The Strivers' Row Spy by Jason Overstreet Read Free Book Online

Chicago. I watched my cousin TJ engage in a fistfight with a white man. My cousin was eighteen and the man was probably thirty-five.
    â€œTJ and I were riding our bicycles, approaching an intersection. TJ didn’t see an automobile idling there at the intersection, preparing to turn. When it turned, TJ ran into the side of it and scratched the door a bit. No real damage.”
    â€œRight,” said Ellington.
    â€œThe man jumped out and began shoving my cousin. He wouldn’t stop. Finally TJ pushed back, and the two began fighting. All of a sudden the man pulled a knife and my cousin kept engaging him.
    â€œAnyway, the man stabbed him in the stomach. Then he walked toward me and pointed it within an inch of my face. I lost all of my senses, just stood there, staring down the point of the blade for what seemed like a lifetime.
    â€œBut he then thought better of it, got back into his car, and drove away. I was shaking like crazy, but I fell to my knees beside TJ. I held him as he bled all over me and died right in my arms.”
    â€œShit,” said Ellington. “My God. Sorry, Temple. Sounds like there wasn’t anything you could have done to stop it, though.”
    â€œNah. I was never a fighter. I didn’t have a fighter’s mentality. If I had known how to use my hands, I would have intervened. And what adds to the anger I still feel is the fact that we were riding our bicycles in our part of the city.
    â€œSo, you see, this man had crossed the tracks and had entered ‘Colored Town.’ He was the foreigner. He was also a coward because my cousin never had a weapon to brandish. He was using his bare hands. That man was a cold-blooded murderer.”
    â€œDamn right, Temple.”
    â€œWhole thing has always made me want to change the way things work . . . the race thing and all. Know what I mean?”
    Ellington nodded. But what I hadn’t told him was how the police never even looked for the man. Two white officers arrived on the scene, questioned me, took the body away, and that was it. There had been two colored women who witnessed the event, and they told the policemen the story, but nothing came of it. I had to accept the horrific fact that a man murdering a Negro and getting away with it was routine in America. But accepting that reality had killed a part of me.
    â€œTo answer your original question,” I said, “about dreaming—after he died, I began searching for some kind of skill I could learn to help me feel like I could defend myself. I told one of my teachers—my mentor—Mrs. Bright—about what I was seeking and why. She could sense that I needed something to help me focus because I had lost that ability.
    â€œShe had one of her colleagues in the white district go to the Central Library in Milwaukee. She checked out a book entitled Scientific Boxing by James Corbett. I was able to learn the basics of the sport and how to stay fit by sparring with an imaginary opponent in the mirror, but I was always seeking something more. Years later at college I found the answer in a book called Judo Kyohan by Yokoyama and Oshima. I read it and learned about a man named Jigoro Kano. He had created this form of Japanese fighting known as Kodokan Judo in 1882.”
    â€œI’ve heard of it,” said Ellington.
    â€œI began working on his techniques every night. The book was filled with pictures that showed the Leg Wheel, Advancing Foot Sweep, Shoulder Wheel, and lots of others. I actually made a dummy out of pillows, a broomstick, and some rope. I tried to master the moves, visualizing the dummy being real. Kano stressed the idea of ‘maximum efficient use of energy.’ Anyway, somehow it all helped me finally cope with my cousin’s death.”
    â€œSounds like some very intense shit.”
    â€œIt is. I told myself that I would spend one hour a day for the rest of my life working on this form of hand-to-hand combat, and I would