Chapter 31

I spent the next day mentally berating myself for what I let happen.

I don’t know why I let things go on without putting a condom on. Neither of us needed it to happen. It was a purely stupid thing to do as we weren’t ready to deal with that level of responsibility. After playing the joke on mom about pregnancy, if it actually happened, her killing me didn’t seem out of the realm of possibilities. It was going to be torture waiting for Ellie’s Aunt Flo to arrive.

Out of all the possible reasons I thought of for what she’d done, none of them seemed to make sense. Whatever the reason, we were going to have the condom talk again.

Dinner that night was an extremely tense affair as it seemed mom hadn’t informed Randy that Grandfather was coming for a visit. He went through the roof when she told him.

It got even worse when she told him that he’d have to watch Randall and Erin while she attended my fight. Seemed that Saturday was his poker night.

It placed me squarely in the cross hairs of Randy’s ire. It got even worse when Randall was informed he had to give up his room for Grandfather’s visit.

They were both bitching up a storm when they proposed that Grandfather could use my room for his stay which from their perspective was a grand idea. The bitching started all over again when Mom shot that idea out of the water. Erin seemed quite happy that grandfather was coming.

“Do you think he’ll speak Polish with me Barnim?”

“You can count on it.”

Seemed that our conversation inflamed tensions at the table.

“GOD DAMMIT! We speak English in this fucking house.”

That brought Mom’s ire down. The rest of dinner was horrendous. I knew I’d have to watch myself around Randy for a while.

The following week was pretty normal for me, though I was getting more sparring at kick boxing than normal. Master Boripat and Mr. Singh were still brutal task masters.

The Saturday meeting with 1st Sgt Gibbs was as hard as I thought it would be. I met him at somebody’s hunting property; from what he said it was around 200 acres. Getting in his vehicle, I was blindfolded and driven around for a while before we stopped and got out. He handed me a map with a handful of numbered points on it, the points in order would take me back to where we had initially parked. The points were marked by a Red flag, and as part of the task I had to initial a slip at each point to show I was there and what time. When I said I didn’t have a watch there was a 5-minute screaming session as to how useless I was.

I was given a general time frame in which I should finish, anything longer than that would be considered a failure.

It took me a few minutes to get my bearings and start working out what I needed to do. I was a little slow in the beginning, then settled into a groove. I thought I was doing good till I screwed up and overshot one of the map points. Fixing that cost me a bunch of time, cause if I didn’t initial the slip at each point, it would be a failure. I didn’t know whether I was over or under on time when I made it back to the vehicles.

Turned out that I was 5 secs over the time limit but I didn’t get yelled out as much as I figured I would. It did turn into a half hour critique session. There were questions on what I did and how I did it. Then we went over some tips and tricks that I immediately realized would have sped the whole thing up tremendously.

The week leading up to the fight was pure chaos as I had finals that week, two per day on Tues-Thurs. Trying to concentrate on finals and prepare for the fight was taxing on me both mentally and physically.

Waking up the morning of the 25th, my mind was going a million miles a minute. I had my typing and anatomy finals that day, and then there was Grandfather flying into Atlanta while I was still in school.

It didn’t help that I was worried about the possibility of Ellie being pregnant, or the cops taking me to jail for the stuff with Ms. Pallesen. Thankfully, Judo was on hiatus while they found a new space for class during the summer. I was going to drop Ellie off at her house after school, then head straight home.

My typing final wasn’t that hard. I was a touch above average, being able to type 52 words per minute. I only had a couple of errors, but it was within the margin of error. The anatomy final was a completely different scenario. What I thought would have been an easy class was anything but. I wasn’t sure how I did, but I thought that it would be a passing grade.

Dropping Ellie off, she gave me a kiss and got a promise I’d tell her all about everything in the morning. Pulling in, Mom’s car was in the garage. Walking in to the kitchen, Mom and Grandfather were finishing making dinner.

I had to laugh as Erin was following him around just chatting away in Polish. I was able to grab a shower and get changed before dinner was called. There was the usual catching up during dinner and after doing the dishes, guess that was another punishment, Grandfather called me over.

“Go upstairs and review for your finals tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then go to bed. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day for you. You’re going to pick me up on your way to kickboxing.”

“Uhm ... yes, sir.”

Walking up to my room, I couldn’t even imagine the torture the three of them were going to put me through in kick boxing. Heeding the advice I’d been given, I went to bed after studying.

Grandfather was making coffee as I was going out for my run. He asked me what was in the pack. I told him, and he told me to hold on for a minute. He found a 10lb bag of sugar and added it to the pack then I was dismissed. I kept the run to a brisk 3 miles, and when I walked back into the kitchen, he pulled the bag of sugar out.

“You’re lucky it’s still intact or you’d have been buying a new one.”

The hits just kept coming when I picked up Ellie for school.

“Sweetie, would it be possible for you to find a ride home from school today?”

“Shouldn’t be a problem. What’s going on?”

“I have to pick up my grandfather before going to kick boxing.”

“OHH, can I go please?” I haven’t seen Master Boripat since the last fight. Pretty please?”

Fuck, I knew I should probably tell her no, though I couldn’t come up with a compelling reason to.

“I don’t see why not. You’re not worried about meeting my grandfather?”

“Master Boripat likes me, he’ll protect me.”

I finished up my exams with math, which I think I did OK on, and NJROTC which I wasn’t worried about.

Heading home from school to pick up Grandfather, I wondered how he’d take Ellie coming along.

Ellie was determined to make a good impression and cajoled me into teaching her several phrases in Polish on the way.

I thought about adding some extra stuff into the phrases but wisely decided not to, as it wouldn’t have gone over well with grandfather.

Pulling into the driveway, I could see him sitting in a lawn chair just inside the garage. Ellie got out and into the backseat. Grandfather no sooner sat in the front sear than he started being suave.

“So, who’s the beautiful lady you have in the back seat?”

“That’s so sweet. I’m Ellie, Barnim’s girlfriend.”

“Well, he should thank his lucky stars.”

“Thank you.”

“When did you have him teach you that?”

“On the drive over.”

“Not bad.”

They talked about nothing in particular during the drive; guess grandfather was getting a feel for what kind of a person Ellie was.

Once we got out of the truck, I noticed that he’d brought a small duffel bag with him; this couldn’t be good. When we walked in, Mr. Singh and Master Boripat were sitting on a bench outside of the office. Master Boripat was on his feet as soon as he saw us.

“Miss Ellie, it has been so long. Mr. Singh, this is Miss Ellie, Barnim’s lady.”

“Nice to meet you Miss. Mr. Lapcynski, it’s good to see you again today.”

Fuck, that meant he’d been here while I was at school. Who knows how much time together these three were scheming? This really did not bode well. I knew my two instructors could be task masters, but Grandfather would take it to a whole new level. Looking from one to another, I couldn’t get a sense of what was going to happen.

I was suddenly broken out of my daze.

“Miss Ellie, do you have workout clothes?”

“I do, they’re in the truck.”

“Go get them. After Barnim and his grandfather change, Barnim will guard the door while you change. Though everyone here knows what would happen if they bothered you.”

“OK.”

With that she was off to the truck. I wasn’t surprised when Grandfather followed me to the locker room; what did surprise me was how in shape he was in for being 77yrs old. I knew he was extremely active, but he was probably in better shape than most guys 20 years younger. He looked at me as we walked out.

“Meet us by the heavy bags when Ellie is done changing.”

She was waiting for us to exit. I gave her the all clear and she went in to change. It wasn’t long before she came strolling out.

Damn, even in workout clothes she looked good. I could see she had on a sports bra underneath a white t-shirt but what caught me off guard was the fairly tight Umbro shorts. There were a few whistles and hoots, though Master Boripat put an end to that.

“Get back to work or I’ll put you in the ring with Barnim and walk away.” None of the other guys could match me for size or strength, so after a few grumbles, they went back to what they were doing.

We went over and started stretching with my grandfather. I was told to warm up with the heavy bag, as they were going to give Ellie some instruction. After about a half hour, I was told to get in the ring, where they had me sit on the stool near the office side of the ring. A TV stand with a VCR was rolled out after I sat down and placed so I could see what was playing.

“We’re going to show you 5 minutes of your opponent. We’ll talk about it, then you’ll spar lightly.”

Damian Botha, my opponent, was 6’3, 240lb, and 5 yrs older than me. He was an overly muscular guy that was just a bit smaller than me. From the video, he looked like the proverbial “brick shithouse”; his muscles had muscles.

These kinds of guys, from the fights I’ve seen, had a fairly slow plodding style. The one thing he had going for him was his ability to cut off the ring and keeping the opponent in the corner or on the ropes. That’s where his size and strength came into play.

“You see why we stressed foot work?”

“Yes, I do Mr. Singh.”

“You’re as strong as him most likely, but you’d absorb too much damage that way. Now you spar with your grandfather.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard them, or are you scared to have your girlfriend watch a senior citizen mop the canvas with you?”

I knew he was pushing my buttons, but I just didn’t see what the hell they were trying to pull. There was no getting out of this, so I would do everything possible not to hit him that hard.

We went around a bit with me doing my best when he realized what I was doing. Grandfather instantly made me regret the plan I was following. A right jab shot towards my face, then as I raised my guard, I missed a left hook/uppercut that impacted me just at the bottom of my rib cage. It felt like my whole body shut down, I ended up on the canvas.

Next thing I knew besides the pain, was that he was standing over me.

“Don’t you fucking pull that bullshit with me. Go full out, or I’ll drop you again.”

They brought the stool out so I could sit and catch my breath.

“I taught you how to throw a liver punch and watched your first fight. You know why the punches you threw didn’t drop your opponent like I just dropped you?”

Honestly, I thought I was doing it right. Obviously not.

“No sir.”

“Well you’ve been throwing a straight hook. That’s not what I taught you, you’re hitting too low. You have to add a little bit of an uppercut. It’s called a shovel punch. You now know firsthand how effective it can be.”

All those summers in the garage with him while growing up came flooding back. He was right; I’d flattened the punch out from what he’d taught me. I didn’t think it would take a whole lot to correct and the rest of the night was productive. We changed and headed home. I was informed that since my finals were over, I’d be staying home the next day and doing whatever grandfather wanted.

Waking up I decided to forego working out. Today was going to be mentally taxing and tomorrow would be and all-around exhausting day. Grandfather was drinking coffee, looking over the paper when I walked into the kitchen. Getting a bowl of cereal, I sat down across from him before I was informed as to what our day would consist of.

“So Barnim, we’ve got a full day ahead of us. First thing on the agenda is to go visit your boss. At noon we have an appointment on Fort McPherson. Then on the way home we’re going to stop and see your JROTC instructors.”

“Ahh, OK.”

This was going to be a long day and had no idea how things would play out. I finished with breakfast and got ready to go.