Chapter Five: A New Found Power

I agreed to take Li up on his offer and that very night, without even saying goodbye to the band, went with him. He took me to a Chinese restaurant a few blocks from where my band had been playing. He owned the place. Food was good and it had nice decor, but Li was just a small-time owner, trying to make his way in the world. It was a pretty big deal for him to tear himself away from his business to teach some guy like me that he just happened across in an alley.

That night, I slept in his kitchen’s office. It took everything in me to resist the urge to hit on Li’s cute little Asian hostess. She giggled and fluttered her eyelashes at me while they closed the restaurant down. I’d become accustomed to the excess of beautiful young women out on the road, but I refrained here out of respect for my new master.

The next morning, he made arrangements for the restaurant to run in his absence before we left in his car. He took me to an unoccupied Monastery in northern California. How he had access to this, I had no idea, nor did I ask. On our first day of training, he explained to me that in order to harness the power of Chi and explode it into a weapon, you needed to swear off a vice and visualize something in its place at the moment of striking your opponent.

He said, “This power only comes to you when you need it. So don’t think you can just go on TV, or a stage show in Vegas and make millions of dollars showing it off. It requires physical stamina and mental fortitude, which I know that you have based on the story you told me of your life journey while driving up here.”

He went on, “Based on what I saw in the street fight the other night, your power appears to be a bright light trying to burst out of your closed fists during impact. It’s likely created from your love of liquor. Do you have a preferred drink?”

“Uh yeah, White Lightning, moonshine,” I answered promptly.

“That’s it, White Lightning! Henceforth, you must mentally and spiritually sacrifice partaking in White Lightning except only through visualization,” he exclaimed, excitedly.

“Question,” I interjected, “does this mean you also have a vice that you are suppressing?

I assume you can also do what you are asking of me to do right?”

Li smirked and responded, “Alright, that was lesson one. Time for lesson two.”

And without wasting another second, he moved at an incredible speed, closing the gap of about twenty feet between us almost instantly. In another instant, he delivered a karate chop horizontally to my chest, sending me backwards. The strike felt like it was almost in slow motion. But a second after that, I felt the most bizarre sensation. A sharp abdominal pain. Gut wrenching agony. But why? He hadn’t struck my stomach area. Then, as my body recoiled from the force of his chop backwards, I started leaning forward clutching my mid section. Then it hit me. I felt like I was about to take a shit? A bona fide, diarrhea duke! What the hell was this all about?

A moment passed and the pain subsided before I asked him to explain. For which he did, “You see, when I was a child, I would always drink apple juice. My mother would say, ‘If you keep drinking that much juice, you're gonna get a stomach ache’, but I wouldn’t listen and end up with the worst diarrhea. Then when I was a teenager and began the same training, you are now, I realized apple juice was my vice. So I learned how to channel the pain I felt from the juice I loved into that strike. You should do the same with White Lightning. I suggest yelling, ‘White Lightning!’ for now as you practice your strikes until you get the art down. You won’t always need to but even so, sometimes it can give that extra oomph you need. For instance, if I really wanted to put the hurt on you, I would have yelled, ‘Johnny Appleseed!’ right as I hit you. But even so, I’ve never mastered the technique to the point of actually making my opponent shit their pants. Just feel like it.”

I froze for a minute with my mouth agape and then said, “This is crazy. I mean, I’ve seen some shit in the past year, but come on.”

Li laughed hysterically and said, “I can certainly see why you’d feel that way. But all I’m asking you is to give it a good college try for at least a few months. If you get no results, go back to your moonshine.”

“Well, alright,” I shrugged.

And for the next few weeks, all I did was punch dummies and Li’s training mitt while yelling, “White Lightning! White Lightning!” Until one day, I swung at a torso dummy and a spark of light emerged.

Li shouted, “That’s it! Progress!”

Even I could see it. So, I just kept punching. About a half hour later, more sparks! By the end of the day, I saw what looked like little lightning bolts surrounding my hand as I struck. He told me that was enough for now and to take a day off from it.

The following day, he took me on a wilderness hike and told me about how wonderful the world was and that people like us tend to attract the most amazing and peculiar of circumstances. He said that after my training there was finished, and I went back into the world, I should expect even more crazy things to manifest. I told him about the bookstore experience. I hadn’t talked to anyone about that since Robert and Jessica left me in Reno. He told me that it didn't surprise him that I already had something like that happen and that when he was twelve years old, he saw a dragon moving amongst the clouds over the bay in Hong Kong. Even though it was clear as day, no one besides him saw it.

Finally, after a couple months practicing and being able to will the electrical aura into existence on command, Li asked me to spar with him and only use the attack when I was sure I could connect a hit with the proper focus and pent-up energy. We fought each other hard, not unlike my first fight with Jason back in Kansas. If you were an outsider, you would have thought Li and I hated one another. But I love Li like he was a long-lost older cousin. Not once during this match did he use Johnny Appleseed on me. And when I saw an opening, I felt deep within my soul all the sensations of being drunk on moonshine, formed it into my fist, charged it, swung and yelled, “White Lightning!!!”, at the top of my lungs. A burst of white light and a scatter of tiny lightning bolts exploded across Li’s chest like a slug from a fortyfive. Time slowed down for us both as he was thrown nearly ten feet back and onto the floor. I helped him up and it took him nearly five minutes to catch his breath. That was the first day of the rest of my life.

February 1993. It had been nearly six months since I first took up Li’s offer to come train with him. I stopped to turn and look at the monastery that had been my home during this season of my life as I walked down the mountain trail on my own. Li had offered to drive me somewhere, but I decided to do this on my own since it had been some time since I traveled this way. The time had come for me to move on, seeing as I had passed all of his tests. But I needed to pass a test of my own. So I found myself in Sacramento. Felt like a fish out of water walking amongst this big city after months of solitude. My bald head didn’t help my confidence. Li didn’t ask me to shave my metal mane, but I decided to after a few weeks at the monastery because it just seemed right.

After a day of rest at the motel I was staying at, I decided to hit the gym. I had been no stranger to the gym even before my travels and would infrequently stop at them to keep on my game between fighting angry hicks, drunken nights with groupies, and stage dives. But this trip to the gym was going to be different. Had I taken the skills I had now to the fight in the alley six months ago, I’m sure I could probably beat those five guys. I’m certain if I recreated the fight in Kansas outside the roadhouse I would win. But this was gonna be the real test.

In broad daylight, I went to the roughest, dingiest gym in the city I could find. Walked right to the back of the place and sat down on a lateral pull down bench. I warmed up a little and observed the room. There were some pretty buff and fit dudes in this place. As I scanned the room, I found my target about thirty feet from me. A wide chested, big shouldered Bruno with a red tank top on and black spandex shorts on the Smith Machine. I nervously and cautiously got up and approached him.

Standing next to him, I cleared my throat obnoxiously a few times. Finally, he racked the weights and turned to me and asked, “Is there a problem?”

I answered him by scooting between him and the workout station and said, “Umm, yea. My problem is that they’re letting Village People work out here and charging the same rate as the rest of us.”

Before I could even get one rep in, he pushed my chest with the tips of his fingers and asked, “What’d you just say to me?”

I said, ”I’m sorry, I didn’t realize hearing loss was a symptom of steroid abuse.”

It was on. The guy swung at me but I ducked underneath the Smith bar and went behind it. Like the angry grizzly bear, he went around the machine to try to get me. The whole gym started looking our way as we finally started exchanging blows. The floor manager in a yellow polo came over and tried to separate him but I took a shot at him next. Afterwards, I turned and walloped the red shirt guy right across the face, nearly flooring him. Within ten seconds, everyone in the gym started funneling in my direction. I would hit the nearest guy every time one got close, but it was starting to get real…fast!

I knew that this was do or die. Between me and the entrance to this fine establishment was about twenty-five smooth brains and a collective of ten thousand pounds of testosterone soaked muscle. I gave rights, lefts, kicks, dodges, jukes, and headbutts. Without wasting another minute, I did it. I unleashed a fury of White Lightning punches that could’ve been orchestrated by George Jones himself at a rowdy Honky Tonk.

It wasn’t long before the last guy went down and I stepped over a pile of Right Said Fred impersonators on my way to the escape hatch. By the time the police got there, the best anyone could tell them was that some guy came in here and started a bunch of shit. Before anyone could ID me in the city, I was already boarding a bus to Los Angeles.

The next month was spent just chilling on the beaches of SoCal. I stayed at a nice hotel near the waterfront, paid completely with money made in underground fighting rings. I didn’t want to make a habit of that, because I didn’t wanna draw too much attention. But for the moment, I was relaxing and honing my skills at the same time.

Then one day, Robbie’s pager went off on my hip. I went to a payphone and called the number on the screen. Sure enough, it was Robbie! He and Jess were also in LA, so we decided to meet up and reconnect. They told me about their most recent crime sprees, and I told them all about touring with Modicum and meeting Li.

“So I’m really glad we found you,” Robbie said, “there’s something I’ve wished I could’ve told you about for the past few weeks. But I hesitated to call.”

“Oh yeah, what's that?” I inquired.

“Well, when we were on the east coast, we started getting involved in bigger and bigger jobs. Not just flips and chops like the old days. Some pretty serious people started asking for our services. Russian Mafia types. Way too scary for our tastes. But I told them we knew a guy who’d be really interested if we ever saw him again. Of course, we meant you. They seemed pretty keen to meet you and asked to have you contact them if you were interested too.”

“What kinda jobs?” I asked.

“Well it's the Russian Mob, so all kinds of stuff. Hit jobs, human trafficking, drug runs...I told them you weren’t really all about that, but you were a great muscle and be perfect for high profile heists. Want the number?” he offered.

“Sure,” I said.

“Here,” he handed me a piece of paper from his wallet, “I don’t have a name, but she said to call and they’d arrange travel if you were interested. I know you’re up for just about anything but be careful. People like this can make things go south fast. That’s why me and Jess didn’t mess with ‘em. I’m only offering you because I know you’re crazy like that.”

I took the number from Robbie and didn’t talk about it any more the rest of the time we hung out. After a couple days, the two of them moved on and then I decided to call the number. A woman with a thick Russian accent answered but didn’t give a name. All I had to do was tell them I was the guy that the car thieves referred to and that I was interested in some work. She gave no details whatsoever but told me there would be a plane ticket waiting for me at LAX the next day, to be on the flight, and wait at the baggage claim at JFK International in New York. The phone hung up abruptly and I was left with no choice but to check it out.