Wrestling Sturbridge (13 page)

“Just pissed.”

“At who?”

“At myself. I had him beat, Coach. I had him beat.”

Coach sort of smiles. “You wrestled good,” he says. “But don’t get bent out of shape, kid. It wasn’t like you think.”

I’m still seething. “What wasn’t?”

“He needed to work on reversals. The state meet’s coming up and he hasn’t had enough challenges. Not many people ever take him down.”

“Not like I did.”

“Right. Not like you did. He needed four or five opportunities under real, live conditions. We talked it over before the match.”

Suddenly, I get the picture. All the life goes out of me. I stand frozen on the mat, staring at the wall.

“He’s the best in the state, Ben,” Coach says softly. He puts his arm around me. “Get yourself a shower.”

I head for the locker room. Al and Hatcher are wrestling on another mat, laughing and straining. Digit is refereeing.

I walk down the stairs like a zombie. I open my locker, put my clothes in my gym bag, and put my coat on over my wrestling stuff. I take the bag and lock the locker. I walk home real slow and unlock the house. Mom’s already at work and my father hasn’t gotten home yet. I go to my room and set the
gym bag on the floor. I take off my wrestling shoes and turn off the light, and curl up on the bed with two fingers against my lips and my eyes open wide in the darkness. I don’t know how long I lie there. Eventually, I fall asleep.

When I wake up, my father is standing over me with his hand on my forehead. “You okay?” he says.

I open my eyes. “Yeah. Getting a cold maybe.”

“You eat anything?”

“No … What time is it?”

“About eight-thirty.”

“Okay. I’ll get something soon.”

He goes back downstairs. My lips are dry and I am thirsty. My eyes sting a little, but I never stay sad for long. My sadness is already turning to anger. No way is it ending like this.

I watch the match against Midvale from the end of the bench, in street clothes. We win big, as expected, wrapping up a 16–0 dual-meet season. All that remains is the league meet and the state tournament.

I want to get home—I’ve barely spoken to anybody all day. Digit said “Good match yesterday” to me in homeroom and I told him to eat shit. I think he meant it though. He wouldn’t bust my chops about that.

I head for the exit, and I hear Kim call my name pretty sharply. I stop and turn. I avoided her all day. She comes over.

“What’s up?” she says.

“Not much,” I answer.

“You going home?”

“I was.”

“You said you’d call me last night.”

I let out a sigh and start chewing on my lip. “I wasn’t feeling very good.”

“Still could have called.”

We’re in people’s way, so I step against the wall. “I got my ass kicked again in the wrestle-off,” I tell her. “I needed to be alone.”

She stares straight ahead and starts to say something, then stops. Then she starts again. “You know, every time you have a shitty match you head for the door like a race horse. When things are going good, you’re only too happy to see me. When you have a little problem, you act like I’m a pain in the butt.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Like hell you don’t. What am I, your cheerleader? I only get to come close when you want to feel like a hero?”

“I don’t want to feel like a hero.”

“No? What do you want, Ben? You don’t seem to want me.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Not bad enough.… Maybe as an ornament.”

I look away. Two little kids are wrestling out on the mat, and several groups of adults are standing around talking. The guy from the newspaper is interviewing Al and the coach.

“It was the worst wrestle-off of my life, Kim. The worst match I could imagine.”

“What does that have to do with me?”

“Nothing. Everything. I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

She studies me a few seconds, probably wondering how she got hooked up with such a wimp. “Okay,” she finally says.

I roll my tongue over my left molars and look at the floor. Then I look at Kim. She squints at me, and I touch her nose with one finger. My feet are cold and my head is hot. I feel like I’m going to throw up. One of her friends is standing by the door. She gives Kim a look like “Are you coming or not?”

“You going home?” Kim asks me again.

“Yeah,” I say. “I really do feel shitty. Okay?”

“Okay.” She smiles and touches my mouth with two fingers. “You jerk. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Happy Valentine’s Day.” And she is gone.

I wasn’t there, but I can envision it clearly. I know the procedure. I’ve been there before.

Winter in northeastern Pennsylvania is cold. The temperature falls to the teens in January and hardly ever gets out for at least eight weeks. Most nights it hits single digits.

The furnace generates a lot of heat every night, keeping the school warm for us students.

Picture Al with a six-pack, a not-so-unusual occurrence. He’s driving around after practice with two other guys and two other six-packs. They get to talking about their English teacher, a prissy, balding guy in his thirties who still lives with his mother. They don’t like him much.

The school’s open—adult education classes going on downstairs—so they park the car and slip inside and make their way up to the classroom. This was Tuesday, about 8
P.M
.

It was already down to 14 degrees.

If you piss on a radiator that’s going full blast, then shut the classroom door tight, you’ll have a pretty healthy odor in there by the following morning. It bakes on good. You can even wait fifteen minutes or so for the first layer to get sticky, then add another coat. Leave in a hurry, and don’t make much noise on your way out.

If you’re on the wasted side, you might get a little carried away. You might laugh uncontrollably, loud enough for somebody walking the halls to be alerted.

If that guy happens to be the vice principal, you’re nailed.

Now Mr. Frazier is a decent man. He’s a wrestling fan. He knows that the league meet starts on Friday, and he can take a joke as well as anybody.

But there’s witnesses here. Can’t strike a deal, even for the good of the program. All three guys have to go down together. Damn lucky it didn’t happen next week. Next week is the districts. You miss the districts, your season is over. Missing the league meet is survivable.

It’s a three-day suspension: Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. If you don’t wrestle in Friday’s qualifying round, you obviously can’t wrestle on Saturday.

Coach tries to make a deal, but there’s no way out of this one. The official word is a violation of school rules. I’d love to see that rule in writing (“Students shall refrain from urinating on heating elements”).

Al sits home, misses three days of school and practice. The entire town is alerted. If this was district week, there’d be a lynching.

I get to wrestle in the league meet.