Athletic Shorts (5 page)

“I’m sorry about the jokes, Dad. I don’t know what got into me. If I could take it back, I would. If I—”

“Nope,” he says. “This is mine. I’ve raised you for seventeen years, Johnny. And it’s come to this. I wanted it to be different. I really did. I swore…” For the first time ever, and I mean
ever
, I hear my father break into sobs. I lay a hand on his shoulder, but he brushes it away.

“You want me to leave, Dad?”

He nods.

At the Winter Sports Awards banquet, my father stands before a crowd of athletes and their parents for the first time since he wrestled me. He is immensely uneasy but determined. Dad is there to re-present the 160 state championship trophy to me. The crowd waits in silence. Dad swallows hard. “I’m going to write a novel,” he begins. “An epic novel about our two cats. Their names are Huntley and Brinkley….”

There is an idiom in athletics (though when I played sports, people used to say, “There is an idiot in athletics”) that humiliation breeds character. As a freshman in high school I was made to go against my two-years-older, fifty-pounds-heavier brother in blocking and tackling drills, in order to experience the character-building adventure of being likened unto a pancake
.

My first year as a competitive swimmer in college, my swimming coach entered me in a preseason 200 freestyle race against, among others, Steve Krause, who at the time held the world record in the 1,650 freestyle. Two hundred yards in a traditional twenty-five-yard pool requires one to swim a mere eight laps. When I finished that race, Krause was
gone.
He wasn’t resting comfortably in his lane, shaking hands with the other
competitors; he wasn’t even up on the deck drying off. He was
gone.

Petey Shropshrire, small and tentative, is about to face one of the biggest challenges of his athletic career: a wrestling match with an athlete all his peers dread to face. He is plagued by constant, gnawing hunger, as he is commanded to drop to the lowest weight of his less than brilliant wrestling career, only to be almost certainly humiliated at the moment of truth
.

The person to whom Petey normally turns for support—his friend Johnny Rivers—is the person who got him into this jam in the first place. He finds himself with no place to turn but the source of the problem itself
.

“I need somebody to wrestle Byers,” Coach says, and all the grapplers under 125 pounds stare hard at the mat. Johnny Rivers moves in close to Petey Shropshrire, digging an elbow into his ribs. Petey remains quiet and still as a statue, knowing Coach, like the great moonlight auctioneer he is, will take any sound or movement as a bid.

“Do it,” Johnny whispers. “This is a chance to wrestle varsity again. Might get you enough points to letter.”

“I’d go with the number one person at that weight,” Coach continues, spitting his chaw of tobacco into the paper cup that has been with him so long it seems part of his hand, “but Byers is a special case, and I need a man who can handle that.”

No one steps forward.

“
Someone
has to do it,” Coach continues. “Chris Byers is gonna be wrestling one-twelve or one-nineteen all year long. Silver Creek has a good team this year; we can’t afford to forfeit. An’ we ain’t gonna. Either I get a volunteer, or I
get
me a volunteer.”

“
Do
it!” Johnny whispers again. “It’s not gonna be that bad.”

“It’s humiliating,” Petey whispers back. “You don’t win against Chris Byers.”

“You don’t win against Johnny Rivers either,” Johnny says. “But that doesn’t stop guys from wrestling me.”

“That’s different. You just win. Byers humiliates.”

“That may be. But we’ve got a good chance to win regionals this year. Maybe even state.
Somebody
has to wrestle Byers. Horseshoe Bend forfeited at that weight and lost the match because of it. We can’t afford that, so reach for the sky, sidewinder. Give a little for the cause.” Johnny pinches the inside of Petey’s leg, hard, and Petey screeches, bolting forward.

“Shropshrire,” Coach says. “Gutsy move. I knew a hero would show hisself. A pin’ll give you just about what you need for your letter, won’t it? You wrestled varsity twice already, ain’t you?”

Petey starts to protest the nature of his volunteer
move but knows Coach well enough to know it’s a done deal. Petey glances around the room. The other guys at lower weights smile again, all looking tremendously relieved. Petey wonders if this time he has truly bitten off more than he can chew.
No
body wants to wrestle Chris Byers. He makes a mental note to launch a pipe bomb through Johnny Rivers’s bedroom window tonight. “Yeah, I guess so,” he says, but somehow that doesn’t ease his sense of dread.

“Look at this as a spiritual challenge,” Elmer Shropshrire says. “There’s often something to be gained, taking on a task that others shy away from.”

“You’re not giving me the kind of help I’m asking for, Dad,” Petey says. He is again in the familiar spot of having to tell his father what advice he seeks. “You’re supposed to say, ‘Don’t do it, son. You can’t win. Save yourself.’”

Elmer sits back. He has dedicated his life to clearing the way for his only child, and he hurts inside each time he fails, which seems far too often. A tall, beefy man with a waistline like an equator and a dearth of athletic talent, he has long been elated at his son’s interest in sports. Petey excels at baseball, and that is his love; but in a town as small as Coho, Montana, there are many
other opportunities, and for the past two years, mostly because of the urgings of his friend Johnny Rivers, Petey has filled the winter months with wrestling. So far he hasn’t been great, but his quickness keeps his shoulders off the mat and his name consistently in the number two spot, with the opportunity to wrestle varsity on occasions when number one wrestles up or down a weight class. Or when it comes time to wrestle the likes of Chris Byers. “What can I do really, son?” Elmer asks now. “What would help you?”

“We could move away,” Petey says. “Maybe some other state. After the match we’ll have to anyway. I’ll be too humiliated to show my face, and unless you and Mom have skin like elephant hide, you’ll be too humiliated, too. So just be looking for a new location. Maybe the East Coast. We could get into sailing. Wear those fancy white pants and blue blazers with anchors on the pockets. We’ll tell people we’re related to the Kennedys. Get a family coat of arms. Cover our tracks, Dad, hear me? Cover them good. No one will ever know I wrestled Chris Byers.”

Petey’s dad smiles. In truth, it tickles him when Petey gets wound up like this, running 90 mph at the mouth and 10 in the brain. He never teases Petey in
this state, however, because Petey takes impending tragedy quite seriously, and laughing at him serves only to aggravate his condition. “Petey,” he says when Petey stops to breathe, “you’ll do fine. It’s only three rounds out of your entire wrestling career, and no matter what happens, it’ll be over in ten minutes at most.”

“When it’s over is when it starts, Dad. Because then I have to shower and dress and face the world. I have to show my face at school, Dad, and on the street. It’s Chris Byers this and Chris Byers that all over the sports page after every match. If Johnny Rivers got half that much attention, he’d be all-state without ever stepping on the mat.”

“You have to understand it’s a human interest story,” Elmer says. “No matter how you feel, Chris Byers has gone through a lot, beaten heavy odds. The best thing you can do is go out there, hold your head up, and wrestle your best match. That’s all anyone can ask. Anybody wants to give you a hard time after that, that’s their problem.”

Petey is far from convinced, but nothing can be said to change that. His father’s mentality is about as far from that of an athlete as one can get living in a country
where the Super Bowl is a national holiday. Petey’s abilities remain a total mystery to him, and he can only smile and celebrate that for which he has no feel.

“Jeezus,” Johnny Rivers says as he and Petey push through the exit of Cineplex 3 at the Northtown Mall on the outskirts of Silver Creek, “get me away from this popcorn. I swear to God I didn’t even see the second half of that worthless flick. My taste buds swelled up so big they blocked my eyesight.”

“Me, too,” says Petey. “I
hate
when I have to drop weight. From now on I’m telling Coach I only wrestle
up
. Even if it means the rest of my life on JV. If I get any hungrier, my stomach will swell up like a basketball and flies will come to crawl on my eyeballs.”

“Man,” Johnny says, “no flies better crawl on my eyeballs, I’ll pick ’em off and eat ’em. Next year I’m getting on that exchange program to Japan.
Those
guys wrestle with their stomachs. I saw this guy on ESPN last week, his
gut
was bigger than me. Man, think of it. We could be puttin’ down ten pounds of burgers right now, for
training
.”

“Listen, man, we’re way too close to the Food Circus to be talking about this. We need to go in another direction. Where to?”

Johnny’s head whips to the right, and he comes to point like the finest of bird dogs. “My God, I’m in lust,” he says, ignoring Petey’s question and nodding ahead. “Look at that. Just look at that. We don’t get to the big city enough. If we had more women like that in our lives, we wouldn’t be forced to subliminate our sexual desires rolling around on a Styrofoam mat with stinking, sweaty bodies of our same sex.”

“What?”

“Look.” He nods again at the two girls ahead no more than twenty-five yards, staring into the window of an exclusive women’s clothing store. They talk and laugh easily, and the larger of the two has been cloned from Johnny’s Advanced Math Fantasies—necessary daydreams that got him through algebra and geometry in his first two years of high school and that are now saving his life in precalculus. She is tall and dark, with nearly jet black hair, and eyes so green he could mow them.

“I’ve gotta talk to that girl,” he says. “I’ve gotta. God makes you suffer, Petey. He really does. He calls you mysteriously to the mall to a movie
I
could have written—and I can barely write my name—directs you to the seats nearest in the house to the popcorn machine,
knowing
—because God knows all, right?—
that if you eat, you die at the hands of a subhuman small-town wrestling coach with a gut the size of a small prairie dog community. The fat kid next to you stuffs enough malted milk balls and licorice whips into his mouth to make Willie Wonka blanch, and you want to kill him, but you know if you do, you’ll eat his stuff to mark your conquest and weigh in a pound over come Friday night. In other words, God creates for you hell on earth. And just when you’re about to pack your stuff and move to western Montana or northern Idaho to join a devil cult just to get even, the Lord our God reveals his plan to you. You are Job, really, and He is about to reward you for your patience, with”—and Johnny points to the strong, dark, leggy beauty in front of them—“her.”

“Oh, no, you don’t, Johnny Rivers,” Petey protests. “You know what happens when I try to talk to girls I don’t know. I can’t talk to girls I do know. Oh, no, you don’t. We go over there, you tell one of those stupid jokes you make up all the time, like ‘We do not know For Whom the Tells Bowl,’ and embarrass us both so bad we ought to shoot ourselves in the head on the spot, but you’re too thickheaded to be embarrassed, so you tell another one. Then you start talking to the girl
you
like, which is the one I’d like, too, if I could untie the knot in
my tongue, and I’m stuck with the other one, who would rather be talking to you anyway because I’m a squirrelly geek, which is why I can’t talk in the first place.”

Johnny shakes his head. “You can’t be a winner with that kind of attitude. Look, the girl with her is cute. In fact, she’s a fox. We can’t lose on this one, Peter, my boy. This is God’s plan.”

“I don’t believe in God anymore,” Petey says. “Not after right this minute. For one thing, if God would reveal a plan to Johnny Rivers, there’s something wrong with Him, like probably the real God’s on vacation and some warped kind of angel who was supposed to go straight to hell but slipped through anyway has snuck into the control room and—”

“No time for biblical theories right now,” Johnny says, elbowing him. “They’re getting away.”

In spite of Petey’s continued protests, they follow the girls down the long corridor between small shops and around the corner toward the Northtown Mall Food Circus.

Petey’s heels dig in. “This part of God’s plan, too?” Petey says in the face of a dozen neon signs flashing the names of a dozen eateries, featuring pizza to tacos to fried chicken to Greek sandwiches on pita bread. Saliva pours onto his tongue like a river. “Johnny, don’t do it.
They’re going toward the
food
.”

“Be calm,” Johnny says. “This is a test to prove our love.”

“
I’m
not in love,” Petey said. “I’m
hungry
. Don’t you see, if I spend ten more seconds within a hundred yards of Pizza Hut, I’ll kick out their window and eat raw dough. Don’t do this to me, Johnny. There is no good to come of this. I’m starving myself to wrestle Chris Byers.
Chris Byers
, Johnny. Chris Byers, who, along with everything else, is strong as a bull. Chris Byers has to
gain
weight to wrestle one-nineteen. While my taste buds are cannibalizing
each other
to stay alive, Chris Byers is probably locked
inside
a Burger King somewhere, trying to make weight. I came to the movies with you today to try to forget my pain, Johnny, not double it. I’m giving you one chance to save our friendship. Don’t follow those girls into the food section of this mall. I’m drawing the line here, Rivers. Don’t take one more step.”

“I’m doing this for you, Petey,” Johnny says, shaking his head again and locking his fingers around Petey’s elbow. “This is the kind of challenge that spiritually prepares you to take on a wrestler with the unique capabilities of Chris Byers. I’m as hungry as you are, and I can take it.”

“Yeah, but you’re after something a lot more spiritual than food.”

Johnny stops, Petey’s elbow still locked in his grip, and stares through the window of Taco Tango, where his eyes meet the gaze of the girl of his dreams. In a final, futile effort, Petey says, “Don’t do this,” but there is nothing left of his resolve.

At the counter Johnny orders an extra large Taco Tango Mango Shake with three cups. Petey’s tongue cramps into a tube, and spittle runs off his chin like a high African waterfall. “What are you
doing?
Get that thing away from me. I swear, I’ll knock it over. I will.”

“They won’t let us sit here if we don’t order. Relax, Pete. Sometimes there are dues to pay.”

Petey’s voice rises to that preadolescent pitch it always hits when he feels his life spinning out of control. “Dues are what Boy Scouts pay,” he eeps. “My mom and dad pay dues at their club so they can go there and keep the likes of your mom and dad out.” He stares at the shake as if it is the poison capsule he is supposed to bite before he steps onto the mat in two weeks with Chris Byers.
That
is not dues. That is cool, milky, sugary
death
.

“You worry too much,” Johnny says back. “Look,
I wasn’t going to show you this little trick unless you needed it, but—”

“What trick?”

“Watch.” Johnny pulls hard on the straw until his cheeks puff up like a blowfish. He sloshes it around for thirty seconds or more, his facial expressions mimicking one in the throes of the final stages of the most sensual of pleasures, before spitting it into an empty container, then quickly washes his mouth out with water and spits again. He hands the shake to Petey. “It’s expensive, given zero nutritional value,” he says, “but it works.”

“Wrestlers, huh?” the dark-haired girl with the enchanting green eyes says, indicating only minimal interest. “Where do you wrestle?”

“Coho.”

“Oh,” says her blond, brown-eyed friend, “I know where that is. It’s a little Podunk town east of here.” She catches herself. “I mean, it’s a little place, right? Just a few thousand people.” Petey notices Johnny was right. She is a fox, almost as pretty as her dark-haired friend. If he doesn’t have to talk, this might not be so bad. He hopes the girls didn’t see him and Johnny spitting their milk shake into empty containers. It couldn’t have been a pretty sight, nor would it be considered all that intelligent.