Briggs, may I ask you something strange? "" "Ask away," she hesitated. She looked at her hands, then at him. That young man, the tall one who put his hand on me, his name is Colt Garrison. His father owns the martial arts school on Balsam Street.
My brother Roy's grandson Cole goes there. He has been studying there for 2 years, working extra shifts at the hospital in Big Pine to pay for it. It matters to him enormously, especially since his grandmother passed last winter. She paused. Today is Cole's belt examination.
He is testing for his blue stripe, and after what just happened here, I am worried. I know how young men like that one work. They do not let things go. They find softer targets. Cole is gentle and earnest, and he does not know how to protect himself from someone who wants to humiliate him.
" She looked at him steadily. "I know this is an enormous thing to ask of a stranger, but would you consider coming with me to watch the examination just to sit in the back? Your presence alone, a man like you in the room would be enough. Someone like that garrison boy will not take a run at Cole if there is someone sitting there who looks like you. Hank was quiet for a moment.
He thought about Roy, about Wyatt Decker sitting in the halfway house on Inyokern Road. He thought about the 9 years he had spent methodically building a life that required as little of him as possible and giving himself reasons why that was the right thing to do. Then he thought about June. Specifically, he thought about something she had said to him in the third year of their marriage after he had declined an invitation from a neighbor who had just lost her husband and needed help loading furniture for a donation run. "You can always find a reason to say no," she had told him.
"But some people just need to be seen, Hank. That is all they need. And you are good at seeing people. Do not waste that. " He reached into his jacket pocket.
He touched the silver chain he wore around his neck. The one with June's wedding ring on it. The one he had worn every day for four years. He did not take it out. He just touched it.
"I will come watch," he said. "I am not getting involved in anything. I will sit in the back. " Dela Flynn's eyes filled with relief so plain it was almost difficult to look at directly. "Just being there is enough," she said.
She started at her Subaru confirmed the engine was running steady and pulled out of the station with a small wave. Hank stood at the pump for a long moment after she had gone. He had a feeling, the specific feeling of a door opening that you thought had been permanently shut, that he was about to break a promise he had made to himself. He remounted the Harley, started the engine, sat for a moment, listening to the motor. Then he rode south toward Balsam Street.
Garrison Martial Arts Academy occupied the ground floor of a two-story commercial building near the corner of Balsam and Bowman. New construction tan stucco, a bright red and gold sign above the entrance, floor to ceiling windows along the front wall through which you could see the white tatami mats inside. Hank pulled into the parking lot at 2 in the afternoon. He cut the engine and sat on the bike for a long moment. He had not walked into a martial arts facility in 9 years.
The last time had been his final day as an instructor at Camp Pendleton when he had taught his last class shaking hands with 12 young Marines walked to his truck and driven home to Ridgerest, knowing that what had been the center of his professional life for 22 years was behind him for good. He had told himself many things over the subsequent 9 years to justify why that door was closed permanently. He was too old. The world had taken enough from him. He had given what he had to give and had earned the right to spend his remaining years quietly without responsibility without the weight of other people's survival resting in his hands.
Looking through the front windows of Garrison Martial Arts Academy, at the white mats inside and the folding chairs being set up along the walls, he was aware that every one of those things he had told himself might be less true than he had needed them to be. He dismounted, walked to the entrance, pushed the door open. The interior smelled like matte cleaner and chalk and old swad. The specific smell of a working dojo. A smell Hank associated with two decades of his life so strongly that walking into it was almost physical.
40 people inside parents and folding chairs along the walls. Students stretching and warming up younger children chasing each other in the back corner until an instructor told them to stop. 40 heads turned when he walked through the door. He was aware of the assessment happening in the room. The way a room full of people takes in someone who does not fit the pattern they are expecting.
The leather jacket, the white beard, the boots, the way he moved. A few parents leaned to each other. One mother pulled her child closer in the automatic way of someone who has registered something as unfamiliar. Hank walked to the back of the room. He found an empty folding chair against the wall, sat down, and folded his hands in his lap.
Dela Flynn was three rows up. She caught his eye and mouthed the words, ""Thank you. "" He nodded once. A man approached from the front of the room, 54 years old, compact and precise in the way of someone who has spent a lifetime paying attention to how their body moves. He was wearing a black gi with a black belt bearing four gold stripes.
His hair was dark brown, gone to gray, at the temples, cut short and neat. He carried himself with a particular bearing that Hank recognized immediately, not as a martial arts instructor, but as someone who had once served. "Master Garrison," the man said, extending his hand. "Welcome to Garrison Academy. I do not believe we have met.
" Hank shook his hand. The man's grip was firm and measured. "Just here to watch. A friend's family is testing today. " "Wonderful.