He sat down, frowned, shook his head, and looked at me.

I dropped to my knees.

"Get off your knees. We don"t train like that. Push-ups like a man."

"You"re still an a.s.s."

"Seventy and seventy."

"I hate you. Really hate you."

"Eighty and eighty."

"Are you f.u.c.king mad?"

"One hundred and one hundred."

"I"m a girl."

"When I"m finished with you, you will be a woman who fears no man."

"Still an a.s.s."

Then he added speed drills. Left-leg sidekick down the black stripe to the end. Turn around. Right-side sidekick on the return. While I was exhausted, panting, he made me keep going. I refused to let him break me. More roundhouse kicks. More hook kicks. Soon it was same leg down and back, then change legs, down and back, doubling the number of kicks, and while I was exhausted from his regimen, I had to do two hundred front kicks into a heavy bag, one hundred with each leg, each striking with the ball of my foot, each time trying to make the bag fold in half. Training went on for hours. Spinning back kicks. Crescent kicks. Jumping double kicks. Reverse punches. Jabbing punches. Lunge punches. Punches in a series of three. And there were katas to enforce my stance and blocks and form and fluidity. Upper rising blocks. Middle-level blocks. Down blocks. Foot sweeps. Block after block after block. Elbow strikes. Spear hands. Upper-elbow strikes. After all of that we did kata after kata after G.o.dd.a.m.n kata.

I yelled, "I hate katas. They are bulls.h.i.t."

"You need katas, need form, grace, and repet.i.tion."

"Do I look like I want to be Ip Man?"

While normal girls were taking ballet and losing their virginity, while they were talking about giving boys b.l.o.w. .j.o.bs, while they were kissing and being fingered by boys, this was what I was doing.

Soon he came in with bo, staves, kamas, shinai, sais, nunchaku, swords, and tonfa. There was a hatchet, sling blade, and a baseball bat on top of all of that. I was kicking around the gym, at that point able to do that on my own, and when I finished I stood in front of him, my T-shirt soaked in sweat.

I asked, "What"s this?"

"Weapons training."

"What do you do for a living, Daddy?"

"I told you to never ask me that."

"I"m going to ask every day until I get an answer. You can make me do push-ups all day and night and I"m still going to ask. I"m your daughter and I have the right to know what you do."

"I hurt people."

"What, do you call them names and hurt their feelings, or something else?"

"I freelance for powerful individuals who want to operate outside of what"s legal."

"Freelance?"

"Sometimes I do more than hurt them."

"What"s more than hurt?"

"Gear on now, or one hundred and ninety-nine push-ups."

"I still want to know what you do for a living, Old Man Reaper."

"I"m thirty-four."

"I"m fourteen. To me that"s old."

He paused. "You want to know what I do, who I work for, after we"re done, I"ll tell you."

FOUR.

Five years later. Two years ago.

I was a new hire being indoctrinated in the company"s philosophy.

It was midnight when Old Man Reaper pulled up outside of a dive bar on the outskirts of Dallas. He wore a gray suit and tie. I wore slacks and low heels. I wore a top that had no sleeves, no jewelry, hair slicked back, black leggings, flat shoes. He drove us to a club in a building that looked like it had been a church, a bowling alley, and a strip club over the years. Loud music. Large crowd. I smelled the ganja in the parking lot. If cocaine had a stench, I was sure that it was in the air too.

Daddy parked near the club, made a call, hung up, then said, "The target is inside."

"Who is he?"

"It"s a woman. About your age. She"s three inches taller and about two weight cla.s.ses up from you. Wearing a Bob Marley top, tight jeans, heels, hair dyed bright red. Looks like a clown."

"She"s carrying a weapon?"

"No idea."

"What do you need me to do?"

"Show no mercy."

"Mind if I ask what this is about?"

"Never ask what it"s about. Down the line, that"s the way it will be. If you come on board and they want you to know, you"ll know. Even then don"t be eager to find out. Listen if they tell, but never ask."

"Okay. But I am a girl and I guess that we tend to be inquisitive about things."

"Lose that habit."

"Sure. Whatever."

"Follow your orders. Beat her a.s.s. Give her a message."

"Just give her an old-fashioned a.s.s whooping?"

"Tell her that n.o.body f.u.c.ks with Reaper and gets away with it. n.o.body. Reaper will always come after you, no matter how long it takes. Tell the target that, hit her ten more times, then walk away."

Old Man went in with me, stood near the door, pointed out the target.

The girl was standing at the bar. Dressed as described. High heels supporting a round, plump, meaty, circular a.s.s. Laughing like she owned the world. Her girls were at her side. I pulled off my motorcycle gloves, gloves that had rock-hard protective plastic across each knuckle, gloves that could be used as bra.s.s knuckles or have the impact of a sap. Old Man Reaper nodded. I pushed my way through the crowd and went straight to her. She looked my way and without pause I threw a hard punch into the center of her nose. Her drink fell and she wobbled in her shoes. Blood gushed. On the heels of the first blow I dug in and threw a right hook to her solar plexus. Her hands dropped from her bloodied face to grab her new pain. One of her girls ran over to save her and was met with a spinning back kick that hit her gut and lifted her in the air before she dropped in agony. A second girl came and two punches left her on the ground in dreamland. A guy came. I looked toward Old Man Reaper. He was gone. The guy cursed me, charged at me, but I dropped, made him trip and fall. By the time he was getting up, I was putting a bottle to the side of his face. Then my right hand came down on his face until he begged me to stop hitting him. He was done. I grunted, looked at the crowd, then went back to the girl I had been sent to give a message to, went to the terrified woman and threw another hook that landed on her blood-damp chin. As she was falling I hit her three more times.

I looked at the crowd. n.o.body wanted to f.u.c.k with me, n.o.body wanted to tug on my cape.

As they watched, I grabbed the girl"s hair, gave no mercy, beat her from pretty to ugly to atrocious, and as she suffered, I gave her the message. Her eyes had widened in surprise.

I repeated, "n.o.body f.u.c.ks with Reaper and gets away with it."

She moaned, "Reaper."

My fist was a hammer.

Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.

She had been unconscious since eight, maybe since nine, but I had hit her anyway.

When I got back to the car, Old Man Reaper was inside.

I slid in and he pulled away from the curb slow and easy. I was sweating and breathing hard. He was listening to Luther Vandross sing that a chair was not a chair with no one sitting there.

I raised my fist and showed him my bloodied glove as proof of the mission accomplished.

"I gave her the message from you."

"The message was from you."

"Why would the message be from me?"

"When you were a fat little girl in Memphis, that b.i.t.c.h used to bully you. She beat you up on the playground. She called you names. Called you fat. Talked about your mother. Stole your lunch money. She stole your confidence. She had almost destroyed you in your youth."

"That was Alberta Simmons from when I was in Memphis?"

"That was that little b.i.t.c.h."

"She got fat. And now she"s ugly."

"The day I had picked you up, she had beat you up on the playground."

"That happened a long time ago."

"No matter how long it takes, always pay a motherf.u.c.ker back. Whatever they did to you, you take them double. You make them not forget to never f.u.c.k with you again. You make them p.i.s.s when they hear your name. You make them turn the other way and start running when they see you coming."

"How did you find out about her bullying me?"

"Your elementary school counselor told me."

"Miss Smith?"

Old Man Reaper said, "Yeah, Miss Smith."

"When?"

"The night I left you at my hotel, I went over on Blair Hunt Drive and went to see her."

"Why?"

"She extended an invitation. Southern hospitality. Didn"t want to be rude. I wanted to know why you were bruised when I picked you up. Wanted to know why you had a black eye. Your momma had just died and I didn"t want to ask you if she had been physically abusing you. So I asked her."

"Then you ended up having Bible study."

"Without the Bible."

"Gross."

"She"s well versed with the Song of Solomon. And she cooked a good chicken."

"Much people picked on me."

"She said you were made fun of a lot, pushed around, called much names."

"Do I get to go after them all? Can I go after the teachers who made f.u.c.ked-up jokes too?"

"If you want to."

My nostrils flared with the memories. "Now what?"

"We go to work, get to the real reason we drove two days to get here from California."

"Collections."

He nodded. "This debt might be beyond collections."

Hours later, as the sun was about to rise on a Sunday, we were in an office near downtown.

The building was empty, Dallas a place where people went to church.