Quest for Honor (7 page)

War is goddamn hell, boys, don’t you ever forget it. Sometimes it’s gotta be done, we had to save those South Koreans, and we did, but I wish to God I hadn’t had to do some of the things I did.

Mark had thought often about that day, and what Ed said to him and his brother. He knew it scared Jim, could tell it even then, and Mark suspected that had played a large part in how Jim had lived his life since then. Jim had a lot of potential, and he proved it in the classroom and on the basketball floor, but other than throwing a few elbows in a game now and then he was one of the most passive guys Mark had ever known. Maybe that had changed recently, since his wife died, and he’d gotten into martial arts, but Mark had seen his big brother only a couple times since her funeral, so it was hard to say.

For Mark, it was different. He was too young to really understand Ed’s feelings about combat, but it sounded pretty darn exciting, and as he grew older he became fascinated with the military. He read everything he could find about it in the school library and then the city library yielded even more treasures. By the time he was in eighth grade he knew he wanted to be a soldier, a warrior, someone even greater than his father had been. He set his sights on West Point and hit the books, and he also dedicated himself to excellence on the football field, because he knew that would help his chances. He was right. After his junior season at St. Francis High, an assistant coach from the Point said he would see about helping Mark get the necessary congressional appointment. Athletes had to meet the academic standards just like everybody else, but if you had a great time in the 40, that would help. It did. Mark got his appointment and headed off to the Point after graduating high school and he never looked back, never once regretting the life he’d chosen.

His father had talked to him about it only once, the night they got the phone call from the Academy telling him the appointment was his if he wanted it. In Mark’s mind, there was no question about it, but he respectfully listened to the old veteran when Ed took him out into the garage. They sat in the car and talked about it, and Ed told him some things about Korea that he’d left out of the story at the cemetery, sobering things that Mark took seriously, but they didn’t change his mind. Finally, he said, “Dad, I understand. I really appreciate you telling me this. But I’m going.”

Ed stared out the windshield at the tidy workbench along the back wall of the garage. Then he said, “Okay, son. We won’t need to talk about this again. Your mother will need some more convincing but I’ll talk to her.” He looked over at his son. “I pray to God you will never have to go through what I went through, but sure as hell the shit’s gonna hit the fan again someday and that’s when this country will need good officers in the Army. Maybe you can be one of them. It’s up to you.”

“I’ll make it, Dad. I won’t let you down.”

For the first time that evening, Ed Hayes smiled. He put his hand on his son’s shoulder. “You’ll do just fine, son. I’m proud of you.”

The voice on the helmet intercom broke through Mark’s reverie. “Coming in now, sir. Make sure you’re buckled in, might get a little rough. The gomers have been pretty active out here lately.”

Good. It was time to get back to work.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Wisconsin

T
he
bo
was
almost a living thing in his hands, an extension of himself, his will. The six-foot oak staff, tapered at both ends, ripped through the air with an audible hum, helicoptering overhead, then slashing with a backhand side strike, a perfect
ichimonji-mawashi.
He followed with a forehand strike to the midsection, then an extended
nagashi-zuki
thrust as he lunged forward, left leg extending back behind him, his weight perfectly balanced, upper body in the vertical as the bo speared upward at a forty-five degree angle, and the loud
kiai
spirit yell almost leaped of its own accord from deep within him. He held the pose for a second, then brought the bo back in a perfect
yoko-uke
sweep and block as he stepped back into a cat stance, held it another split-second, and went into his close, the
musubi-dachi
ready stance, bringing the bo to his side, closing with the final bow, and taking a half step to his left into what his brother would term a parade rest position., bringing the bo around to his front horizontally with an over-hand under-hand grip. He was panting, his headband dripping sweat, his
gi
soaked through.

“Very good, Mr. James. A very respectable
Shushi-No-Kon-Sho kata.”
The sensei stood up with a fluid motion that never ceased to amaze Jim. He didn’t really know how old Yamashita Sensei was, but he had to be in his early sixties, at least. Yet the man moved with the grace of someone decades younger. It was something Jim knew he could never fully achieve himself, no matter how much stretching he did every morning.

“Thank you, Sensei. It’s not the easiest kata to perform.”

“Indeed. How many moves?” The Japanese-born master led the way to the edge of the mat. Jim followed at his side, but respectfully a step behind.

“A hundred fifty.”

“Ah. Would you like some tea?”

“Very much so.” Jim toweled his head and neck as the sensei went into his small office and retrieved two bottles from his refrigerator. He handed one to Jim, who twisted the cap off and took a healthy swig. “Hits the spot,” he said.

“I must thank you for introducing me to this Honest Tea,” Nakamura said. “It is quite good.”

“Best there is for bottled tea,” Jim said. He’d read about it somewhere, and it quickly became his beverage of choice. How long had it been since he’d had a can of pop? He couldn’t remember.

The master sat on one of the chairs in the waiting area, and Jim took the seat next to him. There were a dozen chairs in the small lounge, with a half-wall separating it from the training area. The dojo was tastefully decorated with Japanese artwork, including some
bonsai
plants that Sensei carefully cultivated. Bonsai was an art Jim had taken up recently and he was proud to have a nice plant in his own home. Fortunately the cat left it alone.

Jim had found Rising Sun Martial Arts on his first visit to Cedar Lake, five years ago when he came to town for his interview at Tri-County Telecom. A month after making the move from the Milwaukee suburbs, he joined the dojo and started training in
isshin-ryu
karate and
kobujutsu,
the study of Okinawan weapons. The training was a lot different than taekwondo in many respects, but Jim found himself enjoying it. For one thing, it was easier on his legs than the Korean art, which emphasized a lot of kicking. He especially enjoyed the weapons training. Sensei also brought in guest instructors for occasional day-long seminars in judo, Brazilian
jujitsu,
and Hardened Target combatives, and Jim used his Systema contacts to arrange yearly seminars in the Russian art.

It didn’t take Jim long to find himself immersed in the training. He was at the dojo three or four evenings a week, sometimes also on Saturdays, and he also maintained a membership at a gym a few blocks away, where he kept up his weight training. He maintained his aerobic fitness with bicycling through the countryside in the summer and fall, and with the machines at the gym during the winter and early spring. One or two mornings a week he would swim at the town’s indoor pool. Once he’d actually tracked how much time he spent in training for an entire month, and he was astonished at how quickly it all added up. But he was in great shape, and what’s more, the training had helped satisfy the deep-set urge he’d felt since Suzy’s death, to push himself toward his elusive goal.

The camaraderie was in many ways the best thing about it all. He’d become friends with several of the men who trained at the dojo, and he found that they understood what he was doing, because they were doing it themselves, in varying degrees. They had all discovered that outside the walls of the dojo, people didn’t know about these things, didn’t understand that there was so much more to martial arts than what they saw on television. It really was a way of life, and Jim found that it suited him perfectly. He advanced through the ranks quickly and now held black belts in both of the disciplines taught by Yamashita Sensei.

The private training was what Jim enjoyed the most. About a year ago, the master surprised Jim by inviting him to stay after class one night and work on something. Jim couldn’t even remember what it was now, but the one night turned into two, and then it became a regular occurrence, so that Jim would now routinely spend a half-hour or more after the evening’s final class, working with Sensei on one aspect or another of the arts. Tonight, it was the bo.

“Are you going to the tournament this weekend?”

Jim snapped his thoughts back to the present. “I had thought about it. It’s a long way, but I think I just might.” A month earlier, a flyer announcing an open tournament in Rice Lake, up in the northwest corner of the state, had been posted on the dojo’s bulletin board. Jim competed in five or six tournaments a year; his most recent had been the Badger State Games in Appleton at the end of June, where he’d won gold medals in sparring and weapons in his division. The Rice Lake event wasn’t one he’d considered when he first saw the flyer, but now, the way things were going this week, he thought that getting away for a weekend might be just what the doctor ordered.

“You have seemed a bit preoccupied in class this week, Mr. James. How are things going for you?”

Jim had long ago ceased to be surprised by his master’s instincts. In truth, the Japanese sensei was one of the most remarkable men Jim had ever met. “Well, I’ve had better weeks,” Jim said now. His argument with Annie, coupled with his somber trip to the Mt. Sterling church, had set the tone. Things hadn’t gotten much better.

“You focused quite well on the kata just now. Perhaps if you direct your energies toward the tournament, it will help your focus outside the dojo as well.”

“I think you might be right about that, Sensei.”

“May I make another suggestion?”

“Of course.”

“Do not use the bo in the tournament. Use the
sansetsukon.
The kata you performed with it last night was quite good. I doubt if they have seen that weapon very much.”

Jim thought about that. The weapon was a three-section staff, sometimes called the “coiling dragon staff”, with each section about three feet long and connected with short chains. It was very difficult to master and thus rarely seen in tournaments, but Jim had started working with it several months ago and lately had put together a kata that he thought might be competition-ready by the time of the Diamond Nationals, the big tournament held every October in the Twin Cities. Jim had been there twice, had yet to win an event, and he really wanted one of those big trophies. “Do you think the kata is ready for that, Sensei?”

“There is only one way to find out.”

Jim took Friday afternoon off, packed an overnight bag and his competition gear, and hit the road. The five-hour drive gave him a chance to do some serious thinking.

There’d been a message waiting for him on his home phone when he got back from Mt. Sterling the previous Sunday. It was Annie, wanting to talk. He was a bit surprised Annie hadn’t called him on his cell, because she had the number, but he was sort of glad she hadn’t. On the way home he had time to think about the events of the day and evening before. It was the first time he’d ever turned down sex with her, and he wondered what that meant.

Maybe, he thought, that was a sign of something. He returned her call, but he held something back, and she could tell, so when they hung up after five minutes of small talk there wasn’t a promise to get together later in the week. Surprisingly, he was okay with that.

The work week hadn’t started off too well the next morning. He went through his usual routine of stretching and calisthenics before his shower and shave, then popped open his laptop computer at the kitchen table as he ate his breakfast omelet. Spike the cat, contented now after having his own breakfast, curled around his legs and went off to find a sunbeam for a nap.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s
website was one of Jim’s regular stops on his morning surf, and today the third entry in the News section caught his eye: “Anti-war group looking for air show assailant.” A bit of a chill ran through him as he clicked on the link.

The story was brief, but now he knew the name of the protestor: Carleton Higgins, a sociology professor at UW-Madison, who was claiming he’d suffered two broken fingers and a sprained wrist “when he was assaulted by a man leaving Saturday’s air show at the Dane County Airport.” According to Higgins, the attack had been completely unprovoked.

There was a photo, taken by someone in the group of protestors, evidently with a cell phone. Jim couldn’t help holding his breath as he examined it. The camera had been about eight feet away and to his right, he estimated, and fortunately for him, it didn’t show his face very clearly. His back was partially turned toward the camera, as he’d been shifting his upper body to the left as he used his left hand to remove Higgins’ right hand and twist it downward and to his left. The shot didn’t show the grip, but it caught the look of surprise and pain on the professor’s face. Jim looked closely, but there didn’t seem to be anything that would clearly identify him. Annie was not in the shot at all.

Well, it could’ve been worse, somebody on the other side could’ve taken the photo and gotten a clear view of his face. Or it could’ve been a video, showing the entire thing. There was the chance somebody else with evidence like that could come forward, of course, but Jim figured he was probably in the clear. There’d been police nearby, after all, and none of them had done anything. It had happened pretty quickly, and by the time any of the cops got around to talking to Higgins—he said in the story he’d given a statement to the police—Jim and Annie had been well away from the scene, in the parking area and lost among the people heading for their cars. Fortunately, none of the protestors had been thinking clearly enough to follow him. No surprise there; they certainly didn’t have any kind of training in responding to such situations.

That sort of set the tone for his week at the office. Despite the progress he and his team had been making on their major summer project, revamping the telecom’s website and its associated multimedia marketing campaign, his supervisor, Lori, was all over him about it. Every morning there was an email in his inbox with another picayune question, and every afternoon he could expect to have her “drop by” his office to “see how things are going.” By Thursday he was dreading the sound of her heels clicking their way toward him on the tiled hallway.

The highway sign said he was passing Tomah, with another hour or so to Eau Claire. He’d leave the interstate there and head north another hour to Rice Lake. He kept it at sixty-five, which was the limit but seemed kind of slow, compared to the traffic. His Hyundai Genesis could keep up with anything on these roads, but Jim wasn’t in any hurry. Behind him now, he saw a red sports car coming up behind him, then swerving into the left lane. As it cruised past, Jim glanced over and saw the driver, a severe-looking blonde in large sunglasses, staring straight ahead, ignoring him. For a brief, jolting second he thought it was Lori. He forced himself to get a grip. The blonde’s Porsche Boxster accelerated ahead.

Jim liked to think that nobody could intimidate him anymore, but Lori Atwood could get to him. Part of it was her position, of course. As manager of the telecom’s business section, Lori had the power of life or death over about two dozen jobs, including his. She’d demonstrated more than once how she was willing to use that power, sometimes on what appeared to be just a whim. By what he heard around the office when she wasn’t around, most of the women felt the same way about her. Jim liked to visit Plant, where the all-male crew of technicians hung out, and they all thought she just needed to get laid more often. Divorced a few years earlier, no kids, Lori was said to be dating a guy from Madison. Even if that was true, nobody had yet come up with a way to thaw out the Ice Princess.

It made him wonder if he could survive another ten or twelve years there. He could always check out another job. It wasn’t as if he had any strong ties to Cedar Lake, especially with things apparently cooling off with Annie. He’d hate to leave the dojo, but there were lots of good dojos out there. But as he got older, retirement was something that crossed his mind now and then. That was a lot more attractive than another job search, another move.

Well, he would just have to hang in there, keep his head down around Lori and hope for the best. Ride it out and take his retirement when he was ready. But somehow that didn’t feel right. He was just on cruise control, and he’d never really done well just cruising along in his life. Not anymore. Since Suzy’s death, he’d overcome some big challenges, and found out a lot about himself. He’d avoided challenges, for the most part, in the old days. Basketball came easy for him in high school, but it was tougher in college, so he just gave up on it, using his knee injury as an excuse. Yes, he’d tried to get into the military, twice in fact, but the rejections hadn’t surprised him. They wouldn’t take anyone with his knee problems, and although it was disappointing, in a way wasn’t some part of him, back then, actually relieved about it? So he just sailed onward, with his wife and daughter and their comfy little life, and it was good while it lasted.