When Brad put the phone keypad letters against the numbers that appeared on the message screen, the sender’s name spelled Resurrection.
It was a few days later, and the weather, which had been outstanding during most of April, still couldn’t completely shrug off winter, so they had days of rather cold, damp mist and rain. For the past three days, Brad had taken the bus instead of riding his bicycle. It was an enjoyable and relaxing trek to the dojang south of the city: an easy jog from Poly Canyon to the Route 6B bus stop near the Kennedy Library; an easy seven-minute bus ride to the Downtown Transit Center; switch to the Route 3 bus line; a longer twenty-minute bus ride to Marigold Shopping Center; and then another easy run from there down Tank Farm Road to the dojang, which was just north of the airport. He had lots of time to do some reading or listen to audiobooks or lecture recordings on his tablet computer. Brad wished he could take the bus all the time—it was free for Cal Poly students—but he wanted the exercise, so he stuck with it whenever the weather was cooperative.
The week had started, along with the rain, with an introduction to Krav Maga. “Krav Maga was developed in Israel for the military,” James Ratel had begun last Monday afternoon. “It is not a discipline, like karate or judo; it is not a sport, and will never be in the Olympics or on television. Krav Maga has three basic objectives: neutralize the attack through the use of arm and hand locks and parries, being careful to protect yourself; go from defense to offense as quickly as possible; and quickly neutralize the attacker by manipulating joints and attacking vulnerable spots on the body, using any tools that might be handy. We are assuming you have broken or misplaced your cane, so now you are left with having to defend yourself without a weapon and probably against a very angry attacker.
“Some teachers will tell their students that the amount of force needed to neutralize an attacker should be proportional to the force of the attack, which means, for example, you would use less force on an attacker that uses his fist than on an attacker with a bat or knife,” Ratel went on. “I do not believe in that. Your objective is to put the attacker down so you can escape. In training, you will do three blows to demonstrate you can do them, but on the street you continue to attack until your attacker goes down. Forget all the Bruce Lee movies you’ve ever seen: it’s not one parry, one blow, and then let the guy get up to go after you again. Once you’ve blocked or locked up the attacker, you keep attacking his soft vulnerable spots and joints until he goes down, and then you run like hell and get away from the situation as quickly as possible. Understand?”
“Yes, Chief,” Brad said.
Ratel motioned to a folder that was lying on the counter outside. “That is some homework for you,” he said. “We will train to attack soft spots on the body using numbers, going from head to foot. Learn the spots and the numbers. You will also learn about all of the two hundred and thirty joints on the human body, and specifically which way they articulate so you can attack them. Be prepared to demonstrate those to me by next Wednesday.”
“Yes, Chief.”
“Very well. Kick off those shoes and socks, then on the mat.” Brad removed his sneakers and socks, bowed to the center of the blue mat, and stepped to the center, and Ratel followed. Brad was wearing his workout beol, now with a red and black belt, instead of the white, with first-level poom-rank markings on it, indicating that he had passed his first round of basic instruction.
“We start with the basics, and in Krav Maga that is parries,” Ratel began. “Notice I didn’t say ‘block.’ A block suggests that you might absorb some of the energy an attacker is using against you, like two football linemen smashing into one another. We use the term ‘parry’ instead, which means you divert most or all of the energy of an attack in a safe direction.”
“Just like the basic moves with the cane, sir?” Brad observed.