Free Futures Near and Far by Dave Smeds Page A

Her
glance reminds me a little of a deer as it stares into oncoming headlights.
    “Don’t worry,” I say. “Just do it the way you’ve done it all
week.”
    She tugs her belt, tightening the knot. Weightlessness
perversely unties everyone’s belt several times a day, unless they’re as old
and frayed as mine. The committee has already voted to replace them with
velcro-secured ones. “Yes, sensei.”
    “What’s this ‘sensei’ shit?”
    “Yes, Aaron.”
    “Kick ass, girl. Show them what a Goju player can do.” The
sentence is hardly out of my mouth when her name is announced over the
loudspeaker.
    She crosses her fingers once, gives me her pert,
nineteen-year-old smile once again, and launches toward the cube.
    I observe her gracefully sliding through the trap door to
take her place on the velcro patch, and feel like a father with only one child
left at home. Sally is the single one of my students who has survived the
morning’s qualification rounds. I’m a bit startled by the feeling. Ordinarily
watching that body of hers move brings on much more corrupt emotions. Must be
getting old, I muse. Pushing the big three-five. My own instructor retired from
tournament play at twenty-five.
    She places the soles of her feet on the velcro and stands
straight, hands at sides, gi precisely arranged, hair tied back in a neat bun.
The commander announces kata seinchin ,
and gives her the cue to start.
    Gradually she unfolds into the first posture of the kata,
and proceeds with the opening set of slow, isotonic movements. She must try to
maintain her position just above the floor. If she floats too high, she’ll be
unable to kick off in order to begin the fast sections of the form. I picture
all too well the times during training when even I ended up rotating helplessly
in the middle of the enclosure.
    She hovers perfectly. I watch her hands: clenching for
double downward block, opening for the upward block, tensing for the finger
strike. The hardest part is breath control. If she exhales or inhales too
profoundly, it will send her traveling in directions she’s not supposed to go.
    Then she kicks, zooming straight “up,” then back down to
land on the velcro so smoothly that it holds her once more. She rotates
slightly, blocking with tension, then pushes off toward a corner, performing a
lower block in midair, and bouncing back to the opposite corner, blocking
again. She catches herself against the sides of the cube, canceling her
momentum. She stays there, executing another slow block, then kicks off to
perform the same set of movements to another two corners.
    She’s good. She’s on a streak. Furthermore, seinchin is the most spectacular null
gravity kata, if done with the precision that she is exhibiting. I feel a smile
creeping across my lips. The judges’ gazes are rapt.
    She lands in cat stance dead center on the velcro, and
finishes the last block in an almost leisurely fashion. She knows how well
she’s done.
    “Hot damn,” Mikey says. We wait. I wipe the slickness off my
palms.
    “Five point zero,” we hear come out of the speakers. It’s
the highest score so far in Sally’s class.
    She shoots through the trap door like an acrobat, pivoting
on one finger, and glides across the gap to the bleachers, a great big grin on
her face. Then she has her arms around me, pinning me to my seat.
    “Congratulations,” I say.
    “Oh, I’m so glad you talked me into coming here.” Sally gave
up a semester of college to make the trip. She waves her arms in a little
dance, forgetting where she is, and I have to catch her toes and reel her back
in.
    “Hold on. The competition isn’t over yet.”
    “I don’t care. I never thought I’d get a five today.”
    Some time later, I leave her in the company of the others
and wander back to the kumite area. I have a bye for the second round, so I
have some time.
    Sally is the new breed, I tell myself. She’s learned the
music. Whenever the next karate tournament in high