From Providence, VA

Here’s another excerpt from my book Providence, VA.  In this scene, my heroine Sammy Reisinger is working with her friend Jamaal Winston to learn some karate, in case she may need to defend herself. He is an economics professor by profession, also trapped in Grayson County by the circumstance of the collapse of the national power grid. Jackson, the horse Sammy has befriended, watches their lesson. Here, the enormity of their predicament overwhelms her and Jamaal looks to comfort her.

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“I’m going to teach you a few basic stances. First, we’ll do the Ready Stance. I haven’t earned the title sensei, which means instructor, but it will have to do. You are the kohai, the student. First, we stand facing each other. Then we bow to each other, recognizing our worth to each other and to humanity. Like this,” he bowed from his waist. She returned the bow.
“Now then, when the sensei says, ‘Ready!’ you will close your hands, bend your elbows, and place your hands a few inches from your chest while simultaneously moving your right leg outward and placing it back on the ground at about the width of your shoulders, bending your knees slightly. Ready!”
Teacher and student assumed the Ready Position.
“Now then, let’s do a Forward Stance. You can do this from either side. Are you right-handed?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, let’s do the right foot first. Move your right foot forward about one-and-a-half times the length of your foot. Like so. My right foot is still pointed forward. My right knee is bent while my back leg is straight. My shoulders are still straight. You can tell you have put your foot forward enough if you drop your back knee to the floor and put your fist between your feet and it touches both. Try it.
“Look what you can do from this stance. Your forward arm is your right. You can thrust it straight for a forward punch. You can thrust your back arm, your left, straight. This is called a reverse punch. You can kick from your back leg. Or you can get a front snap-kick. Let’s try this. Good. Again. Good.”
“Jamaal, I’m scared.”
“Sam.”
“No, really,” she quivered. “I’ve never hit anybody before.”
“Sammy.”
“And I’m scared about what might happen to me. To us.”
“Focus on the task at hand. Try your kick again.”
She dropped her arms and started to cry. Soon her tears became a torrent, a full-fledged, unabashed wail. Jamaal walked to her and embraced her, but she was inconsolable. Her fit of agony and despair continued. The intensity of her grief was so violent that her body shook spontaneously. She choked on her tears, but they continued to flow, dampening his shirt.
“Oh, Sam,” he said, gently.
Gradually she regained her composure, but she continued to hold him. “I am so scared.”
He took her by the hand and led her to a nearby bench. “I’m scared, too,” he admitted. “A person would be crazy not to be scared right now. But we must overcome our fears.”
Seeing her still wavering, he said, “Sam, for whatever reason, we’re being tested. We’re not the first people who have ever been scared.
“I’m sure my ancestors experienced intense fear. They were scared when they were roped like wild horses on the plains of Africa and placed in chains into stinking, putrid holds in the bottom of ocean-going ships to sail to America. They were scared when as slaves they knew that at any time, their children could be sold away from them like chattel. They were scared when their daughters, younger than you, were forced to copulate with and bear the children of their masters. They were scared when they heard the drum-beats of the Civil War. When the war was over, they were freed, but were given nothing with which to earn a living or feed themselves. As sharecroppers, they were forever bound to poverty. They marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. in Jackson and were shot with water cannons and attacked by police dogs. I’m sure they were scared.
“My father’s father served in Korea, fighting for a country that never considered him a full citizen. He returned with a severe back injury and never was able to work another day in his life. And my own father was killed in a drive-by shooting in Memphis.
“That my country elected a black man as its president, that I was able to earn a PhD and get a job at one of the nation’s finest universities, that I married a wonderful woman, that I am now living in the home of a selfless woman who may die soon, and that at this very moment, I am in your presence, is breathtakingly astounding to me. I am humbled, I am amazed, and I am terrified. But you know what? We’re going to make it. Fuck this Pulse! I’m not about to piss away a legacy of multi-generational pain and anguish because we don’t have any goddamn electricity.”