by Habash, Gabe
I dream that I’m outside Linus’s door yipping like a dog.
Sometime in the middle of the night, I give in and call Mary Beth’s number. It rings and rings but no one picks up because superstition is the belief in the causal nexus.
The difference between how I miss Linus and how I miss Mary Beth is that I don’t ever really hope to see him again. With Linus, it’s like something’s already run out, like the hope is beside the point.
I catch myself whimpering I want to get back on the mat so bad. They all look alike, hitting the mats, grabbing each other around the neck, pulling. This is for them somewhere between a hobby and a habit. Something they can put on a key chain or tell their wives about after sighing. But Fink and Kryger, the proud worm, are different. Am I the only one who notices it? Seeing both of them in one place creates a strange effect. Kryger does the drills, making a show of doing them hardest or fastest, Fink watches, puts his whistle in his mouth from time to time and leaves it there, but never blows it.
I also wonder if to work for something very hard necessarily requires pushing other people enormous distances away from you.
For the whole practice, Hargraves is unhappy. He blows his whistle disgustedly, he keeps stopping drills. No one is working hard enough. This is “not what he likes to be seeing.” No one is ready. What no one says is that no one, since Linus isn’t here and I’m on the bike, is good enough to win anything at regionals anyway. It all looks sort of like an elementary school play. The other coaches watch as he flogs Reuben with his whistle’s string for “lollyassing.” Finally, he gets so fed up he untucks his shirt and ends practice, telling everyone there is no practice tomorrow because no one deserves it, telling everyone they better use their day off to get their heads on straight.
Some of them get ice packs afterwards, knees and shoulders, and I miss and envy the ice packs. A few of them stop by my locker and ask about my health, Fat Henry and Whitey and Harry slap my shoulder. Weeds grow out of my mouth, hang down on my chin and flop around when I speak.
I try calling again. Without any expectation that this is real, or that it will amount to nothing all over again, I’m overtaken by something yellow and delirious when I hear the phone pick up, and I’m about to say something but she says something first.
“Fuck you.”
“Mary Beth?”
The phone line cuts out. “Hello?” I say.
I dial up the number again, and she picks up right away. “Do you know how long I sat in that fucking diner waiting for you? Do you know that I put a dress on for you and it was zero degrees? I don’t know if you know this but I don’t have time to recline and eat bonbons. Do you know how bored I got?”
“I—”
“I had four Cokes. I hate Coke but it’s all they had. As soon as I figured out you weren’t coming I left. When I got home I threw my earrings out the window. I don’t know why. Do you know how boring that was?”
“I’m sorry.”
“I hate being bored. You made me really bored.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What were you even doing when I was sitting there?”
“I don’t remember. It’s been an unmemorable month.”
“Is that self-pity? Shouldn’t that’ve dried up a few weeks ago?”
“What’s going on?”
“I think that’s obvious. I feel like there’s an emotional and also spatial dental dam between us.”
“What were your hairs doing in my drawer?”
“I was looking in it, stupid.”
“Yes, well, why?”
“Because I knew you had them, the pamphlets, in there. When you went to use the bathroom or something I looked through all your stuff.”
“Well …”
“Well, what?”
“Didn’t you think something about them?”
“Are you embarrassed?”
“I’m not embarrassed.”
“I thought you might be suicidal at first but then I figured out you weren’t pretty quickly. But that’s doesn’t mean I don’t worry and I think you would’ve figured out by now that it’s part of why we’re talking on the phone now, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I say, just to say something, trying to keep up.
“Listen, I’m not going to make this into a big thing, and I’m not expecting it to be some turning point where we both say we’re both sad and you apologize and we make up just like that, and you say to yourself, ‘That’s it, no more messing around, I’m going to be a big boy and quit moping and that’s that,’ and I come to your match in Wisconsin and you win 133. I have my own life here. I’m happy. I don’t think I can flip the switch for you right now. I miss you terribly, a lot of the time I can’t sleep. But I’ve already booked two exhibitions here, and I’m doing it because I barely go to bed, and some of that is because I miss you, but most of it’s because I’m hustling my ass off. I hope you’re not wandering off into that swamp pit of yours, because I know what you’re like when you get like that. You’re like me. You have to keep the blinders on, you have to stay exhausted, it’s how you know you’re doing it right. I promised myself I’d never set foot in North Dakota again and I still mean it. I don’t miss that hole one bit, so I guess don’t get your hopes up or whatever is what I’m saying. I have to go, I have too many things to do right now. Don’t get too much sleep. I miss you.”
I hang up the phone, and though I know she’s not calling back, I stand there for a minute just to make sure.
One day in December outside the Drawing shed, Mary Beth grabbed my arm and asked me, “When are you going to take me on a date?”
At the time, I remember thinking she was clutching me like the cosseted duchess we all read about, but I also remember something in her face, her eyes, which I hadn’t seen before, which now strikes me as fear, a fear of sadness, because I think she already knew what was going to happen.
“O.K. What about tonight? What do you want to do?” I was nervous, because there was nothing to do around here.
“Oh, I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” she said, and the thing in her face was gone.
And I will make this short because I didn’t come up with the world’s most original lineup, we watched a weak December sunset at three thirty over some buildings, and then I took her to a female movie, and though I was worried about my unoriginal decision she watched the whole thing with insane intent, like it was going to have some big secret ending, but it didn’t, the farmer and the schoolteacher just made out like crazy at the end after some obstacles were cleared, and she wouldn’t let us leave until after the credits were over, as though she wanted to pay her thanks to all of the makers by sitting through the scroll. We were the last ones in the theater. Then I took her to a bar with loud music and nursed a cup of water all night and she ordered a basket of fries, which I tried to dissuade her from, saying I had a reservation for two at the good German restaurant, but she said, and I remember this very clearly, that she was too happy to go to the good German restaurant, and she ate the bad fries and I made a fool of myself dancing for her enjoyment, which I didn’t mind, and I shouted over the music, “I’m a big fool for you!” and we were dehydrated and sweating, and who knows what time it was when we walked home, with her hanging on my neck, looking down at her feet and the snow and smiling like a delirious person.
We went through the lobby and up the elevator and to her room without talking, and I remember feeling more and more excited with each new door we were passing through, like I was heading toward a tiny center that only I was told the location of, and after she’d locked her door behind us and turned the lights off I realized the center wasn’t tiny at all, it could be large and anything.
She had my shirt off and I had her pants at her ankles, and I said, “Is this our second date?”
“Does the time I jerked you off on the hill count as a date?”
“I jerked you off more than you jerked me off.”
“I’m really glad you’re not wearing sweatpa
nts,” she said, and then she raked her nails down my sternum.
Her eyes were brown and I’m not trying to be an uppity poet when I say that the world shortly became more than a freezing ice ball, which is what I always thought it was, and so I said, “Wow.”
“Did you say ‘wow’?”
“Yes.”
And I could hear her start to say something just as I started to explain, but in the end neither of us said these statements, because she had put her hand over my mouth.
The next morning, I take a stealthy trip to the gym because obviously “no practice” means you’re still supposed to come to practice, just that the coaches won’t be there. I want to see who correctly read between the lines. I peek through the small window of the gym door. Doing the bleachers is Kryger in front, behind him Lyle, Ellis, Nate, Carpenter, Harry, Whitey, Fat Henry. “Pigeons mate for life!” Kryger yells, which isn’t true, if you’ve ever seen a pigeon you know that’s not true, but that makes me think of the opposite of that, which is lions, who fuck for fun, and then humans, who fuck for a lot more complicated reasons.
I leave and take a run south. The route I always do, all the same scenery. Quonsets, a white water tower. The route ends with my favorite tree, the one that I passed for the first time four years ago, one that got sick from the inside and died a long time ago, a tremendous goiter bulging out of its trunk. Now I always run by to see how much worse it’s gotten. One time with Linus, I said, “I’ll pay you five dollars to lick the goiter,” and he said, “I’ll do it! I’ll do anything for five dollars!”
I get finished just as the bus is getting to the stop. I ride it to the pool, do forty trips.
I crack open a new sketch pad and try to draw what I think Levi Silas looks like. Over the next three nights, I keep doing sketches and taping them up above my desk, beside the best sentence I ever wrote. Two years ago, I got a C+ on my Debating Human Rights in China paper after I spent fifteen minutes straight, a personal record, sitting at my desk and doing nothing other than creating this sentence, the last one of the paper: “This persistence of the Chinese’s indefatigable will, even in centuries, will still be remembered.” I believe that this sentence is the best sentence I’ve ever written. I believe it raised the paper from a C single-handedly, and so I cut the sentence out of the paper and taped it up over my desk. The wind flutters it when I have the window open, it likes to draw attention to itself. And now alongside it, there’s a row of seven different Silas sketches, but they all ominously resemble a different person.
In the grass field west of town, two cows run into each other like rams. They hand out neon flyers telling everyone to stay away from the cows.
One week when I was nine or ten, my mom tried to quit. She didn’t buy any cartons for seven whole days, and you’d see her walking around the house with a toothbrush in her mouth, chewing up the bristles.
A little bit after it happened, I sat with my grandma in Rudy Unger’s office, rolling and unrolling my blue tie as he called a bureaucrat who carefully explained over speakerphone why only a percentage of my parents’ pensions would be transferred to me.
My mom had more friends than my dad. She would carefully drive a carful out to Kraft Lake, Mrs. Venders and Mrs. Tomasi and also sometimes the awfully attractive and childless Mrs. Blankenship, whose image I experimented with in the first days of my own personal masturbation, and they’d all sit in the car and drink out of a big silver flask that she didn’t want us to know about even though we did. “Do you think George could kill someone?” “Yes. I could never marry a man who couldn’t kill someone.” “Oh, for Christ’s sake, shut up about all the husbands all the time and pass that shit.” My dad didn’t have friends, he had my mom. In high school he had a public urination charge and a disturbing the peace charge, separately but within a week of each other, the first from a long night at a dance hall, and my mom told me it was a direct result of her challenging him to drink ten Sankas, which he did of course to impress her, and she knew the whole time that the men’s room was out of order, and the second charge at the same dance hall when he started a fight with other local toughs over of course my mom, defending her honor or whatever. He didn’t deny any of this when I asked him.
One of the last things I can remember about my dad was he started to tell me about the time in college when he woke up without his shoes, but my mom quickly interrupted and told him to stop.
Since I have the time, I ask Farrow after practice if he can help me out with scouting Garnes’s 133. He says he’ll see what he can do. Three days later, he hands me a sealed envelope with my name written on it. I tell him thank you and put it in my bag. I carry it back to my room, feeling the thrill of having something of great value in my possession, and lock the door. A single typed page. Everything there is to know about Jan Gehring.
Gehring does a lot of hand fighting. Will bait wrists. Steps back and shoots low. Constant movement. Very patient and waits for his spots. Prefers to let opponent make mistake than force them. Record: 8–2.
And just like that, Jan Gehring becomes a fateful person to me. The way the season works, there’s nearly a month between the end of the regular season and regionals. I treat him like a final I need to study for. He’ll be the only person I get for keeps until March.
What I have done is add to my game every year. Because if you don’t learn something new, if you don’t keep learning, you’re fucked. Anyone will tell you that. In the last year of high school, I was working on the Granby series. By my first year at Oregsburg, I was drilling my switch and my Peterson roll. I spent my entire sophomore year pounding and pounding away at the outside sweep single, I did it so many times it started the pain in my knees, I did it so many times I would begin the move before I realized I was doing it. What you do in the summer is build off what you already have offensively. So after working on the outside sweep single, I worked on my shrug from the same tie up, then I worked on my double for when guys want to keep me from tying up. Last year, I started doing spladles, which I haven’t been able to use since last November. This year, I’ve been working and working on my cheap tilt, then adding a ball and chain tilt for when I’ve got the guy’s wrist trapped. I learned how to see things slower, slow enough that I can move when I need to move. While everyone else was studying, I was hitting the dummy in the gym, and I knew no one would come find me. Most of the time you go to these tournaments, you’re all standing around, you hear someone go, “Hey, watch out for his cradle” or “Watch out for his arm bar,” because they know that the best wrestlers have their go-to move that they’re going to turn all their opponents on. I don’t have one, I don’t think that way.
I’m pleased Jan Gehring is not some snail cephalopod and is good enough to help ready me for regionals. Mainly, though, I’m thinking about Mary Beth and, to a lesser extent, Linus, and what I’m supposed to do about them.
A day or two after our big date, I asked her, “Why do you hate North Dakota so much?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s a representation. It’s the biggest representation I’ve ever seen.”
“A representation.”
“I didn’t learn anything I didn’t want to learn. It was a reality I wasn’t surprised by. When I met you I felt like someone was trying to make it up to me.”
And I imagine Mary Beth taking a long road trip from Michigan to come see me. She takes various highways, which connect and funnel her farther and farther west, Wisconsin and finally Minnesota, but when she approaches the North Dakota state line, which is a dotted line drawn in the dirt as though for surgery prospecting, she paces back and forth, unable to cross, and when it’s clear that there’s no other option, she turns around the way she came.
At Thursday practice, the first time I see Linus again, I remember that he is only a seventeen-year-old. Seeing him again is like walking into my room except all my clothes in the closet have been rearranged. He has a fragmentary beard. And then whatever the feeling is, it’s gone.
The whole rest of practice, he’s showing up everyone else, including Kryger. If they give him any extracurricular sympathy, I don’t see it. After twenty minutes, Hargraves stops practice to tell everyone to be more like Linus, which causes an involuntarily yowl on my part because I was mistakenly under the impression that this would all be very straightforward. I just have to get through another week of this. That’s what I keep telling myself.
When practice is finished, out of the corner of my eye I watch them file out, dallying around on the bike, taking a theatrically long time to towel off, hoping he doesn’t hang around and wait for me. He spends a minute talking to Fink, who says something I can’t hear but that clearly interests Linus, who looks intently at the shitman. Then Linus walks out without saying anything else to anyone. I quickly scramble off the bike and grab the last person to leave, Whitey, and ask him to do live-gos with me. I need the practice. Need it like a fucking transfusion. He tells me he doesn’t want to hurt me. I tell him, plead with him, that my knee is fine, nothing’s wrong. He tells me again that he doesn’t want to hurt me. He leaves me alone in the gym, the lights buzzing and the family of six dummies sagging against the far wall without expression or opinion, free of fault. I walk over and briefly take my frustration out on them.
In the locker room I shower, clean up, get ready, with the understanding that Linus is coming. The chalkboard says: The virtue of wrestling is to be a spectacle of excess. —Barthes. You can tell when Fink is the one supplying the chalkboard material.
“Hey, Stephen.”
He has his bag over his shoulder. He’s ready to leave. It seems I am to be leaving with him.
“Hey.”
“You going to McCloskey?”
