Wrestling Sturbridge

by Rich Wallace

  She finally shoots, easing the three ball into a side pocket from a pretty tough line. She’s got her tongue between her teeth as she lowers her head to table level, searching for her next shot. Then she comes to my side and stretches out across the table, and I’m starting to get some ideas that have nothing to do with pool.

  She misses, and I chalk up my cue and make a real solid stroke that sends about ten of the balls flying but doesn’t sink any.

  Kim squeezes past me and she smells sweet. “Scuse me,” she says. I’ve got my eyes fixed on her, but I guess they stray because I look up and notice the girl—Jody, the one from the Mobil station—sitting over to the side with another girl about her age. They’ve got a little kid with them, probably not even two years old, and he’s playing on the floor at their feet. Jody keeps looking over at the entrance.

  After a few minutes three guys come in and she stands up. The one guy, who looks vaguely familiar, is maybe three years older than me and has longish hair and a cap that says Marlboro on it. He’s about my size and has a thin, fuzzy mustache.

  He sees them and walks over and nods with a trace of a scowl. The other two guys leave. The Mobil girl hands the guy the baby, and says, maybe to both of them, “Long time no see.”

  The guy holds the kid up and says “Hey, buddy,” sort of wiggling him while the kid’s legs dangle. The baby looks back at Jody, reaching for her.

  “It’s okay,” she says gently, taking the kid’s finger. “That’s your daddy.”

  I’m trying not to watch too closely, glancing around, looking at the pool table, but I’m hanging on every word. Jody is keeping an even tone, but there’s enough of an edge to her voice that you could imagine her tacking “you son of a bitch” onto the end of every sentence.

  “I left a message on your machine last night,” she says. “Why didn’t you call?”

  He just says, “I was out,” not looking at her.

  “Daniel and I are leaving at eight,” she says. “You said you’d be here at six.”

  “So what is it now, ten after?” he says.

  “It’s quarter to seven,” she says. “We’re leaving at eight.”

  She turns to her girlfriend and they start out the door. Then she stops and comes back to kiss the baby, who’s starting to whine. “It’s okay. You spend a little time with your daddy.” She shoots a look at the guy. “We’ll be over there in the pizza place. Watching.”

  The guy puts the kid down and takes his hand, and they walk over to the side where they’ve got rides for little kids. He lifts him into a rocket ship and feeds it a quarter, and it rocks back and forth while the kid spins the steering wheel.

  Kim pokes me on the arm with her cue. “You know those people?” I shake my head and look at the table. I’ve got stripes, and all seven of them are still sitting there. There’s only one solid ball left, and Kim is smirking at me.

  But I run the table, then sink the eight ball with a long clean stroke. Between every shot I look over at the guy with the baby. The kid is happy now, on his third ride, and the guy just looks lost and bewildered.

  Kim looks beautiful, and a big part of me wants to take her down on this pool table and wrestle until we’re sweaty and exhausted.

  Another part of me—the part I can’t quite measure—wants to pick up that baby and find the Mobil girl, take both their hands, and help them.

  The other part of me—the one that wins—makes me retreat inside, makes me shrivel. Makes me wonder if I’ll ever do anything that matters.

  Kim squeezes my arm and looks up at me (not many people can look up at me, but she’s short enough), and says “Rack ’em up?”

  I start to say “No, I’m tired,” but I know that isn’t true. So I say “Yeah, I’ll play another game.” It’s healthier than playing games in my head.

  Kim deposits a quarter to release the balls, then spends about two minutes racking them up, rearranging them about fifteen times.

  I can see the guy sitting outside now with a cigarette, staring straight ahead, holding the baby on his knee. The kid is playing with the buttons on the guy’s shirt, and the guy doesn’t seem to realize that he’s blowing smoke in the kid’s hair.

  Kim sinks one on the break, but doesn’t leave herself much of a second shot. I sink five in a row before she shoots again, and I win on my next turn. I haven’t said a word in ten minutes.

  “You’re good,” Kim says.

  I nod. “Sometimes.” I force a smile on her, too, and start digging in my pocket for another quarter.

  Things my father told me never to do:

  eat fish at the diner

  boo the other team

  marry the first woman you fall in love with

  Things he never mentioned:

  how to change a spark plug

  why he goes to church

  if he ever misses his dad

  CHAPTER 13

  February

  The moon is nearly full, and there’s the slightest dusting of snow on the ground. The air is cold, but there’s no wind, so the only sound is the frozen leaves crunching lightly under our feet.

  My dad has a flashlight, but he hasn’t turned it on. The last thing he said was back at the house when he asked if I wanted to come along. I nodded and put on a hooded sweatshirt and gloves. Mom’s working tonight. I knew something was up, and I guess he knew that I knew.

  We’re headed for the houses by the pond, through the woods about a half-mile above our house. There are maybe two dozen little houses there; most of them aren’t even winterized, and nobody lives in any of them except during the summer and the occasional weekend. My dad does maybe three jobs a year up there, ever since he was in high school. Once every year or two he takes me along, silently passing along a heritage that started with his own daddy.

  The trees are tall back here, maples and white pine. We’re high enough that I can see the lights of Sturbridge far below us. And I can see my breath.

  My dad has his black-and-red-checked hunting jacket on, and a dark blue watch cap pulled low. He’s carrying a small cloth sack with a drawstring. There’s a dog barking way down below, and my lips are dry. We’ll have a couple of beers together when we get back.

  We come to a clearing above the pond and he stops. The pond is two football fields wide and three times as long. Tonight it’s as black as coal, except where the moonlight shines like a mirror. It’s frozen solid. Below us is a small beach, with two low docks jutting out into the water. On the far end of the pond is a Boy Scout camp, and lining either side are the cottages, owned by people from Brooklyn and Philadelphia and New Jersey. I’ve been inside a couple of them, on other nights like this.

  “That red one,” he says, and I wonder if he’s been there before. I figure he must have hit all of these places at one time or another, but maybe he has his favorites. We start walking again, keeping our distance from the water and coming up behind the house.

  There’s a dirt road that circles the pond, and we walk it for about fifty yards. All the houses are dark. This one has a low rock wall that runs from the road to the water, lining one end of the property. I know the house. It’s small and squarish, with a big picture window that looks out on the pond and a cinder-block chimney on the side. There’s maybe a half cord of wood stacked against the house, which is a muddy red clapboard. My father tries the door for the hell of it, then walks to the window near the chimney.

  It doesn’t take much to get the window open, and he climbs in and motions me in after him. The house smells musty from being closed up since summer. He clicks on the flashlight and puts his hand over the light, running it slowly around the room.

  We’re in the kitchen, so he opens some cabinets and finds a few cans of soup and a jar of spaghetti sauce. Nothing we’d want. He carefully shuts the cabinets and looks around. The inside of the refrigerator smells sour and moldy, so I shut the door as soon as I open it.

  He takes a small clock radio from a bedroom, and also a hammer and a couple of fishing lure
s from the room next to the kitchen. We leave the clothing and the blankets and the books, which include Cannery Row and Roger’s Version. Dad says he’s already read them.

  I reach for the flashlight, and my father lets it go. I shine it on two portraits in the tiny living room, hung together in a cardboard mat with two openings. The one on the left is Elvis in his youth, with slick black hair and a cocky smile; the other is the standard painting of Jesus you see everywhere. In a faint hand, someone had scrawled “You give me strength” in blue pencil on the cardboard.

  We go back to the kitchen, and my father pulls open a drawer next to the sink. He finds eighty cents and two bottle openers. He holds up the openers, determines that they’re exactly the same, and slips one into the sack. The other one goes back in the drawer.

  “Been needing one of them,” he says, holding the sack open and studying the contents. He bites down on his lip and looks up at the ceiling. “Last time I was here … I was twenty-four years old. Got a jackknife and two cans of motor oil.” He rubs his chin, dark and scratchy with two days’ growth. “Did better this time, I’d say.”

  We leave by the same window. He never does any damage, wouldn’t even leave a drawer ajar, so it’s likely that the owners will never know we were there. They’ll look at each other one evening next June and wonder if they hadn’t left a clock radio in that back bedroom, and old Sam will be confounded by what could have become of his hammer.

  My father is good at this. So good that it’s invisible to everyone but me. Like a ghost, spanning the decades, revisiting the past as he revisits old trespasses. It’s his secret, and he shares it with me alone.

  We move real quickly getting back to the trail through the woods, and my father lets out a triumphant little laugh when we finally reach safe ground.

  “You ever worry about getting caught, Dad?”

  “Not much. Got it down to a science.” He puts a hand on my shoulder and we slow our pace. He shrugs, and laughs again, feeling giddy and renewed, I suppose.

  Colleges I should have applied to:

  Penn State

  Kutztown

  East Stroudsburg

  Millersville

  Colleges that I did:

  CHAPTER 14

  There’s an envelope sticking out of my locker when I get to school. It’s a valentine from Kim. I look at my watch. Yes, it’s February 14, and it’s 7:58. Rite Aid opens in two minutes, and homeroom begins in seven. I can make it.

  I sprint out the door and down the hill, through the alley next to the bagel place and into the drugstore. I scan the cards and grab one with two rabbits on it—“Honey Bunny, Won’t You Be Mine?”—and race to the register. The store has only been open for a minute and a half, but there’s a lady at the checkout with two bottles of shampoo, a box of Motrin, four bars of Jergens facial soap, a tube of Crest, and an ironing board cover. Oh, and four coupons. Two of the coupons have expired, and a discussion begins. It’s 8:04. I throw two dollars on the counter (the card cost a dollar twenty-five) and sprint out the door.

  Mrs. Corcoran shoots me a look as I get in a minute late, but she doesn’t say anything, since I’m usually prompt. Digit reaches over and takes the card and gives me a big shit-eating grin.

  “I love you, too,” he says. “I’ll give you your present later.”

  “Give me that,” I say. “That’s for Al.”

  This is a huge day for me. Not because it’s Valentine’s Day, but because it’s Wednesday: wrestle-off day. I’m 6–0 this season for real, but 0–8 in wrestle-offs.

  I think I’ve finally got him figured out, though. Last week he beat me 7–3, but I was actually ahead 3–2 midway through the second period. And he hasn’t pinned me in a month.

  Al and Hatcher are ranked first in the state in their weight classes, and Digit is rated third at 130. And none of those guys is significantly better than 1 am.

  I’ve been watching and waiting for a long time, getting my little half-ass matches but gearing up for something monumental.

  The bell rings for first period and I go looking for Kim. Then I remember I haven’t even opened her card.

  I tear open the envelope and skip the verse. She wrote “Ben” on top and signed it “Love, Kim.” I’d just signed “Ben” on hers. I keep a tight rein on my emotions.

  I shut my eyes and wipe the sweat from my face, getting a grip on my nerves. I am so psyched I feel little explosions going off in my arteries, but I have to keep thinking clearly.

  I’m ahead, 5–3, and I took Al down twice in the first period. He escaped the first time and took me down, but I managed to get free. Then I shot in and took him down again. I think I’ve got him rattled.

  Coach waves me to the center circle; I start the period down. Very few people can survive from this position against Al, but I am ready. Coach blows the whistle and I force my way up, loosening his grip and escaping.

  We circle around each other, and he keeps reaching for me, but I stay clear. Then I shoot in and grab his ankle, and he’s down on his stomach and I have control. I am destroying him.

  It’s 8–3. Who’s number one now? He escapes quickly and takes me down, but I drag him out of bounds. I’ve still got the lead and the momentum.

  I escape: 9–6. I take him down again—I have solved this man, I am ruining him. It is 11–6 and he’s in trouble. I am rolling him to his back, rolling just too far, losing control, and he reverses me. It’s 11–8, but the period’s almost over; 11–8 and I know I can hold on till the whistle blows.

  I don’t succumb. I will start the third period up. I have taken him down four times in this match, and I doubt that anybody’s ever done that to him. Not even when he was a freshman.

  The third period begins. Make that five takedowns. He is down, I will win this thing today. I will ride him the whole period, and I will never look back. He is slippery; his muscles are smooth and sweaty and strong.

  Somehow he gets loose. Somehow he gets to his feet and shoots in and puts me on my back. Somehow I’m ahead only 13–11 and he’s got control.

  Coach is hovering beside us, head against the mat, watching for a pin. But I will not be pinned. I will get out of this.

  And I do, but not completely. I get off my back but can’t quite escape, and he gets three near-fall points and the lead.

  And that’s as far as it goes. 14–13. The closest I’ve been in years.

  I take off my headgear and shout “Shit!” so the whole school can hear it. I had it. I had him beat.

  “Relax, Benny,” Coach says. “What’s your problem?”

  I kick my headgear to the side of the mat. “I had him, Coach,” I say. “I had him beat.”

  Coach waves me over. Al’s at the water fountain, and the 145-pounders are waiting to wrestle. Coach puts his hand on my shoulder.

  “You feeling all right?” he asks.

  “Just pissed.”

  “At who?”

  “At myself. I had him beat, Coach. I had him beat.”

  Coach sort of smiles. “You wrestled good,” he says. “But don’t get bent out of shape, kid. It wasn’t like you think.”

  I’m still seething. “What wasn’t?”

  “He needed to work on reversals. The state meet’s coming up and he hasn’t had enough challenges. Not many people ever take him down.”

  “Not like I did.”

  “Right. Not like you did. He needed four or five opportunities under real, live conditions. We talked it over before the match.”

  Suddenly, I get the picture. All the life goes out of me. I stand frozen on the mat, staring at the wall.

  “He’s the best in the state, Ben,” Coach says softly. He puts his arm around me. “Get yourself a shower.”

  I head for the locker room. Al and Hatcher are wrestling on another mat, laughing and straining. Digit is refereeing.

  I walk down the stairs like a zombie. I open my locker, put my clothes in my gym bag, and put my coat on over my wrestling stuff. I take the bag and lock the loc
ker. I walk home real slow and unlock the house. Mom’s already at work and my father hasn’t gotten home yet. I go to my room and set the gym bag on the floor. I take off my wrestling shoes and turn off the light, and curl up on the bed with two fingers against my lips and my eyes open wide in the darkness. I don’t know how long I lie there. Eventually, I fall asleep.

  When I wake up, my father is standing over me with his hand on my forehead. “You okay?” he says.

  I open my eyes. “Yeah. Getting a cold maybe.”

  “You eat anything?”

  “No … What time is it?”

  “About eight-thirty.”

  “Okay. I’ll get something soon.”

  He goes back downstairs. My lips are dry and I am thirsty. My eyes sting a little, but I never stay sad for long. My sadness is already turning to anger. No way is it ending like this.

  I watch the match against Midvale from the end of the bench, in street clothes. We win big, as expected, wrapping up a 16–0 dual-meet season. All that remains is the league meet and the state tournament.

  I want to get home—I’ve barely spoken to anybody all day. Digit said “Good match yesterday” to me in homeroom and I told him to eat shit. I think he meant it though. He wouldn’t bust my chops about that.

  I head for the exit, and I hear Kim call my name pretty sharply. I stop and turn. I avoided her all day. She comes over.

  “What’s up?” she says.

  “Not much,” I answer.

  “You going home?”

  “I was.”

  “You said you’d call me last night.”

  I let out a sigh and start chewing on my lip. “I wasn’t feeling very good.”

  “Still could have called.”

  We’re in people’s way, so I step against the wall. “I got my ass kicked again in the wrestle-off,” I tell her. “I needed to be alone.”

  She stares straight ahead and starts to say something, then stops. Then she starts again. “You know, every time you have a shitty match you head for the door like a race horse. When things are going good, you’re only too happy to see me. When you have a little problem, you act like I’m a pain in the butt.”