Carr

I was an angry, angry kid. Not for any good reason either. Sure, my parents had passed away, but I barely remembered them and my relatives treated me well enough. It was something much pettier than that. Just hated that there was never really a place that really felt ‘mine.’ Made some friends at school, sure, but they would invite me to their house, and all I could do was to invite them to my uncle’s house. Not mine.

Possessive little shit, I was. If you heard of a kid mad he was alone, sad that his parents had passed away, maybe you would have sympathized with him. I wasn’t that kid. Barely remembered my parents enough to miss them. But I really hated that I didn’t have a single thing that I could call mine. My family wasn’t my family, my interests weren’t my interests—they were all things that my kind relatives allowed me to have. And don’t get me wrong, they treated me really well, just…they never really loved me. To be fair to them, don’t think I ever gave them much reason to. But they liked me still, and I can’t complain about that.

They were kind enough to allow me to do whatever I wanted with my inheritance money instead of spending it all themselves like I know some assholes would have. At first, I was your regular kid and bought toys, video games and the like. But soon enough I wanted to find something else. Something more. Around that time my cousin had started playing soccer. My relatives encouraged me to play with him, but something inside of me told me to fight against that. I will feel even more like I don’t have anything to myself if I join his sport, I thought. But they are going to tell me sports are good…need to find something. Anything.

And so, I settled on fencing.

Rather anticlimactic, that. Just happened to come across an ad for a local fencing class for beginners and wanted to take a look at it. It was an individual sport, which appealed to me, but it was also a weird sport. I liked how no one practiced it, and the immature little kid in me did love the idea of hitting people with swords. Just sounded like a way to get away from everything.

I hated it at first.

Our first class we weren’t even allowed to touch a real sword. They gave us some foam swords, but even then they barely let us hit each other. Most of the class focused on moving your feet and understanding some vague gestures with our hands, and that bored me to death. Worst of all was the instructor. He was a loud, arrogant old man who shouted at us through a thick Eastern European accent that I could only sometimes understand. His back was mostly straight despite his old age, but he had the strange habit of making his head lean forward in such a way it always seemed like he was slightly crooked forward, as if the angle was just mildly wrong.

And it only got worse when we were allowed to use real swords.

I lost my first few matches so incredibly badly, my rash childish self back then just wanted to quit. Even more so when the old man started screaming at me. “No, no, no!” he shouted. “Arm forward, eyes up—see?” He gestured wildly at me. “Don’t do it again!”

“Sorry, coach.”

“Don’t be sorry, be smart!”

It was bad enough that day that the assistant coach approached me as I was leaving. She seemed like an adult at the time, but now I imagine she was barely in university, and was talking just as much to me as she was to my uncle, who had come to pick me up.

“Don’t mind him—he’s going to be moved to private lessons only soon. We’ve had a lot of parents ask to…um, please come back, is what I’m saying. The coach recently lost his wife, he’s been a little…difficult since. We’ll keep him away from the new kids, so please, understand…”

“…his wife…”

“…his kids…”

“…accident…”

I was only half-paying attention to the conversation.

She hadn’t lied about keeping him away. From that point on, the old man hardly interacted with the newer fencers, and just sat in a corner watching us like a hawk. The sport wasn’t fun yet, but it was tolerable. Enough that I could go to practice and not particularly dislike it—though I can’t say I was enjoying it either. Not much to enjoy when I was getting my ass kicked every time by anyone even remotely more experienced than me.

“Are you enjoying fencing?” my uncle awkwardly asked me over dinner.

“It’s not bad,” I told him honestly.

Every single damned night my terrible lunges would be met with parries my poor young self never even fully understood. See, the thing about fencing is that the blade is honestly too fast to entirely follow. It’s not some weird, cartoon thing where the sword is actually invisible, but honestly the sword is too fast for you to react to its trajectory in full. But the more you fence, the more you recognize patterns—when you see a sword moving in a clockwise circle you know what the full movement is going to look like and you react accordingly.

Thing is, someone has to tell you what those moves are, otherwise you don’t learn them just by getting your ass kicked by them. Oh, sure, you might know that certain moves you do lead to losing the point, but the execution will probably remain a mystery to you for the longest time. And the other coaches there seemed completely uninterested in teaching me anything beyond stop-hits and parry-fours.

“Don’t give up, Carr! You’re doing great, they just have fenced for longer than you.”

“It will all come together at one point.”

“Just focus on the basics for now.”

It infuriated me, but even as a young kid I knew better than to make a scene. After some particularly grueling matches that night, it was time to grab my water bottle and head outside for some ‘fresh air.’ I don’t want to just get better. I want to WIN! A moment later, my legs had sunk to the ground and I was shouting, “Goddamn it!”

“Those kids are getting the top of your hand every time,” the old man said. “Raise your hand. When you see them coming, duck. If they are trying to go over your guard like that, they are going to either miss you completely or fuck up and hit themselves.”

“I—huh?” When had the old man gotten there? Was he there the whole time? Ah. Crap. I could get in trouble for shouting like that. But it didn’t appear like he was intending to hand out many punishments. While panicked apologies might have been the right response, the words that came out of my mouth were, “Just…raise my hand and duck?”

“Yeah. Give it a shot.” The old man took a sip from a flask, shook his head twice and entered the gym again. Just before he left, he repeated, “Duck, you fucking idiot.”

I didn’t win that night, but I did score more points. The old man’s advice had worked.

“Are you enjoying fencing?” my uncle awkwardly asked me again over dinner.

“Tonight was interesting, I guess.”

Next practice, my sole focus was what the old man had told me—keeping my wrist high so the taller kids couldn’t hit it too easily and occasionally ducking and letting them walk right into it. It had made me more competitive, of course, but it wasn’t enough to win a match against the older kids. All I knew how to do was lunge, parry four, and duck. That could win me points, but not matches. It was frustrating, to get so close but know that there was a wall before me still.

So frustrating.

I’m doing better than before, but that’s not enough.

I want more.

I need more.

I need to win.

Absently, out of breath, almost as if it was the most natural thing to do, I nodded to the other coaches, then walked past them—toward the scary old man with the stern expression sitting with his back against a wall in the corner. To this day, I don’t know what possessed me to look him in the eye and ask, “Hey, can you teach me?”

“Teach you?” he asked, as if confused why a coach would be asked to teach a student. “Teach you what?”

“What do you mean ‘what’? Fencing!”

“If you aren’t more specific than that, then I can’t teach you,” he replied, smirking.

Bastard. He knows I don’t even know what to ask for. Is that the lesson he’s going for here? That I need to improve before benefiting from asking help from you. Like hell I was gonna play along with that. “I want you to teach me—I want you to teach me how to—” I began, searching for words.

“Well?” he insisted. “Be specific, shitty kid!”

“Teach me how to win,” I told him, my eyes blazing, and whether due to a spark of competitiveness or anger at this old man I did not know.

To this day, it is also my belief that he did not know either, because he held my gaze for a long while with an amused look. It wasn’t as if he had been expecting me to argue back with him, but that I had done so did not appear to discourage the man either. The sound of footsteps hinted at another coach coming up to us, but he held an extended hand presumably to keep them away. In hindsight, kind of bad coaching that they obeyed him. But I’m glad they did. “You couldn’t do it if I told you,” he said derisively. “Hear that, shitty kid? Grow older, stronger, come back to me when you have a beard. When you’re strong, I will teach you.”

“When I’m strong, I won’t need you! Tell me!” I said stubbornly.

“You would give up,” he said, a grin forming across his face. “Can’t keep up with me, kid.”

“Watch me!” I shouted at him. “Try me! Let me show you!”

I didn’t care about fencing at that point. I’m not even sure I cared about winning. That’s not what that was about. This old man was looking down on me and telling me that there was something that I could not do and I would not have that.

This was probably the first time in my life I decided to do something out of pure spite.

Pretty sure the old man was the same. He didn’t think about teaching me any deep lessons or anything. He just wanted to be a shithead to this kid who thought he could handle more than he really could. And to be fair to him, he was right. He taught me how to use disengages but just knowing about them wasn’t enough to let me beat those kids. I still lost that night, and the old man’s cocky grin made me furious.

“How’s fencing going?” my uncle asked that night.

If I say I’m annoyed, he’s going to pull me out of it. “It’s going…fine.”

“Are you sure?” my aunt asked. “You seem a little upset today. Is everything okay?”

Crap, I can’t hide that I’m upset! What do I do? In a panic, I settled on, “I’m upset, but that’s fine,” I muttered. If there was no way to hide my feelings, and I still wanted them to keep me fencing, I would have to make that sound fine. But how? “Got a pretty good feeling of how to get better, so it will work out,” I muttered.

They seemed pleased at that. Said something about my maturity or whatever. Looking back, that must’ve been when I started to internalize that reacting to losses like that was how things should be. Just because it made them happy. It’s weird, the things that affect kids.

I didn’t beat the older kids the next practice, either. And the old man laughed at me.

I didn’t beat the older kids the practice after that, either. And the old man still laughed at me.

I did beat them the practice after that. And the old man appeared unsure how to react. Shock, annoyance, pride—what emotions was he torn between? Don’t suppose that’s something for me to know, really. Not ever. But he appeared hesitant for a few moments, before settling on begrudgingly telling me, “Don’t get cocky. That was just one match. They’ll figure out your gameplan soon enough if you don’t adapt.”

“Well, how do I adapt?”

He drew a deep breath. “Listen, you shitty kid—”

That started a strange routine where I would be the only one who would approach the grumpy, quiet old man in the corner of the fencing salle. He would nearly yell the advice at me, but he would make sure I understood it and his instructions were clear. We would set goals, a sort of unspoken bet where the only thing on the line was the right to derisively smirk at the other, and he would teach me—then we would see if I could meet those goals. If I failed, he’d mock me, laugh at me, but teach me anyway. None of the other kids wanted to be taught by him, and the other coaches tried to keep me away from him a few times. Didn’t take, of course.

I wanted to learn to win, and this old man was getting me there.

“Alright, you shitty old man,” I snapped at him, “tell me what to do today!”

One of the other coaches was startled at hearing this. “Carr, you can’t—you must treat your elders with respect! I’m going to tell your uncle that, you know?”

This sent a chill down my spine. My uncle would not be happy with me using that language or talking to an elderly man like that, no matter how fitting it was. I can’t—I—no, I want to keep fencing!

“Why should he treat me with respect?” Coach muttered. “I don’t treat the shitty kid with respect, why would I expect differently from him? Mighty dictatorial of me if I did that, eh?” I think he meant hypocritical, but that wasn’t the point. “Let it go. We have our own language, eh kid?”

“Yeah,” I agreed quickly. “We do.”

Our practice went on for months like that. ‘Do this, don’t do that, bend your knees, pay attention to your opponents. Your goal is to defeat one of the older kids again, now two of the older kids, now three, now all of them, now beat everyone, now beat everyone without losing a single time tonight!’ It was exhausting, it was painful, every night I was coming home from practice feeling like my body was destroying itself.

“How’s fencing going these days?” my uncle asked over dinner.

“I love it.”

Soon, after we ran out of goals to set in practice, he started taking me to tournaments. It was pain, heartbreak, depression, pain, heartbreak, happiness—repeated forever, often in that exact order. For the next two years I improved quite a lot, and Coach had taught me a lot not just about fencing, but about life. It made me feel bad, considering how uncle had tried to be there for me as much as possible…but the old man was filling in a void I’m not even sure I was aware existed back then.

“You’re okay?” Coach said one day. “You—you didn’t show up last practice, I thought…you’re okay, kid?”

“Of course, I just had a cold last time,” I replied, walking up to him to soothe him. It was here that I remember realizing, for the first time, that he was getting more frail. I was growing taller to be sure, but he seemed like a gust of wind would knock him down now. But his eyes never lost their intensity. When did this happen? “I’m sorry, Mikhail,” I told him softly, placing my hands on his shoulders. “I should have called and let you know.”

“You should have, shitty kid,” he muttered.

Years went by, and certain things changed. My routine had become based around fencing, and the idea of not going to that shitty old gym after school every day appeared entirely alien to me. Foods I had grown up loving were no longer staples in my diet, and while I still enjoyed video games, I dreamed of new epees not of a new graphics card.

“Hey Carr, want to hang out at my house later?” I remember a classmate asking. “Play some board games and stuff, will be fun!”

“Sounds good, I’m down.”

“Then again, we always hang out at my place though, how about we go to yours today?”

“Eh, not really comfortable taking people to my uncle’s house,” I remember replying. A smile took over me. “Say, how about we go to my fencing club?”

My friends never really committed to the sport, but they did come, and I got to show them around those dusty closets, barely clean masks, and rusty blades. Got to show them my home, just like they would show me theirs. And that meant the world to me.

Many happy years like this passed, and only my senior high school year was bittersweet. It was here that I became unable to ignore my coach’s health. It had been steadily declining for years, but now it had reached a point where we had to accept an uncomfortable truth—he would die within months. This was a talk he wanted to avoid having with me. Guess if it was up to him, he would have died without saying a word and we would just have had a silent, manly understanding of what we both felt.

But I forced the issue, and after some initial resistance, he opened up to me.

“I have cancer,” he told me, rather frankly, “and the treatment has been rough…as you can see.”

“You look great, Mik.”

“Don’t lie, you goddamn kid!” Coach shouted at me, but his heart wasn’t into it. His head was shaking and he appeared to be struggling with something. I didn’t say a word until he felt ready to talk. “I got my diagnosis just a bit before you came, you know?”

“What? You mean—even back then? When I was a shitty kid?”

“You still are a shitty kid,” he told me smugly. “But yes.”

“You looked completely fine back then, I can’t—I can’t believe it!”

He laughed at this. “See, kid, thing about cancer…it doesn’t actually kill you like you’re thinking. Not always, anyway. Sometimes, you can live your shitty final years in relative comfort…so long as you refuse treatment. I had just refused it. Two healthy years seemed better to me than ten shitty ones. But then…” Coach laughed. It was a short, almost sarcastic laugh, but his smile at the end was genuine. “Life is really smart sometimes, you know?”

“Like, there’s intelligent life out there?” I tried, hesitantly. Mikhail had some strange opinions about conspiracies sometimes. “That what you’re saying, coach?”

“No, no! I mean life itself is intelligent. Back then, it seemed like a no-brainer to me. My wife and kid had just died in an accident, so the tumor almost came as a relief. Meant I didn’t have to worry about…what was to come. I could just let life itself take care of me. Just slowly survive until things…until it was time to see them again. What else would keep this old man on this Earth, eh?” He paused. “Then I met this shitty kid. He amused me at first. Not much more. But slowly, I came to realize that I wanted to see him improve. To watch him get better. Just some curiosity at first, but…ah, not the time to keep secrets, is it?” Coach looked at me and smiled. “You gave me reason to want to go on, kid. A few months after you showed up, I decided to take the treatment—wanted to see how far you could go.”

“Coach, I…” I’m sorry you put yourself through so much pain for me. I’m sorry things have been rough for you. I’m sorry for everything. This wasn’t just a minor inconvenience he put himself through for me. I wasn’t dumb, I knew how hard those treatments could be, even accounting for the occasional remission. There were so many things I wanted to apologize to him about, but none of them would have felt right. “Coach— Mikhail—I—thank you. For everything.”

“No.” He placed a hand on my shoulder. “Thank you, kid. When I first found out I was going to die, my first fear wasn’t death itself. It was what was going to come after. What had I really done in this world? My wife, my kid—they were both gone. There wasn’t going to be a single bit of proof that I had lived left. Just…like I was never there at all. But then, when I stand here, and look at you…” Mikhail never looked prouder. “I see that my time on this Earth mattered. I see that I raised not just one hell of a fencer, but one hell of a man. Your shoulders are broad, but you don’t pick fights. Your tongue is sharp, but you use it to defend others. You don’t let anyone talk shit to you, but you try to understand them anyway. When—when I die,” he stuttered slightly, “I will go a happy man, knowing that I left you here. And that you’ll be ready to take on life come what may, with or without me.”

“Coach, I—I—” What did you say to the man that gave you everything, when he was about to die? How did you thank him? How did you make sure there was nothing left unsaid, that he knew how much you appreciated him? “I—I love you, coach. Thank you. For everything. I swear that as long as I live, I’m never going to forget anything you taught me!”

“I know you won’t,” he said, a gentle teasing to his voice. Then, without warning, he tapped the side of my face. He was weak now, but I knew he had meant it as a slap. “And if you ever feel like you forgot what I taught you…that you don’t know what you’re doing…that nothing makes sense…I want you to know, my ghost is going to slap you in the face and say, ‘ON YOUR FEET, YOU SHITTY KID. Mikhail knows you can do better.’” Then, he smiled at me. “And I love you too, kid.”

“Carr? Carr? Hey, Carr?”

I woke up suddenly, all emotions of that memory still flaring up in me. Valle stood before me, appearing annoyed and holding two cologne bottles at my face. “Did you actually fall asleep while I was explaining how to know what the right kind of cologne for the occasion was? Please, tell me you at least were awake for the talk on watches.” Valle suddenly paused his outrage and looked at me with concern. “Were you dreaming?”

“Yeah…sort of. Closer to a memory. Was just remembering something that happened.”

“Are you okay?” he asked me, putting a hand to my shoulder. “Do you need to talk? Alone time? Fresh air?”

I smiled, but shook my head. “It was a good dream.”

“Ah.” Valle appeared relieved. “Can I ask what it was about?”

“My father.”