Leverage

by Joshua C. Cohen

  5

  DANNY

  In the gym, I am somebody.

  In the gym, school stops at the thick, fireproof doors, held back by air that tastes of chalk, turns spit into paste, cakes the inside of nostrils, and packs under fingernails in a white powder. Buzzing halogen lamps, hanging from the thirty-five-foot-high rafters, turn everything the pink-orange of a beach sunset. Wall-to-wall foam mats forgive my mistakes, offering no judgment, only a cushion when I fall.

  “Gentlemen,” Coach Nelson announces as the team starts warm-up stretches on the thin tumbling mats, “we’re running sets today.”

  “Sets” are when my teammates and I throw ourselves through the air, battle gravity like X Games superchamps, and occasionally crash and burn. Drop a so-called real jock in here and watch them assume the fetal position while we blast through circus tricks they can’t even figure out. The jungle of toys waits patiently for our arrival after school lets out. High bars, parallel bars, rings, pommel horse, vaults, and springboards. Here my secret plan—revealed to no one, not even Bruce—hatches:1. State champion on high bar by junior year.

  2. Team captain by junior or senior year.

  3. State all-around champion by senior year.

  4. Full-ride athletic scholarship.

  Number four is the one that really counts. Number four makes it legit. Number four turns virtual daydreams into a lotto jackpot, lets me laugh at everyone thinking “Danny who?” while I start a new life in a man’s body really fucking far from this place.

  Full-ride scholarship. Full-ride scholarship. Full-ride scholarship.

  I whisper the phrase three times every day while stretching, sending it out to the gymnastic gods, hoping they’re listening.

  “Danny?” Coach Nelson gets my attention. He sits among us in a hurdler’s stretch, both arms reaching out to touch his toes. Coach Nelson knows way more about rock climbing than gymnastics but he does his best to offer tips and advice and makes a good spot-catcher if one of us is about to crash. He keeps his long hair pulled back into a ponytail and the weathered skin around his eyes is spiderwebbed with squint lines. Vance nicknamed him “Uncle Jesus” but he looks more like a retired special ops officer who’s renounced all things military, because that’s exactly what he is. He served over in Afghanistan, though he won’t discuss it. Bruce told us that when he was a freshman—Coach Nelson’s first year coaching and teaching at Oregrove after returning from the war—he had a buzz cut. Coach just never bothered cutting his hair again.

  “You going to try that suicide catch again today?” Coach asks me.

  “Yeah,” I say, grinning, liking his description.

  “Look, squirt. I don’t think my heart can take watching you miss that bar again.”

  Cool, I think. My new trick must be pretty nasty if Coach’s actually worried about me. He’s the only adult I don’t mind calling me squirt, either. He calls everyone on the team names like kid, squirt, half-pint, headache, peanut brain or—if he’s in a really good mood—little shit.

  “You’re tough, Coach,” I say. “You can handle it.”

  Just like Bruce is our team’s master on the rings, I’m the team’s master on high bar. I convinced my dad to pay for private club practice during the off-season, so, unlike most of the other guys, I train all year. Now, I’d never say this out loud, but ... I’m pretty good. Of course, no one outside the gym has any idea, including, I think, my dad. It’s okay. All that matters is the scholarship. That’ll make it official.

  “You’re up, Danny,” Coach Nelson calls to me. “It’s okay if you want to skip the trick.”

  “No it’s not,” Bruce says more to Coach than to me. Bruce and Coach are standing below me on either side of the high bar. If I miss the catch, they make sure I don’t do a head-plant into the mats. We have a spotting harness attached to ropes and pulleys that hang from the rafters, but the ropes get in the way for this trick. It’s not the floor I’m worried about smacking, anyway. Crashing into the high bar feels like being hit by a baseball bat. If you’re lucky, it’s not your face.

  “Make it!” Bruce barks at me like a drill sergeant. I nod to him—message received—and kick up to a handstand on the high bar. Then gravity takes over. I help it by jamming hard through the bottom of the swing and looping back up around the steel pipe. The leather grips only partially dull the bite of the chalky metal digging into the thickened skin of my fingers and palms.

  “You got it,” Bruce encourages as my legs whip past him and Coach Nelson on my way back over the bar. “Hit it!”

  I kick my legs harder, tighten my belly, feel air breeze past my ears and ankles. The torque is pulling at my grip, tearing at my hands, itching to rip me off the bar. I crank even faster.

  “Easy, Danny,” Coach cautions. Too late. I whip around the bar until I can feel my fingers about to peel off. At the top of the arc, I let go. I’m weightless, feeling my thighs powering me up toward the rafters, body fighting hard to break orbit while my neck cranes backward. I’m searching, searching as the world spins around me once, twice, I’m searching and throw my hands out, feeling, hoping, reaching ...

  My hands slap the chalky steel. My fingers instinctively grab tight and hold on. I caught it. I caught it! I’m back on the bar swinging down and up around again. I did it! My legs snap me up and over the pipe for a smooth follow-through loop.

  Bruce howls for me.

  “Hot damn, Danny!”

  “I’ll be an SOB.” Coach starts clapping. “Pigs are flying somewhere.”

  I hear Fisher whistle and other guys clapping. I do one more loop and then let go, tossing off a lazy flip before floating down from the sky onto my feet. Bruce reaches me first, raising both arms for high fives. Two powdery chalk-clouds pop out from our slapping hands.

  “Outstanding!”

  “That was sweet, bro,” Fisher adds. Chalk powder settles over his raven-black hair, turning it old-man gray.

  Coach Nelson offers me a small salute. “You could clean up in state on high bar if you keep that up.” Then Coach turns to Fisher. “Vance, you work a little harder, like Danny here, and stop worrying about your fake ID and maybe we could count on some consistency in your pommel horse routines.”

  Ronnie, one of two freshmen on the team and the only guy actually smaller than me, approaches as I’m pulling off my leather grips.

  “That’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen,” he offers.

  “Thanks,” I say, feeling too good to ignore him like I usually do because he’s so shy and small and sometimes the sight of him irritates me in a way I’m not sure I understand.

  6

  KURT

  In full pads and helmet, with autumn still feeling like summer, the players around me pant like sled dogs ten minutes into the tackle drills. The sun’s scorching and sweat’s running off me like rainwater but I ain’t winded like the others. Getting bigger, faster, stronger comes as natural to me as stuttering. When you got no money and home sucks, the free community gym and library are what’s to do besides watching TV, and Crud Bucket pretty much ruined TV for me. He loved it; loved drinking in front of it, loved talking back to it as he drained a twelve-pack, readying himself for one of us, rotating us to keep the bruising spread out.

  Back at the other place, I used to sneak over the neighborhood school’s fenced field and run bleachers. Or I’d run wind sprints on their track. But mostly I hit the weights. First time I ever tried it, I took to weight lifting. All I ever needed to know was that it made you bigger and stronger. And if you got big enough, you’d never suffer someone else’s temper ever again. No matter where the state shuffled me, I could always hunt down a weight room, stack the plates, and make all that iron rise again and again, muscles screaming with that final rep, me pushing even harder, imagining all the hurt I’d visit on Him when I finally—

  “Brodsky!” Coach Brigs barks, interrupting my favorite revenge fantasy. “You got cotton in your ears? I said I want you in on this drill. Need to see what
my new fullback’s bringing to the table.” I nod, feel my helmet shift down on my forehead. “The play is twenty-one split,” Coach continues. “You fake the handoff from Scott and open a hole for Terrence coming up behind you. Full contact. Let’s see you create some space on the line.”

  “Yes, sir!” I holler. On the field, behind a face mask, I hardly ever stutter. Gnawing on my mouth guard, I line up off quarterback’s left and glance over to make sure Terrence, the running back, is on my right.

  “Studblatz! Peters!” Coach barks over to the other side. “I just gave you the play. Won’t get any easier for a defense than that. I wanna see you two stuff this big ol’ sumbitch!”

  Scott Miller chomps out a hyena laugh. “Yeah,” he echoes in a way I don’t appreciate. “Stuff that ugly sumbitch!”

  I find the back of Jankowski, our offensive tackle. He looks bigger than he did in the locker room. Glad he’s on my side of the ball during real games. If he does his job right, creates daylight, then I won’t have to. But this is a drill and Coach wants me to make a statement on my own. Guess it’s his way of introducing me to the team.

  Something I learned in foster care is that power and size matter. So does toughness. All three are like math variables. Increasing any of them is a good thing if they’re on your side of the equation. Take Lamar, for instance. Not much size, not much power, but lots of toughness. He’d back down boys three years older than us just by clawing the air and spitting like a wildcat and telling them they’d lose an eye if they so much as touched us. No matter how bad he might have needed it, he kept his inhaler in his pocket until we were alone. Then, bent over, hands on his knees, wheezing hard but smiling like he’d just been handed the heavyweight title, he’d suck on his inhaler, look up at me, and shake his head. Boy, look at those feet. You gonna be huge. Big as an ox one day. Just you wait. If I had your size, I could rule the world. I’d show ol’ Crud where he could stick his thing. Lamar talked that way all the time, talked as if for all his toughness and my big feet there wasn’t a final variable neither one of us could ever match: cruelty.

  I look across the line and see Studblatz and Peters itching to double-team me now that they know the play, both grinning through their masks, both hungry to flatten me, give me a real warm welcome. A shudder runs up to my skull, twisting my neck as an imaginary yoke comes undone. I stare back at Studblatz until the face under his helmet is the man that used to enter my room at night reeking of whiskey and cigarettes, belt buckle already rising, waiting to make its mark. The right toe of my cleat digs into the turf, creating a starting block. The world beyond me and him melts into the color of fire. The source of all pain, all hurt, crouches in front of me, begging to be snuffed out of existence.

  Quarterback calls out his cadence, then lets loose one sharp cry. I hear no more. My thighs expand as I lower, understanding all about leverage and the physics of unearthing bodies. I bull’s-eye him under his chest, aiming for that crease at his waist, feeling his legs crab-scramble too late. My shoulder catches his gut while Peters, an afterthought, tries wrapping me up at the calves. Peters catches a pumping knee under his chin strap and drops like a stone. My target ain’t as lucky. Folded over the rising plank of my shoulder pad, his feet leave the ground as I drive him backward. Legs airborne, his feet kick in tandem for the ground. Rushing toward annihilation, I welcome the hug of gravity as our combined weight accelerates. I ride big boy onto his back, body-slamming him into the grass, his chest absorbing my shoulder, deflating like a used air bag. First sound coming through my helmet’s ear hole is a satisfying “Ooofff!”

  Pushing off him to stand up, Crud Bucket vanishes, leaving behind only the smoldering remains of Studblatz. He doesn’t move. The wind’s knocked out of him, maybe more. Terrence sprints past with the ball for about ten yards and then slows. No one’s watching Terrence, though.

  I feel and smell them: the pack. They watch me from under their helmets, not saying anything until their leader speaks. Unsure how to respond, they wait for a signal to attack or accept. Just like first day at group home.

  “Jesus!” Scott Miller cackles. “I think Studblatz might be pregnant after that one.”

  Assistant Coach Stein runs over to Studblatz, kneels down to him, and shines a penlight in his eyes.

  “My, my, my,” Coach Brigs says, holding his chin in his hand.

  “Damn, boy!” Pullman, one of the linemen, whistles.

  “Walk it off, ’Blatz. Walk it off.” Rondo, our center, chuckles.

  Coach claps his hands to restart the team.

  I am numb with release.

  “Hey, man.” Terrence jogs up to me and slaps me on the butt. “I got a feeling you and me are gonna be real tight. Real tight. Shit, man. I ain’t no homo but you do that for me in the games and I’ll be riding your ass all the way to the end zone and a scoring title.”

  Size. Power. Ferocity. Establish you have the most of all three and everyone leaves you alone. That’s how you survive those places. And if you find a brother like Lamar, a brother you trust with your life, to watch your back, then you’ve doubled your odds.

  7

  DANNY

  What the hell are you freaks doing in here?” Mike Studblatz challenges.

  I was wondering the same thing when Coach Nelson led us into the heart of the gorilla cave. The varsity weight room is technically open to all team athletes, no matter what sport, but during fall season, the unspoken rule is no one comes in here except football players—until today. My eyes wander from Studblatz to another gorilla pacing in front of a mirror, holding thick dumbbells, pumping them up and down.

  “Get some, bitch,” Tom Jankowski huffs at his reflection, focused on the image of his log-arms bulging with each dumbbell curl, missing the nervous monkeys skittering past him, staying as close to our coach as possible.

  Coach Nelson walks right up to Mike Studblatz and yanks out his earbuds by their wire. Studblatz’s eyes open wide in surprise and his mouth drops. Coach Nelson cuts him off before his little brain can think to speak.

  “Careful how you talk to a teacher, Mike. I’ve just given you your warning.”

  Mike stands there—stupid—but doesn’t say anything.

  “Cool,” Vance Fisher whispers, his eyes twinkling. Fisher is the type who likes trouble, even if it may lead to getting his ass kicked. About now most of the other gorillas have stopped grunting and heaving long enough to notice our little group gawking at them. We stick close to Coach Nelson and his protective sphere of adult authority.

  Tom Jankowski stops cursing at himself in the mirror and drops his dumbbells onto the rubberized floor with a loud boom that silences the room. He turns to face us. “This is our house,” he huffs. He doesn’t look like he cares that Coach Nelson is an adult and a teacher and, technically, off-limits.

  “Actually,” Coach Nelson levels his voice at Jankowski, keeping it steady and strong enough to be heard over a few remaining clinks and clanks as other players rack their weights and gather around us, “this is our house, as well.”

  “Hey, Ted.” Assistant Coach Stein steps into the free weight area from the connecting room where rows of bench presses lie like empty morgue tables. “What seems to be the problem?”

  “No problem, Frank.” Coach Nelson smiles and holds up his hands. “We need to work on some strength training, same as your boys. I figured now would be a great time to teach both teams a little lesson in economics and accounting while I’m at it.”

  “I’m not following,” Coach Stein says.

  “Let me explain,” Coach Nelson replies. “I just found out our team’s operating budget all but disappeared. That means no money for buses to our away meets and no money to pay the judges who score those meets. Found out the same thing’s happening to cross-country and swimming.”

  “What’s that got to do with my team’s weight room?” Coach Stein asks. His players cinch closer around us. Like Coach Stein, I’m wondering what the hell Coach Nelson’s talking about. So’s ever
yone else. Tom Jankowski and Mike Studblatz are both breathing like draft horses and shifting their weight like they can’t wait to stomp us. There’s only one player not standing around, not paying attention, and it’s the new guy, Kurt Brodsky. He’s strapped into the squat rack machine, ignoring all of us while pushing up a warping bar of steel plates equivalent to the mass of a small planet.

  “Our weight room,” Coach Nelson corrects their coach. “Turns out all the money’s gone to paying for that shiny new TV going up in the football stadium, that nifty new Jumbotron. So here’s where the economics and accounting lesson comes into play. You gotta pay for what you take in the real world. Since football took our money, we expect football to start sharing some of the wealth. So we’ll be using the weight room for the season.”

  We will?! I gulp. No way I’m coming into this place again.

  “Like hell!” Studblatz shouts. Coach Nelson turns on him fast and moves close, jamming his finger up into Mike’s Adam’s apple. “Son, I already warned you about talking to your teachers in a disrespectful manner. Now, I’m not going to warn you again.”

  Coach Nelson’s shorter than Studblatz but he’s layered with wiry rock climber muscle. Mike Studblatz, as angry as he’s getting, holds his tongue for the moment.

  “This weight room is for real athletes,” Tom Jankowski tells our coach. Jankowski keeps making his hands into fists and opening them like he’s seriously considering taking a run at Coach Nelson.

  “You’re right,” Coach Nelson counters. “And that’s why I’m not sure my gymnasts should even tolerate you guys in this room. Everyone knows the weakest gymnast is a hell of a lot stronger than your average football player.”

  What?! What is he doing to us? I’m thinking. He’s going to get us all killed.