The Adventures of Stagger Li

Chapter 4

Stagger Li Learns to Dance the Wu Chi Ku

A warrior with a vorpal blade strapped to his back leaped into the passenger seat of
Wu Chi Ku’s blue Eldorado convertible as Wu slowed for an alligator on the two-
lane back road he was taking on the first leg of his journey home from an
unadvertised gathering of top martial artists from around the world. Wu and
Stagger Li looked at each other. Within a quarter of a mile, they were fast friends.

With Wu’s laughing but fierce influence and his ability to see the humor in most
everything, Stagger Li’s ferocity did not lessen but became more contained. He
was learning to become more human, and that though born of gods, humanness
was his nature and his fate.

“Where are you headed?” asked Wu.

“Where are you headed?”

“Home.”

“Where’s that?”

“The Isle of Metaphorical Encounter.”

***

Thud!

Stagger Li opened first one eye, then the other. Flat on his back again! Good thing
the sand was loosely packed. Though if this kept up, with his body as the pile
driver, the sand would become as concrete as an orthodox mentality.

Wu Chi Ku peered down through the palm fronds and giggled. “Come on back up,
Stagger! Give it another whirl!”

Stagger Li positively detested his teacher’s giggle which only seemed to come
during what Wu called “teaching moments,” generally meaning when Stagger Li
was rendered immobile and in some degree of pain. Like now.

Wu Chi Ku ran a summer training camp for his advanced students which Wu called
Metaphorical Encounters but the students called Nursery Rhymes From Hell. The
camp was on a remote island in the southern Pacific that hosted no one but Wu and
his spirited associates.

Right now the martial training metaphor (or hellish nursery rhyme) was a revised
version of Jack and the Beanstalk. Stagger Li’s task was to climb the palm tree
without disturbing the sleeping giant (Wu). Thus far, the giant had been very much
disturbed.

Stagger Li groaned, rolling to a standing position. “You think this is so easy, Wu,
let’s see you do it.!” Uh oh! Did he really say that out loud? He meant only to think
it.

Wu laughed. “Sure! Come on up and be the giant!” Stagger Li swiftly climbed the
palm, noticing the blue ocean gently waving toward the white sand beach. He
settled among the fronds. “Okay! I’m ready!”

Wu called up from below. “So am I! I think your goose is cooked, Stagger!” Wu

stood with a coconut balanced atop his bandana-covered head.

Stagger Li sighed. Jack and the Beanstalk had yet to be mastered. And only
Buddha knew what awaited him after that with Jack and Jill, but he was sure it had
to do with fetching a pail of water.

Stagger Li would need all his training and then some in responding to the
numismatic message heading his way and slicing into his life with a thunk.