Pride

by William Wharton

  It’s only a half-serious proposition; he doesn’t even stand up. Cap strolls over, shakes hands with the promoter, with the fighter. The fighter pulls off his glove and shakes with his bandaged hand. Cap sees the fighter is slow, standing up shakily, somewhat back on his heels, rocking above them, looking down, practically expressionless, a slight smile revealing missing teeth in front, probably has just about as many teeth left as Sture. But Cap feels this man, even fighting on instinct, would be deadly close in, past his prime but still out of any ordinary person’s class, just as Cap now is as a driver.

  “Nope. I wouldn’t have a chance with the champ there. I drive cars, couldn’t punch my way out of an empty apple box.”

  The manager cocks his head, birdlike, looks closer at Cap.

  “Hey, you’re the guy won that race today, ain’t you, the one people say has a full-grown lion with him somewhere, that right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Ya know, I was thinking about that lion when I heard about it. We could have him declawed and he could fight my boy here the way they do with kangaroos. It’d be an act nobody could resist; we could go big time with an act like that, a boxer fighting a lion. He don’t bite or nothin’, does he?”

  Cap smiles, looks at Sally. Her eyes are wide open, listening, watching. She still hasn’t had much experience with carny folks, their wild ideas, their dreams, impossible propositions. Cap smiles at the promoter.

  “Naw, he’s not for sale. And besides, even with his claws pulled, he’d knock your boy right out of the ring, probably break his neck. A full-grown lion can snap the back of a mature horse or buffalo with one swipe; they’ve got power in the shoulders you wouldn’t believe. They make Jim Thorpe look like a marshmallow.”

  “Well, just thought I’d ask. Could you tell me why you’re keeping that lion anyway; going to teach him to drive a car or something like that? He must cost a fortune just to feed.”

  “No, he’s a friend, a pet. I bought him down in San Diego when he was a cub, in a bar there. I don’t actually know what I’ll do with him in the end. Maybe give him to a zoo someday. I hate to think of it.”

  They talk a few minutes more then move over to another attraction next door that’s been interesting Cap since they set it up. It’s one of those “Wall of Death” acts. They’ve put up a huge wooden bowl twenty-five feet high or so, with straight wooden sides. These sides are held together by wide metal straps screwed tight on the outside of the wall. There are steps up to a catwalk around the top from which people can look down inside to see the act.

  There’s also a platform in front of this Wall of Death where the performers do tricks to attract crowds.

  Into the platform are built rollers. The performers ride their motorcycles on those rollers.

  Cap’d gone by before and seen the riders dipping and doing tricks, running the bikes on the rollers. They’d made a lot of noise and done some impressive tricks such as standing on the seats of the motorcycles. Once Cap saw one of them stand on his hands using the handles of the motorcycle. He wondered what they did on the inside, if they did any of the tricks in there they did on the rollers. It had to be like some of those high-banked fast curves at Des Moines. If you got out of your car there, you could hardly stand on the track.

  Two guys are on the platform out front. They’ve got one of the motorcycles, an Indian, broken down and are working on it. The mechanic in Cap, as well as the driver, is fascinated. It looks as if they’re trying to adjust the timing. He stops and watches; one of them looks up, smiles, then looks again. He turns to the other driver, working on the other bike.

  “Hey, Jimmy. Here’s the guy who drove that Ford Fronty job and won today.”

  They both turn back to Cap.

  “Boy, those rubes didn’t know what hit them; they didn’t have a chance against that machine and you really drove them into the ground. Hey, you’re Cap Modig, ain’t you? Holy cow! I didn’t recognize you today. You’ve always been one of my big heroes, one of the real drivers, one who came out of the garage; a mechanic, not just some rich playboy.

  “Gees, I thought you got killed in a crash in Atlantic City or something!”

  “Not quite; just banged up some. But it finished me for big-time racing. Maybe that’s why you thought I was dead. I raced a couple more times but I’d lost it.”

  The two young men are standing. For them it’s like looking at the ghost of Valentino or Caruso or even Frank Lockhardt. They’re both young, strong, full of life, greasy-shirted, greasy-handed, nails and cuticles packed with black dirt the way it is for anyone who works all the time with machines.

  They make Cap feel old. They’re both under thirty and the younger one probably a long way from thirty, maybe under twenty. The younger one swings his leg up over the machine he’s been working on, another Indian; he rolls it off the kick stand and pushes it over the rollers.

  “Ever try one of these, Mr. Modig? It’s the greatest thrill in the world, almost like flying.”

  He looks over at Sally, who’s leaning on Cap’s arm, taking it all in, fascinated.

  “Honest, Mr. Modig, you ought to try. We’ve got these bikes specially geared for that wall in there. You got to get up fast or you’re dead; a driver like you would love it.”

  He’s playing to Sally. She leans tighter against Sture and he puts his hand over hers.

  “I drove one of those Indians once, but I’ve never raced one. I only borrowed a machine and took a few short trips. That damned engine scared me, I must admit, all that power between my legs. But it’s a thrill all right.”

  The young one kicks his engine over and guns it a few times. The boxer and his manager look across. Then the young driver strips off his undershirt in the cool evening air. He has an eagle astride a motorcycle tattooed on the top of his left shoulder. His body is tight, muscular, a gymnast’s build. He’s short, not more than five feet seven, not much taller than Sally, and he’s wearing high-heeled boots.

  He begins by larking and dipping, his own speed keeping him up as with a gyroscope. He stands on the seat, first holding on to the handlebars then letting go. He’s locked the accelerator cable so the engine keeps up its speed. He stretches out his arms, then swivels his hips so the motorcycle tips left and right, synchronized with his swivel. He smiles, bright, wild-eyed, cocky. He knows he’s good and keeps his eye on Sally.

  Cap thinks it’s hard not to wish he’d get down before he hurts himself. Cap knows it’s only carny corn and he and Sally are probably more in danger themselves standing there. That motorcycle might catch or turn and swing off the platform at them, but something in him won’t flinch. He moves himself slightly in front of Sally to protect her in case something does happen. Finally, the young fellow lowers himself back onto the seat, unhooks the accelerator throttle, shifts down, and leaves the motor purring on the rollers, wheels stilled.

  “Come on, try it, Mr. Modig. It’s the real thing.”

  Cap knows he’s being egged on but it’s the kind of temptation he can’t resist. Almost any machine, any risk situation, has a strong attraction for him. If it weren’t for this personality flaw he wouldn’t’ve wound up riding cars at county fairs trailing around a grown lion. If it isn’t hard, it isn’t interesting to Cap Modig.

  Cap springs onto the platform, playing young, slightly pulling his hurt leg by hurdling with a one-handed vault. He takes the handlebars from the kid and swings his good leg over the bike. It’s a wide, comfortable seat. Cap checks all the controls, accelerator, brakes, gears, revs it a few times with his feet still flat on the platform.

  He shifts carefully into first and lets out the clutch. The wheels start, and as the gyroscopic effect comes on, he slowly lifts his feet and hooks them into the foot pegs. It’s a strange feeling having the back wheels turning and the bike going nowhere. The bike’s taken on life, but there’s no pull of acceleration. He shifts up one more gear, gives it more gas, adjusts the magneto a fraction for more spark. Then, gently at first, he star
ts dipping as if he’s going into and out of curves. He finds it really is a good feeling, some of the thrill in driving without all the fear. You’re not going to run into anything and nothing can run into you.

  But Sture finds the old devil is still there inside, urging him to stand up on that seat, show up the young bastard making eyes at Sally. But, at the same time, he knows he’s liable to break his neck and it wouldn’t prove anything anyway, so he lets up on the accelerator, comes to a halt, switches off the motor, rolls the machine back off its rollers, and swings down the kick stand.

  This time he lifts his bad leg up high over the seat trying not to wince. There’s still a piece of shrapnel dug into his femur high on the inside of his leg near the hip joint. The doctors at Metz said it wasn’t worth taking out, they’d do more harm than good just cutting through muscle to get at it.

  Two days later, while Cap is strapping his car up onto the truck, the older of those two with the motorcycles comes over. Cap and Sally are ready to take off for a track just about fifteen miles away in Wall township. It’s another dirt track on a county fairground.

  The young fellow stands around watching. Cap figures he has something on his mind. Tuffy is tied under the truck and stays quiet, looking out. Cap’s trained him to stay under there to keep from scaring people half to death. Cap looks up and smiles at this guy, who smiles back, lights a cigarette, offers him one. Cap refuses. He couldn’t smoke. With the little bit of lung he has left after his gassing, just being around someone smoking is almost impossible. Sal has kept her promise and hasn’t smoked since they got married.

  The young guy rocks back and forth on his boots.

  “Hey, you wouldn’t be interested in a trade, would you?”

  Cap stands up. He doesn’t understand what this is about. He looks under the truck at Tuffy. Does he want to trade something for Tuffy? Maybe he wants to trade something for Sally; maybe the young guy put him up to it.

  “Look, I’ll trade my whole rig over there, wall, bikes, truck, the whole thing, for your car and that truck. You can keep the lion.”

  He peeks again at Tuffy, who’s asleep. He stamps out his just-lit cigarette.

  Cap’s reaction is that this man must be crazy. It’s like asking somebody if they want to trade lives.

  Cap pulls hard on one of the straps holding his car in place and looks to see if there’s anything serious here. It’s a crazy idea, but he’s half interested. He knows sooner or later some fool’s going to crash into him or he’s liable to do something dumb himself. He stops and puts his hands on his hips, listening.

  “I tell you there’s a good living to be made with that wall. You have to travel most of the year but you’re already doing that. I know getting a bike up on the wall and doing a few little stunts would be nothing for a real classy race driver like you.

  “If you want, I know Jimmy’ll stay around and do most of the stunt stuff for you, anyway. He’s absolutely crazy to go up there and put on his act. I give him fifteen dollars a week and found; he really earns it. He’s a hard worker putting up and taking down that wall, too. That’s the worst part, getting the damned thing up and taking it down again each time. I talked to Jimmy about it and he’ll stay with the act if you decide you want to trade. But we ain’t got no contract or nothin’, you can just dump him if you want.”

  Cap’s thinking. Do they really want to live the carny life? He knows if something happens to his car he’ll wind up a grease monkey in a garage somewhere working for somebody else. He’s not ready. He’s not sure he could take the gaff he’d have to put up with just staying alive, keeping a job.

  Running a motorcycle around a wall is one hell of a long way from being a war hero and race driver, but then he knows he’s not a race driver any more, no hero either. He’s already halfway to being a carny man without even knowing it. Next thing he’ll be one of the geeks eating raw chickens, stomping around naked with his bald head and bum leg for people to laugh at.

  “Tell me, what’s your typical daily or weekly take when you run that thing?”

  The young motorcycle driver lights another cigarette, strikes the kitchen match from his pocket by running it down the side of his overalls.

  “Depends. Depends on the place and time of year. If you can find a good summer concession in a place like Atlantic City or here in Asbury Park, something like that, you can really rake it in. Maybe, if you work up a good enough act, you could practically live the rest of the year on what you make summers.

  “Little short gigs like this fair don’t last long enough and there’s not enough people; it’s hardly worth putting the wall up and taking it down. Yesterday we only took in thirty-two dollars, but the day before it was almost fifty.”

  He stops, letting smoke curl across his face in the evening light. He looks over Cap’s head, staring.

  “I tell you one thing, though. It’s what got me thinking about this whole idea of trading. You have a real ace-in-the-hole with this here lion of yours. If you could get that big cat to sit in a sidecar and let himself be driven around a wall, you’d have a regular gold mine. You’d scare people out of their wits with a full-grown lion roaring as he goes around and with no cage between him and them. I’ll bet you’d make over a hundred dollars a day right on the boardwalk at Asbury. Or you could check other places like Wildwood, Atlantic City, or even Cape May. Being scared is what people come into this kind of act for; they want to be scared without taking any real risks. That’s why they go to races and circuses, too, right?”

  Cap knows it’s true but hasn’t thought about it much. He’s wondering just what he’s doing with his life. Maybe he should go back and take over the farm. His dad’s getting too old for the job and his mother’s slowing down.

  “O.K., but what’s your angle? What is it you want out of this? If you’ve got such a good deal why give it up?”

  “I want to race a really good car. All my life I’ve wanted to race but could never get up enough money for a honest fast job. If I can’t win some with that one you’ve got there I’ll never do it. It’s sort of a last chance.”

  Cap thinks how, in a certain way, it’s a last chance for each of them. They stroll over to the Wall of Death, half dismantled. Chuck, the owner, with whom he’s been talking, shows Cap how it’s done, how the whole thing can be put up or broken down in about four hours. Cap looks over the bikes and listens to the motors on each of them; the pistons on one sound sloppy but that would be easy to fix. Jimmy’s standing around watching, something like a slave at a slave auction. In a sense, he’s being sold with the rest of the chattel and isn’t even sure if the new master will want him.

  Cap takes his car off the truck and lets Chuck run it around the dirt track a few times. He gives him some hints about a slight pull to the left and how this pull can be used making tight turns on a counter-clockwise track. Sally stands beside Cap as they watch Chuck push the car around some turns. Cap sees this young feller might make a fair racer with experience but probably won’t win much, even with the Fronty.

  Sally holds on to his arm.

  “Do you really think you’ll do this, Cap?”

  “What do you want, Sal? We can still back out of this whole thing you know, or we can keep on with the racing, or get into this carnival stuff.”

  Cap waves his free arm back at the carnival area. Most of the tents and trailers have pulled out. The boxing ring is dismantled and being stored on another truck.

  “I want to do whatever you want, Cap! I’ll be happy wherever you are, no matter what you’re doing. But I hate to think of you riding a motorcycle around on that wooden wall; I’m afraid you’ll get hurt. What keeps the motorcycle up there anyway? Is there some kind of trick?”

  “No, it’s just the speed of the motorcycle pushing out against the wall holds it up, the same way you can swing a pail of water around, have it upside down, and the water doesn’t spill out, sticks there in the pail.”

  Sally smiles, reaches over, pulls Sture’s head down close
, and kisses him.

  “Can you imagine? I’ve never swung a pail around in a circle. Does that show I’m not a farm girl?”

  “Just means you haven’t had a chance. I think you’d make a darned good farm girl myself.”

  Cap pulls her around in front of him, holds her out at arm’s length, looks her up and down.

  “You look kinda strong to me, lady, and feel those muscles.”

  He pretends to squeeze them as Sally pulls up her short cape sleeves and crooks her arm to make a muscle.

  “I really do have muscles for a girl, don’t I? Maybe it’s from plugging in and taking out all those telephone lines.”

  “There is something else we can do, Sal, go back to the farm. I’ve been thinking I’d rather do that than be a mechanic if it comes right down to it. I’d like to go back to that farm and have a whole passel of kids.”

  “I’m not ready for anything like that yet, Sture. Give me some more growing time.”

  Sally comes close to Cap. He looks over her head. Chuck’s stopped the motorcar and is walking around it. He comes up to them.

  “Well, it’s O.K. with me if it’s O.K. with you.”

  Cap looks at Sally and she looks at him. She smiles. And so it was done. They traded lives.

  PART 5

  We ate the dinner Mom cooked on our little cooker off dishes Mom had brought with us. The salt-water taffy was delicious. My favorite kinds were the one with peanut butter inside and one that tasted like strawberries. The kind Dad likes were too strong, like his horseradish. But Laurel liked those kind, the same as Dad, so it worked out fine. I don’t remember ever having had salt-water taffy before.

  Mom washed the dishes in the little hand sink while Laurel and I got to dry them. It was like playing house. Then, afterward, I crawled under my bed and played with Cannibal. We played at fighting, that’s the game she likes most. I try to fool her and reach in so I can touch her nose without her being able to hit my hand with her paw. She doesn’t scratch me any more except by accident. I saved part of my hot dog and gave it to her, and I think under that bed was the first time I ever heard her try to purr. It sounded almost like something inside was broken and couldn’t get started. She purred the way Mickey Saunders talks, and he stutters so he can hardly answer any questions in class. I had my feet sticking out from under the bed and then felt Dad’s hand on my ankle. He softly tugged me out.