Wrestling Sturbridge

by Rich Wallace

  At the bottom of the slope she stops to look at another stone, a big one. “This guy was a doctor,” she says. “ ‘Samuel E. and Lucretia B. Dunning. Died 1877, 1881.’ ” She drops to her knees and looks at a smaller stone behind it, squinting to read the faded words. “ ‘Our Charlie. June 21 1862-January 3 1863.’ … Oh.… That’s so sad.”

  She stands and takes a step toward me, still staring at the little stone. She slowly brushes her hair back from her forehead. I resist an urge to put my arm around her, to hold her. I look up at the sun, then back at the stone, then over at Kim, who walks toward another marker. And I’m struck by the simplest of thoughts: how real Kim is. Real to me, I mean. Not like the images I’ve had in my head of other women; of Jody, the Mobil girl, of girls I’d watch in school or on the street, or even of Kim up to this point. Suddenly, the fantasies are over. For the first time in my life I don’t need them just now. Because she’s real and she’s here and I can deal with it.

  The sun goes behind a cloud, and I walk over to Kim, who’s studying a marker from 1844. Another simple thought; this one I say out loud: “This seems like a good place to be a hundred years from now, don’t you think? Nothing really left but some lines etched in stone.”

  Kim looks up at me, just gazing at my face. “Makes you think,” she says softly, “about what has to come first.” I put my hand on top of her head and tap her gently with my fingers. She leans forward slightly and rests her forehead on my chest. And I don’t say what I’m feeling, because it seems premature, but I let out my breath and rest my chin on her head and let my arms drop down around her shoulders.

  We stand there like that for a couple of minutes, silent. The workout is over. Kim raises her head. We walk back toward town, toward the future.

  CHAPTER 18

  Wednesday. I wrestle Al this afternoon. Winner goes to the districts, the other guy goes home. I meet Kim at lunch and we walk down to the Main Street Deli. There are some booths there, so we get sandwiches and sit down. I stare at my chicken salad on a hard roll with lettuce and tomato, and she says I better eat or I’ll be weak later.

  I take a deep breath and one bite.

  “That’s how I felt before the states in cross-country,” she says. “I couldn’t eat; I didn’t sleep the night before.” She makes me look up at her. “I came in a hundred and forty-sixth.”

  I pick up a chunk of the chicken from my plate and eat it. There’s a pretty big crowd at the counter now, so it’s a good thing we got here early. Mostly kids from school, a couple of lawyers, some secretaries.

  “You wanna know why I punched that minister?”

  She raises her eyebrows a little, nods. So I tell her.

  Me and my father were coaching a team in this Sunday afternoon, little-kid soccer program. Our church put it on, but anybody could play. We had a team in the first- and second-grade league. Reverend Fletcher was one of the other coaches. Four teams, you play everybody else twice. The idea was to have fun and learn something. No standings or statistics. Purely instructional. Everybody plays an equal amount and everybody rotates positions.

  So we’re 1–2–1 after four weeks, and we’re going against Fletcher’s team, which is 4–0 and has clobbered everybody. He took all the best players for his team when he made up the rosters. Plus he knows the game—played in high school and all. No big deal, right? It’s just for fun.

  Anyway, after three quarters we’re actually ahead, 3–2. We’ve got eight on each team, but it’s a small field and you only play five at a time. Our best kids have already played two quarters, and so have his. So we send our subs back in.

  He’s got his guys huddled up on the sidelines. They’re only about ten yards away from us, and we hear him telling these kids that if they don’t win, then nobody goes to The Fun Zone afterward. Then he sends his best players back onto the field. They score four more goals and we never even get the ball past midfield.

  Now, it isn’t that we lost. The kids aren’t even upset about it, they just love to play. All the kids shake hands, and he comes over to us to do the same. He takes my hand, and I say something like “That wasn’t exactly fair to our guys.” He keeps hold of my hand and frowns, then grips it a little tighter. I’m not smiling when I ask, “Does it really mean that much to you?”

  “Don’t be a poor loser, Ben,” he says, and I tell him to screw himself. He shoves me away from him, and my father steps forward and sticks an arm between us. The Reverend is standing there kind of defiantly, holding his ground, and a couple of parents who’d been watching are inching their way over.

  I hold my ground, too, and I tell him he’s one hell of an example for these kids. “Darn right I am,” he says. And then he calls me a pansy.

  Now, I don’t think anybody’s actually used that as an insult in the past three or four decades, but I catch his intention. So I step forward again, right in his face (he’s about five inches taller than me, but you know what I mean).

  “Step back, son,” he says.

  I move about two inches closer. He shoves me with both hands, and I go at him swinging. It’s over in a second, but I hit him once in the gut and a real solid right to the mouth that draws blood. I don’t think he hit me at all.

  My father and some other guys drag me away, but I shake loose and just walk toward the car. My father catches up and doesn’t say anything right away, just walks alongside me, looking back once or twice. When we get in the car, he sighs and grips the wheel and nods at me nonstop for about thirty seconds. He punches me gently on the arm—I’m still seething—and says, “Well, let’s get home.” He starts the car and we’re out of there, and he’s got a hint of a smile he’s trying to hide.

  He’s never mentioned it again.

  Kim’s got her arms folded kind of tight and she’s looking at me like she doesn’t quite get it. But she’s got that same hint of a smile that my father had, and I don’t think I’ve ruined her image of me.

  “So,” she says. “Can you call back enough of that anger to help you this afternoon against Al?”

  “I’m not sure I have any of that anger left,” I say. “But I don’t have to look too far to find more. I can get set off when I need to.”

  “Why do you need to?” She’s unfolded her arms.

  “I’m not sure that I do. But I still have plenty. Plenty of anger. Frustration.”

  I reach my hand across the table and put it on top of hers. I squeeze her hand gently and look in her eyes, and she smiles kind of stoically.

  “Why don’t you put all that anger in one little package and take it onto the mat with you today?” she says. “And use it all up, every ounce of it. Then, win or lose, walk away and move on.”

  I withdraw my hand but not my eyes, and I smile and let out my breath. Then I start eating what’s left of my sandwich, and she puts her foot on top of mine under the table. I put down the sandwich, wipe my mouth on my sleeve, and go around to her side of the booth, where I sit right against her, put my arm around her—probably getting chicken salad that I just wiped off my mouth on her shirt—and kiss her really nice on the lips.

  Now how am I gonna get angry again by this afternoon?

  What happens before a match (in this order):

  diarrhea and mood swings

  a kind of prayer where you curse at God and beat yourself up, then tell God you’re sorry and he says it’s okay

  a concentrated sense of focus

  What doesn’t:

  you don’t joke around with anybody

  you don’t resign yourself to losing

  you never say it doesn’t matter what happens

  CHAPTER 19

  They’ve moved the wrestle-offs to the main gym, and they’ve had to let the bleachers down on both sides of the court because of the crowd. In my four years here I’ve never seen more than fifteen spectators at the wrestle-offs. Today there must be seven hundred.

  Al’s already out there warming up, but we won’t be wrestling for about twenty minutes. I’m sitting in f
ront of my locker with my sweatshirt hood pulled up, just staring at my hands and exhaling pretty hard. I’ve got a scar on the back of my left hand, barely visible unless you know where to look, from when I ripped it open playing kickball on the playground in third grade. Fell face-first heading for second, but the only injury I remember is my hand. You could see bone at the knuckles.

  I lie flat on the bench, clenching my fists.

  The ceiling in this locker room is high, and we get big clouds of steam bouncing around up there after practice when all the showers are going. Somebody, years ago, must have climbed on top of the lockers, took a pen, and wrote STURBRIDGE SUCKS on the ceiling in the corner. Maybe it was my father.

  There are people who’ve asked me to concede this match, to not even wrestle. Why stand in Al’s way, they want to know. Why risk getting him hurt?

  There are a few people who want me to win, though. Some guys on the team, maybe even Digit; I haven’t asked. I’ve been waiting a long time to walk out there in a match that means everything—my whole career. Al’s, too. I earned it and I want it.

  There are people out there watching who don’t know who they’ll be pulling for. They won’t know until we’re out there, when the first move gets made, and they’ll wince or revel without even knowing it and then they’ll find out who they’re for.

  If I was watching, that’s how I’d be. But I won’t be watching. So I’m pulling for me.

  Tommy Austin beat Anthony Terranova pretty good in the first match, and Larry Drummond pinned his guy at 119. There are no challenges at 125 or 130, so me and Al are up.

  Al is staring at me from across the mat, and Coach is waving us out there. Al is pissed. He’s 22–0 and nothing should be standing between him and the states.

  But somebody is. And I’m pissed, too.

  CHAPTER 20

  I got down 2–0 almost before I had time to react. Al shot in and got me up in the air, flipping me onto my back so I was in immediate trouble. I twisted and tried to get out of bounds because he already had the leverage he needed, but he yanked me back toward the center of the mat and started forcing me down. He wanted to get this over with, and he was being more aggressive than even he’d ever been.

  He got near-fall points, but I managed to squirm out of it and get back to my knees. Five–nothing, and he was still riding me. It took most of the period for me to work my way free, but I finally got to my feet and escaped just in time. Five–one, I was behind.

  Al didn’t even leave the mat between periods. He just squatted with his hands on his knees and stared at the big blue S in the center circle, breathing hard. I walked off and grabbed a squirt bottle from Digit. Coach didn’t look at me.

  I started the second period down, but escaped pretty quickly. Al does that. He’ll give up an escape point to get two in return with a takedown. Usually when he lets a guy go, he gets an evil smirk, kind of half-circles the guy, then goes in for the kill. But he came right back at me and threw me to the mat without any nonsense, and suddenly I was down 7–2 with his nails digging into my skin.

  For the next minute and a half he rode me, trying to get me cradled, to bring my shoulders to the mat. But he couldn’t do it this time. Coach even started to warn us for stalling, since we were barely moving, but my effort was maximum, and Al’s was, too. We just seemed to be on neutral ground all of a sudden, deadlocked. The second period ended and I was down by only five points.

  Al was still mad, but it wasn’t just at me anymore. He was pissed at himself, I know, because this was going far too long and there didn’t seem to be much he could do about it. It’d been a long time since he got tested like this. And now my confidence was escalating, too. I was seething. Seething in a good way, a way I knew what to do with.

  I scanned the bleachers, looking for Kim and half expecting one of those movie-type breakthroughs where I’d catch her eye and feel a lightning bolt of energy and desire that would carry me to victory.

  Instead, I saw my father, and the impact was different but the same. He was standing about three-quarters of the way up, arms folded, looking kind of dazed. I didn’t try to catch his eye. I tried to share his dignity.

  I started the third period up, and Al was tensed below me, ready to explode to his feet the instant Coach blew the whistle. Maybe it’s a cliché, but my life had come down to a two-minute summary: the third period of this match. There was life on the other side: Kim, an escape from this town, my pride. But there was too much value in what had gone before to let it fade away without a defining moment. That moment had arrived.

  CHAPTER 21

  Al is pale, like sweaty marble coiled beneath me. The whistle blows, and instead of forcing up, he drops to the mat on his belly. My grip slips away. He rolls, and I grab the back of his thigh, jabbing my other arm over his shoulder. He gets to his knees. Coach gives him an escape point, but I swing up behind him and regain control. I’ve got him in a half nelson and I’m pushing with everything I have. Now he’s down.

  I’m behind 8–4, but there’s a chance here. Al is on the mat, facedown, and every muscle in his back is flexed and extended. His right shoulder is coming up, it has no choice, because at this crucial moment I’m stronger than he is. I have to lift him and turn him, and I give back an inch for every two that I gain. But I’m gaining, and he’s groaning, and suddenly he’s perpendicular—his left shoulder is digging into the mat, his right is at a 90-degree angle toward the ceiling.

  That angle is growing shorter as I force him toward the mat. One hand is gripping my chest, but he has no leverage at all, no power. Time is getting short. Coach is kneeling beside us, palm flat, watching for that moment when both of Al’s shoulders are planted firmly against the mat.

  The crowd sounds frantic, but maybe they’re enjoying this. I am up on my toes, pushing hard, using my knees and my gut and my thighs and my shoulders. I taste his sweat; he is pulling at my jersey and his headgear is slipping to one side. I don’t know what’s holding him up. It’s my desperation versus his.

  “Thirty seconds,” somebody yells; Digit it was. Is he telling Al to hold on or urging me to find something more, to finish this thing? I give one mighty surge, everything I’ve got left. He moves closer to the mat, but not close enough.

  I surge again and get nowhere, but I’m three inches from ending this thing, from pinning Al and walking away and moving on to where he’ll never go. By sheer gravity I should win this now, all other things being equal.

  But he’s defying gravity. He’s defying me, too. “Ten seconds,” I hear, but ten minutes wouldn’t be enough. I give one final surge. Coach blows his whistle. “Three,” he says. It’s over. Al lets go, lies flat on his back. I shut my eyes and get to my knees.

  Eight–seven. Digit pulls me up. The bleachers are nearly full, and everyone is standing. Al shakes my hand, I clasp his arm and we walk off the mat. Coach calls the next wrestlers onto the floor.

  It’s over.

  CHAPTER 22

  My father’s shaking my hand, too choked up to say anything, then handing me a twenty-dollar bill and telling me to take Kim out for dinner; I can take his car and he’ll walk home. “No, really,” he says. “Go. Get a shower and take this pretty girl out on me. You were great.”

  She’s got tears in her eyes and the next match hasn’t started yet; everybody’s standing, cheering for Al and some for me, too. Coach is shaking his head and he’s got a big grin, talking to the guy from the newspaper. Al and his father are hugging each other over by the water fountain. Digit’s standing next to me, patting my back.

  The pep band starts in with “You Can Call Me Al,” brassy and off-key just a little. Al raises his fist in the air; there’s a crowd around him now. My father musses my hair and mumbles “See ya at home,” then turns to leave. Digit says “Gotta see Al,” and he goes, so I hug Kim and kiss her on the forehead. Coach blows his whistle and the 145-pounders attack each other. The band shuts up.

  Kim waits in the stands and I go to the locker room. Nobo
dy’s in there. I shower a long time, letting the heat soak into my chest and through my head and down to my feet. My season’s over, but I’ve got shampoo left. I’ll have to go out for track.

  I’m thinking Chinese food would be good; fried rice and snow peas, maybe with shrimp. My father doesn’t have any decent tapes in his car. I’ll borrow one from somebody. I love Kim. Digit has some good tapes in his locker. Al will win the states, no question.

  The 189ers are wrestling by the time I get up there, and there’s almost nobody left in the stands. I sit next to Digit, who’s sitting next to Kim, and she and I hold hands behind his back until the last wrestle-off is over. We give him a ride home and then head to the Chinese Kitchen in Weston.

  Digit’s tape sounds good, even with the cheap speakers in this vehicle. Kim has her hair in a ponytail. She is looking happy. This is a day I will never forget.

  I get home late. My father is asleep on the couch, and the TV is on, but it’s turned so soft you can barely hear it. Mom’s still at work.

  I climb the stairs quietly—I’ll let her be the one to wake him—and shut my door before turning on the light. It’s just cold enough outside, so I take off my jacket and put on two sweatshirts, as much for comfort as for warmth.

  I can taste Kim’s mouth and her skin. I smell her soft hair and feel her sweet, moist breath on my neck. And I feel Al’s muscles, hard as steel and flexible as good strong rope, and I feel his breath on my skin, too, cursing, straining, finally wanting it as much as I did.

  I sit on my bed to change from my running shoes to hiking boots, and then I see it there on the wall. The Elvis and Jesus thing from that house by the lake, with “You give me strength” scrawled on the cardboard matting.

  I stand and take a step toward it and stop, not sure whether to laugh or to shudder or feel honored.