by Jason Ridler
“Now, coming down the aisle, from the Aleutian Island in Alaska, weighing three hundred and fifty pounds, Kodiaaaaaak . . . SLIM!”
The crowd didn’t have time to register their disgust, because Kodiak ran out like he was a real mamma bear and I was kicking her cubs. His close to three-hundred-pound frame shook with the vicious intent of a career criminal with nothing to lose. He slid beneath the bottom rope, slick with sweat and no beer. The crowd was cheering for the bad guy as he pulled himself to his feet and I saw his dead smoky red eyes. And worse: the fetid magic scent of his breath.
Black Lotus.
“Keeeyah!” he screamed, throwing a wild haymaker with closed fists, the kind that would make your dentist cheer and a neurosurgeon cancel his golf plans.
I dodged, feinting left and right, ducking and diving as every wild throw missed me, but not for lack of trying. Sweat replaced the beer as Kodiak reared back his head and yelled, giving me time to drill his liver with a savage kick.
The audience oooowwww’d as the pain paralyzed Kodiak for a second, long enough for me to catch my breath.
“Slow down!” I yelled, giving him the bird, keeping up the illusion that this was in fact a bullshit wrestling match and not a real one. “You’re off book. I don’t mind if you squash me but I don’t want you to kill me!”
Clarity returned to his hazy red eyes, but not the sober kind. His long arms grabbed for my neck. I ducked and ran under his arm, much to the joy of the crowd, who hooted at David avoiding each blow from Goliath. Me? I was grateful he was so jacked he was fighting like a monster and not a fighter.
I ran around the ring and laughter smacked me from all sides, along with fistfuls of peanuts as I played the wuss, puss, wimp, and mollycoddle while a six-foot-six monster chased me. But I had to keep the match alive, or Shemp would welsh my deal for Jack’s pay and Sam and her daughter would be out of their papa’s last payday. Thank god for the ref.
Herc finally thrust himself between us and pressed me back with ease and Kodiak with seemingly similar ease, but he’d given each of us a knuckle-punch to the solar plexus, stealing my breath and making even Kodiak stagger. “Come on!” Herc said, then turned to Kodiak. “Stick to the match! Kodiak, squash him now. Do it.” Iron laced Herc’s voice. But my vocal cords were stolen. I tried to scream out “Herc, no!”
But Kodiak’s eyes glazed with rage. His hands clutched Herc’s throat. The audience was howling, loving the attack on the ref, a completely vile bit of sportsmanship. Herc fired out his arms to reach for a hold, but Kodiak yanked Herc into the air before his iron fingers could find purchase. The one-time masterpiece of cultivated muscle and viciousness hung in the air, blocking out the spotlight, before Kodiak rammed him into the mat. Thankfully, his reflexes were still good, and he extended his limbs in a Jesus Christ pose to keep the impact divided among his skin and organs.
Silence. The crowd might as well have drowned in blood. Kodiak rose from his knees and I tossed a spinning heel kick to the back of his skull. He stumbled back onto his knees and I leveled an ax kick to cut him down to size. But the slippery giant had dragged Herc to his feet, and I nearly hit my old friend. With his hands under Herc’s arms, Kodiak waltzed with a human shield. I couldn’t tell if Herc was alive or dead.
“Looks like the ref is back in action!” Kodiak said.
“Put him down!” But the audience howled, dark and guttural, loving this macabre turn of events. I was just glad to see Herc start huffing and puffing. “Put him down now!”
“Or what, mark? What you got? What can you make me—”
Tyger Tyger, burning bright, asshole!
I slid into a joyride and moved faster than even Kodiak could sense, and then I ran like a soul past hell’s gate, leapt, and drew my fist back for a haymaker that, if it connected, would have felled a redwood that had stood for a century.
Pain jolted through me as the joyride taxed every nerve into submission, bleeding my aura as if I were in a mystic iron maiden. Damn it! Tyger Tyger, burning bright!
I snapped back to reality, but with the momentum of the joyride carrying me like a train. My fist clocked Kodiak’s jaw before his eyes registered me as a lethal weapon . . . and that big mouth unhinged. Literally. I’d broken his mandible just below his ear.
Kodiak screamed and hit the ground, and I hugged Herc to keep him afloat. Around the ring were officials, Shemp included, staring at me as if I’d done something wrong.
“Herc? Can you count?” I said, a plan forming just in time to save my hide.
He shook his head and he muttered death threats in Greek until he said “Yes.”
“Then get ready to drop.”
Herc hit the ground as Kodiak roared with his jaw hanging off its hinge amid the crowd’s vicious screams. Kodiak was not entirely impervious to his injury, however, and hunched over in pain as his hand began to explore the damage done to his jaw.
I ran and jumped on his bent back, landing with my arm hooked around his neck, his jaw hanging loose against my forearm as I locked the same blood choke that took out Mick.
Boos and hisses hit me right before the lit cigarettes sparked off my wet skin. Kodiak lumbered around the ring like Frankenstein’s monster being drained of his life-force. He bolted to the corner and dropped to his knees. Next thing I saw was the turnbuckle coming at me like a perfect bull’s eye was painted on my skull.
My head crashed into the turnbuckle, which had all the give of a boxing glove filled with sand. But the shock of pain did not break the choke I had vice-gripped on Kodiak, who was finally starting to fade. Outside the ring, Shemp and the cronies were circling like starved piranhas. If I fucked up the match, I was doomed, and “I didn’t want to be killed” wasn’t going to cut it with carny management, regardless of the era. Kodiak lunged up, running on Black Lotus fumes, aiming to go to the well for one last drink. As he surged forward, I let go.
Kodiak boned his half-asleep noggin at full speed on the turnbuckle, his nose going crunch while his jaw swung like a drunk pendulum.
The crowd eeeww’d! as he staggered backward and tried to straighten his back. All the while I ran around inside the ropes with Shemp yelling, “What the fuck are you doing?”
I had no breath to say what I was thinking: Need to land in a Jesus Christ pose.
I climbed to the top rope, glad my feet could grip them like a prisoner’s fist around iron bars while the warden works the whip. Crouched on the top, I rose. The audience glared at the man at whom they’d tossed pennies, butts, and beer, not believing that Davey had a slingshot’s chance of destroying Goliath.
I raised my arms in victory, knees bending as Kodiak shook his head and Herc shook out the cobwebs, looking at me like I’d lost all of my marbles down the drain. “Never regret thy fall, O Icarus of the fearless flight,” I yelled, then jumped into flight, arcing my spine, thinking of Oscar Wilde’s last line: “For the greatest tragedy of them all / Is never to feel the burning light.”
I leapt into a roar of adoration that I’d missed since being a stick for Herc at fairgrounds and parking lots. I crashed into Kodiak’s chest with my knees. I hadn’t twisted enough to make it look good, but the big man toppled with me on top of him. Awkwardly, I covered Kodiak’s chest and whispered. “For the love of gods old and new, stay the hell down!”
Herc dropped a hand as the crowd chanted, “ONE!”
Kodiak’s glazed eyes re-focused and his mouth swung wide without his jaw. Then his feet started to rumble.
“TWO!”
I elbowed his already-bashed liver, his eyes nearly popped out of their sockets, and he screamed, “Arroooga!”
“THREE!”
Every member of the crowd was on their feet screaming so loud it drowned out the bell as I struggled to bring myself up to my feet, sweat pouring out of me by the pint. Herc followed, and I looked in his eyes. I pulled him close so Shemp and his crew could not read our lips.
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
“Gre
at, because I’m screwed. Shemp is going to tear my arms off.”
“No. He won’t.” Herc pushed himself off me as the bell rang through the din and grabbed my wrist, not an ounce of his strength having been drained by age or the chokeslam that would have killed a younger man. The bell rang and Kodiak still lay on the floor.
“The winner of this bout as a result of a pin fall . . . Icarus, the Great!”
Herc yanked up my arm and I sucked in the wild applause from the same drunk bastards and old nuts who had wanted me plastered not ten minutes ago. Now I could probably get them to vote me in for mayor.
I waved and did a short run around the ring as three mugs pulled out Kodiak and led him down the aisle on giant legs made of sand and dying fury.
That’s when all the pains in my body hit. Herc slapped my back, so I stood up straight. “Parade for them,” he said while looking at Shemp. “Sign autographs. Buy time for the son of a bitch-bitch to be tossed in back.” I did as instructed.
“That was so boss, man!”
“You got less insurance than Evel Knievel!”
“Here I thought you only skateboarded.”
Front row, with a girl under each arm, was Kevin.
“Well, I retired after having my ass handed to me by a kid. So, I started a new job. How’d I do?”
“It suits you, man. It’s a trip to watch you hit that guy. I always thought this stuff was fake.”
“Never trust anything but your own eyeballs,” I said. “Enjoy the rest of the show.”
“It will be hard to top a guy losing his jaw,” said one of the girls, auburn hair in two thick braids.
I bowed and then looked through the ring ropes. Kodiak was away. “Take care, Kevin.”
“You really know Icarus?” the other girl said with soft surprise. Kevin laughed and I waved goodbye as my brain scrambled for a plan once I left my adoring fans for a dressing room filled with men keen to break my ribs.
Rounding the ring, I saw Shemp waiting at the curtain. I walked with purpose, big smile on my face, as I passed by the hatchet-faced granny with the hatpin. She tapped her hat. “You live to fight another day, sissy,” she said.
Shemp sat before the curtain, cracking his chubby fingers and preparing to chop me up like mutton. The closer I got, the more obvious his anger became. His pockmarked skin and the heavy veins in his hands almost glowed with rage. Shemp was a shooter. And thanks to the joyride and every part of my body feeling like it had been worked over like a government mule, there was a good chance he could cripple me before I could get away or reverse the tables. Either way would kill the money I owed Sam. Either way he’d be harder to get on my side to tell me about Mick Butler. I was close enough to smell his cigar breath, but no Black Lotus. His eyes narrowed, then widened, but not on me.
Behind me, Herc ran up. Backup, as if I’d yelled “Hey, rube” against management instead of the fans.
Shemp made the come-here motion with his finger, then pushed himself through the curtain. We followed, Herc at my side. “I stay with you,” he said. “You don’t go piss without me.”
27
WE CUT THROUGH THE CURTAIN AND FOUND THE dark corridor filled with mountains of meat and fists ready to give the new guy a once over before dumping him in the trash.
Shemp dug into his pockets. Before I could run my mouth, Herc stepped in front of me. “This man saved my life. Kodiak was bananas. I’d be dead if not for James Brimstone. And, Shemp, if you think of a double cross, I’ll stretch you and all your boys.”
Shemp exhaled through his nostrils like a dragon with a deviated septum. “Relax, Herc,” he said. “I ain’t aiming to screw nobody but the concession stand tonight.” He pulled his fist out of his pocket. He held a bunch of twenties. Hopefully enough to pay for the medicine to help Sam’s little girl. “That was a hell of a thing you pulled,” he said. “You turned the crowd around like a tangle of Christmas lights when things went screwball. I don’t impress easy, mark, but you earned Jack’s pay.” He stuck out his fist.
I smiled, then took the twenties out of his grip. But the last one stayed locked in his meat-fist. “That’s for the main event. You still got another job to do.”
“What?” Herc said. “Kodiak can’t wrestle. He lost his mind.”
“Then our baby face here just earned even more chances to prove his gifts.” Shemp smiled. Brown baby tombstones hung from gummy graveyards. “Go enjoy the hospitality of the boys.”
“What about the mugging?” I said while I was in a room full of witnesses with more leverage. “That guy I tried to wake up in the parking lot?”
“What guy?” Herc said. “What mugging?”
“The guy around back with the backpack,” I said while Shemp coughed. “Did you guys see him?”
The glances, shaking heads, and awkward silence made it clear everyone knew who Mick Butler was, and they were sworn by the carny code to keep things mum. “He’s gone,” Shemp said.
Gone? Was Shemp lying? Maybe not. There was no sign of an enraged Mick Butler calling for my head on a platter, so maybe he was gone.
“He the one who got Kodiak crazy?” Herc said.
“Kodiak’s always crazy,” Shemp said.
“Maybe you gave it to him, then?” Herc said. “Spice up the act?”
Shemp growled. “Don’t know what you’re insinuating, but I don’t like it.”
“Bullshit. You know these guys are full of drugs.”
“Why would I damage my number one commodity?” Shemp said, making a compelling point until you realized that Shemp thought of people as commodities. Sure, Kodiak was huge, fast, tough, and smart, with natural charisma, but that didn’t make him unique like a true giant or a midget or a pretty boy with a high-school athlete’s physique. Kodiak was what we call an attraction, and only worth as much as his draw. But even within that, Shemp had no ire on me. Someone else made Kodiak a victim of Black Lotus, but it wasn’t management.
“Did that mugged guy know Kodiak?” I said. “Maybe he did something to him that made him nuts.”
“All wrestlers are crazy,” Shemp said. “Now go rest and wait for Bikini and Dynamite to walk you through the match. Herc, you’re on water cooler.”
“Fuck that,” he said. “I’m reffing the main event.”
Two forces met each other behind the curtain. In their heyday, each man would have been a holy terror. Now in their golden years, they were no less fierce, but terrorized quietly.
“You pulling rank, Herc?”
“I’m doing my job. You going to fire me, Shemp?”
I wasn’t sure if Shemp had sent Kodiak to kill me in the ring to make blood red or dollar green, but I wouldn’t put it past him to make Herc’s last days numbered, miserable, and long.
“I’ll be fine, Herc,” I said. “I mean, it’s all fake, right?”
Now all the ire was on me. Nothing spit in the eye of a grown man who plays pretend than telling him the emperor has no clothes. Might as well have yelled, “Hey, rube!” in the Electric Magic Circus and started a donnybrook with the viewing public.
The beastly grapplers shoved forward until Shemp screamed, hoarse as a dying vulture. “Enough! Positions. We got a show to do. Mark, sit your ass in the locker room. And Herc? Let’s have a chat.”
Shoulders bumped into me like stun guns as I left. The day’s soreness crept back on me as the last adrenaline ran out. Heartbeats speedbagged my chest. The world of the backstage halls, concrete, and white light became a parade of shadows. Drained, I realized I was easy pickings for whoever had sent Kodiak to kill me—someone who was still here. That list of suspects consisted only of the two people who disliked me when I arrived, not the world of enemies I’d made since.
I turned left to enter the dressing room where I’d changed.
Every wrestler was on their feet, killing me with their countenances. But they didn’t move.
“Boys,” I said. “I didn’t have a choice.”
“They don’t care,” said a voice
behind the wall of flesh. They parted their arms and Sam walked through, straight for me. “Neither do I. You’re a shit. A fucking scumbag shit.”
My mouth shook trying to find words that couldn’t be uncovered.
“Give me my money.”
I did.
“Where’s the last twenty?”
“Shemp said I’d get it at the end of the night.”
“Fuck him and fuck you. I can’t believe I gave you the benefit of the doubt.” She stormed past me and down the hall.
Mutters grew into threats and threats became promises about breaking my arms and knees, cracking my skull and bending my elbows inside out as I backed out, slow, hands up. “No need to get riled up over little old me. I’ll see myself out.” I headed to the main-event dressing room, where I’d hoped to find the inane egotistical ramblings of Bikini and his creepy sidekick. Instead there was just a closed door and silence. The grapplers entered the hall as I turned the knob.
Click.
I entered, closed the door, locked it behind me, and enjoyed the darkness.
The main eventers had their own exposed toilet next to a blue cooler filled with ice and Budweisers. Barbells sat on the floor with enough slats of weight to give me an eye hernia. And there sat two gym bags. I perused Bikini and Dynamite’s wares. Tank tops, deodorant, a Seiko watch that one of them likely got touring Japan, stray condom wrappers, and a pack of Zigzags.
I shook out a sweat-salted and stained pair of denim cutoffs that exposed more ass than the Thump & Grind Burlesque, and a glassine envelope fluttered and flipped into the bag’s mouth. I winced at the flavor.
Black Lotus. But different. More . . . Union Carbide than ancient Sumerian. The flavor vanished quickly, but there was no doubt who was using this drug.
They must know Mick Butler. They must know where he was or where he would go.
And there was no question that those two bastards were going to be jacked on Black Lotus. I had to make them talk. No knockouts. No jawbreakers. I had to force two men who could withstand the pain of a thousand arrows to say uncle and make it look good.
