I looked at my work shirt.
Then at the toolbox near the mat.
“Because things break.”
Jake frowned.
“What?”
“Things break.”
I tapped the cane against the mat.
“Doors.”
“Pipes.”
“Light fixtures.”
“People.”
“You fix what you can.”
Daniel looked down.
He knew the rest of the story.
Most people there did not.
I had not competed since 1986.
I stopped after my younger brother Thomas died.
Not in a fight.
Not in some dramatic martial arts accident.
Drunk driver.
Interstate 94 outside Chicago.
Thirty-nine years old.
Wife.
Two children.
Gone in one night.
Something in me changed afterward.
I stopped enjoying competition.
I stopped traveling.
Stopped teaching full time.
My wife, Margaret, and I moved back to Riverdale to help Thomas's widow raise the children.
I took a job maintaining city recreation facilities because it came with steady benefits and let me stay close to home.
Eventually I opened a small evening martial arts program at the community center.
Nothing fancy.
No trophies on the walls.
No photographs of me kicking people.
Children.
Working fathers.
Teenagers who needed somewhere to go after school.
Daniel Kim had been one of them.
He was nineteen when he walked into my gym.
Angry.
Fast.
Talented.
And almost as arrogant as Jake.
Almost.
Daniel smiled at the memory.
Jake looked at him.
“He taught you?”
Daniel nodded.
“For nine years.”
Now the crowd reacted again.
Jake stared at me.
Then Daniel.
“You're a seventh-degree black belt.”
“Yes.”
“And he taught you?”
“Yes.”
Jake looked at my cane.
The old work shoes.
The faded blue shirt.
His face slowly lost its color.
Daniel continued.
“He also taught Chief Instructor Marcus Grant.”
“Sensei Peter Wallace.”
“Coach Ronald Avery.”
“Half the old men running schools around this county have been thrown across a room by Henry Carter at some point.”
Raymond called from the side:
“Twice in my case.”
People laughed.
I shook my head.
“Daniel.”
“All right.”
He stopped.
Jake looked at me.
Then at the mat.
His humiliation had begun turning into something uglier.
Defensiveness.
“So what?”
Daniel's face hardened.
Jake continued.
“So he's some old champion.”
I watched him.
He was trying to rebuild himself.
“Doesn't mean I knew.”
“No,” I said.
He looked at me.
“That part's true.”
Jake seemed relieved.
Then I continued.
“But you shouldn't have needed to know.”
Silence.
His expression changed.
I pointed toward the bench.
“You think your mistake was taking a cane from an old fighter.”
Jake said nothing.
“It wasn't.”
I leaned on the cane.
“You took it from an old man who needed it.”
A woman near the front lowered her phone.
I continued.
“If I had never trained a day in my life, would that make what you did funny?”
Jake looked down.
“No.”
“If I couldn't defend myself?”
“No.”
“If I fell when you pulled it away?”
He swallowed.
“No.”
“Then my past has nothing to do with whether you were wrong.”