When we were young, there was a man in our town named Shotokan. He was pale and balding and sported a ponytail that was at once tragic and defiant. More importantly, he could dodge bullets.

Growing up in the suburbs in the 1980s, bullets were hard to come by so we were forced to take him at his word which I, for one, did happily. Anything that broke the monotony of housing estates and skinheads and the endless talk of unemployment was to be applauded. Whether you believed him or not, the very idea of Shotokan dodging bullets was a chance to dream of something beyond the ordinary.

Dodge might be the wrong word actually. As he explained it, it was less about dodging and more about bending the flow of the bullet around him. Everything had a flow, and everyone had the capability of disrupting that flow, but it took years of training, concentration and discipline. On summer evenings he would stand in the middle of the green wearing full karate garb. It was his Gi, he informed us, much to the delight of my friends. He had studied martial arts throughout Asia. He had mastered Bushido, Aikido and even Shen Long, and he was held in the highest esteem on the island of Okinawa. Along with his Gi, he wore a black belt with three red tips. He said the black of his belt was the darkest shade possible and the red was a reminder of the blood on his hands. When pressed on this he would get a faraway look in his eyes and remind us that Karate should only be used in self-defence, a lesson he had learned the hard way. 

Shotokan was the subject of ridicule among my friends, and though I laughed along with them, I noticed that nobody dared mock him to his face. The potential of his fighting skills and his supposed mastery of the dreaded Dim Mak technique kept the sceptics in check. And even if there were those who doubted his tales of unsanctioned death matches, the fact remained that standing in the centre of the green in his pristine white outfit performing his kata while twenty teens and children waited impatiently for a game of football, took courage. 

To me, his powers bordered on the supernatural and I would watch fascinated as he worked his way methodically through his routine, half expecting him to conjure a fireball in his gracefully twirling hands. He didn’t punctuate his movements with any sound effects, no hi-yahs or Bruce Lee wails, but the whip-crack of his loose fitting Gi as he performed roundhouse kicks and Karate chops against invisible enemies accompanied his strikes. He was a study of poise and concentration. His moves went from meandering and balletic to sudden and violent in the blink of an eye. None of us knew where he lived, which only added to his mystique, and we would never see him approaching the green. He was always just there, as though he had materialised from the earth beneath him. He became a fixture of the summer of ’88, as ingrained in my memory as the European Championships and Ray Houghton’s winner against England. I can still see him, side-kicking and leg-sweeping his way across the grassy surface, oblivious to everything but the imagined foe in front of him.

The summer was stuttering to a close and my thoughts were turning with apprehension towards secondary school. I’d been working up the courage to ask Shotokan if he would consider taking on a pupil, when he abruptly vanished. There was joy amongst the youth of our estate as they reclaimed possession of the green, reestablishing football in its rightful place above Karate. And while I shared in this general happiness I couldn’t help but wonder what could have caused his sudden disappearance. Had he returned to Okinawa to avenge his murdered Sensei? Was he fighting in some underground tournament on an exotic island in the Pacific? Maybe he was in Nepal, high up on a snowy peak, bending bullets, time and space to his will. I really didn’t know, but I was content to leave it a mystery, to let my imagination fill in the blanks. His absence would only enhance his legend and if, like me, you prefer the legend, then at this point you should stop reading. 

It was my friend Daragh who showed me the article in the local newspaper. He was waiting for me at the top of the road, a football in his hands. He handed me the ball and took a page from his back pocket, unfolding it carefully, like a treasure map. And there he was, not Shotokan, but Sean, his smiling face pictured above the caption: Sean Murphy (29) of Leixlip Park was struck by a car and killed in the early hours of Saturday morning. Grief and shock nestled in my stomach. I felt sick and strangely betrayed. He hadn’t gone anywhere. He wasn’t mystical. He wasn’t even Japanese. He was Sean Murphy. He was mortal, and now he was dead. Daragh folded up the page and snatched the ball from my hands.

 “You’re trying to tell me he could dodge a bullet, but he couldn’t dodge a bloody Toyota!” he laughed. He turned and booted the ball onto the green where a group had gathered to play. “Come on. You’re with me. We’ll be Brazil,” he said, chasing after the ball. I watched him run away and found I couldn’t follow. As he disappeared amidst the roiling bodies, I turned away and walked slowly home. 

It was late August and the summer evening light was waning. The sky in the west was a deep amber and the first chill of autumn could be felt on the breeze. In Japan, the people of Okinawa were sleeping soundly in their beds.  

*

Billy Craven is a teacher living in Dublin, Ireland. He has had short stories and poetry published in a variety of literary magazines including Ram Eye Press, The Madrigal and Paper Lanterns. His first full-length manuscript was longlisted for the Mercier Prize. Twitter/X: @billycraven2