Free Buffalo Jump by Howard Shrier

area stretching from Windsor, in the southernmost reaches of the province, to North Bay, two hundred miles north of Toronto. Officials in North Bay liked to tout its clean air to tourists, billing the area as the Blue Sky Region and the city itself as “Just North Enough to be Perfect.” Now their marketers would have to come up with a new slogan. Something like “North Bay: Not as Brown as Downtown.”
    My apartment didn’t smell much better after all the cigarettes Dante Ryan had smoked last night. I opened both balcony doors and emptied and rinsed the ashtray he had filled. The evening had been so surreal I might have thought it a dream; a better dream than the one I had just had. But the photo of Lucas Silver and his parents still lay on my coffee table. The contract on their lives was all too real, if what Ryan told me had been true.
    Was it? Could it be? Did he really care whether a five-year-old lived or died? Or was he using me in some way—to flush Silver out, or maybe set me up for Marco Di Pietra, who would never forget what I had cost him.
    For the moment, I had to assume Ryan was telling the truth: that he wanted to save a life and needed my help to do it. I had things in this world to make up for, repairs to make, and I wasn’t getting the opportunity to do it behind my desk at Beacon.
    The first thing to do was stop thinking of myself as still being in recovery. So instead of doing a physio routine on my arm, I eased myself down to the floor to begin a salutation to the sun. I worked my body slowly and deliberately through the movements, feeling tightness in my back, shoulders and calves as muscles moved in ways they had missed for months. By the time I completed four salutations my right arm felt like a wolf had clamped its jaws around it. I was damp with sweat, much of it from the heat and humidity but at least some due to my own efforts.
    I rolled up to a standing position and marked a place on the floor where two parquet tiles met. I planted my feet there and began working through the
sanchin kata. Katas
are designed to improve a martial artist’s balance, fluidity and style, but they also provide a good cardio workout, even—perhaps especially— when done slowly and mindfully.
    Sanchin
is moderate in its degree of difficulty, with forty-seven moves in all, including eight attacks. Before my injury, I had done
sanchin
so often it felt ingrained. I could do it left to right or right to left, beginning to end or backwards. I had done it blindfolded but didn’t think I’d be trying that any time today.
    During my first go at it, I felt awkward, having to think about the moves rather than letting them flow through me. My goal was to begin and end at precisely the same spot, but I didn’t feel rooted in it and even stumbled once in transition between defence and attack. I kept reminding myself to slow down, breathe more deeply, find the focus
sanchin
can bring.
    My first karate teacher told me a
kata
was a fight against an imaginary opponent. Not that I needed imaginary opponents, with Marco Di Pietra back on the scene. I’ve since learned that
katas
can be far more than that. Like dance and other art forms, in the right hands they can express sentiments about life, justice and the self. Known in English as the Three Cycles Form,
sanchin
symbolizes three primary conflicts of life: birth, survival and death. Only when the life cycle has ended can it begin again. When I completed my first run-through, I rested a minute and sipped water, then started again. It went more smoothly as muscle memory began kicking in. But not until the third time did I finish where I’d begun, the marked parquet tile squarely between my feet.
    By seven I was heading down Broadview in my revitalized Camry. The east-facing sides of the downtown towers reflected the rising sun as though they were aflame. Not themost comforting image in our post-9/11 world, but arresting nonetheless.
    I wanted to get in to work early, whip