by Ron Carlson
She stood and threw the paper into a barrel. “I didn’t say that.”
On the scooter again, I didn’t nuzzle. The dinner and the little lesson had taken the spirit out of it for me. I just squinted into the wind and held on. Thirty-fifth South widened into a thick avenue of shopping plazas separated by angry little knots of fastfood joints. Betsy maneuvered us a mile or two and then turned left through a tire outlet parking lot and around a large brick building that I thought was a JC Penney but turned out to be Granger High. We cruised through the parking lot, which was full, and she leaned the scooter against the building. The little marquee above the entrance read: Welcome Freshmen, and then below: Friday, Mack’s Mat Matches, 8:00 p.m.
We stood in a little line of casually dressed Americans at the door and paid four-fifty each for a red ticket which let us into the crowded gymnasium. A vague whomp-whomp we’d been hearing in the hall turned out to be two beefy characters in a raised wrestling ring in the center of the gym slamming each other to the mat.
“Wrestling,” I said to Betsy as she led me through the crowd, searching for seats.
“Looks like it.”
I followed her, stepping on people’s feet all the way across the humid room. There were many family clusters encircled by children standing on the folding chairs and then couples of slumming yuppies, the guy in bright penny loafers and a pastel Lacoste shirt, and sprinkled everywhere small gangs of teenagers in T-shirts waving placards which displayed misspelled death threats toward some of the athletes.
Betsy and I ended up sitting well in the corner of the gym right in the middle of a boiling fan club for the Proud Brothers. Two chubby girls next to me wore Proud Brothers Fan Club T-shirts in canary yellow (the official color) and on the front of each was a drawing of a wrestler’s face. The whole club (twelve or so fifteen-year-olds, boys and girls) was hot. They were red in the face and still screaming. Over in the ring, one man would hoist the other aloft and half our neighbors would squeal with vengeful delight, the other half would gasp in horror, and then, after twirling his victim a moment, the wrestler would hurl his opponent to the mat and ka-bang! the whole room would bounce, and the Proud Brothers Fan Club would explode. The noise wanted to tear your hair out. Finally, I noticed that one of the participants had entangled the other’s head in the ropes thoroughly and was prancing around the ring in a victory dance. The man in the ropes hung there, his tongue visible thirty rows back, certainly dead. The referee threw up the winner’s hands, the bell gonged about twenty times, and the Proud Brothers Fan Club screamed one last time, and the whole gym lapsed into a wonderfully reassuring version of simple crowd noise.
The two girls beside me had fallen into a sisterly embrace, one consoling the other. One girl, her face awash in sweat and tears, peered over her friends’ shoulders at me. “Were those the Proud Brothers?” I asked her.
She squeezed her eyes shut in misery and nodded. Her friend turned around to me fully in an odd shoulder-back posture and pulled her T-shirt down tight in what I thought was a gesture meant to display her nubby little breasts, but then she pointed beneath the distorted portrait on the shirtfront to the name below: TOM. Her friend, the bereaved, stood and showed me her breasts too, which were much larger and still heaving from the residual sobs so much that it was difficult to recognize the face on her shirt as human, but I finally read the name underneath: TIM.
“And it was Tim who was just killed?” I asked. She collapsed into her friend’s arms again.
Betsy nudged me sharply. “What’d you say to her?” She tapped my arm with her knuckle. “You’re going to get arrested. These are children.”
By now they had carried the body of one brother away and the other brother had finished his prancing, and the announcer, a little guy in a tux, crawled into the ring with a bullhorn.
“Ladies and gentlemen…” he began and before he had finished rolling gen-tull-mn out of his mouth, Betsy turned to me and I to her, the same word on our lips: “Mitch!”
We both sat up straight and watched this guy very carefully. It was Mitchell all right, but they had him in a pompadour toupee, a thin mustache, and chrome-frame glasses. What gave him away was his voice and arrow posture and the way he held his chin up like William Tell. He had a good minor strut going around the ring, blasting his phrases in awkward, dramatic little crescendoes at the audience. “Wee are pleeezd! Tooo pree-zent! A No! Holds! Barred! Un-Ree-Strik-Ted! Marr-eeed Cupples! Tag-Team-Match! Fee-chur-ring Two Dy-nam-ic Du-os! Bobbie and Robbie Hansen! Ver-sus. Mario and Isabella Delsandro!”
Evidently these were two new dynamic duos, because the crowd was quiet for a moment as people twisted in their seats or stood up to evaluate the contestants. And both couples looked good. Bobbie and Robbie Hansen, I never did find out which was which, were a beefy though not unattractive blond couple who wore matching blue satin wrestling suits. The Delsandros were very handsome people indeed. Mario nodded his beautiful full hairdo at the fans for a moment before dropping his robe and revealing red tights. But it was Isabella who decided the evening. She also had curly black hair and a shiny red suit, but when she waved at the audience, they quieted further. There were some gasps. The girls next to me actually covered their mouths with their hands; I hadn’t seen that in real life ever. This was the deal: there was a tuft of hair under each of her arms. It was alien enough for this crowd. Mormon women shave under their arms; it’s doctrine. The booing started a second later and when the bell sounded, the fans had made their choice.
When Mitchell ducked out of the ring, Betsy said, “Announcer. That’s not bad.”
“They’ve got him up like Sammy Davis, Jr.”
“But,” she added, “where does an announcer get a black eye?”
I was having trouble taking my eyes from the voluptuous Mrs. Delsandro, who now as the unclean woman was getting her ears booed off.
“You’re right,” I said. “We better stay around, find out what he’s up to.”
I won’t detail the match (or the one after it featuring the snake and the steel cage), but in a sophisticated turn of fate, the Delsandros won. I bounced in my chair the whole forty minutes watching Robbie and Bobbie have at the luckless Mario and Isabella. They were pummeled, tossed, and generously bent. Then, late in the match, Robbie or Bobbie (Mr. Hansen) was torturing Mrs. Delsandro, twisting her arm, gouging her eyes, rendering her weaker and weaker. Mr. Delsandro paced and wept in his corner, pulling his hair out, praying to god, and generally making manifest my very feelings for the woman in the ring. Finally Mr. Hansen climbed on the turnstile and leapt on the woozy woman, smashing her to the mat. He was going for the pin. He lay across Mrs. Delsandro this way and that, maneuvering cruelly, but every time the referee would slap the mat twice, she’d squirm away. Robbie Hansen or Bobbie Hansen, whatever his name was, was relentless. Mr. Mario Delsandro prayed in his corner of the ring. Evidently his prayers were answered, because about the tenth time the referee slapped the mat twice, Isabella Delsandro bucked and threw Mr. Hansen clear and in a second she was on him. It was such a relief, half the fans cheered.
What she did next sealed the Hansens’ fate. She whomped him a good one with a knee drop and then ducked and hoisted him aloft, belly to heaven, in a refreshing spinal stretch. Well, it took the crowd, who thought they were rooting for the home team, less than a second to spot Mr. Hansen as a sick individual. His blue satin shorts bulged precisely with the outline of his skewered erection, and Mrs. Delsandro toured him once around the ring for all to see and then dropped him casually on his head. By now they were urging her, in loud and certain terms, to kill Mr. Hansen. Wrestling is one thing. Transgressing the limits of a family show is entirely another. I heard cries which included the phrases decapitate, assassinate, and put him to sleep.
She responded by giving him the Norwegian Fish Slap, the Ecuadoran Neck Burn, and the Tap Dance of Death, and then, before tagging her wonderful husband, she stood over the prostrate and slithering Mr. Hansen, her legs apart, her han
ds on her hips, and she raised her chin triumphantly and laughed. Oh god, it was passion, it was opera, it was giving me the sweats.
When Mario Delsandro leaped into the ring, he swept up his beautiful dark wife and kissed her fully on the mouth. The crowd sang! Mr. Hansen thought he would use the opportunity to crawl away home, but no! Still in the middle of the most significant kiss I’ve ever witnessed in person, Mr. Delsandro stepped squarely in the middle of Mr. Hansen’s back and pressed him flat.
There was never any hope for Mr. Hansen anyway. Among the spectators of his rude tumescence was his wife, Robbie or Bobbie, Mrs. Hansen, and she stood at her corner, her arms crossed as if for the final time, and sneered at him with all her might. Mario Delsandro took his time punishing Mr. Hansen: the German Ear Press, the Thunder Heel Spike, the Prisoner of War, the Ugandan Skull Popper, and the complicated and difficult-to-execute Underbelly Body Mortgage. A few times, early in this parade of torture, Mr. Hansen actually crawled away and reached his corner, where Mr. Delsandro would find him a second later, pleading with his wife to tag him, please tag him, save his life. She refused. At one point while he was begging her for help, she actually turned her back and called to the audience, “Is there a lawyer in the house?” No one responded. The attorneys present realized that to get in between two wrestlers would probably be a mistake.
After taking his revenge plus penalty and interest, Mr. Delsandro tagged the missus, and she danced in and pinned the comatose Mr. Hansen with one finger. The Delsandros kissed and were swept away by the adoring crowd. Mrs. Hansen stalked off. There was a good chance she was already a widow, but the crowd was on its feet and I couldn’t see what ever happened to her husband, Mr. Hansen, Robbie or Bobbie.
Mitchell announced the next match, using the same snake oil school of entertaining, which was about right, because, as I said, it involved a snake and a steel cage and five dark men in turbans.
When that carnage was cleared, we found out what we wanted to know. Another announcer, a round man dressed in a black suit carrying what looked like a Bible in his hand, climbed into the ring and introduced the final match of the evening, a grudge match, a match between good and evil if there ever was one, a match important to the very futures of our children, et cetera, et cetera, and here to defend us is David Bright, our brightest star!
Ka-lank! The lights went out. Betsy grabbed my arm. “David Bright?” she said. “Mitch is David Bright?”
“Come to save us all.”
An odd noise picked across the top of the room and then exploded into a version of “Onward Christian Soldiers” so loud most people ducked. A razor-edge spotlight flashed on, circling the room once, and then focusing on a crowded corner. In it appeared a phalanx of brown-shirted security guards, all women, marching onward through the teeming crowd. When the entourage reached the ring, we heard the announcer say, “Ladies and gentlemen: David Bright! Our Brightest Star!” And the lights went on and a blond athlete stepped into the ring. He raised his arms once and then took several ministeps to the center of the ring, where he lowered his head in what was supposed to be prayer and bathed in the tumult.
“That’s not Mitch.” I squinted. “Is it?”
“No,” Betsy said. “Look at that guy. There’s a lot of praying at these wrestling matches. Is it legal?”
When the crowd slowed a bit and David Bright had gone to his corner and begun a series of simple stretches, the announcer started to speak again. He said, “And his opponent…” and couldn’t get another word out for all the booing.
I sat down and pulled Betsy to her chair. We looked at each other in that maelstrom of noise. It was a throaty, threatening roar that was certainly made in the jungles when men first began to socialize.
“I think we’re about to see Mitch.” I told her.
“It sounds as if we’re about to see him killed.”
“We’ll be able to tell by his theme song.”
The announcer had continued garbling in the catcalls, and then the lights went out and the spot shot down, circling, and then the sound system blared static and by the first three notes of the song that followed I knew we were in trouble. It was “White Rabbit” by the Jefferson Airplane. The spot fixed on the other corner of the room, and here came a Hell’s Angel in a sleeveless black leather jacket, swatting his motorcycle cap at the fans, get your hands off. Well, it was a big guy, a large hairy Hell’s Angel, a perfect Hell’s Angel in my opinion, because it was not my brother Mitchell, and Betsy knew that too, because we exchanged grateful and relieved looks. However, when the Angel reached the ring, he didn’t climb up, but bent down and this dirty, skinny person in a red satin robe who had been behind him stepped on the Hell’s Angel’s back and entered the bright lights of the ring. This guy was Mitchell.
This guy put his face right into all the booing as if it were the sweetest wind on earth. This guy moved slowly, confidently, like Hotspur, which I saw Mitchell play at the Cellar Theater, and he reached into the roomy pockets of his red satin robe and threw handfuls of something at the crowds.
“What’s that?” I asked the Proud Brothers fan beside me. The cheerful chubby girl had been my source of information all night.
“Drugs,” she said. “He always tries to give drugs to the kids.”
I could see pills being thrown back into the ring.
Mitchell was laughing.
The announcer closed down his diatribe, which no one could hear, and then yelled, pointing at Mitchell: “Dr. Slime!” The booing now tripled, which gave Mitchell such joy he reached down and scooped up a handful of capsules and ate them, grinning.
The bell sounded and Mitchell was still in his robe. David Bright had come forward to wrestle, but Mitchell waved a hand at him, just a minute, and poured something on the back of his hand and then snorted it, blowing the residue at the fans. He laughed again, a demented laugh, just like Mephistopheles, which I saw him play at the University Playhouse, coiled his robe, forgot something, unrolled it, removed a syringe, laughed, threw the syringe at the fans, rerolled his robe, and threw it in David Bright’s face. David was so surprised by the unfair play that my brother, Dr. Slime, was able to deliver the illegal Elbow Drill to his kidneys. Then while David staggered around on his knees in a daze, removing the robe from his head, Dr. Slime strutted around the ring eating drugs off the mat and waggling his tongue and eyes at those at ringside. From time to time, he’d stop chewing and kick David Bright about the face. The crowd was pissed off. They had rushed the ring and now stood ten deep in the apron. Mitchell could have walked out onto their faces.
He was milking it. I’d seen him do this one other time, in Macbeth, running the soliloquies to twice their ordinary length because he sensed an audience with a high tolerance for anguish. Now he knelt and took something from his sock and then snorted it. He leaped in frenzied drug-induced craziness, lest anyone forget he was a maniac, a drug fiend. He whacked the woozy David Bright rapid-fire karatelike blows. He was a whirling dervish.
Then while David Bright still tried to shake off his drubbing and climb to his feet, something happened to Dr. Slime. Something chemical. He kicked David Bright, knocking him down, and raised his arms, his fingers clenched together in (what my female neighbor told me was) his signature attack, the Crashing Bong, and prepared to bring it down on David Bright, ending a promising career. Then Dr. Slime stopped. There he was, mid-ring, his arms up as if holding a fifty-pound hammer, and he froze. Then, of course, he began vibrating, shaking himself out of the pose, his head trembling sickeningly like a tambourine, his hands fluttering full-speed. He began to jerk, drool, and grunt.
His demise couldn’t have come at a worse time. David Bright, our brightest star, suddenly came to and stood up. He looked mad. The rest of the match took ten seconds. David Bright, who must have outweighed Mitchell by sixty pounds, picked him up like a rag doll, sorting through his limbs like a burglar, finally grabbing his heels and beginning to spin him around and around like the slingshot that other David
used.
Betsy was on my arm with both her hands and when David Bright let go of Mitchell and Mitchell left the ring and sailed off into the dark, she screamed and jumped on my back to see where he landed. We couldn’t see a thing.
The crowd was delighted and David Bright took three or four polite bows, curtsies really, and humbly descended from the light. Betsy was screaming her head off: “You beasts! You fucking animals! I’ll kill you all!” Things like that. Things that I would have loved to hear her cry for me.
I was crazy to go find Mitchell or his body or who was responsible for this heinous mayhem and file felony charges, suit, something, but Betsy was broken down, screaming into my shirt by now, and I held her and said There there, which is stupid, but I was so glad to have anything to say that I said it over and over.
The auditorium emptied and finally we ended up sitting, worn out, in our seats in the empty corner of the room. My good friend the Proud Brothers fan disappeared and then returned with two yellow T-shirts and gave them to me. “Here,” she said. “Glad to meet you. You two are welcome to the club if you can make it next Friday.”
I looked down at Betsy, her face wrecked, and I felt my own blood awash with the little chemicals of fear and anger. And love.
“You got the right spirit,” the girl said and turned to leave.
We couldn’t find Mitchell. We went back through both of the entrances the wrestlers had used, finally running into the school janitor, who simply said, “They don’t stay around not one second. They get right in the motor home.” He left us alone in the dark corridor.
“Why would he do this?” she said. “Why would he get hooked up with these sleazoid sadists?” She was as beautiful as worried girls get late at night in an empty school.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, find out!” She said this as an angry order, and then caught herself and smiled. “We’ve got talk to him, get him out of this.”
“Save him,” I said.