“Where have you been all day?” I ask.
His eyes come into mine. “Say again?”
“I’ve been trying to find you. I’ve got some demands.”
The woman with the Siamese looks our way, and Quinn smiles at her. “Let’s dialogue constructively somewhere not in the middle of the room.” He leads us to the far corner of the glass wall, where we can see the five thousand fans surrounding the ring below. On the Civic Center’s billboard-sized video monitor, the Spirit Warrior folds his arms into his side and pumps them like wings. Quinn says, “Demands? Somehow I’ve become involved in hostage negotiations. Explain.”
“I only want what I’m entitled to.”
“Tonight, you’re entitled to eight hundred and fifty dollars.”
I look past his shoulder. The nearest group of partygoers is ten feet away. Christopher Walken stands at their center. I’m sixty percent certain of the i.d.
“Demand one,” I tell Quinn. “Quit yanking my chain. These people are buyers. You’re selling the Confederacy and I want a guarantee that I’ll be part of the buyout package. I want assurances that—”
“Hold the phone, B. C. I’m not sure when you got this assertiveness training, but allow me to clarify our current situation. These people are my guests. Think of them as potential investors. With the expansion I’ve got planned, we’ll need what we in the business call venture capital. I’m not confusing you yet, am I? I maxed out all my credit tonight to impress these yahoos. But when the overnight ratings come in, we’ll be flooded with cash. This initiative will benefit everyone, including you. Rising waters lift all boats.”
I don’t know whether to believe him or not, but he sounds pretty convincing. I turn to the ring, where NinJa Z is now riding on the back of the Spirit Warrior, on all fours pawing the canvas. Barney the referee has had it, and waves his hands over his head, ending the match. The bell rings. Booing rolls from the audience, especially from the pockets of Dark Disciples. The Spirit Warrior, dazed, is helped to his feet and staggers from the ring. NinJa Z grabs a mike and announces, “The man will never let a brother have power. He’s afraid of my skills and what I might do. And he should be!” With that, he leaps down next to the operations table, spikes a smoke bomb, and disappears through a trapdoor.
“Hardy told me you promised him he’d be champion again,” I tell Quinn. This happened this afternoon, when we were rearranging tonight’s match.
Quinn holds a finger up, then says into the microphone suspended before his mouth, “Negative. Standby.” When he comes back to me, he smiles and says, “H. A. required some incentive. You’ve seen him. Losing doesn’t come naturally to him like it does for you. How’s he doing, by the way?”
I tell Quinn that Hardy’s fine. I left him down in the locker room, getting ready for his ritual prematch shower. “You didn’t need to lie to him,” I say. “I don’t like being part of a lie.”
“Yeah, but you’ll do it for eight hundred and fifty bucks.”
I wish I were the kind of man who wouldn’t.
“Relax. I was telling Appleseed the total truth. Tonight he falls victim to dark forces, outraging the faithful. Which is why, next week, when he breaks Snake’s spell live at the beach, the ratings will exceed all projections. Think of it like New Coke. People want the same old thing. Once Hardy’s his old self, I assure you we’ll arrange a good shit-kicking for you. Then everything will be just like you want it again. You really think I don’t have a master plan?”
“You could’ve just come clean with me up front.”
“Life’s a PR game, B. C. It’s all information management, image control. I contain leaks. I release misinformation. Now I don’t tell you how to lose; you don’t tell me how to run the business. Watch and learn.” With this, he taps his headset and says, “Victor. Let’s roll the interview segment now. Prompt J. F. to lead in.”
Quinn looks over the arena. The giant video screen shows huge action photos of Cro-Magnum Man and the Mad Maestro, the next wrestlers. But in a flash they disappear, and there I am, standing across from Hardy with Big John Franko between us. My blue-masked face is twelve feet tall.
“Now then,” Quinn says. “As long as you’re up here, let’s exploit the opportunity. Amplify your enthusiasm. These three are live ones.”
I follow him back to the wide-screen TV, where the trio of black women still stand, now watching the interview.
“You missed it,” one says. “That ninja got disqualified for using mind control.”
“There’s the story of life,” Quinn says. “Never trust a ninja. Ladies, I wanted to introduce you to one of our living legends, Buddy Cooper. Buddy, meet the three Graces: Charlotte, Charlene, and Chantrelle.”
In unison, they raise their wine to me. Charlotte says, “So you’re a wrestler.”
“That’s what I put on my income tax form.”
“See for yourself,” Quinn says, lifting his artificially tanned face to the TV.
We all turn to the wide screen, where Big John stuffs the mike in my blue mask and says, “Terror, as a relative unknown, do you really think you have a legitimate chance of besting the All American Dream?”
“Dreams are great for kiddies!” I shout. “For punks who still want Mommy reading them bedtime stories. Yeah, Big John, I may be unknown, but that’s what makes me dangerous.” Here, I jab a finger into Hardy’s thick chest. “Ask yourself, Hayseed: How can you hope to defeat something you can’t understand?”
“Nice line,” Charlene says approvingly. Quinn grins.
Hardy’s concentrating so hard on his lines that he looks intense. This afternoon, it took us ten takes just to get this usable stuff. He says, “I know you talk an awful lot and don’t say nothing worth hearing.”
Charlotte nods. “He’s got the hick thing nailed.”
Charlene asks me if the mask itches when I wear it. I shake my head. Clearly, she’s checking out my wounds.
Big John turns to Hardy. “Mr. Appleseed, are you aware of the allegations that Snake Handler has bribed you to alter the outcome of tonight’s match?”
“I don’t like allegations. Who said that?”
“Sources close to SWC.”
“Sticks and stones can break my bones,” Hardy recites. “But words can only hurt me.”
“How about these words,” I shout on the screen. “Punk! Pretender! Fake!”
“I’ll shut you up good tonight,” Hardy promises, “or my name’s not Appleseed. And my name is Appleseed.”
The interview stops after that last bit of improv, and we cut back to Big John Franko, live at the operations table ringside. All around him are digital displays and control panels. The technician to his right is wearing a headset just like Quinn’s. Big John says, “That championship bout coming up shortly, fans. But now an update on the Spirit Warrior. He’s receiving the best medical treatment available and is apparently no longer under the impression that he is a chicken.”
“I thought he was a horse,” Chantrelle says.
“A horse with wings?” Charlotte snipes.
“Ladies, let’s not quibble,” Quinn says. “You’ll have to excuse Buddy. He needs to expedite.”
Charlene dips her chin and smiles. “Certainly a pleasure, Mr. Cooper. Any predictions before your match?”
“Absolutely,” I say. “Expect the unexpected.” This line takes me completely by surprise.
On the TV, Cro-Magnum Man enters the arena. He looks like a cross between Rambo and Fred Flintstone, wearing camouflage pants and a furry vest that according to Big John Franko came “from the very last saber-tooth tiger.” Strapped across his back is an AK-47. One hand shakes a caveman club at the crowd, the other trails behind him, gripping a headful of tangled blond hair. The cave-woman, dressed in a prehistoric two-piece, doesn’t protest as she’s dragged down the aisle, perhaps because she’s lying on a skateboard. She chews on a piece of raw meat and snarls at the audience.
The Grace sisters nod approvingly, calculating divide
nds. Something about Cro-Magnum’s hand in that woman’s hair disturbs me.
Downstairs, when I push through the locker-room door, Hardy’s still showering. Steam billows out of the showers like smoke from a burning building. He endures these long, stinging showers just before every match, claiming it helps him get focused. Sounds like something a crazy high school football coach beat into his soft brain.
NinJa Z and the Spirit Warrior are peeling off their sweaty costumes. “Good crowd, Pops,” NinJa tells me. “Try not to disappoint them.” The Spirit Warrior gives me the peace sign.
Behind them, a small TV hangs in the corner. Cro-Magnum Man bashes the canvas with his caveman club. “Cro-Mag smash funny Music Man. Crush! Stomp! Kill!” The cavewoman stands on the ring apron, pretending to pick bugs from her hair and eat them.
I open my locker and see the blue, body-length latex suit hanging there. The mask droops from a separate hook. I lift a roll of white tape off the top shelf.
From the shower, I think I hear weeping above the rush of water, but I can’t be sure. It could just be me. The Spirit Warrior and NinJa Z don’t seem to notice. Hardy did OK this morning while we reworked our match. But in between practice bouts his prayers got longer and longer.
At one point he asked me if I ever felt bad about losing on purpose. “No, Hardy,” I told him. “Losing’s just a different way to win.”
I strip to my jock and start taping my ankles, turning to watch the TV. They pulled out all the stops for this Civic Center. There’s talk of Wilmington attracting a WNBA expansion franchise, maybe a semi-pro ice hockey team. We’re a growing community with bold plans for the new millennium.
On the simulcast, the Mad Maestro strolls into the ring, strutting in his neon purple tails, swooshing the air with his baton, pretending to conduct his theme song, “Ride of the Valkyrie.” The cave-woman lobs a handful of uncooked meat at him. Since Snake.
I wrap white tape around my wrists, tight enough to make the skin go a bit purple. I have no idea what purpose this serves, I only know that I’ve always done it. When I finish I open and close my fist and see the blood rising around the tape. The bell rings and the new match gets under way.
The Spirit Warrior and NinJa Z enter the shower, and Hardy emerges from the steam naked and frightening. His shoulders mountain up to his neck, thick as an oak stump. Even in my prime back in the Army I never had a body like Hardy’s. He nods at me. “Howdy, Mr. Cooper.” I get the feeling he was hoping I wouldn’t come back.
But seeing Hardy calms me. I feel more centered. He and I, we have a script to follow. Between us, we have a clear understanding about the future.
“Howdy, Hardy,” I say. “What’s the mission status?”
He turns and looks at me, lifts his chin.
More loudly, I repeat myself, “What’s the mission status?”
He gives me a wobbly thumbs-up. “We have a go code.” Still naked, he digs through the pants in his locker and fishes out his Miracle Ear, works it into place.
On the closed circuit, the Maestro has Cro-Magnum up against the ropes. He doubles him over with a knee to the gut, then executes the Thunder Symphony, a series of rapid elbow blows to the back of Cro-Mag’s skull. The caveman goes down.
“How’s your face feeling?” Hardy asks.
“I’m fine, pal,” I say.
“I’ll try not to whack it too much.”
Hardy shines a towel across his back, then bunches it up and rubs his armpits, his crotch. I wrap both my knees with Ace bandages while he slides on his jock, then his red, white, and blue shorts, pulls on his white pro boots and the red cape he’ll wear into the ring. The fans roar and we turn to the set, standing side by side.
“T-minus fifteen minutes,” I tell Hardy, who now looks a bit like Captain America really. Nervously, he smiles.
I’m glad that it’s me Hardy is going to lose to. I’ll be gentle about it. Help him along like a father helping his son.
Handing Hardy an Ace bandage, I ask him to do my shoulder. He’s wrapped it before and does a better job than the hack trainer that Quinn hired.
I sit on the bench facing the TV and Hardy starts his wrap job. Under one armpit, up over the far shoulder, looping across my chest and under the arm again.
From the top rope, Cro-Mag attempts a move Big John calls a Jurassic Bomb, plummeting knees first toward Maestro on the mat. But Maestro rolls left, and Cro-Mag’s knees crack canvas. The cave-woman covers her eyes and howls at ringside.
Pulling the Ace tight on one shoulder, Hardy says, “Mr. Cooper, sir, do you ever get scared?”
“How do you mean, Hardy?”
“Like a little kid scared. Like being afraid of thunder or what’s under the bed, that kind of scared.”
“I hated the dark when I was little,” I tell him. “Couldn’t stand going into my room at night without my mom or dad.”
“My dad brought me out in his boat,” Hardy says. “I cried and cried ’cause I was so afraid of the ocean. I could hardly swim. But my dad taught me how, and then I took to swimming real good.”
Maestro has scrambled up and rolled Cro-Mag onto his stomach for a submission hold. He’s kneeling on his spine, one hand cupping his chin, the other grabbing a knee. He pulls them together. The Beethoven Backbreaker. Snake’s Dark Disciples scream, “Bravo!”
Hardy’s hands have stopped. “Do you ever get scared like that still?”
I think this over before answering. “I suppose so, Hardy. Everybody does.” He is silent behind me, so I prompt him, “Are you scared now, Hardy?”
“No, sir. It’s just I had a funny dream last night. That’s all. Kind of woke me up.”
“Do you want to tell me about it?” This is the line Alix would use with Brook when she crawled beneath our sheets crying.
Hardy takes a deep breath. “It was a terrible dream. I was in the ring and snakes were coming out from underneath it like that was their home down there. And when I tried to run, the floor was all covered with them sliming around. Like in the movie when Han Solo has a whip and is going after the Ark of the Covenant.”
“That’s a good one,” I say. Hardy’s hands tremble as he unrolls the wrap across my chest. On the screen above us the Mad Maestro twists Cro-Magnum’s arms around the top rope. While Barney the ref is distracted by the crowd, Maestro grabs the caveman’s club from the corner and begins beating Cro-Mag in the gut. The cave-woman tugs her hair in protest.
Hardy finishes the wrap job, pats my back. I roll my shoulder twice to test it. “That’s a good job, Hardy.”
“Thank you, sir,” he says. “We learnt about the Ark of the Covenant back in Sunday school. It ain’t the same as Noah’s ark.”
“Is that a fact?”
“Yes, sir. The little Ark is more important on account of it’s like a box. And in the box is, you know what?”
Brook and I have watched Raiders of the Lost Ark three times, but I shake my head so Hardy will go on. He says, “The Ten Commandments that God gave to Moses.”
His eyes brighten with belief. “Now all among the Israelites did witness the thunderings, the lightning flashes, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw him and that he held before him the truth of God, they trembled and stood afar off.”
He waits for me to say something. “Well, I guess people are like that.”
“One time Moses turned his staff into a snake, but it was a good one. It didn’t bite nobody.”
I get up, step to my locker. I lift out the familiar blue suit and say, “I remember hearing about that, Hardy.”
“Most snakes are bad, you know?”
“I know, Hardy. I know.”
I step into the skin of the Unknown Kentucky Terror. The body-suit covers me, stretching from my ankles to my wrists. It zips up the back and I have to ask Hardy for help.
On the simulcast Maestro flattens Cro-Magnum on the mat. The cavewoman leaps onto his back and claws at his face, but he doesn’t let up. Barney slaps th
e canvas three times, and it’s over. Cro Magnum hops up and wails, “Bad Music Man cheat Cro-Mag. Cro Mag mad. Mad!” He threatens to go for the AK-47, but calmer heads prevail.
From behind me, Hardy tugs the zipper snug up by my neck. When it’s tight, his fingers stay where they are. Then one hand settles on my shoulder. I turn.
“Mr. Cooper, sir,” he says. “I got a awful bad feeling about tonight.” His eyes are red and puffy.
I reach up, cup one hand over his on my shoulder and pat it. “Hardy,” I say. “Everything’s gonna be just fine. We’ll do it just like we practiced and everything will be fine. You’ll see.”
I feel bad for the kid. I’m trying to comfort him. This is, after all, his first time.
Still, if he thinks he’s going to change the plan at this point, he’s completely out-of-his-mind bonkers. I am committed to this course of action now, and I mean to see it through. Tomorrow, I will show the championship belt to Alix.
Hardy sniffles. I look away so he won’t be embarrassed, and my eyes roll back to the screen, where the victor is being interviewed. “Mr. Maestro,” Big John Franko asks, “shouldn’t your use of the club have disqualified you?”
Maestro smooths his handlebar mustache and works his British accent. “Are you suggesting that I needed to resort to unsporting tactics to conquer such a troglodyte buffoon? Snake constantly reminds me what simpletons you Americans are, and I fear he is not exaggerating. What comfort it must give you to see me as plainly bad and see others as plainly good. But all childish comforts end.”
There’s a pause. Hardy tenses. Maestro looks directly into the camera. “On one point I can enlighten you—sometimes good apples turn rotten. Especially when big checks get written.” Looping his hand through the air, he makes an S with his baton. This brings howls of delight from the Dark Disciples, and boos of disbelief from the good people, who also let loose a barrage of crushed Coke cups. “Mark my words,” Maestro says as he strokes his baton. “Hardy Appleseed is soon to sing a new tune.”
Buddy Cooper Finds a Way Page 9
