Becoming the Storm
70 Coach
I’D HAD A LOT OF RESPECT for Gamma House ever since Dawn and Cathy introduced us to their sisters four years ago. The fact that TK, Addison, and Amber had all continued with the sorority and become members after the shooting, brought us closer. We always donated to their fundraisers for Riley Children’s Hospital in Indianapolis, rapidly becoming the top children’s transplant hospital in the country.
But all the sororities and fraternities on campus were supporters of various charities and causes. It brought the members together with a common cause. We had a closer connection with Gamma because of the current members, but in the wake of the shooting, George and Rich had both pledged Lambda. The triplets were sister alumnae of Theta House. Renee and Sora had both been members of Kappa. Theta had recently re-evaluated their ‘cause’ and had adopted St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis where a sister chapter at the University of Memphis was trying to raise awareness of juvenile cancer.
Like many well-intentioned drives, this one started a little short-sighted. The sororities decided that they should donate their hair to make wigs for all the poor bald girls being treated for cancer. That appealed to everyone’s vanity as well as supporting the children. It didn’t do much for the actual work of the hospital, and in the long run it didn’t help the children. It takes longer to make a wig than most children are in care at the hospital. And children grow. What fit one when it was measured might no longer fit when it was delivered. I’d listened to the triplets start enthusiastically and then roll their eyes with the impossibility of the task.
Ultimately, the ladies decided to sell their hair and donate the proceeds to the hospital. Whitney told me to donate her hair. When we got back to the ranch, Debbie took charge of the locks Whitney’s mother had sheared and added them to the sorority’s donation. As much as I loved Whitney’s hair, I wasn’t going to make a shrine of it. She wasn’t dead and even if she had been, there were better things to do with her hair.
Coach Hancock accepted our invitation to dinner out at the ranch and we did a little tour as we caught up with everyone. We stopped by Casa del Sol and talked to Lionel and a very pregnant Sugar. Leon was running all over and seemed to have a ball in his hands at all times.
“Are you planning to raise a whole team?” Coach asked.
“As long as he’ll keep loving me and his kids, I’ll keep popping them out,” Sugar said happily. “We had to try for two years before we got the first one to take. Then this one took on the first try. I guess blowjobs won’t get you pregnant!” Coach turned a little red, but joined in the laughter.
“So, are you going pro?” he asked Lionel. “I was disappointed that Lamar didn’t stick with the Pacers.”
“Well, I’ve been told that I should attend the draft in Indy on the 29th, and not just sit home by the phone,” Lionel said. “If I get an offer, I’m taking it. I don’t have aspirations of becoming a lawyer like Lamar.”
“You’re going to make a great engineer when you’ve finished playing ball,” Sugar beamed.
I started laughing. There was just something insanely funny to me about Lionel Trane the Engineer. Choo choo!
“If I had a gi with me, I’d offer to spar with you, Brian. Whitney tells me I could learn something,” Coach said when we looked into the silo.
“I doubt that,” I said. “I still train mostly as a meditative act. Though Whitney beat my ass on Monday. Still, we are not a formal dojo and only a couple people ever wear gis in here. Mostly, we do forms and spar naked. I’m willing if you’d like.” Coach raised an eyebrow and wrinkled his nose at me. Then he started removing his uniform and carefully folding it.
“I have a change of clothes in the car,” he said.
We only dropped to skivvies out of respect for Judy and Adam, who showed up at the door while we were undressing.
“Masters, may we watch and learn?” Adam said formally. Coach turned and bowed to him. Judy held Coach’s neatly folded uniform as we squared off.
Crap! He’s big. Coach was a foot taller than me and probably outweighed me by eighty pounds. We bowed and that was all I had time for. I was not about to let Coach hit me if I could avoid it. He was just too big. On the other hand, he was the one who taught me to flow like water and he flowed right along with me. Wherever I moved, he was there, too. I was successfully avoiding his blows, but I couldn’t get off defense.
Then my perception of the world seemed to change. I began to see the difference between when he was actually striking with force and where he was striking as a feint to set up another move. And when I saw the feint, I became a rock before it. His feints were less than half force blows intended to move me away from them. When I moved into them instead, he was jarred and his full force blow found nothing where he thought I would move. I slipped beneath him and tapped him three times on his back before I backed away. He spun to face me and his eyes narrowed as he nodded.
Coach was good. I’d finally sparred with Amy the last time she’d been at the ranch and I could identify similarities in their training. Both were aggressive, even though controlled. They carried the battle to their opponents, keeping them moving away and anticipating their moves. They also expected their opponents to fall back before their onslaught. When I stepped in front of Coach’s feints to cut them short, it was taking the battle back to him and he began to fall back.
It simply isn’t possible to give a blow-by-blow description of sparring. In the first place, I’m not individually aware of the moves. I just move. But each time I had the advantage, I tapped Coach in the same three locations on his back. That’s not to say he didn’t land a few blows himself. My bruises from Monday hadn’t entirely faded and I was going to have a new set today. After about twenty minutes, we stepped apart and by mutual agreement bowed to each other.
“Thank you for the lesson, master,” Coach intoned. Shit! It’s just not possible to adapt to that kind of a reversal in roles.
“Thank you. I have learned a great deal today, Coach,” I said.
Judy ran to Coach’s car with his uniform and brought his duffel bag with a change of clothes to the outdoor showers. She took an appreciative look at both our naked bodies in the shower and then politely left. It’s funny that taking a shower outdoors had none of the awkwardness of stripping to do naked combat. Teams showered together all the time. Coach noticed Judy’s appraisal and chuckled.
“That one was a fireball in school,” he said. “I once found the Carson twins out behind the football stadium picking up boards from the construction site and pounding on them at random. The school was doing some construction and repair to the stands and score booth. I asked them what they were doing and they said they were looking to see if there were more trick boards like Judy had broken. They pointed to a couple boards that were splintered on the ground. There was no trick about it. I finally had to break a board myself before they would believe that a person could do that without some kind of trick.”
I laughed, but realized how close both Judy and Lexi had come to having their reputations trashed by the boys.
“She’s studying criminal justice,” I said. “I worry that she’ll follow Whitney into the Marines, but she’s so little.”
“She’s within the height restrictions by an inch for women,” Coach said. “But there are probably not a dozen women in the Marines who are under five feet. Whitney was nearly rejected because she is at the maximum height for women. She’s probably the tallest woman in the Marines right now.” Coach dressed and we walked up to the big house. I didn’t bother to dress until I got there. It was almost dinner time.
The casa dressed in house gis for dinner and we had a great time talking with Coach Hancock and being reassured that Whitney would be okay.
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