by George Wier
Aiden sits down hard on the floor but remains upright. The fountain grows until it hits the ceiling overhead.
And Shelby screams.
Shelby screamed, came awake and sat bolt upright.
He was in Sheppard’s do-jo. The hard floor mat beneath him was his bed, an old airline blanket his only cover.
Shelby listened to the darkness for minutes as his breathing slowed and his pulse evened out.
He arose and turned on the lights. There along one wall was the rack holding Sheppard’s martial arts implements: his bong-sa staff, his nunchukus, archery equipment, wooden daggers and sabers, and numerous padded protectors, mitts, and kicking and punching bags.
Standing in the center of the room, the silence thick around him, unmindful of the hour—or even the day, for that matter—he went into the stretching routine.
Old whipcorded muscle, thinned and bunched with disuse, slowly came unknotted as he moved through the routine. His joints creaked and his spine and neck adjusted themselves with audible pops.
The thing was not to think. Let muscle memory take over, concentrate on the joints and on breathing, and gather chi from the air and the Earth.
After the Buddha stretch in all four cardinal directions—or what felt like might be a rough approximation of the four directions—Shelby slipped a staff from the rack and went through the Bong-sah stretch. He quickly ran out of memory of the how to do all of the staff motions, and reached for the wooden sword. He paused, looked down at the wooden Japanese katana, then turned his head to the corner and the boxes there. The hilt of Aiden Holloway’s bastard sword stuck a foot into the air at an angle, much like how the Sword in the Stone probably stood in some Cornwall forest a thousand years before. He walked over to it and pulled it free. It rang when it cleared the box.
Shelby walked to the center of Sheppard’s do-jo, rested for a moment with the sword at his side, it’s tip denting the cushioned mat beneath him. He closed his eyes and began to breathe. After a moment he had his breathing under fine control. He began to move.
A kata, when one is starting out, is a completely controlled slow dance. It is graceful, yet functional. The early masters of the art developed the katas by watching animals in nature. How they moved and how they paused. How they struck and how they spun away from danger. Hence, most of the katas have animal names.
Shelby didn’t remember the name for the sword kata, but he had nearly perfected it all those years ago. There were twenty-seven chief movements, and each flowed from one to the next like a doleful breeze. Muscle memory took over and somewhere during the kata his eyes came open. His pace picked up and the slow lunge became a stab and a withdrawal. Shelby spun to strike in the opposite direction with an over-the-head arc and downward strike, but he froze in an instant. Sheppard stood there, the blade an inch away from his collar bone. Sheppard never even blinked.
“You’re early,” Shelby said.
Sheppard nodded. “Put the armor on.”
“Why?”
“I want to see how you move in it.”
Shelby nodded.
Over Shelby’s street clothes—the same clothes he had worn to the police station and while traipsing along the creek into East Austin afterwards—he wore the chainmail coverlet. It made a caul around his head with streamers of chain hanging over his brow. The rest of it flowed down around his waist to end midway between his crotch and his knees. Over this Sheppard fitted the breastplate and the backplate, and buckled them together at the shoulders and along the sides. The arm plates were a bit complicated at first, but between the two of them, they managed to figure it out. The leg plates worked on the same principle as the arms, but these had to be removed again and the boots put on and tested before the leg plates were again applied. Then came the gauntlets and helmet.
“Damn, man. You look like something from one of those King Arthur books.” Sheppard walked around him in slow circles.
“At this point I hope the box is empty. This thing weighs a ton.”
Sheppard moved back to the corner. “Ah! Not even close.” Sheppard held up a leather belt and the scabbard for the sword in one hand. In the other he hefted a steel shield.
“Shit,” Shelby said.
With the belt attached and the shield in place, Shelby realized just what a knight of old was up against. The armor was heavy. It was the real thing, not the standard Society for Creative Anachronism play armor. It did, however, feel as though it fit snug. It felt like a part of him.
“Now,” Sheppard said, “with sword in hand, do the kata again.”
“What about the shield?”
“Yeah. Change the kata as needed to incorporate the shield.”
“Yes, master,” Shelby said.
He took a moment to center himself. Once he had his breathing under some semblance of control, he began to move.
“Keep it slow. You’ll want to get to know that armor.”
“I think—”
“No talking. No thinking. Just do it.”
Squire yipped from the corner.
Shelby moved. The sword described slow arcs as his body twisted and the armor creaked and the edges of steel plates rubbed together. He moved and slowly began to move faster, all the while controlling his breathing and focusing on his wrists.
He spun, lunged. The sword whistled in a backward arc. The last movement flowed again into the first and he was dancing in full medieval body armor. Shelby felt powerful. The building chi made his fingertips tingle, his stomach became tight with burgeoning energy. There was a small sun at the center of him, an engine that drew half of its strength from the inflowing world, the rest from his body. The air around him sang. And somewhere during his third time through, the tears began flowing from Shelby’s eyes.
He slowed as he moved through the last three motions. Shelby knew he couldn’t go further until he rested and had a meal of some kind. But the blood was flowing through his veins. He was alive. He had wanted to die at one point, had instructed Holloway’s father to kill him there in his doorway all those years ago. But now, he lived.
Shelby turned to Sheppard.
“I brought food,” Sheppard said.
They had breakfast at Sheppard’s desk. Sheppard had the window louvers positioned such that he could see if someone was walking up to the front door. The door was unlocked, the sign was turned and coming daylight gave definition to the driveway, the overgrown fence and the roofs of houses beyond.
“About your looks,” Sheppard began.
“Now there’s an open-ended subject.”
“Just listen and shut up. So you want to stick around, but you don’t want to be recognized. It would be nice if you could move about. The first part of this is easy, the second part, not so much so.”
“Oh crap. I don’t know if I like the sound of what’s coming.”
“It’s okay. The easy part first. Lifts in your shoes to make you taller. We turn that sandy blond hair of yours black and change the style. In the meantime, you grow a beard and mustache.”
“That still doesn’t change my face,” Shelby said. He broke off a piece of bacon and handed it down to Squire, who took it and wandered a few feet off, turned in a circle and sat down.
“Your face. Well, I’m thinking you might like to be a different race.”
“What?”
“White people are so boring anyway.”
“That’s a hell of a thing to say. Just because you’re not one.”
“But I can get away with it,” Sheppard chuckled. “You can’t.”
“Some things never change.”
“About a year ago I had to open up a locker after it went six months with no payment. There’s a couple of tanning beds in there. I was thinking—”
“Tanning beds. Really.”
“Yes. Really. How’s your Spanish?”
“Nicht sehr gute.”
“That’s German. Okay, maybe not Spanish. Hmm. I got an idea. How about Basque?”
“I know less Basqu
e than I know Spanish.”
“I’m pretty sure the Basque speak Spanish. The Basque are from Spain. You know, the Iberian peninsula? But that’s not my point. My point is about appearance. I’ve already got a guy working on an ID and passport.”
“I’m not even a U.S. citizen?”
“Of course not. You know how hard it is to forge a birth certificate these days?”
“Right.” Shelby tossed off the last of his coffee and set the cup down. “What’s the hard part?”
“The facial reconstruction.”
“No.”
“Hey, wait. It’s easy and not all that painful, or so I’ve heard. Not as painful, say, as getting something hard shoved into your backside behind prison bars.”
Shelby remained quiet, and Sheppard continued to ladle forkfuls of scrambled eggs into his mouth.
“Botox injections. Small ones, say, above the eyes to make your brows more prominent, your chin to give you a bit of a jut, and maybe along your cheekbones. That, the tan, the beard, the change of hair color and style, and a change in height and weight, ought to—”
“Who said anything about weight?”
“Seriously? Dude. You’re carrying enough spare tire for the Daytona 500.”
“Fuck you.”
“No. Fuck you. The girl is coming over here next week for the injections. By that time you will need to drop at least twenty pounds. That means workouts a couple of times a day.” Sheppard slid a sheaf of papers across the desk.
“What’s this?”
“Read it.”
Shelby picked them up and began to read.
“ ‘Graduate over one week to doing fifty chin-ups, seventy-five pushups, one hundred-fifty situps, fifteen minutes of jump-rope...’ You’re kidding me.”
“No kidding. Otherwise, I can drive you downtown and help you turn yourself in.”
“And I thought Quinn was my best friend.”
“You have to start thinking with the possibility that Quinn is the asshole in the this whole thing.”
“I have.”
“Good.” Sheppard wiped his hands with the dishtowel the meal had arrived wrapped in, then tossed it to Shelby. He finished off the last dregs of his coffee and put his cup down. “Come on. We’ve got work to do.”
CHAPTER SIX
The Cadillac Sedan pulled up at the automotive shop on South 1st Street at 2:00 a.m. The garage door rolled upward and the Cadillac pulled inside. Once inside, the door trundled back down. The Cadillac disgorged two passengers, one from the front and one from the rear passenger seats.
“Anthony, Lionel, glad you could come,” the woman said. She stood beside an oil-stained worktable that came to the height of her ribs. The table was clear but for a cigar box.
“Our condolences, Mrs. Moore. We’re not used to being told when to meet someone.”
“As I see it, my husband was faithful to you fellahs for twenty-five years. Now he’s dead.”
“Yes, we loved Ricky. He was like a son to me.” This from the elder of the two men, the one named Anthony.
“He was like your faithful lap dog. He made you millions.”
“You have nothing to worry about, Sonja,” the younger of the two said, although he was perhaps in his early fifties. “You and your children will be taken care of. One of your kids wants to go to college, they go.” Lionel snapped his fingers.
“None of my kids are college material, and you know it. Jimmy is already working this garage in his father’s place. He’s good with the repairs, and he knows the deal for when deliveries are made. It’s going to be business as usual around here, okay fellahs?”
“Sure, Sonja,” Anthony said. Anthony’s hair had turned silver over the years, his face was always clean shaven and his attire was immaculate. His manicure was perfect, like his smile, which was a thing rarely seen. When Anthony smiled, someone was going to die.
“Yes, Sonja,” Lionel echoed.
“That’s not why I brought you down here. Someone killed my husband. The cops are saying it was Shelby Knight. I don’t trust cops.”
Lionel nodded. “What do you want us to do?”
“I want to find out who really killed Ricky. If it was Knight, I want him dead.”
“What if it wasn’t Knight?” Lionel asked.
“Then I want whoever did it...just as dead.”
“This thing we do, Sonja,” Anthony said, and removed his hat, “we don’t do it because you ask us, we do it because we loved your husband. That kind of devotion, from a man such as him, it must be given a proper amount of...attention.”
Sonja nodded. “I want Knight’s woman dead too,” she said.
“She’s well-connected,” Lionel said.
“So am I. If you don’t have the stomach for it, I can find someone who has.”
“We ain’t killing no cops,” Lionel said.
“Former cop,” Sonja said. “And like I said, maybe it wasn’t him. You do this thing like I ask you. Don’t do it for Ricky. You do it for me.”
“I got a guy, Sonja. He can do the hits. It’s gonna take some time, though, to find out who killed Ricky.”
“Kill the bitch first, then figure the rest out. I want some payback.”
Lionel looked from Sonja to Anthony. Anthony slowly nodded. The hint of a smile began to work the corner of his mouth.
The next day, when Shelby began to suspect his heart might not give out and let him die, Sheppard came in with the morning newspaper. Shelby’s photograph from the newspaper archives was splashed six inches high and four wide on page one.
“Shit,” Shelby said.
“You had better read it.”
Shelby did. The article took up a third of page one and then carried over to page seven, where it took another third of the page. When he finished he folded the paper back together and dropped it to the floor of the do-jo.
“It’s official,” he said.
“Yeah. You’re the most wanted man in the State of Texas. Do you feel like a celebrity?”
“I feel like someone just punched me in the stomach.”
“That’s just from the situps.” Sheppard looked down at Shelby’s stomach. “Add another workout today.”
“I may have to just from boredom. I need something to read.”
“Ahh. Well, I have just the thing. Hold on a sec.”
Shelby waited while Sheppard went out to his car. He watched from the window as Sheppard opened the trunk of his Toyota, took out a small box and slammed the trunk shut. He came back inside and dropped the box into Shelby’s hands.
“What’s this?”
“Open it, white boy,” Sheppard said.
Shelby dropped the box on Sheppard’s desk, pulled open the cross-hatched leaves, and started pulling out paperbacks.
“Don Quixote, Idylls of the King, Le Morte de Artur, Chivalry of the Middle Ages. Why do I want to read this stuff?”
“Because. That’s who you are, now.” Sheppard had become animated. He moved around Shelby, catlike, and took a seat in his chair, propped his feet up on his desk and folded his arms behind his head and leaned back.
“Oh shit. I know that look.”
“It came to me last night while I couldn’t sleep. Actually, I think it came to me when I was watching you do that kata in full armor, with sword and shield, all that shit, only I didn’t know it then. I had to let it...percolate.”
Shelby sat down. “What came to you, might I ask, oh wise one?”
Sheppard leaned forward and slapped the desk. “In Seattle, they have superheroes.”
“What?”
“I said, in Seattle they have superheroes.”
The silence flowed over and through Shelby Knight in waves. Then he spoke, “I ask you about this late night epiphany, and you tell me that Seattle has superheroes. I mean, like it means something.”
“It means everything,” Sheppard said. “Have you ever seen a superhero in Austin?”
“No. We don’t have superheroes in Austin. Besides, there�
��s no such thing as superheroes, that is, outside of the comic books.”
“Well, maybe they’re not real superheroes, like you see in the comic books and the movies, but they’re called superheroes by the people up there.”
“I think I saw something about that on TV one night,” Shelby said, and dropped Chivalry of the Middle Ages on the stack of others. “I think they call them vigilantes.”
“They do. That is, the people who don’t like them. But most people do like them, and they call them superheroes. That is, most of the regular downtown Seattle people. It sets them apart, you know. Crime statistics have dropped like crazy in the areas where these guys hang out. The cops put up with them because it’s good for them. Mostly, anyway.”
“You want me to put on armor and walk around Austin. I’d get a heat stroke during the summer and I’d freeze to death in the winter. I mean, that suit is made of real steel.”
“I’ve got an idea about that. With a little messing around, I can fix it so you’re cool in the summer in there, and warm in the winter. I used to have this friend—”
“You had a friend?”
“Shut up. Used to have this friend who would drive his motorcycle coast to coast during the worst part of the winter. He took the cords out of a electric blanket and lined a jumpsuit with it and hooked it to a line leading to his battery.”
“Electric blankets run on AC. You’re talking DC.”
“Will you shut the fuck up a minute?” Sheppard said, but he was smiling and clearly driven to get the whole concept across. “Of course you put an AC/DC converter between the two. It’s easy.”
“You aren’t hooking me up to any refrigeration coils,” Shelby said.
“I’ll burn that bridge when we come to it. Right now we’re getting into the fall. The days are getting cooler. In a few weeks, conditions should be just right for the White Knight to make his debut.”
“The White Knight? Are you crazy? Someone will definitely recognize me. They used to call me the Black Knight. I’m not sure I could get away with it.”
“You were the one who ran from the police.”
“True,” Shelby said. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
