Fanfare (Country Roads #2) - Chapter 39

Thursday we were back playing ball, this time playing away at their field. We were still in the district and were up against Murphy again. We’d lost to them in the regular-season game, although it had been close. They were a really solid team, so we’d been preparing for it all week, watching game tape and trying to fix some of the problems that tripped us up last time.

Thankfully, from everything we could see on the tapes, they didn’t have a pitcher like the monster we played the week before. Our biggest problem with them was going to be two of their hitters who could absolutely crush the ball.

Sure enough, on their first at-bat, these guys were up in the two and four spots. After striking out the first batter, number fourteen, the first of the two power hitters, knocked a line drive in between the left and center fielders that was a thing of beauty, splitting them perfectly and getting a stand-up double out of it. We managed to strike out the third batter before number nine rolled up. If we thought number fourteen was bad, he was nothing like number nine, who got the first home run of the day in the bottom of the first inning putting us two behind practically before we got started.

We caught up some ground in the next inning thanks partly to a beautiful third base steal from Marcus that put him in a good position to score on a line drive two batters later. I did not fare so well, timing the pitch wrong and retiring our side, ending us down one.

It went like that for the next four innings, with one of the two hitters getting a run every time they were up and us catching up the following inning. We managed to finally break the cycle in the bottom of the sixth and I was happy to have a part in it.

We tied things up in the top of the sixth with several solid hits that moved men across the bases. Marcus had a great moment catching their closer completely unprepared, stealing third base. I wish I could say I was the one who got him the rest of the way home and put us ahead, but I popped out to left field closing the side. We were at least tied, and I redeemed myself shortly after. They had a man on first and one of their big hitters was up. They’d already shown us that fastballs would just get us scored on, so our pitchers had been trying to change things up in an attempt to get them to keep the balls within reach.

I’m not sure what pitch our pitcher threw, but instead of a high arc into outfield like he’d been hitting, this was more of a line drive with a very shallow arc. It was still pretty high, but I took the shot and jumped as high as I could, stretching out my glove as far as I could. I was pretty sure I was going to miss it and almost dropped the ball when it smacked into the end of my glove, barely remembering to pull it in fast enough to keep it from popping out. I started to twist towards first base even before I came down, rocketing off a side-arm throw as I landed, beating out number fourteen before he could get back to the bag.

Thankfully, their other power hitter didn’t bat directly after and we were able to strike out the next batter, closing out the side, leaving us tied going into the seventh inning. We put up two more runs in the seventh, including one almost homer from Christian Hume, our captain, that he nearly turned into an out. The ball looked like it was going to clear the fence easily so Christian did a slow jog to first base, his attention on the ball, waiting for it to go over. A gust of wind or something must have slowed it down, because it started dropping a little too steeply on its descent, finally banging off the edge of the fence and bouncing back into the field. As soon as it hit, he turned on the speed and managed to make it to second, but just barely.

The runner who’d been on third had made it with time to spare, so we still got a run and Christian was brought home two batters later, giving us our second run and the lead. Number nine was up first for Murphy and I think everyone was sure he’d bring them within one, which is why we were all so surprised when he struck out looking on a really nice slider from our closer.

That seemed to be enough to finish them off, with the next two batters seeming to barely try as they got struck out, eliminating one of the strongest competitors in our region and clearing the way for us to go to regionals.

I’d seen Hanna and Kat in the stands while we were playing, but both were gone when the game ended and they weren’t waiting by the bus that would take the team back to Carr like they normally did for away games.

I texted ‘Did yall leave?’ to Kat. This was a big moment for me, and I couldn’t help but be a little bummed out when they weren’t there to celebrate with me.

Kat replied a few minutes later with, ‘Her mom said we could come, but she wanted us to come right home. Hanna’s not backing down from her decision and her mom is still pissed.’

For a woman who said she wasn’t blaming me for Hanna’s decision and refusal to bend, I sure seemed to be getting the brunt of it. I guess in a way I was since, while I didn’t actively encourage her, I also didn’t discourage her, even though I knew her mom was against it.

Things were normal at school, but it sucked that I didn’t get to see my friends as much as I had, and I could only hope she and her mom worked things out.

***

Saturday I had the MMA fight. It ended in the late afternoon, which gave me just enough time to get back for our set, but not enough time to practice, which was a problem considering how close the audition was.

We’d actually gotten more information and it turned out it wasn’t an audition in the way I’d been thinking about it. The scout was coming to our Saturday show, which had probably always been the plan. I’d just assumed it was some kind of audition where we played for just him, instead of him just observing our normal show. Mr. French explained that this was how they normally did it. First, because they didn’t want it to actually be an audition, since some people would consider that some kind of semi-guarantee, which it wasn’t. Most of the bands talent scouts saw never made it beyond that step, and they didn’t want bands to start getting the wrong impression. It’s why most of the time the groups being checked out didn’t even know they had a scout watching them.

The other reason was that they wanted to see the band not just for how it sounded but also its stage presence and how they looked, since these days it wasn’t just about the CDs it put out, but also about TV and publicity appearances. A band that had no stage presence was almost as bad as a band that couldn’t play. The only exception was when studios needed to make a list of possible session musicians, where ‘presence’ didn’t matter.

I rode down with Chef more or less in silence, mostly in my head about how things were going to go. He’d walked me through what to expect several times, going through the steps, but that wasn’t the same as experiencing it. Chef tried to talk to me a few times, but I ended up giving one-word answers that basically killed the conversation. I wasn’t icing him out on purpose; I was just nervous and couldn’t focus on anything else.

We pulled up to the school we’d come to when he’d had me sign up. For some reason, I’d expected them to change the setup inside, maybe adding metal cages or whatever that I’d seen on TV. Instead, it looked exactly the same, except for some portable bleachers around the large center ring in the middle of the large building.

“There isn’t a cage or anything?” I leaned over and asked Chef as we stood just inside the doorway, off to one side.

Chef looked at me, slightly confused, “Why would there be a cage?”

“I don’t know, I guess that’s just what I’ve seen the few times I’ve seen pictures or video of MMA fights.”

“No, that’s mostly just the American competitions that are part of Federated Martial Arts. FMA is the biggest outfit and they’re the ones you see on TV, but they’re far from the only mixed martial arts outfit. This event is technically part of the Yàzhōu Wǔshù Liánméng, which is the largest mixed martial arts organization in Asia and pulls from not just China but most of Asia. Japan and Vietnam are both big competitors in it.”

“The banners and stuff say WMMA,” I pointed out.

“That’s for English speakers. Shan has been trying to carve out his own niche with it here, but there’s a guy out in California who has better connections overseas than Shan, so Shan registered it under a separate name in the states.”

“But it’s part of this other group, the one you named a second ago?” I asked, not attempting to repeat what he said.

“Yes. At the moment, they have kind of a split license and there’s talk of making separate east coast and west coast expansions of the mother organization.”

“Why would they bother if this other guy has better connections? Why don’t they just give it all to his thing and that be that?”

“Because he thinks smaller than Shan, and he’s behind the curve. Shan’s already put together a bunch of tournaments and has signed up almost a hundred martial arts schools to become members. I don’t know for sure, but I’m betting they’re worried about picking the wrong horse and losing their edge in the US. It’s already going to be challenging enough to displace the US MMA organizations without fighting amongst themselves, too.”

“Ohh,” I said, not sure how to reply to that.

“So the answer is, no. There aren’t any steel cages in these matches. The rules are just like we went over in practice. Your opponent has to be pinned, tap out, or get knocked out for the match to end. That’s it. If you get thrown out of the yellow ring, the match breaks and you re-enter, and you go again.”

I only nodded in response. He’d explained all this several times, but it was different seeing it in person. That, however, wasn’t the thing that had fixed my attention. Jason and Todd, the two fighters I’d run into the last time I was here, had arrived and were setting up on one of the benches lining the back wall where fighters were to wait until it was their time to compete.

They were both as big as I remembered and both looked my way when their coach pointed in my direction and said something. I had this feeling that they thought I was some kind of easy mark. I was smaller than them only in that I wasn’t built like a weightlifter. We were almost the same height and I’d been putting on a good amount of muscle over the last year, so it didn’t make sense that they’d think I was physically some kind of pushover. Chef had said that he and their coach had had some kind of disagreement, but that didn’t really explain it. The other master had greeted Chef with respect and Victor made it sound like he was well respected by others in the community.

I decided to ignore them and focus on what was going on. There was the one ring, so fighters had to go in turn, which meant we’d be able to see each competitor as they went. It was a bracket-based competition, which didn’t give anyone an advantage. By the time you got to fight someone who you’d seen compete, they would have already seen you as well, so it was at least even.

I was the third match-up and went off to an area set aside for competitors to begin stretching. One of the two guys who’d been eyeing me was there too, although I couldn’t remember if he was Jason or Todd. He shot me another look, but I ignored him and went through my normal routine.

I did stop to watch the first match, to get a feeling for how the competition would go. The matchup was incredibly uneven, and not in the way I’d originally thought. One of the competitors was this really tall, lanky guy. He must have been at least six-six or six-seven and he had a really long arm span, which meant he’d have some impressive reach. His opponent, on the other hand, was tiny. He was, at max, five-five with the same wiry build. Had I been betting, I would have put my money on the big guy, who should have been able to keep the little guy at bay fairly easily.

I would have lost that bet. The little guy was lighting fast. I don’t think his competitor was expecting it, since he looked just as surprised as the audience when his opponent dodged a test jab almost like he’d been standing still and practically climbed him like a tree before he pulled him down to the mat and put him in a hold I hadn’t ever seen before. It was hard to tell exactly what he was doing from where I was, except that he had the guy on his stomach with one of the tall guy’s arms pulled behind him while the little guy’s other arm wrapped around his throat.

It must have been painful, because he didn’t even hesitate before tapping out. The next two face-offs went just about the same. The tall guy kept changing up what he was doing, but it didn’t matter. Each time he was down on the matt in less than thirty seconds, never landing a single hit.

I went back to stretching, ignoring what was happening. I wanted to do well for Chef, but I wasn’t really invested in the whole thing. I’d try my best, but if I ended up with someone like that, I’d be out and that would be that.

The next match took longer, going almost five minutes before someone tapped out for the last time. The longest part of each match seemed to be the time in between the actual fighting, with the event organizers gathering in the middle of the floor and discussing whatever it was they had to discuss before all but the announcer walked off.

They called my name and the name of my opponent, who I hadn’t seen before. I was pretty sure he was older than me,  but not that much older. About my build and a little shorter, we looked fairly evenly matched, although the first round showed that wasn’t something you could always judge just by looking at the two people.

They had us bow to each other and the judges, and then called to begin. We both took our stances across from each other. I’d recognized the style everyone else was fighting in, so I assumed we all were learning roughly the same types of things. I was apparently wrong, since this guy did something completely different. He had one foot back and his hands held up palms facing each other, almost like he was holding an invisible ball in front of him.

As soon as the floor judge called for us to start, he darted in towards me. He was fast, but he wasn’t as fast as the first guy, or even Victor. His style was different enough that I wasn’t sure what he was going to do, so I took a step back while I tried to get a read on him.

He went down and to the left slightly as he took a skip in towards me, almost like he was preparing for some kind of lunging uppercut, except that his hands were loose in front of his face, not pulling back for a hit. As soon as he committed to it, I dropped and did a back sweep, partly because he had his entire weight on one leg, which was going to make him unbalanced, and partly because it moved my head down and away from whatever attack he was just about to launch.

As soon as I dropped he tried to hop back, out of the way, but he’d already committed and he had to step forward to kill his momentum before he could move back out of my way. To his credit, he was almost successful by the time I got the sweep around, but only almost. I caught his heel just as he was pulling his leg back and hit it dead on, pulling him sideways and sending him falling sideways. This ended up with him sprawled out right next to me, while I was still low at the end of the back sweep. I grabbed his ankle and rolled, turning him over and pulling him back as I wrapped myself around his outstretched leg, putting him in a leg lock he couldn’t get out of.

We went twice more and I managed to get him pinned twice more. He surprised me with a series of close-in punches and knees that backed me out of the ring, but didn’t connect well. I learned later that he was using something called Krav Maga, which is a fighting form that originated out of Israel and apparently wasn’t well suited for this kind of competition. It was more about causing as much damage as possible with fast, aggressive attacks while trying to protect as much of your body as possible. If my opponent was any indication, it was a lot of knee and elbow attacks. When I asked later, Chef said it was possible I beat him easily because he wasn’t experienced, but it could have also been because there were rules against certain moves that could cause permanent damage, which would have made a lot of his training unusable at the tournament.

Either way, I was one match into the competition, a little sore from some of those body blows, but otherwise no worse for the wear. I waited for the rest of the first round to finish, and got my first look at the two large guys. Todd won his match by sheer aggression. I recognized a lot of his moves and he was clearly learning a similar form of martial arts to what I was, which, if we faced off, would be good for me. I would recognize what he was going for and would have a chance to react. Of course, the reverse could be true too, since he’d also recognize what I was going to do as well.

If I thought he was aggressive though, he was nothing next to Jason, who got warned out off the bat when he all but broke his opponent’s arm in the first clash. The referee had to tell him to release twice before he did, and that probably would have been the last of it, but he decided to give a little oomph right before he did, visibly popping the kid’s elbow out of joint. We could see it turned at an ugly angle as Jason rolled away and got up, smiling evilly. That was enough to get him expelled from the competition, although his opponent was also gone, since he had to be taken to the hospital to get his ruined elbow fixed.

The worst part of the entire thing was that Jason’s coach didn’t seem bothered at all by the entire incident. His student might have permanently injured another competitor, and he just didn’t seem to care.

I couldn’t help but be concerned that something similar would happen when Todd came up to compete, although he’d played it more or less clean, so maybe it wasn’t their coach so much as just Jason. Still, I wasn’t surprised when my name came up with Todd’s for the next round of matches.

The little guy who’d done so well in the first round went first, and once again devastated his opponent. I think everyone agreed he was the one to beat, although now that I’d watched everyone go once, I wouldn’t have put money against him.

Todd and I followed him. One of the things I’d worked on with Victor had been specifically how to deal with someone larger than me. While there were a lot of things you could do with the right leverage to use the other fighter’s size and weight against them, a lot of them were easily countered if the other fighter knew about them. They’d work great in most real-life circumstances when the person you were against was a brawler, but against someone with training, they’d just leave you vulnerable to a counter.

The other thing I’d noticed about Todd in the first match was that he had really good balance. It might have been just because of his size, but he didn’t come off his feet, and barely did any footwork at all. He seemed to prefer to get right on top of someone and use his size and strength to just pummel his opponent into submission. Unfortunately, I’d spent a long time working on takedowns leading up to the competition, and a lot of those were targeted at the legs. He probably weighed a good fifty pounds more than me, making any sweeps or hobbles difficult to pull off, since it required the person to either be off-balance or light enough that I could muscle their legs out from under them.

Of course, knocking him out was also going to be a long shot.

We faced off and I bowed at the judge’s instructions. He very clearly and purposefully did not, which earned him his first warning from the ring judge, since they considered that bad form. He ignored it and took his ready stance.

As with my first match, I waited for him to come to me. I didn’t have to wait long. He first went with a lunge into an elbow strike. It was slow and I blocked it easy, pushing the elbow to the side with my forearm and making a straightforward strike to his chest. The punch felt like hitting a wall, and had just as much effect. The other problem was that it put me inside him. I tried to pull back as soon as my fist bounced off him, but he moved fast enough to grab my arm and pull me towards him.

I tried to throw a knee, but he stepped his right foot back, moving enough out of the way to lessen the impact while he grabbed the front of the monk outfit Chef had given me to wear. Twisting, he used his body weight to lift me off the ground and tossed me.

Going airborne was a weird sensation. You can feel yourself sailing through the air, but there’s absolutely nothing you can do to stop what’s coming. I braced as well as I could before smashing into the ground hard. I’d tracked him as I was landing, because I was fairly certain he was going to follow the throw up with a hold. Sure enough, he was moving as soon as I was off my feet his knee dropping towards me as I landed. I started rolling into the fall as soon as hit the ground. I’d like to say I rolled back, popping onto my feet, but it wasn’t that graceful. What I did was more of a sideways barrel roll. It was enough to get me clear of the knee that would have smashed into my stomach or side had I stayed where I was, however.

My clumsy push into a low stance put me behind him and he was slow in pushing himself up. I lunged at him as he started to come off the ground. It wasn’t graceful or even a move I’d learned from Chef. If anything, my arms going around his neck as I sailed past his head was closer to something I’d expect to see on TV wrestling than some kind of trained martial art. Maintaining my hold, I twisted in midair. He was strong, but my body weight was enough to pull him to the mat. It probably hurt his neck pretty bad when I slammed his back down on the matt still holding onto it. Someone with a smaller neck might have gotten severely injured, but he was already trying to come up as soon as we landed.

I rolled up and onto his back, grabbing the arm he was trying to push himself up with on the way and again pulling with my body weight. He had no leverage and was terribly balanced, so I was able to pull his arm out, causing him to fall flat on his face again. The weight of his body falling down had the added effect of straining his shoulder. I felt it tug tight and then go slightly beyond that point, and he made his first sound of the match that wasn’t a grunt as a small yelp escaped his lips.

He still refused to tap out at first, trying to push himself up with the other arm or roll over on me. I had my knee in his back and the other leg partially wedged between his legs. With my body weight and leverage, he couldn’t get enough to pull himself over and every time he tried, it hyper-extended his joint until he finally couldn’t take it and tapped out.

As he got up, his coach was railing on him. It was in Russian, which I hadn’t realized these guys knew, but the meaning was clear to everyone. Blood had started to drip down his nose from when it slammed into the mat, but he waved off any medical check.

He charged in again the second the ref said go, but it was obvious how badly he was hurt when he reached out with only his left arm. With only his non-dominate arm, he didn’t stand a chance. Even not focusing on hitting his injured arm, which clearly hurt him every time he moved it or it got touched, he no longer had any ability to either grapple or throw me, and each time he tried I was able to get him on the ground and pinned, ending the match with three pins to his none.

I knew I’d gotten lucky. Someone better than he was would have probably gotten out of my weird neck slam, or at least have tapped out instead of continually damaging their arm trying to push themselves up when it was obvious they weren’t going to be able to.

That was it for me though. The third match, I went up against was the little guy who was dominating, and he dropped me as fast as everyone. One minute I was trying to counter a move or make a grab on him and then he’d be somewhere else like he teleported. I’ve never seen anyone that fast before and I never stood a chance. Of course, it was hard to feel bad about that when everyone else he came up against went down just as badly.

“You did good,” Chef said when we walked out.

I was pretty sure if Chef hadn’t been with me, Jason might have had a go at me when we were walking out. He was standing with Todd and their coach, who was laying into both of them, and tracked us as we walked across the parking lot. Something about him gave me the shivers and I knew that the best thing I could do was give him a wide berth as much as possible.

“Ignore them,” Chef said, noticing my looks they generated.

“What is wrong with those two?”

“It’s Sergi. He comes from an old-school Russian way of thinking, where victory is the only thing that matters. He doesn’t believe in things like rules, especially those for the competitors’ safety, and he trains his pupils the same.”

“They have Shaolin in Russia?” I asked, since I recognized enough of the style Jason and Todd fought in to know that’s what they were using.

“In some parts. Russia touches China and there’s a fairly large population along the border. It’s not as popular as other forms, especially in western Russia where most of the population is, but there are still masters who teach there.”

“And Sergi learned from one of those masters, I guess?”

“Yes, although he isn’t a master. He learned the physical aspects, but Sergi ignored everything else Shaolin taught. He moved to the states because he had trouble getting students in Moscow, mostly because the martial arts community didn’t like either his methods or his attitude.”

“I see,” I said.

I didn’t really have much else to say. It made sense guys like Todd and Jason would have an asshole for a master, but beyond giving them a wide berth if I ever happened to see them again, it really didn’t affect me. It seemed unlikely that I’d run into either of them outside of one of these competitions, and I wasn’t even sure I’d do one of these again.

In hindsight, I was glad I’d competed. Even if I never did another one, it was an interesting experience, and Chef seemed really pleased that I’d made it as far as I had. Considering everything that he’d done for me, that alone made the trip worth it.