floor.

  “I know that Ms. Klein occupies your mind,” he said quietly. He cocked his head to one side as if examining a complex object from a different angle. “She has suggested some things about you that you find troubling.” He nodded to himself, but whether it was in agreement with Sarah or for some other reason I couldn’t tell.

  “I worry I’ll lose her,” I told him.

  “It is a real fear,” he agreed. He held up a hand, finger pointing in the air. “But is this the thing that bothers you most?”

  I took a deep breath. “I worry…” I began. But I paused.

  “Yes?”

  “I worry some of what she says about me is true.”

  He dropped his hand to his thigh and shifted slightly, the type of centering move a swordsman makes before starting a technique. “So. There is this strange conflict always with you, Burke. You tread the Way and value it. But it is the Way of the Sword. You know this in some sense, but…”

  “Am I a violent man?” I interrupted. My voice trembled slightly with emotion.

  Yamashita grunted. “You are a man. A good man. It should be enough. You Americans—why this fixation on violence as something good or bad? It is a tool. Nothing more.” He paused and rocked slightly on his heels, thinking. “The world is full of violence. It is the way of nature.” He gestured with his hand around the dojo. “Here we see the world for what it is. We take the chaos of the violent act and channel it. We forge ourselves into people who can bend violence for better purposes.”

  I sighed. “How do we know what is better?”

  For the first time, Yamashita’s voice grew cold and hard. “Burke. It is a child’s question. It is why I wished to shield you from the world beyond these walls. At least for a time, until you grew stronger. But the world comes upon us when it will.” His voice was reflective and sad. Then, he seemed to push down an emotion deep and away from himself, sat up and waved his hand in annoyance. “All this speculation—it is pointless now. Was there another way to deal with that man Martín?”

  “Maybe,” I began.

  “Do not be a fool. If you had gone to the police, Ms. Klein would be dead. If they arrested Martín, he would bide his time or simply send someone else. The evil would live on.”

  “Is that how you see it,” I asked, my eyes rising to look at him, “some battle between good and evil, peace and violence?”

  He grimaced. “You are losing your way in this. It is not a thing where you can choose either peace or violence.” He placed his hands on the floor in front of him and pivoted to face me. His spoke slowly, distinctly, concerned to drive home the import of what he was revealing.

  “The sword that gives life, Burke, is also the sword that takes life. They are one and the same. Accept it. Accept yourself.”

  I felt a great weariness then, but simultaneously I had the sudden sensation of a yoke being lifted from around my neck. I bowed in obedience to my teacher, wondering what dark places this Way would take me to. “Hai,” I said.

  A few days later, an envelope with Sarah’s handwriting on it. A letter.

  Dear Connor,

  Maybe it’s me. Maybe it’s you. Or us. I’m not sure anymore. But it’s too much for me right now. I need time and space to heal.

  I’m not blaming you—I have so much to thank you for. But I can’t stop thinking about what I saw and what I did. What we both did.

  It’s your world, Burke. I thought it was something different, but it’s not. I’m not sure I can be part of it. Time will tell.

>   Some friends in the Berkshires need an office manager and marketer. It’s a quiet place—part ashram, part B&B. I’m leaving tonight.

  I’ll need some space Burke, so please give it to me.

  Write though.

  Be careful.

  Sarah

  Days later, we sat by twilight in Yamashita’s garden. Amid the meticulously tended bonsai, sparrows and chickadees fussed before bedding down for the night. A trickle of water ran through a bamboo tube onto rocks and a bell chime sounded faintly from a distant corner of the yard. Wood and water. Earth and metal. The thickening air of night.

  “Will she be back?” I asked Yamashita.

  His head swiveled slightly in my direction. “Perhaps. With time.”

  My hands fidgeted in my lap. “She feels— I don’t know—somehow responsible. Guilty almost.”

  “It is not a logical thing,” he sighed, “but it is not uncommon. Sarah Klein is a good woman, a compassionate person. All that violence revolts her—the realization that the world is, at heart, a dangerous place. It is a shock for someone as good hearted as she. She takes on a sense of responsibility—it is perhaps a last attempt at exerting control.”

  “She feels guilty,” I repeated.

  “Survivors often do,” he answered.

  I stared off into the garden for a time. Yamashita stirred. “Life is like the katana, Burke. A thing of beauty, certainly. But at heart dangerous.”

  “A weapon,” I answered.

  “Indeed. And how a person sees the sword is a reflection not so much of the thing itself as the state of mind of the viewer. For now, Sarah can only see the blade and its sharpness.”

  I turned my hands over and looked at them; thick things, grown through the years in imitation of my teacher. “What can I do?”

  “She asked you to write, neh? So write her. Coax her into seeing beauty again.”

  “It’s a tall order,” I said.

  “The fact that you have grown to be a warrior does not mean that you cannot also be a poet, Burke.” He smiled slightly. “What was it I sometimes hear you say to trainees?” And then he broke into a pitch perfect imitation of my voice, its accent and cadence and tone: “Nobody said that the Way would be easy…” he left the statement hanging in the air for me to finish.