showing up here, doesn’t like questions about Corey. Boone asks, “Aren’t I welcome here, Mike?”
“You’re welcome,” Boyd says. “But it’s not the water, you know?”
Boone gets it. This is Boyd telling him, You may be the A male out in the surf, but this is my world.
“Corey was one of your students,” Boone says.
“Not really,” Boyd answers. “He hung out a little. Corey was . . . how should I say this . . . more about the ‘about’ than the ‘the,’ if that makes any sense?”
“Yeah, it does.” You get it in surfing all the time—the dismos who like to put on the wet suit, carry the board around, paddle out, but don’t like to take the wave when it comes. It’s a good expression—“about the about,” Boone thinks.
“Corey didn’t like to get hit,” Boyd says. “And that’s what you do in MMA. You get hit, you get cut, you get your nose busted. You gotta be kind of a freak to enjoy that kind of fun, and Corey wasn’t that kind of a freak.”
“I’m just trying to get a sense,” Boone says, “of what this is all about.”
“‘This’?”
“MMA.”
Boyd goes into a speech that sounds practiced and a little defensive. MMA is a highly technical combat art that requires high levels of training, conditioning, and practice. Although it certainly can look bloody, it has a fine safety record—unlike high school football or professional boxing, there has never been a fatality in a sanctioned UFC bout.
“You wanna work out,” Boyd says, “I’ll show you a little. I know you can handle yourself.”
“I don’t know about that.”
Boyd says, “You’re the sheriff over at The Sundowner, right? I heard you can take care of business. You and your crew.”
“I don’t have a crew.”
Boyd smirks at this. “There’s that lifeguard, the big Sammy, the Jap cop.”
The “lifeguard” is okay, Boone thinks, but “Sammy” and “Jap”? He says, “I have a Samoan friend, who is, yes, big, and a Japanese friend.”
“I didn’t mean any offense,” Boyd says, still smiling.
“See, it sounded like you did.” Boone isn’t smiling.
Some of the activity in the room stops as the students sense an impending conflict. They have a nose for this kind of thing, an unerring radar that tells them of imminent violence. They’re into it, wanting to see what their teacher will do to this guy.
“Where are we going with this?” Boyd asks, feeling their eyes on him. He knows he can’t even look like he’s backing down. If he shies from a fight, or loses, half his devoted team will find a new school. The other half will stay and eat him alive—they’re pack dogs.
Boone has no such worries. “We don’t have to go anywhere with it.”
He hears a guy in the back of the room mutter, “Pussy.” A few of the others are smiling and shaking their heads. Boyd feels the momentum and doesn’t want to let it go. He says, “You came into my place, my friend.”
“I’m not your friend.”
“Tell you what,” Boyd says. “Strap up, get into the ring with me, and I’ll show you what MMA is all about.”
Maybe because it’s been a sad day, or because he’s pissed off about a lot of things he can’t do anything about, maybe even because he let that kid at Rockpile mouth off to him, Boone decides it might be a good time to throw a little.
39
Five minutes later, he’s stripped down to just his jeans, is wrapping the MMA gloves around his hands, and one of the students is handing him a mouthpiece.
“This is new, right?” Boone asks.
“I think so.”
“You think so?”
“I just took it out of the wrapper.”
“Better.”
The guy looks at him funny and then says, “I’m Dan. I’m your corner.”
“This is a circle.”
“Huh?”
“There are no . . . Never mind,” Boone says. “What does a corner do?”
“Coach,” Dan says. “Yell out advice and encouragement. Help carry you out of the ring if you, like, can’t walk.”
“Great.”
Dan explains the rules. They’re going to fight one five-minute round. You can kick, punch, wrestle, grapple, but no kicking in the balls, eye-gouging, biting, or kicking or kneeing the opponent in the head when he’s down.
“If he gets you in a joint lock or a chokehold,” Dan says, “and you feel something about to pop or break, tap him three times and he’ll stop.”
“Okie-dokie.”
“We have a saying.”
“What’s that?”
“‘Better to tap a second too soon,’” Dan recites, “ ‘than a second too late.’”
“Good saying.”
If a guy were to have a crew, Boone thinks, this would be