Still not entirely sure about things, I punched with my right, going for the side of his head. Just as quickly, J.T. blocked my shot with his left arm, then his hands were down again, passive at his side.
“Maybe a D,” he said roughly, his breathing no easier than mine. “You’re still alive, but only barely.”
Slowly, I straightened. “You attacked me as a training exercise?”
“Think of it as graduation.” He fingered his side, where I’d kicked him pretty hard, and winced. “Though, given my age, next time I’m going with a paper diploma.”
My hands were still up. I couldn’t drop them. Not yet. My breathing was too shallow. My throat hurt. I would be bruised in a matter of hours.
“Fuck you!” I said suddenly.
He studied me, eyes cool, inscrutable.
I hit him again. He blocked it again. So I really went for it. Punching, jabbing, and attacking until pretty soon we were chasing each other around in a circle again, him on the defensive this time, me powered with a rage I barely recognized. He had hurt me. I needed to hurt him back.
He’d almost killed me.
And I’d nearly let him.
It burned. My throat, my chest, my pride. All that training, all that practicing, and I’d still nearly died, taken out by a sixty-year-old ex-marine.
Tulip chased us. Not barking or whining. She had seen me spar before, and maybe she understood the situation better than I did. I don’t know. I chased my shooting coach and he let me. Dodging, blocking, recoiling, sometimes slapping back. Moving with a speed I didn’t know a silver-haired former marine sniper could still have.
Problem with hitting, really truly throwing a punch, is that it demands such an explosive release of energy. Even world heavyweight champions can only sustain the action for three minutes at a time.
Sooner versus later, my hands grew heavy. My lungs heaved for air, my shoulders and chest burned. My heart rate had spiked to the edge of nausea, and I no longer chased my opponent as much as I staggered after him, my rage still willing, the rest of me giving out.
J.T. ended the situation, by plopping down beneath a skeletal tree. I collapsed on the snow next to him. My face was beet red, covered in sweat from my exertions. The snow felt good, the gray sky a balm against my flushed cheeks.
Tulip came over, sat beside me, and whined uncertainly. I stroked her head. She licked my cheek. Then she wandered over to J.T. to repeat the ritual. Satisfied all was now well, she plopped between us, burrowing against my side for warmth. After another moment, J.T. got up, trotted over to my messenger bag, and returned it to me.
He sat back down and we passed another moment in silence.
“Why is my firearms instructor beating me up?” I asked finally.
He regarded me steadily. “Nothing wrong with training with a handgun,” he said curtly. “But odds are, you’ll never get off a shot. Or if you do, you’ll be panicked and overwhelmed with adrenaline. You’ll shoot wild till you run out of ammo. Then, you’re back where you started—up close and personal.”
I thought of my encounter with Stan Miller. J.T. had just summarized it quite nicely. Stan and I had both fired wildly. And the situation had ended up close and personal.
“Have you ever killed anyone?” I asked.
“I’ve done my share of damage.”
“How did it feel?”
“Never as good as I wanted it to.”
We sat in silence again. I stroked Tulip’s head.
“Am I going to die on the twenty-first?” I asked at last. A stupid question, but maybe that’s what life came down to. Stupid questions in waning hours where we stood on the tracks, watching the locomotive bear down on us and wondering how bad it was gonna hurt.
“Maybe,” J.T. said. He looked at me again. “Who beat you? Mother, father, boyfriend?”