Ironman

by Chris Crutcher

  “Why not?” Bo snaps a connecting chain to the harness of the equally eager Samantha, a forty-five-pound silver female, then stuffs his hands into his mittens.

  “Because they can’t run in Yukon Jack’s. These guys are responsible for most of your speed the first three or four miles. All you do is hold on and move your legs.”

  “If it’s an inferior workout, how come I can’t breathe after the first hundred yards? Besides, I got no choice. If I don’t run them every day, they’ll attack and eat me. I’ll just add miles.”

  “I have a better idea.”

  “Why am I not surprised?”

  “Because you’re beginning to wise up.”

  Bo’s eyebrows rise. “So what’s your idea?”

  “A sled.”

  Bo snorts. “There’s a better idea. If a little dog power diminishes the effect of your training, why not wipe out your workouts altogether and ride?”

  Shelly smiles. “I ride, Brainiac. You run along beside.”

  Bo thinks a minute. “I don’t know. These guys have never actually pulled a sled. They’ve only pulled me.”

  “Yeah, but they’re sled dogs. Believe me, Brew, they’ll catch on. And I’ll be the Susan Butcher of the lower forty-eight.”

  “Who’s Susan Butcher?”

  “The next best thing to an Alaskan Gladiator. She used to win the Iditarod on a fairly regular basis—against scores of macho numbnuts just like Ian Wyrack.”

  “Would you mind telling me something?” Bo scrutinizes Shelly across the booth at Doc’s.

  She shrugs. “Take a chance.”

  “What did you mean the other day in Mr. Nak’s group when you told Elvis you knew what he was talking about?”

  “Child molestation?” she says. “You can say it, Brew.”

  “Yeah, that.”

  “Because I have an uncle who’s gifted in that area.”

  “Really? Did he—I mean, did you—”

  “Get molested? Nope. But my sister did, and so did two of my cousins.” Shelly speaks with no hint of emotion. “I told. Almost got me thrown out of the house. It did get me beat up. This was clear back in grade school.”

  “Who beat you up?”

  “Who always beat me up? My dad. My sister chickened out after I told and wouldn’t back me up, and my cousins called me a liar and a bitch. Dad couldn’t figure out why I would say such things, so he slapped hell out of me to make me stop. Said I was making the family look bad.”

  “God, what did you do?”

  “I covered my head, what would you do? But he was really mad, and he got in a shot that cracked my eye socket. My sister wouldn’t protect herself, but she’d sure protect me, so she got on the phone and called Child Protection Services.” Shelly laughs, void of delight. “Man, those guys were there in fifteen minutes with the cops, and they put my dad away for the weekend and got my uncle for ‘communication with a minor.’ Isn’t that amazing? They called what he did to her ‘communication.’ He didn’t do much jail time, but he disappeared when he got out, and no one in the family’s seen him since—which probably means some girl none of us knows is getting it as we speak.”

  Bo watches her face, looking for signs of the war she just described. “You tell it like you’re talking about a family reunion or something.”

  “Want me to burst into tears? Or tear this booth out of the floor?”

  Bo chuckles. “No, I guess not. These people will think I did something.” He hesitates, formulating a question he has danced around since he’s known her. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Like when are we going to have sex?”

  Bo’s chin drops as if he’s placed a five-pound pinch of BBs between his lower lip and gum. “No! I mean that’s not what I was going to ask. I mean, I just wanted to know…” He pauses. “When are we going to have sex?”

  JANUARY 8

  Dear Larry,

  I think it’s about time you did a show on safe sex. You probably have, but advertising has more clout when you’re in the market for the product. Let me clarify my request. I’m not requesting a show on creative uses of the condom; my PE teacher has already demanded that we each have one welded to the appropriate appendage as we step out of the shower each morning. I’m talking about a show that will demonstrate how to be safe if you go to bed with someone who can pin you three falls out of three.

  Only kidding, Lar. Shelly talked about having sex today when we were in Doc’s, and it threw me off. We’ve only been making out a little while, and my fantasies—not to mention my skills—aren’t finely honed enough to step up into the majors. Actually, she brought it up to keep from talking about a subject she wanted to avoid, and it worked for a while, but I prevailed.

  She’s so fine, Larry. At first I think her muscles might have put me off a bit, but her skin is soft as suede and kind of naturally tan, and though she’s not movie-star gorgeous, she’s maximum sexy. And see, that’s part of the problem, because I can’t think about getting serious without thinking about that part, but I also can’t think about getting serious without wanting to know all I can about her, because I think that’s how my parents got into trouble, by not knowing each other.

  Remember, I met her in Anger Management, which has to be, on the whole, a really bad dating service; and after all this time I still don’t know exactly why she’s there. And unless you’re a misunderstood righteous dude such as myself, you have to commit some true ugliness to be sent there. So I finally cut through all the bullshit and asked. I said, “So how did you get into the Nak Pack?”

  “I asked him if I could.”

  “You mean you’re not sentenced to it?”

  She shook her head.

  “I don’t get it.”

  “My whole life is full of secrets,” she said. “Secrets are the very worst thing you can have in your life, Bo, and that’s all there is in mine. My family views the truth like it’s cholera, and they stomp it out. My dad broke my eye socket because he would rather beat me up than let the truth out, or have his family look bad.” Then she said, “You know why I took a liking to you right off?” and I said, “Biceps? Quads?”

  She said, “Yeah, right. No, it was because of Redmond.”

  I hesitated a long second before saying, “I do not fancy the idea of owing Mr. When the Going Gets Tough for the luckiest break of my life. Please tell me this has twisted meaning.”

  She said, “This has twisted meaning. You sure you want to hear it?”

  I was sure.

  “Besides all the secrecy in my family, my parents are just plain nuts. They’re nuts and they’re mean. Most of the time I think they adopted me because they needed one kid to hate. They’ve always said they love me as much as my brother and sisters, who are all biological, but it’s a lie. I never even got the same allowance as they did.”

  “They gave you less allowance? That’s cold.”

  “That’s not even the bad part. I was the only jock of the bunch, and in all my years in grade school and junior high they never went to one game, and I played three sports. When I was eight, if I couldn’t find a ride to summer soccer, I walked three miles. Dad said it would help me get in shape.”

  “So how does this make Redmond responsible for awakening you to the social and sexual potency of Beauregard Brewster?”

  “That would be a rude awakening. Be patient. Mom said I hated her from the beginning, and Dad said he knew I was a troublemaker from day one. As far back as I can—”

  I said, “Wait. Your mother thought you hated her and your dad said you were a troublemaker the day they got you?”

  She nodded. “That’s what they said. They still say it.”

  “I thought my dad was rough.”

  “They’ll tell you it was in my genes. Mom said my real mother was a drug addict and a prostitute, that I’d probably turn out the same.” Shelly gazed over my head and out the window. “You can’t know how much that scared me. I didn’t even know what a drug addict was, or a prostitute, ei
ther, but I knew they were bad and I really believed I could make my parents love me if I could just be good enough to prove I wouldn’t turn out like my real mom. I watched enough TV to know if you were good at sports you’d never be a drug addict or a prostitute.”

  I still wanted to know what this had to do with Redmond or her liking me.

  “In seventh grade I heard about this agency that will search for your real parents, and by then I was starting to give up on pleasing my mom and dad, and I was so miserable I would rather have lived with a prostitute and a drug addict than with them, so I got a paper route, because the people who did the search charged two hundred and fifty dollars.”

  “That’s a lot of newspapers.”

  “It is a lot of newspapers, but I made the money and they started the process. It only took them two weeks to tell me she’d been a college student right here at CFU on a partial track scholarship. They couldn’t give me her name until they tracked her down and got her permission, but they said she gave me up because she wasn’t ready to start a family yet. They also told me that even though my mother never actually met her, she had that information.”

  I said, “So how pissed were you?”

  Shelly leaned forward on her elbows, Lar, clenching her teeth so hard I thought her jaw muscle would pop out the side of her face. “I got home from that meeting and went to my room and got my baseball bat and stormed into the kitchen and leveled it.”

  “What do you mean, leveled it?”

  “I broke out the windows, ripped three cupboard doors off their hinges, stacked all the dishes I could find on the floor and dropped the microwave on them.”

  “Oh,” I said. “You mean you leveled it.”

  She ignored me. “Mom tried to call Dad, but I tore the telephone cord out of the wall. Then I ran into the living room and fired a vase through the picture tube of our twenty-seven-inch TV, all the time screaming that my mother was a bitch and a drug addict and a goddamn liar!”

  She was sweating as she told me, Lar, like dripping.

  I asked what they did to her.

  She said, “Foster care. Mom made it across the street and called my dad and the cops. I was lucky the cops got there first, because Dad would have beaten me bloody. I went to the Crisis Residential Center for a few days, and since I wouldn’t quit threatening to light my parents’ house on fire, they found me a placement.”

  “God, what was that like?”

  She shrugged. “Actually, it could have been okay. They were probably nice people, but I was so angry I just hid out in my room. They were kind of afraid of me, I think, and I started getting in trouble at school, skipping classes, smoking dope, doing all the things my mother had said were in my genes.”

  I wanted to ask if she did the other part, Lar, but I tell you, I’m getting smart. This girl could take me out.

  “I was kicked out of three junior high schools and five foster homes before the school year was over. By that time there was no drug I wouldn’t try and nobody’s ass I wouldn’t kick.” She sighed and her shoulders slumped, and I figured now was the time.

  I said, “So how does Redmond fit into this?”

  Her eyes flared. “I spent the rest of junior high in residential treatment at Good Shepherd. I was so much trouble at first, they stuck me in isolation for days on end to break me, but I’d be out a day or two and some girl would look cross-eyed at me and I’d take her out, and back I’d go to this locked room with nothing but a bed. They’d make me wait to go to the bathroom until I thought I’d explode.”

  I flinched, and she said, “I know, you want to know about Redmond.”

  I said, “I can wait. This is a good story.”

  “It’s a shitty story,” she said back, “but it’s true. I was still at Good Shep when I got out of junior high, and I was thrown out of two high schools in Spokane and one in the valley. I guess I finally started wearing down because I finally got tired of being in trouble all the time and having everyone hate me or be scared of me or both, and I was sick of being alone. I had also let my body go completely to hell. I weighed as much as a hundred-sixty pounds and as little as one-oh-three.

  “So I made a plan. For the next six months I was a model citizen. My room was immaculate, I ran errands for the other girls, cleaned the premises without being asked. I worked out every day, even though I was being schooled on the grounds and couldn’t play on any more teams because they didn’t want me trashing any more schools. Six months. Bring me an ass and I’d kiss it.

  “Then in September of what should have been my sophomore year, I got myself sprung from Good Shep and placed with a family here in Clark Fork. Good people, and far enough away from anyone who knew my history that I might have a chance.”

  I guessed. “This is where Redmond comes in.”

  “This is where Redmond comes in. He was coaching girls’ basketball and I turned out. I’d been playing basketball since I was six years old—mostly with boys in my neighborhood. I was most valuable player two years in a row in age group, on a team that almost went to Nationals, Brew. This was a good team and I was one of the best players on it. I loved basketball.”

  I leaned back in my seat and slowly shook my head. It could be no other way. “Redmond cut you.”

  Shelly looked off to the side as tears welled in her eyes.

  “Why?”

  She was silent a moment more, gathering herself. Shelly doesn’t like to let even me see the hurt side of her. “The night before cut day, I didn’t sleep a second. I wasn’t worried about being cut, but I wanted to make varsity. I’d given it everything I had: ran every drill full speed, dived for balls, shot jumpers until my arms almost fell off. I wouldn’t leave the gym until I’d dropped ten free throws in a row.”

  “So how the hell did he cut you?”

  Shelly pounded her fist into her palm so hard I thought she broke something, Lar, and then thumped her chest. “Twice in practice I almost blew up. Once a girl undercut me and I came up with my fists cocked. She walked away, and I followed, yelling ‘Hey!’ but she kept walking. I caught myself that time and apologized, but Redmond saw. The other time a girl fell on my knee. I thought I was injured and came up swinging. My rage would just appear like that. Redmond jumped between us and sent me to the lockers. I apologized again, but I was still worried he’d put me on JV for it.”

  “Did he?”

  Shelly grimaced. “Nope. You played football, so you know about cut day. They posted two sheets—one for varsity and one for JV—at noon in student lunch. The whole team crowded around as they were being posted. I scanned the varsity list and didn’t see my name, but I wasn’t as disappointed as I thought I’d be, because by then I’d prepared myself by saying if it happened, I’d work so hard and play so well they’d have to move me up in midseason, or at least by tournament time. But then I scanned the JV list, and my name wasn’t there, either. I started laughing, because I knew I’d gone over the varsity list so fast I’d missed it. But when I looked again, my name wasn’t there. It wasn’t anywhere.”

  I said, “Oh, God. What—”

  “I was the only kid cut. There was a foreign exchange student from Sweden who had never touched a basketball in her life, Brew, and she made JV.”

  “What did you do?”

  “All of a sudden I felt naked. I knew everyone was looking at me, and I was completely stripped. Panic was choking me, so I smiled and started to walk away. I just needed to get to the door, get outside. One of the girls grabbed my arm. She said it had to be a mistake and she would go talk to Redmond with me right that minute, but by then I was claustrophobic. I couldn’t breathe and I just needed to get out, so I ran.”

  “But it wasn’t a mistake, was it? Redmond meant to cut you.”

  “No mistake,” she said. “But this story gets better. I went home and snagged my foster mother’s car and headed for the freeway at about a hundred miles an hour. It sounds suicidal, I know, but I really wanted to hit something, make somebody hurt. Luckily I wasn
’t much of a driver, and I skidded into the highway divider and flipped a couple of times. Totaled the car, but I didn’t have a scratch.”

  “Jeez, Shelly, you’re lucky to be alive.”

  “I guess that depends on your definition of lucky.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m lucky you’re alive. Did you find out why Redmond did it?”

  “Sure did. My foster family gave me the boot in about the same amount of time it took the tow truck to get to the car. They said they were sorry, but they couldn’t stand it if a kid got killed in their care. When my child protection caseworker came out to get me, I told him why I did it, and he went with me to confront Redmond.”

  “I’ll bet that was fun.”

  “Actually, it was, kind of. My caseworker, Jim Avery, was this great big guy—bigger than Redmond—and an ex-Golden Gloves boxer. I thought he was going to spar a couple of rounds with Redmond, which would have made it all worth it.”

  I dream of the day, Lar. I dream of the day.

  “Well, at first Jim was very polite, and he explained my situation to Redmond and asked if there was a way he would reconsider letting me play. Redmond said that after he saw how willing I was to mix it up, he had requested my records and decided he couldn’t afford to have someone poisoning the team’s morale, that it wasn’t fair to the other girls. Jim stayed polite long enough to get Redmond to admit that I had the talent to play, then he threatened to sue the school on behalf of the state of Washington and on behalf of me.”

  This is the kind of shit I like, Lar.

  “Redmond said go right ahead, that the conversation was off the record. He said certain kids simply weren’t right for high-school athletics, no matter what their talent—particularly those who had used up their chances.”

  Redmond’s sensitivity and tolerance know no bounds, Lar. I can’t believe I’m the only one in Nak’s Pack for calling him an asshole. We ought to take out a class-action billboard.

  So Shelly kind of smiled and said, “I was just getting ready to use the F-word in reference to Redmond when Jim beat me to it. He told Redmond he had no business within five hundred miles of a kid and that he would register a formal complaint with the Clark Fork school board, and if that didn’t work he’d sue him for malpractice. He also said Redmond better never give him the slightest reason to kick his ass out in the real world, because he would do it with gusto and in front of as many people as possible.”