Fat Bob

Diary

They called him Fat Bob before he'd earned a single scar, and somewhere between the dojo bowing out and the sake bottles bowing in, he decided the name was less an insult than a prophecy he was contractually obligated to fulfill. The night in question began, as these things do, with good intentions: a plan to sleep straight, wake early, run the old katas until his knees remembered honor. Instead he woke at dawn tangled in his own futon with three goats who had wandered in from the yard, one chewing his topknot ribbon, another standing on his chest like it owned the floor, and Bob himself giggling in the delirious relief of a man who realizes he is somehow still breathing. He tells people he flirted with death that night, but the truth, whispered only to his rice wine, is that death took one look at the scene and laughed too hard to finish the job. Now he trains at sunrise same as always, vows renewed, dignity theoretically intact, and still somehow ends every week explaining to a very patient farmer why his fence keeps mysteriously opening toward Bob's bedroom window.