Hummy got up and went away. He was gone for a good while. When he came back, he jerked a thumb towards the door he had gone through. We went through it, along a narrow hall by a bathroom with an open door where a guy that was maybe three hundred pounds sat on a sagging toilet and made noises like he was trying to pass a water buffalo, antlers and all. The hallway was full of stink.
“Close the fucking door,” Juan said as we went by. “Goddamn Rhino. Who wants to smell that shit, or see you delivering it? Close the fucking door.”
Rhino didn’t reach out and close the door, and we just kept going along the hallway. At the end of the hall was another door. This one was a thick door that looked as if it had been added recently. Billy knocked, and a voice said, “Come in.” We went inside.
It was a big stinking room and it was full of weapons. All kinds of things. I saw an AK-47 and some automatic pistols, small and large. There were also machetes and gas cans all over the place. Some net bags were hanging from the ceiling. In the bags were some human heads that were the source of the smell. They were jacking with me, trying to see what I was made of, how scared I was.
Way I felt, scared was not on the agenda. I was way past scared and had leveled out into a steady feeling of numbness. My body was numb, my mind was numb, my soul was numb. The world to me was nothing more than one big numb ball of grief.
I could cope with it because of the sensei I’d had when I moved away from here, some years back. I had enjoyed the training so much, I almost didn’t move back. It almost made me mellow.
Almost.
But I had the demon inside, and I had left sensei and what he had taught me. I wasn’t trying to use martial arts to learn to live my life without violence, with confidence and harmony, way he taught me. I wanted to use it to hurt someone, the thing I wasn’t supposed to do. I had learned nothing that really mattered from my sensei and I knew it and it made me feel a little ill.
There was a guy in the back, and I took him for the Headmaster, way he carried himself. There were some guys with him. Juan and Billy left me looking at the heads in the bags, and went over to the guy and talked with him. I could hear them whispering, looking back at me from time to time, so I knew I was the subject.
This went on for a while, so I looked around and saw all the guns and the ammunition; all the representatives of power. Straight people, they tell you they like guns because they like to shoot targets. But it’s the power, man. That’s what it is and all it is. It’s the big dick spurting lead cum all over the place. You can call it our rights or you can call it target practice or you can call it personal protection, but it’s about power. I wanted power, and I wanted a gun just like everyone else. Martial arts, Shen Chuan, it gave me power-but a gun, that was the ultimate power.
I put that all out of my mind as the crowd back there broke off and I got a really good look at the guy they were surrounding. He was a little blond guy with a burr haircut and he came strutting around one of the racks of weapons. He was covered in weapons himself, holsters filled with automatics all over him. His eyes darted from side to side. He was as paranoid as a staked goat at a Fourth of July picnic. And like the goat, just because he was paranoid didn’t mean they weren’t out to get him.
“You’re the Headmaster,” I said.
“They call me that,” he said, and he didn’t offer me his hand when I offered mine. I put my hand away, feeling as if I had offered him a cold fish. He looked me up and down. He was short, but he was broad and had legs like tree trunks. They were supported on little feet in little black boots with silver tips. With those things, he could kick a cockroach to death in a corner of the room.
“I got word you done some things,” he said.
“You mean the girl?” I said.
“I mean the girl. You hit her good?”
“Yeah. I broke her little nose.”
“That shows you got some grit. I’m not saying it takes anything to beat up a little girl, but I’m telling you it takes balls to do it.”
I had already heard this from his guys, but I didn’t say anything.
“We need guys like you, can follow orders, do what needs to be done.”
I said, “Okay.”
“Those heads you’re looking at,” Headmaster said, “they strayed. They started trying to hustle their own business-our drug business-when their piece was enough. They wanted more. They wanted to sell a little pussy on the side. The pussy is in the river. These guys…well…you see what’s left of them.”
“Run a pretty tight ship,” I said.
Headmaster laughed. “That I do. What we got to do, man, is we still got some things to try with you.”
“Try with me?”
“Yeah,” Headmaster said. “Come back here.”
There was another room beyond this one and I let the Headmaster lead me back there. When he did, his guys followed me in. Juan hit me a hard one behind the head and made my sight go black. Then my vision jumped back with white dots in it, and I staggered a little. Then someone I didn’t see kicked me up under the butt from behind and got me in the balls.
I swung out and hit someone, and then the Headmaster was on me, slamming one in my stomach. I guess instinct took over, because I kicked him in the groin and stepped forward, popped my palm against the side of his head, and he went down.
I whirled then, tried to hit another guy with a jab, but he slipped it and I caught one under the belly. I jammed an elbow into the back of his neck as he stooped, and he grunted. Then I slapped my hands over his ears and he screamed and turned away. I kicked out at Billy’s knee, and he screamed. I hit Juan in the throat, and as he dropped, I smelled shit on the air.
I hit another one of the guys with a knee to the inside of his leg, and that dropped him. I poked my fingers in another guy’s eyes, not enough to blind him, but enough to make him less interested in kicking my butt.
And then the Headmaster yelled, “That’s it, that’s enough.”
He got up holding his nuts with one hand, grinning at me, holding his other hand up in a stop motion.
“All right,” he said. “All right, you got what it takes.”
I wiped blood off my mouth.
“We got to see you can take it same as dish it out…and man, you can dish it out. Can you teach that chop socky to the rest of us?”
“So this was a test?” I said.
“Big time,” Headmaster said. Then he frowned and looked at Juan. “Man, you shit your pants?”
Juan nodded.
“Go get some fresh drawers,” Headmaster said. “Damn, Juan, he didn’t hit you in the belly.”
“When you get hit hard, throat, any kind of place,” I said, “you’re carrying a load, you’ll drop it.”
“Ain’t that something?” Headmaster said. “I’ve seen and smelled them do it when they’re shot, but I didn’t know about the hitting. That’s some shit you got there.”
“No,” I said. “It’s Juan that’s got the shit.”
Everyone, except Juan, who was waddling out of the room, laughed.
I got respect when everyone in the bowling alley heard about how I had fought. Truth was though, had they fought back a little more persistent, martial arts training or not, I would have been toast. They weren’t willing enough. Me, I thought I was in for it. Like maybe I was just a test for them, way the girl was supposed to be for me, so I was fighting back big time. Them, they were just testing. I was glad they quit when they did, ’cause I felt like my balls were trying to crawl out of my asshole from that kick I got.
Anyway, I was in.
So, I guess a week went by, and I was doing some little things, like I had to break a guy’s leg to get some money that was owed for something or another the gang had going. I didn’t know what. I didn’t ask. I didn’t care. I just stomped the side of his knee with my foot. It cracked like a fruit jar tossed on the sidewalk and he gave up the money. He was ready to give anything up. I asked him to suck my dick and lick my nuts, he’d have done it. Anything to keep me from breaking his other knee.