Champion of the World

by Chad Dundas

  Moira’s words still buzzed in Pepper’s ears. Every time he thought of the look on her face when she’d turned away and gone back inside their cabin, he felt a rush of shame so great that he forced himself to focus on something else. He kept telling himself he was there to do a job, to get Taft ready to make a good show of things against Lesko. He was there to get his money and get out, he thought, just like everyone else.

  One bright afternoon Fritz came bearing gifts. He’d gotten Taft a new red sash to wear with his wrestling trunks and for Pepper a new pair of fancy black-and-white boots that would need some breaking in before he could wear them. It raised the spirits of all the men to have Fritz sitting in one corner of the garage, smoking cigars and swapping jokes. Once they even got him out there in his slacks and thin socks for a couple of one-minute rounds against Wallhead. Fritz showed off the surprising strength and cunning that had made him a decent attraction for Blomfeld, though soon enough his head had turned a shade of deep purple and he was leaning his hands on his knees. Wallhead got inside on him and tipped him over in a fireman’s carry.

  “That’s enough for this old goat,” Fritz said, chuckling from the pain as he limped off the mat.

  Despite the increasing cold, the garage stayed hot and dank with sweat during training sessions, so they kept the big doors at the end of the building open. As the men all broke for lunch and Fritz pulled his shoes back on, Pepper caught his eye and motioned him outside.

  “I’m starting to get worried here,” he said, using a hand towel to mop the sweat off his face.

  “Worried?” Fritz said. “I think we’re making splendid progress.”

  “We’re getting him in shape, sure,” he said. “It’s his focus that troubles me.”

  They both looked over their shoulders to where Taft was sitting on the edge of the mat with his boots off, massaging his feet and saying something to Wallhead, Gundy and Lundin. All the men laughed and then Taft saw Fritz and Pepper staring and smiled at them.

  “He appears in high spirits to me,” Fritz said. “When do you think you’ll let him in on the arrangement?”

  A new wave of guilt rippled through him. “Not yet,” he said. “Nothing in the world is worse than an obvious fix. I say we let him go on training hard for a few more weeks. Can you imagine what the papers will say if we send him out there half-cocked, looking like a walking corpse?”

  “Let me worry about the papers,” Fritz said, picking a piece of tobacco off his tongue. He was still flushed from the workout, and for the first time in a long time Pepper saw the hardness of his gaze. The wind kicked up from the east, blowing a few straggling dead leaves across the snow, and together they turned their backs on it.

  The snow started to become a problem the first week of November, coming down in sheets for three days and nights. When it finally let up they had to wade through mounds up to their knees to the outhouse and water pump, the air so cold that Taft could feel the ache in his bones no matter how many layers he piled on. He and Van Dean dug out big half-moons around the doors to the garage so they wouldn’t be snowed in, and at night they kept a fire burning as close as they dared to the wrestling mat. Still they woke shivering and clawing at their limbs in the dark. The hired girl brought their meals from the lodge, tromping down in tall boots, balancing a tray and looking at them like this wasn’t something she considered part of her job. They hunkered over their steaming plates and didn’t speak until the food was gone.

  Taft felt he was making a good show of it in training. He liked the new men Van Dean had brought in, and suspected even if they weren’t being paid to be there they’d still work themselves to exhaustion for the sheer love of it. Their energy seemed to rub off on Van Dean, too, and he trained alongside them more often than not now, sweating and bleeding and laughing with the rest. The first couple of weeks were misery for Taft, but then all the old feelings started to come back, the sense of being tired and hollowed out from hard work. It was enough to let him forget his troubles for a few days, but soon the pain in his head returned, this time worse than before. The harder he worked, the more his condition declined. He ached all over at the end of each workout, often finding he couldn’t remember much about what had happened. The gaps in his memory were getting wider, making him feel like he was running in sand, burying himself deeper and deeper the faster he tried to go.

  His head and neck got so tender that he wanted to scream every time one of his training partners touched him. He was doubling his doses of Dr. Paulson’s pain tonic now, drinking a full bottle before and another after training. It numbed the pain but also dulled his wits. He kept making the same mistakes over and over, and he knew Van Dean noticed every one. At one point he let the big Swede put him on his back three times with the same move, each thud to the mat sending a jolt of electricity through his entire body, and Van Dean got so mad he kicked an empty oil can. The sound of it was like a gun going off inside the garage. They all turned to watch as it rattled out the big doors at the far end of the building.

  He started losing weight, and the lightness made him feel frail, like he had the bones of a bird. It was from the training, he told himself, and asked the hired girl if she would start bringing him double helpings at dinnertime.

  “You think we have an endless supply of this stuff?” she said as she set his tray down on the old wooden bleachers, looking at him like he’d asked her to personally grow the vegetables and slaughter the animals.

  “You wouldn’t have any of it if it wasn’t for me,” Taft snapped. He swept his arm in a full circle. “All this, it’s because of me.”

  The way the girl’s face cracked, he knew he’d scared her, and instantly he felt sorry for it.

  “And what a kingdom it is,” Van Dean said. He was flat on his back on the wrestling mat, loosening his ankle by making small circles with the toes of one boot, his lip puffed full of tobacco. “Bring him what he wants, sweetheart.”

  With all the snow, Taft thought Van Dean might have no choice but to abandon their morning runs. Instead, he insisted they change directions, jogging up the hill to the crown of the mountain instead of down toward town. The snow up there was even deeper, covering the network of trails that snaked out of the hunting camp like frosting on a layer cake. The first couple of days they could barely make the trek, but after a week or so they got the snow tromped down enough that it was passable. It was cold and miserable and Taft probably should’ve thought of it as punishment, but he was starting to enjoy this time with Van Dean. These days, it was when he felt his best, striding along quick and surefooted, hopping over big rocks in places where they protruded from the snow. His wind was finally getting to where it needed to be, and after a few sessions of the uphill running, he began leaving Van Dean behind on the steepest stretches.

  On one of those days the sun appeared from behind the gray steel of the clouds and lit the snow like a field of sparkling diamonds. It filled Taft with a giddy delight and he pushed himself hard on the final stretch of the run, reaching the top first and sitting down on a fallen log to catch his breath. He must have slipped away someplace while he sat there, because the next thing he knew, Van Dean was standing over him, saying words he couldn’t quite hear. Repeating it, his voice growing louder and louder, the sun in the sky behind him making him an immense dark shape.

  “What?” Taft finally said, shading his eyes with his hand.

  “I said your nose is bleeding.”

  He felt the wetness on his lips with the tips of his fingers and then rubbed them together in front of his face. Sticky. He looked down and found a puddle of his blood thickening in the snow.

  “You really dogged it today,” Taft said. “How long have I been sitting here waiting on you?”

  Van Dean sat down on the log, some of the old bark turning to dust underneath him. “You’re going to have to level with me,” he said. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “I’ll race
you,” Taft said. “First one back to camp gets to sleep closest to the fire.”

  “Look at you, you’re sick,” Van Dean said. “Moira thinks so, too, but says not even your wife knows what it is. Either that, or she’s covering for you.”

  “Leave Carol Jean out of this,” Taft said. “It’s got nothing to do with her.”

  “What, then?” Van Dean said.

  Taft spat onto the ground, something inside him scraping bottom. “I didn’t love her, you know,” he said. “Not at first. She was just my little bit on the side. She’s a goodhearted girl, but a little light in the practical skills department. She was twenty-six when I went away. Never in a million years did I think she’d stay, but she did. You know anybody you’d wait three years for?”

  “Sure,” Van Dean said. “For Moira, I’d do it standing on my head.”

  “How could I not fall for a person like that?” Taft said. “She deserves something for her trouble. Don’t you think?”

  “Tell me what’s going on with you,” Van Dean said.

  Taft looked at his own blood. Everything was whirling inside him now, trying to force its way out. “You ever paint something?” he said finally. “I mean, like a room or anything?”

  “Sure,” Van Dean said. “The year I turned twelve they made us whitewash the dining hall at the orphanage. It was terrible.”

  “My daddy was the type that liked to put a fresh coat on the house every summer,” Taft said. “The same color red, every goddamned time.” He winced now thinking about it: paint on his skin, under his nails, the burn of the turpentine it took to get it out. “Our house was big for our neighborhood and Daddy was proud of that. He’d get me up on this tall ladder to help him. After a few days staring at all that red, you’d lose track of what you’d done. You couldn’t see where the last coat ended and where the new one started. Like, you’d get dizzy, kind of snow-blind. You understand what I mean?” Van Dean nodded. Taft could tell he did. “That’s what it’s like for me these days,” he said. “I lose track. Have headaches, this ringing in my ears that never quite goes away. I get confused, lose time.”

  Van Dean asked how long it had been going on, but Taft just shrugged. Button it up now, he thought, before you go spilling all the beans. Van Dean said they could talk to Fritz and have him bring a doctor up from town. They could keep it quiet, he said.

  “Nah, we couldn’t, either.” Taft said. He stood up, the conversation over. “Come on, it’s getting cold and those guys will be waiting for us.”

  The truth was, he couldn’t say for sure when or how he’d gotten sick. Those years when he was at the height of his powers as a wrestler, there were a lot of girls. It could have been one of those friends Carol Jean let move into the house in Cincinnati. It could have even been Carol Jean. It could have been anyone, he told himself, knowing it wasn’t true. For one thing, his first wife Judith had never gotten sick, and neither had Carol Jean or any of the others. At least, none ever let on that they did. No, Taft knew deep down it was Fleetwood Wallace who had given him the bug, even though Fleet himself had never showed a single symptom, had never appeared to be anything besides the slipperiest, most self-satisfied motherfucker Taft had ever met in his life. Maybe it was Fleet’s cool persistence, that air of always being in control, even in prison, that made Taft so sure it had to be him.

  Of course, he had been too slow to realize that every single thing about Fleetwood Wallace was an act. He’d been too dense, too full of himself, to know that from the moment he’d walked into that cell in Foxwood, Fleet had played him for a fool. Oh, he practically groveled at Taft’s feet those first few weeks, cowed by the presence of such a famous man. A colored man so dangerous that society had to lock him up just to teach him a lesson. Fleet had let him have the bottom bunk and let him roll cigarettes from the pouch of tobacco he kept wedged between his bedroll and the wall. He sat close and listened to Taft tell stories about his freewheeling days as a wrestler, about his cars and his women, smiling and laughing his strange high-pitched laugh, egging him on. Now Taft felt stupid for having been so blind.

  Not even when three lifer convicts worked him over in a basement hallway with knuckle-dusters made from braided shoe leather and lengths of hose stuffed with sand did he guess it might all be part of Fleet’s plan. He’d already been in the infirmary for two days when the three men who attacked him were brought in foaming bright red blood from purple lips and coughing up bits of their insides. Rat poison in their food, the blind old doctor told him. Two of them died; the third survived after an ambulance ride to the nearest hospital, where surgeons removed a full foot of his intestines. He came back to the prison in a wheelchair, with a canvas bag sewed onto him to catch his own shit. After that, life was hard for him.

  As soon as he got back to the cell, still a little sore and limping from the beating, Taft knew Fleet had poisoned those men. There was no mistaking the cocky smile or the extra wiggle in his walk when he jumped up to catch him in a hug, telling how glad he was that he was okay.

  The little man knew how to make a candle out of an old tin can, a scoop of kitchen lard and a piece of thread, and that night they sat up reading to each other after lights out. It wasn’t until much later that Taft began to wonder if Fleet had paid those men to attack him just so he could poison them and earn his trust. It seemed impossible. What kind of mind even conceived of a plan like that? Even years later he didn’t know whether to believe it.

  There were times when, without warning, Fleet would go days without speaking to him. He’d lapse into a funk, curling up in his bunk, pouting over some careless word or perceived insult, until Taft practically begged him to say something, thinking he might burst from loneliness. When Fleet finally did speak to him again, he rationed out his kindnesses like there was a shortage on. Maybe that was the biggest trick of all, Taft reckoned now. Fleet didn’t even have to lift a finger to draw Taft to him, he just had to sit back and let the time do its work.

  Then again, maybe Fleet had needed Taft just as badly as Taft needed him. After all, wasn’t the feeling of those walls bearing down just as smothering to Fleet? Hadn’t he been stripped away from his life just the way Taft had? He had, but looking back on it he knew that Fleet had found ways to get by better than he ever could. Savvy to every trick a convict ever invented, he was friendly with all the prison cops, knew them by name and even looked a few of them in the eyes when he was feeling bold. Fleet taught Taft how to play backgammon using a set of child’s marbles and a board drawn on a piece of paper. They passed long hours playing the game together during the periods when they were on speaking terms.

  A year and a half into Taft’s sentence, Fleet sank into his longest silence ever. Taft didn’t remember how it started now, surely some thoughtless breach of manners that he had barely noticed but that Fleet took as a great offense. They went two months without talking and the isolation tore Taft in half. Each day he woke hoping that his friend would forget whatever it had been that had sent him into his brooding quiet, when he ignored all of Taft’s efforts to win back his attention. He just stayed on his bunk reading books all day. Taft tried to do the same, but books didn’t hold the same kind of magic for him as they did for some people. His parents made sure he’d been educated, but he’d never been an easy reader and could not trick his brain into the place where he stopped seeing the words and started imagining the story behind them.

  He smuggled stale biscuits from the chow hall to leave as peace offerings, but each morning he found them hardening and untouched where he had set them on the tiny table. He tried different ways to apologize, starting at the top and working his way down to straight-up begging. As time passed he began to feel like he was appealing to a boulder. Day after day the only sound in their cell was the quiet flick, flick, flick of Fleet flipping the pages of the book he’d borrowed from the library. Finally, it had been getting on toward Christmas like it was now, Taft caught him alone in the da
nk hallway between the dining hall and the small, caged exercise area and slammed him roughly against the wall. Making fists out of the loose material under his armpits, Taft shook him, cracking his skull off the stones and screaming at him to say something. He felt tears brimming in his eyes, but Fleet’s face did not change. He gave him a fearless stare that seemed to sap his strength, making him suddenly feel like a child, or a dog left barking at the locked back door, and Taft kissed him.

  He pulled their faces together and worked his tongue into the little man’s mouth. Fleet’s lips parting, letting him do it. He smelled Fleet’s sweat and the tobacco on his breath, churning with a mix of sickness and excitement. He still didn’t know why he did it. He guessed the urge must’ve always been in him and now it came pouring through the hundred little cracks that Fleet and Foxwood Prison had pounded into his soul.

  It lasted barely three seconds. “Let me go,” Fleet said quietly when it was over. They were the first words he’d spoken since their falling-out and Taft did as he was told.

  That night, as he lay awake on his hard sleeping pad in a panic over what he’d done, wondering if his friend would disown him, leave him to the other men in the prison who wanted to do him harm, the shadow of Fleetwood Wallace’s head poked over the lip of the top bunk. His hoarse whisper filled the freezing cell and seemed to burst it open from the inside out. “Gar,” he said. “Gar, you awake?” After that, he was on his knees beside the bunk, his hands on Taft’s chest, fingers slipping between the buttons to touch his skin. Taft felt the same car-crash lurch in his gut, but he did nothing besides slide over toward the wall, making room for him to crawl up into the bed. For a long time they just lay there together, Fleet’s back pushing warm against his chest. Then Taft worked his hands down Fleet’s torso and undid his trousers. The little man bent forward, letting him do it, whispering things Taft couldn’t hear. He wanted to shout at himself to stop, but instead he just leaned his back against the cold, frost-covered wall, pushing his hips forward, and did what he wanted to do.