Wrestling Sturbridge

LOSING IS NOT AN OPTION,
Rich Wallace

PLAYING WITHOUT THE BALL,
Rich Wallace

SHOTS ON GOAL,
Rich Wallace

THE WHITE FOX CHRONICLES,
Gary Paulsen

THE BEET FIELDS: MEMORIES OF A
SIXTEENTH SUMMER,
Gary Paulsen

KIT’S WILDERNESS,
David Almond

HOLES,
Louis Sachar

HOOPS,
Walter Dean Myers

THE WHITE MERCEDES,
Philip Pullman

CRASH,
Jerry Spinelli

She’s somebody I could write a song about, I think. She’s small, and older, maybe nineteen, and has probably seen some things in those years. Her hair is so full and bouncy, and it’s that color—a couple of colors, really—of dried hay, but with a warmth to it, too.

You can tell she’s strong by the way she lifts the pump off the tank with one lean, flexed arm and flips that handle thing up and shakes her hair off her face. There’s authority in the way she shoves it smoothly into the car and in the way she wears that mechanic’s shirt, gray with the tail hanging out of her jeans and a little Mobil patch on the pocket. It’s a better show than MTV.

Al’s playing with the radio, looking for the Spanish station out of Weston. He’s in an international mood tonight, with practice starting tomorrow and the Olympics next summer. So we’ll be driving English, probably, on the wrong side of the road, like they do over there.

I’m in the backseat so I have a decent view of the gasoline girl. Al’s only getting three bucks’ worth, so she’s stayed with the pump the whole time. Now she’s pulling it out, a couple of drops spurting out of the nozzle, and the denim stretches tight on her thighs as she wrestles the thing back into its holster.

She ambles over and holds her hand out to Al, and he slips her the bills and she mumbles “Thanks.” Hatcher looks back
at Digit and smirks, and I don’t know if they know something about this girl or what.

Al pulls out kind of fast and I look back and she’s already got the pump in another car, a van, actually, and she’s reaching over to get one of those squeegee things out of a bucket.

We didn’t bother going to the football game. It’s the last game, but we’re all in our own worlds tonight and didn’t want any distractions. And I’ve avoided public places since I beat up that minister.

We hit the mats for real tomorrow morning, so Digit’s mostly looking out the window at the town’s dark stores and Hatcher’s steadily squeezing a rubber ball to build up his forearms, as if they’re not built up enough already.

Al’s the only one who’s really saying anything, and he’s just been going on about kicking people’s butts and winning the state meet. He found the station, so now he’s beating on the dashboard and singing words he doesn’t understand. My right shoulder still hurts a little.

The town is deserted—even more deserted than most nights—because everybody who’d be hanging out is at the game. In an hour the usual spots will be filled—strategic storefronts and benches.

In this car with me are my three best friends, and the three biggest obstacles to my doing much wrestling this winter. I have weighed 135 pounds for two solid years now. After Thanksgiving dinner and a pint of ice cream I might balloon up to 135 1/2 for a few minutes, and if I run eight miles hard in the middle of the summer I might shed a pound or two of water.

I am a natural 135-pounder. So is Al. The other two—Digit and Hatcher, I mean—could be among the best in the state this season at 130 and 140.

We call him Digit because he’s missing one—he’s got no pinkie on his right hand. But I don’t think it’s ever made any difference to him. We always said if he couldn’t make weight for a match then he could just cut off the other one.

We’re outside of town now, heading for Weston, I guess. There’s no traffic, so Al takes it over to the other lane and puts on a proper British accent.

“Bloody good driving, if I do say so,” he says, holding his arms straight out on the wheel like a chauffeur or something. He swings back over into the American lane and turns up the radio.

It doesn’t take long to get away from town, and then it’s twenty minutes, mostly through the woods, until you get into Weston. Our town is small—about four thousand people, plus all the farms on the outskirts—but it’s the county seat, so we’ve got the courthouse and the jail and an abnormally high concentration of lawyers. Most of the guys who work, work at Sturbridge Building Products, making cinder blocks, precast concrete steps, stuff like that. That’s where my father works. And Al’s father and Digit’s. Hatcher’s old man is a doctor, but he’s president of the Wrestling Boosters Association. They’ve got about four hundred members. I’m not kidding.

Part of me wishes we’d gone to the game so I could look for this junior that I sit near in geometry. She’s cute and doesn’t have a boyfriend or anything, and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t
mind that I’m a wrestler. I mentioned her to Hatcher the other day, and he sort of frowned and said, “What are you interested in a spic for?” I had no answer at the time.

There’s about three levels of girls at the school—some who are almost groupies about the wrestlers (not very many of them, and they’re mostly annoying); some who are anti-wrestling because, I have to admit, the whole town is a little warped about the sport; and the ones in the middle who judge us for what we’re worth.

If you wonder why I’m taking geometry as a senior, it’s because it took me three years to get through two years of algebra. And, to use an algebra expression (I don’t use very many), the missing factor in the girl thing I stated above is that there are a whole lot of girls who probably don’t even give half a thought about whether somebody wrestles or not. I have to keep that in mind.

There seems to be an important announcement on the radio. I catch the word for “dictator,” I think, and then the guy clearly says “Honduras.” Hatcher yawns and stretches in the front seat and says he’s getting tired. Al punches one of the things you punch to change the station in a hurry, and we get Top 40 music out of Scranton.

“Doughnuts,” says Al, looking around and nodding. Digit says the same thing, and I nod, too. Mr. Donut is about our best road trip. There’s a doughnut place in town, but we like the ride to Weston and Mr. Donut gives us a valid reason to go. I’ve puked doughnuts out the window twice on the way back. Doughnuts and Rolling Rock. (My limit ought to be three beers, but I can’t stop at an odd number.)

Us four have our differences, but mostly we see eye to eye. We all want the same thing.

Two guys from Sturbridge have won state titles over the years. Jerry Franken won at 135—my weight—about twenty years and seventy pounds ago, and now he’s a supervisor at the plant and treasurer of the booster club.

Peter Valdez managed to dry out to 103 as a senior six years ago and went undefeated. We were in sixth grade that year and were just getting into wrestling. That’s when the four of us hooked up, became a unit. We’d go wild at the matches—Peter pinned just about everybody he faced. We wanted to be just like him.

Peter got a full ride to Pitt and made All-America as a freshman, then screwed up his knee and quit school.

My dad says Peter should get promoted to supervisor any day now.

Al almost hit a deer right around here last time we went to Weston. It raced out into the road and then froze in the headlights. If we’d been on the right side of the road, we would’ve nailed it, but it got out of the way just in time. It was a buck; looked like a four-point but we didn’t get a good look. Scared the piss out of us. This area is overrun with deer.

Except when I go hunting. Then the deer disappear.

My dad gets a deer just about every season. I’ve been hunting with a bow for four years and haven’t even taken a shot. “You’re not patient enough, Benny,” he says.

We come over the hill and can see Weston lit up in the valley. It’s big enough to be considered “the city” around here—there’s a real downtown with exotic things like movie
theaters and three-story buildings. In Sturbridge we’ve got a McDonald’s and an Arthur Treacher’s, a strip mall with an Acme, an anemic Kmart, about seven shoe stores, and several video places. People drive over to Weston to keep from going insane with boredom.

Weston has two high schools: North and South. They’re both in our conference, and they beat up on us pretty good in most sports. Not wrestling. Wearing a Sturbridge wrestling jacket carries some weight over here, although we don’t go looking for fights. Hatcher’s the only one of us who usually wears his letterman’s jacket anyway.

Al parks at Mr. Donut, which is pretty much empty. There’s two girls at the counter who might be from the college (it’s called Weston Area Community College), but they don’t look very receptive. And like I said, we’re not looking for distractions. We get our stuff quietly and head across the parking lot to the Burger King.

One of Al’s best tricks is to get a milkshake and fill his mouth with it, then go out in the parking lot and make believe he’s puking it up. You can ruin a lot of people’s meals that way. Tonight we’re quiet though, pensive I think the word is. Tomorrow we hit the mats.

Al is picking at his hair with one of those big-toothed combs as we start back. He got it cut this afternoon, or shorn, because his hair is kind of like a sheep’s, really curly. He looks evil, with the same kind of tight hair on his chin and above his lip (that’s the only place he can grow it) and a mocking kind of smile. But he’s okay. His father is one of the few people ever to get fired from the plant, because he
drinks more than anybody else and controls it even less. They rehired him last winter. Al was 11–0 at the time.

I don’t know what else to say. Practice starts in about ten hours. I’ll be spending the year getting pushed into the mat by Al in workouts and watching the meets from the sidelines. If I cut weight or add it, I run into Hatcher and Digit.

I just look out the window all the way back to Sturbridge and hardly say a word.

The needle’s on empty when we get back to town, but Al drives right past the Mobil station, which stays open until midnight. The girl is standing on the island with her back to the road, looking at her nails, I think. I figure she weighs about a hundred and six.