Matches for the coming week are posted on Fridays; so half of the staff is in the command center waiting around to see who they’ll be fighting. I stand at the doorway where I can read the matches on the big screen. I draw Jake, who is currently number twelve on the board. I’ve never sparred with him, but I watched him once when he faced Toby. He never made it to fighting with sticks because Toby landed a crushing body blow that left Jake on the ground, gasping for air.
“How about we go on Monday?” Jake asks. “We can be the warm-up match before the big event.”
“The big event?”
“Didn’t you see? Martha is facing Stephen. If he wins, it’s possible for him to move from third to first.”
Stephen is the man I used to call “Angry Eyebrows.”
Lord, is it a sin that I’d like to see him beaten badly?
****
On Saturday, I’m scheduled to spar with Amelia. At the last minute Martha decides that the staff could use a break from guarding me, so I’ll need to travel with her to Capon Springs instead. The trip through the woods is fun for me as she runs ahead, then lets me practice tracking her. I track her to a big rock and conclude from the marks next to it that she sat on the rock. From that point on, her track is nearly invisible. I find just a few broken fir needles and some spots that are little more than soft depressions. It takes me a half hour to follow her just forty meters, where I find her sitting in the limbs of a massive fir tree.
“It was like your feet were barely touching the ground. Are you learning to fly or something?” I ask.
I look at her feet and see how she did it. When she sat on the rock earlier, she was switching from hard soled hiking boots into a soft leather moccasin that would allow her to feel every twig and avoid leaving tracks.
“If I hadn’t been sitting here watching you, I wouldn’t believe it was possible. You followed an invisible track through three different ninety degree turns. Nobody can do that, Cephas. Nobody.”
That’s good to know.
****
We walk in silence as we approach the edge of the woods then make our way under cover until the only house with a view of us is the little house of the old couple we’re impersonating. When we break cover, Wendy spots us and waves that she wants us to stop. Martha and I exchange looks. We can spare a few minutes.
“Leave on the hat and glasses,” Martha says, returning to her team leader persona. “Austin says they can be trusted, but they don’t need to know who’s using Bill’s identity.”
“You make a much prettier me than me, dear,” Wendy says as we approach the door.
Wendy is barely a meter and a half tall, with curly white hair. Her face still has a youthful look, but shows no sign of enhancements.
“I’m sure the real Bill would disagree,” I say.
Wendy assesses me with kind eyes that suddenly go wide, but she keeps her emotions in check.
She knows who I am.
“Bill?” she calls over her shoulder. “Bill, can you come here?”
We hear someone shuffling inside.
“What for?” he answers.
“It’s time, Bill.”
“Time for what?”
“It’s the time, Bill. Like we’ve talked about.”
“Oh. The time. I’ll go get it.”
We can hear rustling inside the house. Out of the corner of my eye I can see Martha senses something is going on, but she’s not preparing for danger.
She senses that Wendy is on edge.
Bill emerges. He’s a tall and handsome man, with a gentlemanly bearing and immaculate clothing. Like Wendy, his face shows no signs of enhancements.
“You can take off the hat and glasses, Dr. Paulson,” Bill says. “My Wendy may be eighty-four, but her eyes are as sharp as a hawk’s. Young man, you have no idea how long I’ve waited for this day.”
He’s so nervous his hands are shaking. Why?
Bill reaches into an inner jacket pocket and I can’t help but wonder if he has a weapon ready to avenge the loss of a loved one. As I watch him dig through his pocket, I relax. He’s holding his elbow in such a way that he’s reaching for something much smaller than a weapon. Whatever it is, it’s concealed completely inside his palm when his hand emerges.
Bill starts to slowly drop down onto one knee. Wendy’s hands come up to her mouth with excitement and I see tears start to well up in her eyes and run down her cheeks.
“Wendy? Will you marry me?” Bill asks.
He opens his hand to reveal a very old diamond solitaire engagement ring.
“Yes, I will.”
Wendy holds out her finger for Bill to put the ring in place. She looks as radiant as a twenty-year old.
“There now,” Bill says. “I’ve done it like I should have done it long ago.”
He rises back to his feet; then turns to me.
“When you came back and told the world the truth about Jesus, we promised each other that if we were to ever meet you, I would propose and we would beg you to marry us.”
“You want me to marry you? But I’m not a minister and the paperwork doesn’t even exist anymore.”
“Son, we don’t want a piece of paper. That’s all just government stuff. We want you to marry us in the eyes of God. There’s nobody more qualified than you for that.”
“Then I’ll do it. We’ll work out a time and a place, and I’ll do it.”
“Cephas?” Wendy says and glances at Martha. “Could Bill and I speak with you privately sometime before the ceremony?”
Martha looks uneasy about the request. I haven’t been left alone with anyone except trusted members of Four since our escape from Henry.
“Do you need some pre-nuptial counseling?” I ask.
“Something like that,” Bill replies.
“Sure, we can talk. I foresee spending a lot more time at Bethany House.”
“I’m happy to hear that,” Wendy says. “We’ve been very busy since you came back and have gone through a lot of the special Capon water Brill sends. Maybe you could carry some extra water the next time you come through?”
****
I enjoy a night in the comparative luxury of Capon Springs and we go back to Bethany House late on Sunday. I ask Martha for some tips on how to fight Jake, but she tells me that she had no intention of adding me to the board; so I need to figure it out on my own.
On Monday morning, I find myself walking to the training area alone. Blake was supposed to be my escort, but he didn’t show. I look at the woods and I’m sure I could be kilometers away before they even realize I’m missing; but I’m not tempted. With or without a relationship with Martha, Bethany House now feels like home.
Jake is already in pads, waiting for me, and about half of the house has formed a gallery in the trees. Although Stephen is already warming up, Martha is not here for their match. Amelia waves to me from the crowd and wishes me good luck. Today there’s a camera on the edge of the arena. A computer will score each move and determine a winner, as well as the rankings.
Jake is one of those guys who’s always happy and smiling, and I’m not sure if that will make him easier to fight or more difficult. He smiles when he helps me with my gear; he smiles when he gives me tips on how to adjust the pads for better mobility; he smiles as he suggests a good stick weight.
“It’s traditional to start hand-to-hand then move to sticks at ten minutes if you don’t concede,” Jake says.
“What happens if nobody concedes after sticks?”
“I don’t think you’ll need to worry about that today.”
When we walk to the center of the ring, his smile disappears. If he beats me with a lot of points, he can move up one spot on the board; but if the score is close, he’ll stay at number twelve. Since I’m an unknown, he can’t move down.
Jake was never formally trained in the martial arts, but has picked up bits and pieces just like I have. We start to circle each other and take some exploratory jabs and kicks. He has long arms and likes to be at the perfect distance to strike without stepping too close, probably because he got too close to Toby and took a hard blow to the body. His desire to always be at a set distance puts him into a rhythm of throwing combinations of two attacks; then backing off and resetting himself. His hands are too fast for me to try to catch one and throw him, but using the signals he’s giving off, it’s easy to deflect what he throws at me and prevent him from scoring points.
After a dozen or so small combinations like this, I decide to see what will happen if I break his rhythm. I start to block his first punch or kick; then close in on him so he’s too close for his second attack to be effective. Then when he backs to reset, I close even more or back out of his reach. With his usual rhythm broken, I can see the frustration building in him.
The gallery uses matches as team building events; so they’ve been yelling encouragement. Coming into my first match my greatest fear wasn’t that I’d lose or get hurt; it was that the people of Bethany House would all be yelling the names of loved ones that I killed and asking Jake to avenge them. Most of the cheers are for Jake, but at least they’re for him rather than against me.
At the end of ten minutes, we take a short break. I look around the gallery and I’m disappointed that Martha still hasn’t come to watch me. Then I look at the scoreboard and smile when I see that I’m only a few points behind Jake.
Fighting with heavy sticks is more dangerous, but also more likely to end stalemates, like the one we’re in now. When we start again, Jake uses the same rhythm of short attacks at the head, followed by backing off and resetting. This time I choose not to close on him. I keep back and easily block everything he throws as we move in an endless circle. He likes to combine stick moves with kicks and will even use his stick one-handed while I still keep both hands on my stick at all times. Using just one hand increases his reach substantially, but he sometimes looks off balance when he does it.
It’s just a puzzle. Solve it.
Two pieces of his unique puzzle are easy to see. He only goes one-handed on the stick with his right hand and he only kicks with his right foot, never his left. I chance a look at his left foot and see an old scar across his Achilles tendon. I watch more and conclude that whatever gave him that scar made his left foot less flexible and weakened it so he uses it as his plant foot to kick with his right. It also explains why we’ve only been circling in one direction: He’s always trying to keep me to his right side because that’s where his attacks all come from.
I feint to his right and make an unexpected move to his left side. He tries to switch us back, but I hold firm on his left, allowing me to become the attacker. I know that if he’s forced to attack to his left, he’ll have no choice but to increase his reach by going one-handed on the stick with his right hand. As his left hand comes off the stick, I go for a leg sweep on his left side; but with two hands on the stick, I can’t reach far enough - and miss. Worse, by failing, I leave myself unprotected for a counter attack. He could easily hit my side, but instead tries for maximum points with a blow on the top of the head and comes up short. His stick misses my head gear and slices across my forehead, opening me up but luckily not blinding me, as the blood flows down my face. He backs away.
“Sorry, Cephas. I was aiming for the helmet. You want to concede?”
Now he’s smiling again.
“Does it look like it’ll need a laser cauterizer?”
“Definitely.”
“Then we have thirty minutes. Can I have one minute to cover it?”
“Sure.”
Jake is not the whole puzzle. The two of you together are the puzzle.
When we resume, I press him to the left again. I want another shot at the same move; but I can see that I’ll need to go one-handed with my own stick in order to have the necessary reach. I’ve never tried it before. As predictable as a puzzle piece, he shifts the stick to his right hand and attempts to kick high. This time I block and pivot as before, but as I do I go one-handed and land a blow to the pads above his weak left ankle. He tries to back up, but I instinctively throw the stick to my left hand to block the attack on my head; then hit the same ankle again with my right foot.
The pieces click together in my head as Jake and I become a single puzzle for me to solve. I feel like a kid on the playground playing Christians and Cult Hunters again, manipulating the pieces five moves ahead. I remember something from the playground that I haven’t felt for a long time.
The solution is joy. That’s what was missing from my life when I was The Cult Hunter: Simple joy.
Jake stumbles as I continue to attack his ankle; so I press harder, giving him no chance to reset.
“Why are you smiling?” Jake asks as he jumps over my stick.
“I just realized how happy I feel.”
“If you say you’re enjoying hitting me, I’m going to ask for a Biblical reference,” he replies.
“There’s no joy in hitting you, Jake. It’s that I feel like you’re my brother and that we’re both a part of each other and of something greater than either of us.”
It’s like the childhood joy of solving a puzzle.
Unfortunately for Jake, this puzzle is solved. First I’ll have the stick in both hands; then just the left; then the right until he has no idea how to defend. All the while I stay on his left side, taking his feet out of play and even giving me the occasional shot at his back and racking up points.
“Enough! I concede,” he says when my point total is too high for him to catch up.
I’m overjoyed to see that the smile is back on Jake’s face as he says it. I ask him to pray with me.
After the prayer, the talk around the gallery is all about how sticks must be part of cult hunter training; but as I stand there, I’m looking at everyone I’ve sparred with and seeing solutions to puzzles. My mind goes beyond how I can beat each of them. Instead I’m seeing how I can help each of them to be better.
“You don’t look like the winner,” Amelia says. “You’re covered in blood. Let me clean you up while we wait for the big show.”
I sit on a rock while she wipes away the blood.
“It’s pretty deep, Cephas. You’re going to have to sit very still while I cauterize it because I’ll need to do it in layers.”
I try to sit still, but I’m shaking a little.
Amelia sits on the ground.
“Lie down and put your head in my lap.”
When she finishes, I start to sit up.
“Lie still for a minute,” she says.
A sunbeam is poking through the canopy and shining right on my face; so I close my eyes and enjoy the warmth.
Lord, for the first time in a long time, I feel like I have a home.
A shadow crosses my face. I open my eyes to find Martha standing above me.
“The computer ranked you at number fifteen. That’s the highest debut possible. Enjoy the victory, and apparently the spoils.”
Amelia only gets as far as “Martha, I was just” before Martha is gone to put on padding for her match. I sit up and lean against a tree, but stay next to Amelia in the gallery. Most of the house is here now and everyone is expecting the match to go beyond sticks to practice knives, where the first three touches wins.
“Your strongest round is sticks, right Stephen?” Martha asks and he nods. “Break with tradition and start there?”
This causes a murmur in the gallery because everyone knows Martha is much stronger than Stephen in hand-to-hand and is passing up the opportunity to score a lot of early points. Martha chooses the stick that I just finished using, which still has my blood on it, and the match begins. She spins it like a baton, which looks fancy but is all too easy to have knocked out of your hands. A dropped stick is big points for your opponent, so Stephen can’t resist trying with a simple thrust. Her stick is just a blur as she hits him three times before he can withdraw.
Martha circles to his left; then stops when she’s lined up perfectly to look at me seated next to Amelia. She spins the stick again. She’s taunting Stephen, but she isn’t even looking at him. She’s looking squarely at Amelia.
Stephen takes the bait again; but this time tries a very nice combination attack that’s known as one of his best. She blocks the first, ducks under the second and blocks the third while landing a kick square on his chest and knocking his stick to the ground by hitting the back of his hand.
“Pick it up.”
Stephen just stands there, testing his hand. Even through the reactive padding, that hit must have hurt. He picks it up, but I can see his grip is weak and his movements slower. Martha returns to the spot where she can glare at Amelia. When the action begins again, the only word to describe Martha’s assault is “savage.” Unlike the encouragement offered during my match, the gallery has become silent.
For two minutes, she pounds Stephen with the stick, her feet and her fists; then finally sweeps his feet out from under him. He lands on his back with the stick still in his hands and Martha comes down at him with a blow that would fracture his skull if he didn’t block it.
Amelia jumps to her feet.
“What’s the matter with you? You’re going to kill him.”
Martha looks up and sees that we’re all staring at her. She looks straight at Amelia; then at me and throws her helmet to the ground at Amelia’s feet.
“I concede.”