by Jack Tunney
A second referee hurried to the ring to aid the one assigned to the match in dragging the raving jungle queen away from the little hummingbird, who the crowd tried to avenge with their boos.
Tonda pulled herself free of the two refs and, with a huge grin etched in her face, curtsied to the four sides of the ring before dropping to the mat and rolling to the floor.
It took both referees and four security guards to get her safely up the aisle.
Dick and Daniel greeted Vicky on the other side of the curtain with huge smiles. Dick actually gave her a hug. “That was some great heel stuff.”
“Wait.” Vicky held up her hand. “I want to hear it.”
In the arena, the crowd was still booing, but the ring announcer’s voice could be heard over the PA system.
“Damas y caballeros, la ganada del partido es…La Pequeño Colibrí.”
The crowd erupted in a mixture of validation, vengeance and glee, all of it loud.
On the other side of the curtain, Vicky smiled at Daniel sidelong. “We get all our heel heat, and a new technica is born.”
He shook his head, smiling, and they kissed.
***
The six-man tag team main event, it turned out, pit Mammoth, El Arana Negro, and El Corazado against Mickey, Daniel and Aguila Gigante who, if she was honest, Vicky didn’t find all that impressive.
Since Tonda’s role in the match was limited to cheerleader, she had a chance to watch the action more than she did matches in which she had to constantly taunt to crowd to get Mammoth heel heat, or actively cheat to help him win.
Plus, she was pretty sure Pequeña Colibrí’s deep matchbook pin had strained both her hamstrings. The backs of both legs throbbed when she put her heels back on, so she left them backstage and returned to the ring barefoot to cheer the rudo team.
In six-man lucha libre matches, each team has a captain and there are two referees assigned with one usually outside the ring. One team must defeat the captain or the other two members of the other team in order to win. Naturally, Mammoth and Aguila Gigante were the captains of these teams and, under orders from Senor Gonzales, were to have as little to do with each other as possible in the match.
So, at the five-minute mark, El Arana Negro pinned Mickey after a cross-body block from the second rope. Five minutes later, Daniel nailed El Corazado square in the chest with a dropkick from the top rope and just managed to hold him down for the three count.
Vicky almost forgot who she was and had to stop herself from cheering Daniel’s finishing move.
So, with the teams even at one fall apiece, Aguila Gigante entered the ring to take on El Arana Negro.
And boy was he slow.
The Mexican champion was a hulking, muscular man, but everything he did seemed distant and listless. His reddish-brown skin looked more sunburnt than Mexican and the star-shaped, raised and ridged scar on the front of his left shoulder was a distracting eyesore.
El Arana Negro — The Black Spider — a thin, wiry luchador, had no trouble dodging the champion’s swatting hands, which were heavily taped. After a few bobs and weaves, Arana Negro backed himself to a neutral corner, into which Aguila Gigante lumbered to deliver a series of heavy, powerful chops the crowd loved.
The crowd loved everything the champion did, but he didn’t really play to them after he made his grand entrance to the ring.
Vicky wanted to shake her head at most of what he did.
Arana rolled out of the corner to escape the chops and made it to the rudo corner, where he tagged El Corazado.
Aguila Gigante advanced, but never quite faced his opponents’ corner, or even looked at Corazado when he climbed through the ropes and the big luchador in gray battered the champion over the back with forearm smashes.
Aguila fell to his knees. His momentum should have taken him toward the rudo corner, but he twisted his almost grotesque torso away and fell, forearms first, in a neutral corner.
The rudos worked Aguila over for another few minutes, including Mammoth for a kick or three, until it was time for the finish.
With a mighty grunt, Aguila blocked a punch from El Corazado and rocked the big luchador with one of his own. The hulking champion then half dove, half fell to his corner, where Mickey got the tag. The crowd wowed its approval as Mickey vaulted over the top rope and charged at Corazado…
But the bigger man dropped to the mat and pulled the top rope down. Mickey’s flying attack sent him careening out of the ring and he landed on the outside referee, obliterating the man.
The remaining five luchadores stormed the ring for a brawl that immediately exceeded the control of the other ref.
Time for Tonda’s bit.
Mickey spent a moment trying to revive the fallen referee outside the ring, then staggered back into the fray inside it.
That’s when Tonda crept over to the prone official and checked him for signs of life.
The members of the crowd nearest her booed the second Tonda made a move toward the ref. Some of them yelled out, trying to get the inside official’s attention to what she was doing.
Tonda lifted the unconscious referee’s hand off the concrete, let it drop, then did it again before cackling with her head thrown back. She got to her feet, trotted to the entrance aisle, and waved someone down to the ring.
A moment later Dick, in referee stripes, ran down the aisle.
A gringo ref summoned by Tonda the Jungle Queen. The crowd knew where this was going.
Boos rained down on Dick from every corner of Arena Mexico as he crawled into the donnybrook in the ring.
Mickey and El Arana Negro, locked in each other’s grip, tumbled through the ropes on one side of the ring.
Aguila Gigante had El Corazado in a tight headlock, but Mammoth shoved the champion’s back and both men tumbled to the outside.
That left Mammoth in the ring with Daniel and both referees. The inside referee climbed through the ropes to try to tell Mickey and Corazado they were the legal men in the match.
Daniel got behind Mammoth and wound up his arm for a big clothesline.
Dick, who’d never gotten up off his hands and knees, scurried close behind Daniel’s calves.
Mammoth turned, jumped back at the sight of Daniel, then lurched forward and shoved him before Daniel could strike.
Daniel tumbled backward over Dick’s back and landed flat on his shoulders with his legs in the air.
The crowd roared in anger as Mammoth pounced on Daniel, cradled both his legs above his shoulders and Dick counted the pin.
***
The crowd was just about gone and everyone was in a good mood backstage as technicians saw to their affairs and event staff and undercard luchadores ebbed from the arena. Even Senor Gonzales, who Vicky had never seen so much as smile, laughed as he told the Americans, through Daniel, the stage was set for the showdown between Mammoth and Aguila Gigante the next week.
Gonzales shook his fat fists at them. “Mucho dinero! Haha!”
Mammoth and Dick exchanged a look and a smile as Senor Gonzales shambled his way toward the nearest exit.
Vicky hoped to see Rosita, talk to her, but she was nowhere to be found before the main event or after.
With most of the wrestlers and staff gone, including Mammoth, Dick and Mickey, Vicky lingered near the doorway the men’s locker room where Daniel and a few other luchadores, including El Arana Negro, were still showering and changing. Her slingbacks dangling from two fingers, Vicky sat on a supply crate and returned the wave of a young man she was pretty sure she’d never seen before as he left the building.
“Senorita.”
Vicky turned toward the voice. A sizeable bald Mexican in a white shirt and black tie stood in an open doorway. He beckoned her. “Ven aqui. Aqui.”
Vicky looked over her shoulder, then back at the man and put a hand on her chest.
He nodded, still beckoning. “Aqui, por favor.”
Vicky glanced into the locker room, then hopped off the supply crate and
approached the man in the doorway.
She recognized him as one of Aguila Gigante’s bodyguards right before he grabbed her around her waist and mouth. She dropped her shoes and kicked and squirmed as he carried her through the door.
***
Her struggle hurt the backs of her legs and got her nowhere, so Vicky allowed the big man to carry her up the hallway, which got darker as they progressed. Bits of her past jumped from her mind and stabbed at the inside of her skull as the man turned a corner with her and she couldn’t see where they were headed anymore.
Daniel would find her shoes. He would find her shoes and come looking for her.
Unless he was in on this too and was one of the men waiting at the end of the darkness to do with her as he pleased.
Maybe that’s what all this was about. Maybe Mammoth and Dick would be there too.
Maybe Mickey…
No, that couldn’t be it. This man was acting on his own. He had to be. Senor Gonzales was gone. Whatever this man had in mind it was his idea.
Whatever it was, she would survive it. She’d come this far.
You’re not going to take anything away from me I haven’t already lost, you bald bastard. I’m going to survive you.
Even if it earned her another jagged scar.
There was another turn, then light at the end of the hallway. Then there was cold, smooth concrete under her feet and the big arms unwound from her mouth and waist.
She was standing between a closed metal door and the bald Mexican, who showed her his palms. “Lo siento.” He patted the air between them. “Lo siento, senorita. Por favor.” He indicted the doorknob with a palm. “Por favor, aqui.”
Without taking her eyes off him, Vicky let her hand wander until it found the doorknob. When it did, the big man nodded. “Entra.” He urged her forward. “Entra, por favor.”
“Okay.” She ventured a palm toward his chest. “But you stay there.”
“Si.” The big man backed away. “Si.” He indicated the door again. “Entra, entra.”
Vicky tighten her grip on the knob and turned.
Would have been nice to win my last match. I’m so dumb.
She pushed the door open and stepped over the threshold.
There was matted, shaggy carpet under her feet. A small coffee table was just in front of her with a battered couch on the other side. There was a worn, wooden end table to one side of the couch, on which sat a simple lamp, casting the only light in the tiny room.
Between the couch and coffee table, wearing Aguila Gigante’s tights, holding Aguila Gigante’s mask in his hand, was Ben Monster Harman, with tears in his eyes and a lopsided smile on his knobby, distorted face. “Hello, Victoria.”
She let the knob go and the door closed behind her. A lump filled her throat and the room blurred through her tears. She managed sketch out a gesture at his mask and tights. “Like…” She just about smiled. “Like Primo.”
“Yeah.” He gripped the mask in both hands. “Yeah, I guess so.”
She looked at the mask, then at the hands around them. The tape and wrapping were gone. She wiped her freshest tears away and stared at Ben’s hands. They were stiff, calloused, twisted and gnarled. Far worse than she’d ever seen them. They looked immobile and broken. “Ben…” She half pointed, half reached for his hands. “You…your…”
“It’s not so bad.” He let the mask slip from his grip to the little coffee table. He looked down at his hands, turning them over. “I just have to be careful to—”
She put one foot on the coffee table and launched herself at him. He caught her, as she knew he would, and she wrapped her arms around his thick neck and her legs around his waist, locking her feet together at the ankles.
Ben brought his ruined hands up and placed them on her back. “I gotcha.” He squeezed his eyes closed. “I gotcha.”
Vicky closed her eyes and sobbed three years of tension and regret into Ben Harman’s neck and shoulder.
FIFTEENTH FALL
Primo Carnera was the heavyweight boxing champion of the world in 1933. He beat Jack Sharkey for that honor, though speculation was the fight was fixed and Sharkey took a dive on a phantom uppercut.
Carnera won his first two title defenses before Max Baer knocked him down eleven times and took his title in 1934.
Ben Harman was an up-and-coming heavyweight boxer who, after returning home from war in Italy, killed an opponent in an Albuquerque ring when the brash young man continuously taunted him about his big, distorted face.
When Primo Carnera’s boxing career dried up, and he lost a kidney to diabetes, he made a comeback as a pro wrestler. He became bigger and more beloved in America than he ever was as a boxer.
And now Ben Harman was a wrestler too, only it seemed he hid everything about himself in order to do it.
Primo Carnera and Ben Harman both suffered from acromegaly, a painful form of gigantism. However, Primo began life with a chiseled, handsome face and the disease could only obscure that so much. Ben Harman was always strong, but never handsome, and growing up in a Chicago orphanage didn’t do him any favors.
When Vicky met him, Ben was fighting in an underground boxing circuit in the harbor village of Mamaroneck, New York. The local harbormaster, Joe Barney, ran the operation there.
Joe Barney — the man who ran girls before he ran fights.
Joe — who took in a pregnant girl on the run from life, and maybe loved her a little.
Joe — the man who turned her out as soon as her baby was born.
Joe — who took her son George away from her when he found out she was skimming to save for an escape.
And Ben, whose affections she’d captured so easily but failed to earn.
Ben, on whose fights she bet without ever telling him.
Ben, who made things so bad with Joe by trying to help, she had to get out of Mamaroneck for good.
Or maybe just for a little while.
Until she had the money to pay her debt to Joe and get her son back.
That was three years ago, and she’d never taken a step further east than Illinois once she’d taken it west.
Now, on a Saturday morning, time blurred along with her vision in a little room deep in the bowels of Arena Mexico. Vicky stirred and purred in a short double bed, her Tonda costume and undergarments somewhere else, the thin, clean sheet cool against her breasts, belly and thighs. The sheet under her back and rear end was still damp with sweat, both her’s and Ben’s.
She stretched, opened her eyes and rolled to her left, expecting to find Ben’s twisted, naked bulk there for her to wrap herself around.
He was there, but not in the bed.
Instead, Ben sat in a simple wooden chair, clad only in his briefs, with his elbows on his knees and his big, bent hands balled in front of his lips.
“Hey.” Vicky pulled a pillow under her head and curled onto her side. She glanced around the small, sparse room a little. “You know, I don’t even remember how we got here.”
“You fell asleep.” He lowered his forearms to his legs. “After all the crying. I let you be for a while. Seemed like you needed it.”
“Yeah.” She scratched at the bed sheet with a fingernail.
“I didn’t want to wake you, but it was getting late, so I carried you to the car they use for me.” He gestured at the little room with both hands. “This is where I live…or where they keep me. We’re about a mile outside the city.”
She sat up a little. “Did you say keep you?”
“I’m not a prisoner, but basically, keep me, yeah.” His folded hands bobbed in front of his knees. “In fact, I got hollered at for carrying you to the car without my mask on. Anyway…” He waved that away. “I need for people not to know who I am, and I need to do something someone like me is equipped to do in order to survive.” He shrugged. “The promoters here keep me out of everyone’s way and I make sure no one knows the current Mexican wrestling champion is from Chicago.”
Vicky shook her head. “If t
hey knew…”
“I know.” He almost smiled. “National tragedy, pretty much.”
She nodded. “Definitely. Wow.” She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “This is insane. What are the odds I’d not only become a wrestler too, but that we’d both end up here?”
“Victoria, Joe is dead. And George is in Chicago.”
She felt Ben’s stare in the pit of her stomach.
Every muscle she had cabled and her body flushed. Vicky crept up and out from under the bed sheet, no regard for her state of undress. She pulled her legs and feet under her, leaned against the headboard and brought her hands together over her nose and mouth. “What?”
“George is in Chicago.” Ben’s words were slow and deliberate. “I brought him to the orphanage where I grew up.”
A different varietal of tear blurred Vicky’s vision this time. “You got him away from Joe?”
“Yes.” Ben’s gaze wandered the room for a moment.
“You killed him.” She nodded. “You killed Joe.”
He swallowed. “No choice.”
She shook her head. “And that’s why no one can know who you are. Not because you’re an American in Mexican wrestling.”
Ben nodded. “Because what’s left of Joe’s goon squad has been after me ever since Mamaroneck.” His lower lip puckered. “I’ve spent the last three years trying to stay ahead of them and as far away from Chicago as I could get.” He sat back in his chair. “I started wrestling in the States, like Primo, but always under a mask.” He shrugged those big, bulbous shoulders. “Finally it hit me, what better place for a masked wrestler than Mexico.”
She nodded, crying and smiling. “Makes perfect sense.”
“Listen…” Ben leaned forward again. “I’d love to know what crazy path led you to be an American wrestling jungle girl in Mexico City, and maybe I’ll find out someday, but for now the only thing I know for sure is we have to take advantage of this crazy break life’s given us and you’ve get to get out of here and go get your son. Go get George.”
“We.” She slid toward him on the bed. “We’ll get him.”
Ben’s head was already shaking. “I can’t go. There’s still too much heat on me up there, and that’s the last thing you’re going to need once you have your son back.”