The Hurting Circus

by Paul O'Brien

  “Got a pen?” Lenny asked Troy. Tanner gave Troy the nod. Troy took a pen from his jacket and gave it to Lenny. “Open the briefcase and show me my money first,” Lenny said.

  “You don’t trust me?” Tanner asked.

  “No, I don’t,” Lenny replied.

  “Give it to him,” Tanner said.

  One of the Botchcos—Lenny couldn’t tell one from the other—kicked the briefcase along the floor toward him. Troy opened the contract, and Lenny approached it with pen in hand.

  “Show me where,” Lenny said to Troy.

  Troy pointed to a few places, but before anything was inked, Lenny stooped and opened the waiting briefcase. It was full of freshly pressed cash. Lenny thought that, even if it wasn’t all there, there certainly was enough to turn things around for his family. That was all that he wanted.

  Tanner walked up to the table to witness the signature. Lenny cocked the pen and slowly brought it down toward the paperwork.

  “It took a while to pay off,” Tanner said. “But it was a good job for both of us that you shot that fat pig Danno in his fucking head.”

  Lenny instinctively turned and slapped the taste out of Tanner’s mouth. The old man fell to the ground, holding his face. The whole room froze in shock—including Lenny.

  “Have some fucking respect,” Lenny said.

  Percy tried to bull rush Lenny as the Botchcos hurried to help Tanner up. Lenny threw everything he had into his right hand and Percy hit the floor, but immediately wrapped himself around Lenny’s leg as Lenny tried to bolt. The closest Botchco brother threw the briefcase at Lenny, who ducked. The briefcase hit the edge of the window opening and burst open, releasing an explosion of hundred-dollar bills outside.

  “What did you fucking do that for?” Tanner shouted at his henchman’s stupidity.

  Lenny could see that the other Botchco brother now had a knife in his hand and was approaching rapidly. Lenny tried to untangle himself from Percy, but as the Botchco lunged, Lenny could only turn his body enough to take the knife in his shoulder area.

  “I got him,” shouted the knife-wielding brother to his boss.

  Lenny kicked with his free leg and caught the Botchco brother as hard as he could in the balls. Both Lenny and Botchco hit the ground as Lenny struggled free from Percy, grabbed his contract, and scrambled for the doorway.

  Lenny looked at the window opening and gave serious consideration to just fucking jumping, but it was too high. He scuttled down one flight of stairs and looked out again, but the drop was still enough to break his legs. He could hear the heavy footsteps of the Botchcos behind him.

  Lenny’s instinct was to try to lose them rather than outrun them, so he broke right and gently opened a door that took him out of the stairwell. He closed it quietly and ran toward the back of the building. His shoulder was throbbing and his blood dotted the gray concrete floor as he went from hallway to hallway.

  The music he’d heard earlier grew louder as he approached the rear of the site. He took the steps down, two at a time, and slipped out of the building by pushing his way past a plywood sheet that covered an exit door.

  Lenny stumbled straight into weirdness. He immediately hunched down behind a pile of bricks and watched a bunch of oiled, half-naked buff men scattered around the site. The fact that they were dancing and miming the lyrics of the song tipped it from the weird to the bizarre.

  Lenny knew by the spandex, fanny packs, crop tops, and fingerless gloves that they were indeed his people. They were wrestlers, and probably southern, judging by the mullet haircuts, suede cowboy boots, and the chewing-tobacco teeth.

  The more he looked, the more Lenny realized that these guys weren’t wrestlers as he remembered them—they were a different breed. These guys were eighties wrestlers. The new school.

  A camera crew filmed one wrestler in particular, as two others flexed their muscles into the camera lens from the side. They were “singing” along with everything they had:

  When life is slammin’ you down

  And you ain’t got no one around

  You gotta be a man

  You gotta clothesline what you can

  Look great

  grind your teeth

  clench your fists

  you can’t be beat

  You’re a maaaaan

  Grrrrr.

  Huge men in tassels and bandanas were breaking planks of wood, swinging sledgehammers, and bending bars for the camera. The bad guys were full of menace and attitude, and the good guys smiled and posed any time they sensed the camera was near.

  “What the fuck?” Lenny mumbled to himself as he backed away. This is what his business—the business of professional wrestling—had become since he went inside.

  With so many of Tanner’s guys between him and the exit, Lenny had no choice but to try the front gate after all. He carefully hurried around the side; it looked clear enough. He could see some of his sixty grand, his ticket home, literally blowing in the wind above him. He wanted to stop and collect every dollar.

  “Hey,” Babu shouted as he raced in through the entrance in his van.

  Lenny stopped dead. He had Tanner’s men behind him, Babu in front—and the money over his head. The giant slid to a sudden stop on the gravel driveway and waved at Lenny to come to him.

  Lenny wasn’t sure.

  He’d already made a lot of stupid mistakes since he got out. He wondered if going with Babu was going to be another one.

  “Hey,” shouted one of the Botchco brothers as he charged out the exit.

  Lenny quickly made up his mind. Babu it was.

  As Lenny ran closer, the giant could see that blood was dripping from a stab wound in Lenny’s shoulder. He turned off the engine and gingerly stepped out of the van.

  “No, drive,” Lenny shouted as he ran past Babu and into the van.

  But Babu didn’t run from nothing or no one—not even the two huge Botchco brothers who were rushing from the building site toward him. As Lenny watched from the safety of the van, Babu slapped the first brother into the nearest wall and cold-cocked the second with a head-butt. Two three-hundred-pound men, out cold in a couple of seconds.

  Lenny slid into the driver’s seat and started the van.

  “You’re not the driver anymore,” Babu said through the driver’s window. He opened the door and put one leg in the van. His weight made the vehicle bow down a little as he got fully inside. Lenny shimmied into the passenger seat.

  “What did you do?” Babu asked as he started the ignition. Lenny didn’t want to answer. “What did you do?” Babu asked again.

  “Something stupid,” Lenny replied.

  Babu sped backward into the street and slammed the van into drive; he kept glancing at the blood stain on Lenny’s shoulder as it grew bigger and bigger.

  “What does that mean?” Babu asked.

  “It means—I guess I’m a boss.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  1984.

  Seven hours after Lenny got out.

  Memphis.

  Joe Lapine took one hundred and thirteen steps through the packed boxes on his floor to get to his ringing phone. It was too many steps, he thought. As he got older, he had begun to see all the things in the world that could kill him. If he had a stroke or heart attack, he’d never reach the phone in time. He’d make sure to have a phone in each room in his new house.

  “What happened?” Joe asked a little too loudly. “Is the paper signed over?”

  “No,” Donta said.

  Joe clenched his fist and punched the air. “He didn’t go through with it?” the chairman asked.

  “No. I talked to Percy, like you said,” Donta replied. “Lenny slapped Tanner across the face.”

  Joe sat down like a nosy housewife about to get all the street gossip. “He did?”

  “Yeah. But it means trouble,” Donta said. “They stabbed him, tried to kill him.”

  “That stupid fuck, Tanner,” Joe said. “Get him the fuck away from that city.”
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  Joe hung up and could feel all his hard work, negotiations, and personal plans slipping down the drain. Tanner was insistent that he would go after New York and Joe knew he should have acted then.

  He wasn’t going to make that mistake again. Tanner Blackwell looking for revenge wasn’t going to be the thing that sank all Joe’s plans.

  It was time to deal with Tanner once and for all.

  Joe dialed his office. “Martha, it’s me,” he said. “Call the other bosses immediately. Tell them that I want to honor Tanner Blackwell and make him the new chairman of the National Wrestling Council. Tell them it’s an extraordinary agenda item and therefore I’d like to call the meeting for tomorrow night. We can do it in Vegas.”

  Down a dark alley, past three boarded doorways, and beyond a mountain of trash, they’d arrived at Babu’s home. It wasn’t what Lenny had expected. When he had gone inside, Babu was one of the most recognized faces in the country. He’d had national talk show exposure, women, money, and fame. Lenny didn’t want to judge a book by its cover, but it looked like that was all gone now.

  Through the flickering overhead lights outside, Lenny could see that his stab wound wasn’t anything to panic over. He’d need stitches, but it didn’t feel like anything was severed inside the shoulder.

  Babu pulled the van up against the wall. “We’re home,” he said simply, as he delicately lowered himself out of the van. Lenny followed Babu’s huge frame through his creaky front door.

  Lenny immediately knew that Babu didn’t live alone; he could smell home cooking, an aroma that hadn’t visited Lenny in many, many years. “Up those stairs, there’s a room and a place to wash,” Babu said as he entered the kitchen.

  His house was small for a giant, but it was well-kept and warm, and it had a woman’s touch. Lenny looked up the dark stairs. “My shoulder is okay,” he said as he followed Babu’s direction.

  “We can’t leave it like it is,” Babu replied.

  Lenny peered around the door and could see a steaming pot of soup on the stove. “You wanna get something to eat first?” Babu asked. “Because we’re going to look at that wound now, or later.” Babu dished up a bowl for Lenny and a second one for himself.

  Lenny sat at the table. He was getting a sense of Babu’s home. It felt like what Lenny thought of as European: there was a small fire crackling in the corner, the beams over his head were exposed, and there was a rail of pots and pans hanging from hooks above the stove. Lenny took a second to digest the smell of the meal before it touched his lips. It was genuinely enough to make him emotional. He was out. All of that shit that happened to him, that had changed his life, was over. Or the last chapter of it was over. But he was out now, in New York, and with Babu again. They were different men, but they were still familiar to each other. Lenny slid his spoon around the inside edge of the bowl and blew on the thick spoonful as he lifted it to his lips. Babu sat next to him and looked intently at Lenny’s new wound. Lenny didn’t want to put the spoon down. The soup tasted too nice.

  “Let me see,” Babu said.

  Lenny tried to play patient and eat at the same time. Babu tore a bigger hole in Lenny’s already ripped T-shirt. The puncture was still wet and exposed, but it was nothing major, a clean cut. Babu rose from his seat and began to rummage through the drawers and little boxes on the shelves. Lenny took the opportunity to wolf down as much as he could.

  “What’s your plan?” Babu asked.

  “To go home,” Lenny replied with a full mouth.

  “And how do you suppose you do that?” Babu asked.

  Lenny hadn’t worked out the details yet. “I don’t know how I’m going home,” he said. “Just that I am. And I’m going home worth something.”

  “Yeah?” Babu said as he put on a broken pair of glasses. “I told you I can help you with that.”

  “Next time I knock on Bree’s door,” Lenny said, “I’m going to be—something—more than this. More than who I was when I got put away—and certainly more than who I am now.”

  Babu sat back down. He had a tube of superglue between his huge sausage fingers that made him look clumsy and the tube tiny. His glasses were broken and Lenny wasn’t even sure Babu could see through them properly. “I’ll do that,” Lenny said, as he took the tube for himself.

  Babu wiped his hands along his shirt and proceeded to pinch Lenny’s wound closed. Lenny then applied the glue along the cut line, careful not to get Babu stuck there, too. “You know Tanner has to come for you now,” Babu said. “He can’t have anyone putting their hands on a boss.”

  “I’m a boss,” Lenny said. Babu peeked up from the wound to see that Lenny was smiling.

  “We can stall them,” Babu replied. “Bullshit them, and dodge them, but even then we only have a tiny window to get the territory moving.”

  Lenny finished applying the glue. “I’m not sure that’s what I want.”

  “What do you want?” Babu asked.

  “I don’t know. Whatever is best for my family,” Lenny replied.

  Lenny walked up the dark stairs toward the small bathroom. He had no idea how Babu fit in there. Lenny needed a shower and rest. He had to try to get his head right, or at least right enough to catch up with what was happening. He had no idea where to go, or what to do—and he had no idea who he could trust.

  He turned on the faucet and let the water slap down into the waiting bath. He locked the door and took off his clothes. He noticed his cuts and bruises in the mirror in front of him. His belly was fuller and rounder than it had been in a long time.

  Below him, Babu waited until he knew Lenny was out of earshot before picking up his phone to make a call.

  On the other end, Joe Lapine answered. “Joe?” Babu said. “It’s me.”

  “What the fuck is going on out there?” Joe asked.

  Babu spoke cautiously. “You need to pull Tanner, do you hear me?” he said, “Get him off the field any way you have to, or all this work will be for nothing.”

  “I’m dealing with it.” Joe said. “Where’s Lenny now?”

  Babu thought carefully about his answer. He didn’t want to say, but he had no choice. “I’ve got him—but I need more time to get him to bend,” the giant said.

  “Don’t give him any other fucking option,” Joe replied. Babu took a quick look up the stairs to make sure he and Joe were still speaking in private.

  “You deal with Tanner and I’ll deal with Lenny,” Babu said. “Either way, New York is back in play.”

  Lenny sat naked in the darkness of the top step, listening to Babu’s conversation. He felt the fear of being out of prison, and the anger of having been in there in first place. His bones were sore, and his wounds were throbbing. He missed his home—the same home he knew didn’t exist anymore. Lenny grabbed his clothes and carefully opened the nearest window as quietly as he could.

  Wrestling was looking for him, but Lenny was looking for family. He knew both things, yet again, were intertwined.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Kid Devine sat in the front row of an empty Madison Square Garden. He thought about his match that was coming up, and how it would play out. He thought about his father, the wrestling business, the threats, and how all that would play out too.

  He heard footsteps on the risers behind him.

  “Let me smarten you up,” said the voice in the darkness.

  In wrestling, this phrase meant everything. A veteran saying those words to a rookie was a passing of the torch; a sign that you’d been truly accepted in the wrestling business. It involved a lot of trust—a lot of faith that the person learning would take on the old traditions, the proper way of doing things. That they would protect the secrets of the wrestling business.

  On this night, the rookie knew the voice of the person that was sitting about twenty rows back. Only the ring was lit, so Kid could only make out a silhouette in the stands.

  “Can we let the people in?” a staff member shouted. “They’re starting to go crazy out there.”r />
  “No,” the man in the stands replied. “A few more minutes.”

  Kid stood up and leaned against the apron of the twenty-by-twenty red, white, and blue ring. He tried to look beyond the lights. “Why don’t you come down here and show me something, old man?” he said. “It’s been a while.”

  The man in the stands struck a match for his cigarette, and Kid caught a glimpse of his pained, pale face. “You okay?” Kid asked.

  “I’m fine,” the man answered. He took a pull from his cigarette. “Now, there’s only four basic parts to a wrestling match: the Shine, the Heat, the Comeback, and the Finish. The Shine is where our hero starts off well, and wins a couple of small, early victories to get the crowd excited. They paid good money, so give them what they want.” He took another pull and continued.

  “To start with.”

  Kid moved to jump the barrier. “You can stay where you are,” the man in the stands said. Kid reluctantly stayed where he was, but he had no idea why he couldn’t go see his mentor.

  “The second part of the match is the Heat,” the man said.

  “I know this stuff,” Kid replied.

  The man continued regardless. “And the Heat is where it begins to go wrong for our hero,” the man said. “The heel sees an opportunity to win, and he takes it. It’s the part of the match where the audience decides whether the babyface hero is worth supporting or not.”

  “Seriously, man. What are you doing up there? I can’t see you,” Kid said.

  “This part of the match is when bad things happen to good people.”

  1984.

  One day after Lenny got out.

  New York.

  Tad Stolliday fucking loved his job. While some people would say they enjoyed being employed, or that they didn’t mind their work, Tad would have come in every morning to do his job for free. Being in charge of people actually made him feel better, as a human being.

  He was too much of a pussy to be a cop, and too fond of himself to be a security guard, so he followed the road that best suited him: he was born to be a parole officer.

  This day, however, was a bad day at the office. Word was coming down from the executive director of the State Division of Parole that a parolee had just shot a cop and wounded two others. The governor of New York, along with the mayor, had both called into question the effectiveness of the parole system in total.