The Way

by Joseph Bruchac

Hah, foolish student. Observe.

  Then the master pulverizes a concrete wall with his crane-hand strike.

  Then it came to me. I didn’t have a concrete wall, but I did have some boards! Soon after we’d moved in, I’d found a six-foot-long, twelve-inch-wide board under the trailer. With the rusty saw I found in the tool shed, I’d cut it into six pieces. Then I’d tried to break one of those twelve-inchsquare pieces with a punch. All I had succeeded in doing was to bruise my knuckles. Uncle John, though, would be able to do it easily. Breaking boards. That was it! It’d be a great way for him to show me the effectiveness of his martial art. Then he could teach me how to break a board.

  I jumped up from the picnic table. Uncle John held up his hand, but I shook my head.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said.

  I ran to where I’d shoved the boards behind the shed, pulled them out, and came running back, but not before dropping half of them on the way and having to turn back to pick them up again.

  I put them on top of the table.

  “Here,” I said, looking eagerly at Uncle John.

  He got up from his chair, walked over to the table, and sat across from me. He picked up the top board and studied it.

  “Good,” he said. “We can make a birdhouse out of these.”

  He put the board down on the stack.

  “Aren’t you going to break it?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “You get a cleaner edge with a saw.”

  “But . . . ,” I couldn’t think what to say.

  He held up his hand. “It’s not about breaking boards.”

  I felt my face getting red. I’d already proven myself to be a total idiot. He already could see I’m hopeless.

  Instead, he grinned at me. “Cody,” he said, “looking at you is like looking into a mirror. You’re just as impatient as I was when I was your age.” He tapped the pile of boards with his little finger. “And thinking about breaking boards isn’t stupid. Chuck Lidell says that breaking has helped him build up the power. That’s how he won the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Ever see one of his fights? Those big, wide, kempo hooks that he throws? But you don’t start there. That’s not how it is with The Way. The way to start learning The Way is to stop. Stop trying so hard. Stop hurrying.” Uncle John chuckled. “And right about now my old teacher would be telling me to stop talking.”

  Uncle John picked up the boards and put them under the table. When he lifted his hand back up, he was holding a stone that had a sharp edge on it, so sharp that when he scraped it on the surface of the wooden table, it cut a circle. Just about a perfect circle—which, as anyone can tell you, is almost impossible to draw freehand.

  “This is what it’s about,” he said. “The Circle. The Way. I don’t just mean that in terms of martial arts. The Way is part of our heritage, part of our blood. Our ancestors tried to live by The Way. In The Way, everything is a circle, and everything is connected. Nothing in creation is outside of it. No person is left out. Everything is perfect, and everything is in balance. We all know that in our hearts, but we fight it. We get frightened, and then we think we either have to fight or run away. Adrenalin takes over. We let our thoughts confuse us. So what I want to teach you is how to teach yourself. How to find your way back to The Way.”

  My own hand had reached out to trace its way around that circle. I felt calmer doing it, calmer hearing his words, which were spoken so softly I could barely hear them.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Tomorrow,” Uncle John said, “we begin. Tomorrow we teach you how to breathe. But now,” he said, looking at his watch, “it’s time for you to go to bed. I promised your mother I’d make sure you hit the hay before midnight.”

  Tomorrow I’ll learn how to breathe.

  It’s already tomorrow, and I’m already breathing. It seems as if half of what Uncle John says is a riddle and the other half is so simple that anyone can understand it. I look at the clock. 1:30 A.M. now. I start to lie back down, and then I hear something. Not that loud. It’s a quick snapping sound coming from out back. I stand up on my bed again and grab the bottom of the windowsill to pull myself up as high as I can. Now I can see into the yard. Uncle John is sitting at the picnic table. His hammer is next to him, and he’s laid out a line of nails. He’s holding up one of my boards in one hand and looking at it. Then he places his other hand with his fingertips on the board and the heel of his hand an inch away.

  Whap! The heel of his hand has snapped forward so fast that I hardly saw it move. And the board he hit—and caught before it struck the ground—has been broken in half as cleanly along the grain as if it had been cut with a saw.

  Chapter 9

  RUNNING

  Even the fastest runner

  can never escape his shadow.

  —Sensei Ni

  Even on a dark and rainy day, I know when it is almost sunrise. Dad said it was part of my genetic make-up. Our ancestors always made it a point to greet the new day, welcome the sun and say “thank you” for its giving us the gifts of life and light.

  So it’s no hardship at all for me to do what Uncle John asked me to do: meet him in the backyard at dawn. That way we’ll have more than half an hour for him to start teaching me before Mom gets back from her overnight shift. Then we can have breakfast together before I have to catch the bus.

  The first thing I see when I step out back is a new birdhouse. Made from some of those boards I brought out to Uncle John. It’s sitting on the picnic table next to that old saw I found. But the saw no longer looks old. It’s been oiled, and its teeth look at if they’ve been sharpened. I remember the files my uncle had in his toolkit. I must have slept sounder than I thought not to have heard him out here filing the saw, cutting the wood, and then nailing that birdhouse together. How late did he stay up after I went to bed?

  And where is he? The flap of his tent is open, his sleeping bag is neatly rolled up, but there’s no sign of him. Then I hear someone whistle from the other side of the trailer—not one of those “here, boy” dog whistles, but the long, sharp whistle like a red-tailed hawk’s call. I open the gate in the gray, sagging stockade fence that encloses the backyard and look out front. Uncle John is standing there in the road, motioning to me to join him. Well, not really standing. Jogging in place. Early as I woke up, he woke up earlier.

  I close the gate behind me and run over to him. He’s wearing his hoodie and one of those pairs of sweat pants, and the cross-trainers are on his feet. He looks as if he’s just done a five-mile run. There’s sweat on his face, and he has that warm glow about him that runners get.

  “We can get a good two miles in if we hustle,” he says. “Run to greet the sun.”

  I look at myself. Run? I can barely walk without stumbling. Plus my sneakers are a wreck, and I don’t have any sweats. He must be kidding. There’s a little smile on his face, though, as he gestures toward the trailer with his chin.

  “On the table,” he says. “Hurry up and change.”

  I almost rip the flimsy screen door off the hinges getting into the trailer. Oh man! There on the table on top of a hoodie and sweat pants is a new pair of shoes—New Balance cross-trainers just like his. My size. He must have had them inside that bag of his that he didn’t open. I yank off my old sneaks without even untying them, strip off my clothes, and put everything on. There’s not time to go into the bathroom and look at myself in the mirror, but I feel as if I look like somebody totally different.

  I open the door and jump from the top step down to the ground. The new sneakers cushion my feet, and I hardly feel the pavement when I land. It’s not like walking on rocks like it was with my old worn-out shoes. I’m running on air.

  “We start slow,” Uncle John says. “Don’t think about running. Just breathe.”

  He turns and jogs down the edge of the road, and I follow him for the first fifty yards or so until he turns his head back toward me and gestures for me forward to run next to him.

  “Breathe,” he says again.<
br />
  We run and we keep running. I can hear his breath and try to match mine with his. Slow and even. A hundred yards, two hundred yards.

  This is so easy, I think. I could run forever. And as soon as I think that, I feel a tightening in my chest. My breath is no longer smooth but ragged. My feet aren’t floating—they’re thudding against the ground.

  “Look up. Breathe. Don’t use your feet. Relax. Let each breath pull you further along. Just one breath. Then another.”

  It’s easier to say something like that than it is to do it, a stubborn voice inside me says. I know that quitter’s voice. But for once I don’t let it tell me what to do. Instead I answer it with my uncle’s words. Relax. Just one breath. Then another. Just one breath. Then another.

  “Hy!” Uncle John swings his arm to his right and dives off the road onto a trail that leads downhill into the park. It’s so quick a turn than I almost stumble, but I keep my feet and fly down the hill after him. He’s just ahead of me on the path that is too narrow for us to run abreast. We’re going around trees, up and down hills at the same even pace. I almost don’t make it up the last hill, but when I see that he’s stopped at the top, I keep going until I reach him. I’m still breathing, but I’m gasping now like a goldfish that has flipped out of its tank onto the floor.

  “Straight,” he says, putting one hand on my back and another on my chest. “Bend your knees a little. Now lift your hands like this and breathe in. Good. Now breathe out as you bring your hands down. Keep doing it as you close your eyes. Just your breath. Nothing but your breath. In. And out. Slow your breath. In. And out. Slow down your heartbeat. In. And out. In. And out.”

  I do as he says and can’t believe how it works. Although my breath trembles the first time I draw it in, it’s smoother when I let it out and from then on it gets easier each time. My heart, which was thudding like a bird hurling its frantic body against the bars of a cage, actually does slow its beat. And each time I breathe in, I can feel the smile on my face get broader. I can’t remember when I’ve felt this good before.

  “Good,” Uncle John says. “Very good. Now open your eyes, Cody. Greet our oldest friend.”

  I open my eyes and realize that the hill we’ve climbed is facing east. There, just starting to show itself above the low range of hills, is the thin, gold crescent of Kisos, the sun.

  Uncle John holds out his arms as if to embrace that first light, and I do the same. I feel the warmth of the new day touching my face and embracing me right back, not just holding me but flowing into me.

  “Oliohneh,” Uncle John says to the sun. “Thank you.”

  He nods to me and then we say it together.

  “Oliohneh.”

  On our way back, we alternate jogging and walking. Uncle John also shows me some runner’s stretches. “Best to do these before you run,”’ he says. “But this morning what you needed most was to run without thinking about it.”

  I nod. But what I am thinking about is how far we actually ran. It was at least a mile, maybe more. It’s further than I’ve ever run before. And I did it! When we get back to the house, Mom is already there waiting for us.

  The first thing Mom does is compliment me.

  “You look great, kiddo!” she says.

  “You, too, kiddo,” I crack back. But I mean it. Mom usually looks drained when she gets home from one of those long nights, but this morning she looks fresh as the proverbial daisy.

  “Wise guy!” She pokes me in the ribs, but the smile on her face tells me that she’s feeling pretty good, too. “Now hurry up and change. There’s barely time for you to get a bite to eat before the bus gets here.”

  I change out of the sweats but not the sneakers. No way am I ever going to put those old scruffies back on my feet again.

  When I get back to the table, only Mom is there. I can see the tiredness is starting to catch up with her now. It’s visible first in her eyes; then it works its way to her mouth. Exhaustion is this heavy weight dragging her down. But she still smiles at me. She always does that.

  “Where’s Uncle John?” I ask.

  “He said to tell you he had to finish his road work. He needs to get in another ten miles of running before he goes over to the gym.”

  Ten more miles of running? And I thought our run to that hilltop and back was a big deal!

  “Your nose isn’t swollen anymore,” Mom says, gently touching my face.

  I lean back from her. The last thing I want is to be reminded of what happened in school yesterday.

  “It really isn’t,” Mom says. “And that black eye will probably be gone in a day or two.”

  Black eye! What black eye? I jump up from the table and run into the bathroom. In the hazy glass of the mirror, I see it. The swelling may have left my nose, but it has migrated into my eye socket, which is all purple. I look like a raccoon with half a mask! Great! Just great! I may have been running this morning, but there’s no way I can ever get away from who I am. A beat-up wimp.

  Chapter 10

  PAYING ATTENTION

  Eyes closed,

  Is the world still there?

  —Sifu Sahn

  For once, fortune is smiling on me. Grey Cook isn’t on the bus this morning. I’ve gotten so used to his picking on me that I almost miss hearing his sarcastic voice when I climb on the bus.

  I relax back in my seat. Perfect! I close my eyes and start thinking about the last thing that Uncle John said to me this morning about breathing and staying calm.

  “It all begins with breath,” he’d said. “When you get frightened or worried, your breath gets quick and shallow. And the faster you breathe, the harder it is to breathe. If you want to stay calm, breathe slowly. In. And out. Pay attention to your breath. Before long, your breath will take over and start breathing you.”

  Without a skinny, bad-tempered junior jerk ragging on me, I actually am able to think about something other than just praying for the bus ride to end this morning. I’m able to truly pay attention to my breathing. In. And out. Making my breath even and long. Making it into a circle. In through my nose, down deep into my lungs to the center of my body, below my belly button.

  I can’t remember the name Uncle John called it, but it’s the center of balance and breath down there. Pay attention. Breathe down to that place. Down, down. That’s it. A word like “down.” Dan. Dan chien. Down to the dan chien and then back up the other side of the circle and out my mouth.

  I’m concentrating so much on breathing that I am hardly aware of the other kids getting onto the bus. In fact, I don’t even notice how long the usually endless ride takes. All of a sudden the bus is stopped, and everyone is getting out. We’re at the school.

  I get off the bus, still breathing. I go through the doors, and this morning the doors don’t throw me off-balance when I try to get through them. I just breathe, step, push easy, and they swing open. No sweat.

  Maybe it was the run and greeting the sun, or maybe it’s just the breathing, but I feel really awake this morning. I actually feel . . . could it be? I feel good. I am in school and feeling good. I’m not even thinking about my black eye.

  Ooops! Yes, I am now. Breathe, Cody. Keep breathing.

  I breathe my way down the hall. Nobody runs into me, by accident or accidentally on purpose. I make it unbruised to my locker, put my bag inside, and pull out the books and notebook for my first class. I keep breathing as I walk. Now I’m through the door of my homeroom. Now I am in the chair in the back of the room and sitting up straight.

  Roll call starts. Here comes my name.

  “Mr. Leee-booo?” mispronouncing my name as usual.

  Then it happens. I don’t mumble my usual surly, “Here.” Instead I hear a clear, self-assured voice saying my teacher’s name. And that person is me!

  “Ms. Taker?”

  “Yes, Cody?”

  “The way to pronounce my name is Luh-Bow. Could you please say it that way?”

  Ms. Taker is taken aback. Then she lifts her index fi
nger up to her chin in an “oh, I never realized that” gesture.

  “Oh,” she says. “I’m sorry, Cody. Luh-Bow, it is. In fact,” she says and smiles brightly, “I believe that means ‘the handsome one’ in French.”

  I take a breath. I don’t put my head down like I usually do. I think about the sound of Uncle John’s voice.

  “I can take it if you can,” I say. My words come out confident and pleasant. Almost cool. Ms. Taker actually smiles at me before she moves on down the roll to call the next name.

  “Snap,” someone whispers a few seats ahead and two rows over from me. Then she giggles. I look over. It’s Maya, who is looking over her shoulder at me. She lifts up two fingers to make an invisible mark in the air—score one point for LeBeau—before she turns back.

  As Ms. Taker continues calling the roll, I dare to quickly look around at the rest of the class. Nobody is staring at me. Aside from Maya’s affirmation, no one has made a big deal out of my speaking up. No one even seems to have noticed my black eye. It’s as if my not thinking about it has made it invisible. Made me invisible.

  It makes me start wondering what it is that makes people aware of each other. Every day we pass by so many people without even thinking about it. Like have you ever noticed how when you’re driving down the road, passing car after car going the other way, you never really see the faces of the people in those other cars. But if you deliberately look at the face of one of those people in the front seat—a driver or another passenger like you—more often than not, they’ll know it. They’ll make eye contact with you in that split second before you whiz past each other. Weird.

  And then I remember something I read in an issue of Black Belt magazine. It was an article about ninjas, those semi-supernatural assassins of ancient Japan. It was said that they could slip in anywhere without being seen, make themselves invisible. Maybe it wasn’t real invisibility, like in The Lord of the Rings. Maybe it was just that they knew what to do—how to move, how to breathe, even how to think. People thought they were invisible. They just knew how to do things without drawing attention to themselves.