Vision Quest

by Terry Davis

  * * *

  I’m curled up in my sleeping bag in the Carpenter’s basement under the pool table. Rance Prokoff from L.C. is asleep on the davenport. He lost pretty bad to a state champ from Battleground tonight. We shot a game of eight-ball to see who got the davenport and Rance won. Actually, it’s pretty cozy under here. I’ve got a little desk lamp hooked up and I’m reading a book Cindy got me for Christmas. It’s called Another Roadside Attraction and it’s by a guy named Tom Robbins who lives over around Seattle. It’s funny and sexy, but the thing that blows me away the furthest about it is how it fits into the stuff I’m talking about in my senior thesis. I don’t know if I’m becoming monomaniacal or what, but everywhere I look I keep seeing things that fit. Robbins’s characters don’t believe the purpose of life is to die and be resurrected in a Christian heaven, so they aren’t terribly surprised when one of them finds the mummified body of Christ where it’s been stashed in the Vatican basement all these years. For a lot of people that knowledge would knock all the meaning or purpose out of living. But these Robbins people create their own meaning in the way they live. They live as though certain things were important, so those things become important. Right here Amanda says, “If our style is masterful, if it is fluid and at the same time complete, then we can recreate ourselves.” A resurrection a day if you work at it. That’s something I can believe in.

  It’s the same thing Castaneda means when he says that by the power of our will we can stop the world and remake it. And the same thing Fitzgerald shows in The Great Gatsby with the schedule Gatsby followed as a kid—exercising and studying needed inventions and practicing elocution and poise and reading an improving book each week and taking a bath every day. The problem with old Gatsby, though, was that he just wasn’t tough enough. With all his discipline, he wasn’t willing to face alone the world he’d made. He wanted Daisy along, and there was no way that stain would do anything that took independence.

  I guess a lot of people are concerned about how to take charge of their lives and make them better. And not just writers, either. My own dad is trying to change. I can see him doing it. And Kuch. Kuch has put it all into his vision quest.

  I think a lot about this stuff when I can’t sleep. It’s lonely without Carla beside me and Dad upstairs. I’m just not real comfortable in somebody else’s house.

  * * *

  I wake to a crash of pool balls overhead. Rance is up and at it already.

  “Prokoff,” I growl. “If you want to live to lose a wrestling match this afternoon, you’ll lighten up on that pool stick.”

  CRASH! Rance drills one into the corner pocket above my head. “Stay down there, Swain, or I’ll clout ya on the nose.”  The news is really out on my tragic flaw.

  “What time is it?”

  “It’s nine thirty and Mrs. Carpenter says breakfast in ten minutes.”

  “Suppose they’ve got any spinach?” I ask on my way to the bathroom.

  When I come out Chris Carpenter is shooting a game with Rance. Chris looks sharp in his cowboy clothes. His eye is all puffy. “Looks like Schmoozler got a piece of your eye yesterday,” I greet him.

  “It’s an infection,” Chris replies. “I get it every season. The doctor says it’s like athlete’s foot.”

  “Typical cowboy disease,” I say, smiling. “Athlete’s foot of the eye.” Rance laughs and Carpenter brings his stick back extra far and jabs him a firm one in the gonies. Rance shrieks in surprise and doubles over, more in reflex than in pain. Wrestlers are a playful bunch.

  “Breakfast, you boys!” yells Chris’s mom from upstairs.

  Chris and Rance are both a couple pounds light, so they’re looking forward to something substantial for breakfast. I weighed 147 on the nose after my morning dump. But since I won’t wrestle tonight, I can’t count on that weight loss, so I’d better go easy.

  Mrs. Carpenter brings the small, thin broiled steaks on a platter. The smell elicits a growl of yearning from my stomach. I smile over my Nutrament.

  Mr. and Mrs. Carpenter and Chris’s younger brother and sister have a leisurely go at their pancakes and eggs. Chris’s little brother, Craig, wrestled at 103 yesterday for the Custer JVs.

  “Look like you’ll be able to hold that weight, Louden?” Mr. Carpenter asks.

  “Looks like it, sir,” I reply. My stomach growls again. “May not sound like it, though,” I add. We all laugh.

  “We read that article about you and Gary Shute in Sports Illustrated,” Mrs. Carpenter says. It wasn’t really an “article.” It was just a couple lines and pictures of Shute and me in that “Faces in the Crowd” section they have.

  “Half our team’s driving over to Spokane to see you guys wrestle,” Chris says.

  “You better get there early,” says Rance through a mouthful of steak.

  We change the subject to snowmobiles. The Carpenters have two on a trailer at the side of the house. Some family strife erupts when Chris’s sister, Andie, says she’d rather go snowmobiling than see Chris wrestle. Argument on the subject is short. The Carpenters are a wrestling family.

  I don’t feel uncomfortable this morning. It feels good to be here in the Carpenters’ house. They make you feel at home.

  I feel the same way about the Baldosiers, although they’re a very different kind of people. They invited me for dinner about a month before they left for Brazil. Jean-Pierre and I got to know each other in physics class last year. He’s the best-educated kid I know. His dad is an engineer who designs nuclear power plants. Jean-Pierre was born in France, went to grade school in Brazil, junior high is Pasco, Washington, where he got into wrestling while his dad was doing something at the Hanford Atomic Works, then high school in Spokane because his dad got a teaching job at Gonzagua U. The family left this fall to go back to Brazil so Mr. Baldosier could work on a nuclear power plant somewhere down there. Jean-Pierre is staying with the Raskas so he can finish up at David Thompson. Then he’s going to college in France, where his real mother lives. That’s why he isn’t doing his senior thesis, the lucky bastard. He says a French college won’t care whether he graduates with honors from an American high school. In fact, I think he has to take one whole year of prep courses before he can even start at college there.

  It was a cultural experience to have dinner with the Baldosiers. They eat like Brazilians and speak French and English and Portuguese all at once. I never get to hear many foreign languages, so it was a treat for me. I learned to say “beans” and “rice” in Portuguese and “please” and “thank you” in French. I’ve studied German for the past three years and never once met a person who spoke it. And that includes my German teacher. I also learned how to use my knife to push food onto my fork.

  Jean-Pierre’s stepmother is dark and beautiful and gracious as I imagine wives of ambassadors are gracious. She also has a maid, which probably makes being gracious a little easier. His stepsister was born in Brazil. She’d give both Belle and Rayette a run in terms of beauty, but in terms of composure and grace she seemed a world away from the girls I know. Even Carla. Jean-Pierre’s little brother was born in Pasco, but you’d never know it. He wears a Brazilian World Cup Soccer uniform all the time and won’t speak anything but Portuguese.

  We all talked about politics and atomic energy and “futebol,” which is what Carlos Henrique, the little brother, calls soccer. And the neat thing was that everybody got to talk and everybody got listened to. Mr. and Mrs. Baldosier and Jean-Pierre stopped and waited to hear Lucia out on her condemnation of torture in Brazil and they deferred to Carlos Henrique on the sad state of French futebol. Lucia shared some false information about heavy water and Jean-Pierre set her straight patiently. Then his dad set him straighter, and just as patiently. I guess I’d just never seen a family pay that much attention to each other. But then, most of the families I know don’t even take the time to sit down together. Sometimes I sure wish I had some brothers and sisters.

  * * *

  We’re headed out of Missoula aft
er munching up a whole bunch of Battleground Bluecoats. Doug Bowden stole the show at fifty-four by beating Battleground’s undefeated Ray Rillke, whom I am glad I didn’t have to wrestle. It was an especially big victory for Doug and the whole team because if Doug can beat guys like Rilke, losing me isn’t going to make any difference.

  When Otto found out Doug was wrestling in my place he went to Coach and asked if Doug could be captain. Coach thanked Otto and said sure. Coach would never have said a thing if Otto hadn’t suggested it.

  Doug went right after Rilke, which is something Rilke wasn’t used to. Most guys, if they think you’re tough, will hang back and wrestle defensively. As a team we reject that philosophy, but we do have a couple guys who occasionally experience failures of faith. But that’s okay, because wrestling isn’t really a team sport. It could be that Rilke is so fucking strong and tough-looking nobody has tried to push him around before, because when Doug took it to him at the whistle, Rilke acted like he’d wandered into the girls’ bathroom. Balldozer says Rilke “wants to fart higher than his hole,” which I guess means he’s arrogant. After Doug took him down, Rilke regained his composure and reversed him in a flash. Doug didn’t seem real impressed, however, because he boomed right to his feet and rolled Rilke to his back. Unfortunately, he rolled him off the mat. There were some heavy sighs in the Battleground bleachers at that move.

  Doug wrestled that match in one explosion of energy right after another, which is what it takes against tough guys. With about half a minute left in the match he spun into a short sitout. Rilke freaked and tried to drive Doug’s head down between his legs. I guess he was just trying to keep Doug from switching him. But he drove into Doug way too hard and Doug just let Rilke push him to his feet. Then Doug rolled him the exact same way he had in the first round. Except this time he rolled him inbounds.

  Time ran out before Doug could pin him, but he got the near-fall points and won the match. The bench just went fucking insane. Coach was leaping up and down and shouting. He had let me sit beside him with the team. Kuch, who lay behind the bench in semi-exhaustion after his very tough win, whooped and yipped and banged his hands and feet on the floor. We mobbed the mat to get Doug, and in the confusion Coach Morgan conked me in the nose with his tape recorder. He slung it over his shoulder, probably to be sure not to lose it, and BLAM—I got his TEAC smack on my nose. I can’t even watch a wrestling match without getting my nose bloodied. I soaked my letter sweater in cold water right after I congratulated Doug.

  I returned from the bathroom in time to see Balldozer wrestle what I consider to be the best match of his career at David Thompson. Even though he did get beat 6–3. He lost to Dan Klosterman, a two-time state champ and one of the best wrestlers in the Northwest and maybe the whole country. Balldozer is good—strong and fast and loaded with guts—but his balance just isn’t what it could be. And if you haven’t got that, you just can’t beat the good guys. He did everything right and looked beautiful.

  Balldozer is this sort of Greco-Roman-looking, incredibly handsome guy. Shute is handsome that way. Shute and Balldozer look a lot alike, in fact. Balldozer is the giant economy size, though. I think if I weren’t a pretty fair wrestler and a semigood student, I’d feel inferior around Balldozer just because he’s so good-looking. I’ve got to get over that. I plan to tell him what a good match he wrestled, but the bastard’s drinking a peanut butter milk shake, and I’m afraid if I get near enough to smell it, I’ll roll him for it.

  We stopped for burgers at Denny’s on the way out of town. I drank tea. I figured I’d lost that much weight just watching the match. Boy, it’s weird to just sit and watch. I kept thinking what I’d do if I were out there. It was frustrating. I’ll watch the guys wrestle out their season and I’ll go to the district and state tournaments, but it’s sure going to feel weird just watching.

  Shute and his dad were sitting at the counter when we trooped in. Poor fuckers. They drove all the way over here to watch me wrestle Rilke. I wonder why they did it. I’m sure they’ve got just as much film of me as we do of Gary.

  Gary and his dad look like brothers. Like brother plumb bobs. I wonder if you can make hair go straight back and wavy like theirs, or if you have to be born that way. Mr. Shute isn’t real young, I don’t think, but he’s in great shape, and whenever I see him he’s always in jeans and a tanker jacket, which is a pretty youthful outfit. He’s a plumber, so he gets lost of exercise. They also hunt and fish a lot.

  I’d talked to Gary for a minute at the match but I wanted just to say hello again, so I stopped.

  “Hi, Gary,” I said. “Hi, Mr. Shute.” I shook hands with his dad.

  “I don’t know what you guys are gonna do without anybody at fifty-four,” Mr. Shute said and winked. Everybody in the gym was blown away by how good Doug was.

  I sat down next to Gary.

  “Have you seen this?” His dad handed the Sports Illustrated clipping across to me.

  “We’re famous.” I smiled and punched Gary a light one in the ribs. I’ve sure taken better pictures than that. Gary looks like Frank Gifford from Monday Night Football and I look like old Harpo Marx from A Night at the Opera. The bastard photographer caught me right after practice. My hair was all standing up and someone had just made me laugh. I look like I was being electrocuted.

  Mr. Shute folded it up and put it back in his wallet. He finished his coffee and Gary finished his Jell-O. Gary said he’d look for me at the New Year’s dance and they left after we shook hands. Gary stopped a second to congratulate Doug and Jean-Pierre on their good matches. His dad said hello to Coach and they were out the door and off in their pickup.

  * * *

  It’s nearly two o’clock. All the inside lights are off, so out the window you can see the snow blowing down and swirling from the trees. Good cheer lasted almost to the Idaho line. Kuch loves beating Custer and Battleground. After both matches he walked into their locker rooms and invited them all to come to Spokane and visit him on the twenty-fifth of June so together they could celebrate the great victory at the Greasy Grass. “What the fuck is that?” a couple guys asked. “Custer’s last stand.” Kuch smiled. The Custer and Battleground guys got a kick out of it, but the Custer coach asked us to leave.

  Just after we pulled out of Denny’s parking lot, Otto called out above the din, “Hey, Coach! How about next year you don’t get us up so early just to go beat up a bunch of cowboys and miners!”

  “Yah, yah, yah!” everybody yelled. Before Coach could respond, Schmoozler declared in a firm cadence, “We’re not gonna be here next year, Turd Head.” The bus went a little quieter for a minute or two while the seniors thought that one over. But the noise picked right back up. Coach promised never again to get Otto out of bed to beat up a cowboy or a miner.

  I talked to Balldozer awhile. He also thinks tonight’s match was his best ever. We listened to Schmoozler’s tape for a while. I snatched it when Schmooz fell asleep. Balldozer’s asleep now, too. The bus driver and I are probably the only ones awake. Sausage and Little Konigi may be awake back there somewhere, though, still trying to determine which girls in the sophomore class are ripe for the large one.

  It’s amazing. Balldozer’s grandparents in France live in a house that’s been in their family since right before the French Revolution. That’s 183 years. He says the house is even older than that. The stones have scars from two world wars. He says they have a room with paintings of all the Baldosiers up until the invention of the camera and then they have photographs. It must be neat to know where you come from. The relatives on his mom’s side are Spanish, which must account for Jean-Pierre’s darkness.

  He wasn’t terribly impressed with my thesis as I summarized it. I guess he’s more classical in his approach to things. Like when we talk about the meaning and importance of different things in life, I bring up Fitzgerald and Agee and Carlos Castaneda and other fairly contemporary guys like that. But Balldozer always talks about Rousseau and Voltaire and Montaigne and Shakespea
re and other guys long dead. Once he brought up Chief Joseph, but that was probably because he’d just come back from a camping trip with Kuch.

  I explained about the myth of self-discovery—that this stuff about a person “finding himself” and having the world then fall into place around him is wishful bullshit, and that what really happens among the few people who make it happen is not that they find themselves but that they “define” themselves. I used the example of Bob Dylan from the Scaduto biography Kuch gave me for my birthday. Dylan wanted to be a folk-hero-singer, so he made up a history, went on the road and followed the tradition, worked hard, and by the power of his will and imagination became his dream and probably more.

  I talked about how, even if you define yourself as a Christian and believe in eternal life, you’ve got to realize your time on earth is incredibly short. And I explained further that along with this has to go the realization that we not only die alone, but that, really, we live alone, too. That no matter how we love our families and friends, we can’t breathe for each other when our alveoli clog up with cigarette smoke and car exhaust, that we can’t pee for each other when our kidneys stop working, and that we can’t really comfort each other once we know these things. This is the real reason Thomas Wolfe couldn’t go home again and why old Don Genaro won’t ever reach Ixtlan and most of all why we’ve got to love the people who deserve it as fiercely as we love our own lives.

  And then Balldozer says, “Oh, you’re writing about growing up.” I passed over the remark and went on. But now the bastard’s got me wondering.

  XXI

  Sunday night is sure a weird night for a dance. But it’s New Year’s Eve and that’s when the dance is traditionally held. I feel as though I should be doing leftover homework. I think I’d like to see Christmas and New Year’s made Wednesday every year. Carla notes, however, that there’s a sense of orderliness in beginning a new week and a new year on the same day.