But by then I’d become a core member of the team who’d impressed Coach Grady enough in the first half of the season that he’d begun to notice every detail of my technique and form. He attempted to fine-tune my skills in such a way that I occasionally felt my human potential being scientifically weighed, that I was no longer training for the state tournament but attempting to stretch the boundaries of my life’s possibilities. My guess is that my new attitude also owed a great deal of credit to the surprise visit we received by the Great Dan Gable. In response to our waning team morale, Grady assembled a crew of former St. Pius state champs who began showing up before practice to narrate the episodes of their greatest, life-altering victories. But even Grady was caught speechless when Will Warner and a few of his University of Iowa teammates stepped into the room with Coach Gable, whose hyperintensive workout routines were the bastion of our daily education.
Given the theme of my resolve during this period, I’d like to take a moment to describe the presumed source of Coach Gable’s determination, which could be traced to the Memorial Day weekend of his sophomore year, when he and his parents were away fishing and his sister was raped and murdered in their family home. After that day Gable never lost a high school match. He finished with a record of 64-0, then a collegiate record of 118-1, his only loss coming his senior year against Larry Owings in the final showdown of the NCAA tournament. (Afterward he cried so vehemently that I swore the camera operators and even their cameras and microphones were crying with him. Perhaps Dan Gable is a more complete man for having experienced such a moment of fallibility and public grief, but on each viewing of that match I feel my heart collapsing like I imagine a star dying, and I weep.) The legend went that every time Gable took the mat, he imagined his competitor as his sister’s murderer.
Despite the fact that Will Warner and his teammates did most of the talking that day, I can hardly report a word of what they said. I only remember staring at Dan Gable and peering through the windows of his amber lenses in an attempt to absorb a small amount of the wisdom I detected in the pale tension of his cold brown eyes. He sat in a folding chair outside our huddle, leaning forward on the balls of his feet—his hands clamped, chin protruding, one shoulder slightly raised—practically in a standard starting position if he’d only lifted a few inches off his chair. There was no need for him to open his mouth. His presence in the room was enough, besides the fact that his wrestlers were regurgitating his own words anyway. “You make it tough on yourself,” Will kept saying, “but even tougher on your opponent. You win the match by winning every second of the match, and the only way to do that is to attack.” At some point I found myself reliving my first night in Des Moines, a memory easily triggered by the story of Gable’s sister, whose murderer, like Nicholas Parsons, was also an obsessed neighbor. I had the feeling that while Coach Gable was sitting before us grinding his hands, he was actually reliving his senior bout with Larry Owings, still set on the perfection he’d sought all those years when he’d only had to look in the mirror to meet his most ferocious competitor.
While I never exchanged a word with Dan Gable, after that afternoon’s visit I began training with a previously unknown severity. I quit complaining about the conditions of wrestling under Coach Grady, feeling the sudden need to purge myself of whatever weakness had prevented me from the romance that had always remained one painful step away. I decided I wanted to win, to push myself to the physical extreme and see what I was really made of. My new regimen allowed almost zero time for Emily or anyone else—I hardly owned an idle minute anyway—a sacrifice I justified by the possibility that something good might come of letting her miss me for a while. In the end, it wasn’t the state trophy I was after, but the success that I associated with that trophy: winning Emily.
For the rest of the season I stepped onto the mat with the intention of looking
through
my opponents, to recognize their limitations as though recognizing my own, then set about exposing them. I started eating more, figuring out how to pack the most energy into the least amount of calories, and working off every bit of excess that I’d previously resorted to spitting, puking, and shitting away. I knew that in a couple of months it would all be over. I’d return to a regular diet and be able to look back in admiration of what I’d accomplished at eighteen years of age, after which time every man begins experiencing a gradual physical decline. Instead of attempting to impress my teammates by showing off on the bench press and squats, I worked the ropes and chin-up bar, developing my wrists and ankles, my forearms and grip, beginning and ending my days with a hundred push-ups, sit-ups, whatever challenges I could invent and find the strength to overcome.
Smitty did his best to keep up with me (though there was no denying which one of us cast the more beastly reflection in the weight-room mirror). He finished the season strong, despite getting pinned twice in Dubuque at the last tournament of the year, which meant he didn’t qualify for state and disappointed his father and uncles, who were all die-hard supporters. While I had major difficulties making my final weigh-ins, I placed first in Dubuque and won twelve of my last fourteen dual matches. These wins were accomplished by every amount of aggression I could muster, many of them ending with pins in the first period. I qualified for state and spent the night before the tournament running stairs and jumping rope, then taking a warm bath filled with Epsom salt my mom bought to help release the lactic acid in my muscles. With a remaining two pounds to cut—an ordinary and somewhat manageable condition—I spent the early hours the next morning riding a stationary bike in the wrestling room. Minutes before our bus was set to leave for the Civic Center downtown, I weighed myself one last time. I was still six ounces over. I said nothing to Coach Grady. We were greeted by big banners, TV trucks, and as many teenage girls in heavy makeup as stooped old men with thick glasses and official programs.
First thing, the state qualifiers crowded into the locker room for weigh-in, where I wasn’t the only one straining on the toilet for ten minutes. Starting with the lightweights, we all stripped naked and squatted cross-legged on the metal scale. When they called my name I sat down and closed my eyes and prayed for a miracle. I heard the scale tip. The judge asked me to get off and try again, but in the following ten minutes nothing changed; I was still five ounces over. “Sorry, son,” he said, shaking his head as he scratched my name from his list.
Coach Grady didn’t bother asking what I’d eaten the week before, or explain how I’d robbed myself of the chance to make the grade for all-time. He stepped right past me, mumbling a gruff and bitter
“Excuse me”
before he started coaching Colin Franzen, like I’d graduated fifteen years before and was no longer of any use. (I wasn’t the only wrestler that year to lose to the scale; the other guy, a middle-weight senior from Adel, bawled hysterically, then cut his forehead open banging it against a locker.) It was still a few hours before the first match. The other state qualifiers started loading up on orange juice and power bars. After drinking a few glasses of water I called my dad from a pay phone in the gym.
“If you don’t feel like coming,” I said, “you don’t have to. I didn’t make weight.”
My dad let go a loud breath. The receiver filled with static, then the sound of a fist pounded on the countertop, rattling plates. “How much over?” he asked.
“Five ounces.”
“Will they give you more time?”
“No. Everyone has to make weight before nine. It’s already past.”
A security guard unlocked the gym doors. The crowd piled in, each of them carrying enough blankets and drinks and snacks to last a week. I couldn’t figure out why I hadn’t shoved a finger down my throat behind some bush.
“Five ounces, huh?”
“Yep.”
“All right, George. You want me to tell your mom?”
“That’s fine.”
“What did Grady have to say?”
“Nothing.”
I could hear the porch door squeal open as my dad stepped out back to smoke. “Never liked him,” he said. “But doesn’t matter much I guess. Shit, you were overweight on day one. Dropping loads so big we could hardly keep the diapers on you.” There was another deep breath. “Well, I’m sorry, son. I would’ve liked to seen you get another chance at that kid from Sioux Falls.”
I didn’t answer. The porch door squealed open again. My dad must’ve covered the mouthpiece. I could hear him whispering (which is to say shouting under his breath), but couldn’t make out the words. “Wait a minute, here’s your brother.”
“You didn’t make it!” he screamed, personally offended, like I’d been sabotaged and he was determined to find out who was responsible.
“No. I’m five ounces over.”
“You should’ve been wrestling one-fifty-two in the first place. Grady should’ve put Smitty at one-forty-five and Franzen at one-sixty. Franzen would’ve made state no matter what. He would’ve made state at one-seventy!”
“There is no one-seventy. It’s one-seventy-one.”
“It’s a miracle you made it through the season without passing out and cracking your fucking head open!”
“I’m coming home.”
“You’re really done?”
“Yeah. I’ll see you soon. I’m coming home to eat.”
By the time Smitty drove me back, my mom had already reheated a casserole dish filled with sausage lasagna she’d stored in our neighbor’s refrigerator so I wouldn’t have to think about it overnight. The recipe was usually enough for the whole family with a few pieces to spare. Smitty and I ate the entire casserole in fifteen minutes, then washed it down with a liter of cola. For the moment it was all I needed to pad the disappointment. I was already four pounds heavier by the time I showered and changed into jeans and we headed back to the arena. On the way Smitty told me all about the fast food he’d been wolfing down over the previous week, which somehow led into a story about his Air Force recruiter hassling him about how it was obvious that he didn’t spend enough time in the gym and how Iowa wrestling wasn’t what it used to be and how unfortunate it was to see so many young men raised in relative peace taking their freedoms for granted. In a surprising bout of pessimism Smitty suggested that the ill-fated conclusions of our wrestling careers was just one indication that we’d never look back on our high school years the way we wanted.
By the time we stepped back into the Civic Center my stomach hurt so bad I wasn’t sure if I could sit. It didn’t help matters that I’d forgotten to call Emily to warn her of what to expect when she arrived downtown. After walking a few languid laps around the circular hallway, Smitty and I took to the stands to join the rest of our teammates who didn’t make state. Hadley’s dad and a few others gave me big pats on the back and stern
Be strong
words of encouragement as they climbed up to their seats. A few friends bought me candy bars and nachos. I nodded to everyone, trying my best to smile and thank them but barely letting go a word, afraid of the emotions that might let loose if I did.
When the Schell girls finally found me, Katie drew all sorts of attention to the both of us by standing at the bottom of the bleachers waving her arms and pointing her crutch at the electronic tournament board that had mysteriously omitted my name. This did little to improve my mood, which grew worse when she kept up the charade during her excruciatingly protracted ascent that involved stopping every few steps to stare up in wait for an explanation—all this in front of a match tied at nine points in the third period. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I marched down the steps and scooped her up like sack of potatoes, a gesture I suspected she wouldn’t appreciate. It turns out I was wrong.
“Holy smokes, George! You could
stab
someone with these muscles. What did you do, spend the last month with the American Gladiators?”
“I didn’t make weight,” I said, heading back up the steps, clenching my jaw at the sensation of my face growing flush. Emily was still waiting below, watching the match, probably having figured out what happened and now trying to decide what to say.
“So you didn’t even wrestle?”
“You didn’t miss a thing, except the heavyweight whose coach slapped him when he started crying.”
“You’re not going to start crying, are you?”
“No,” I said, as a slight shiver ran through me.
“All right. Set me down next to Smitty.”
Smitty happily scooted over. As soon as I set her down he started updating her on the match in progress. I sat a few rows back and waited for Emily, knowing that as soon as I stepped away Katie would ask him for all the details. Emily sat next to me and shot me a quick smile and didn’t say a thing. She probably guessed that if she kissed me again, like she did after the freestyle tournament over the summer, I wouldn’t let her get away without kissing her back. Then she’d have a decision to make that she probably didn’t feel like making. (The fact that I didn’t receive another kiss only further encouraged my remembrance of every athletic letdown I’d ever experienced, not to mention every heroic Peyton Chambeau slam dunk I’d ever seen. Before long my thoughts sank so deep into the gutter that I found myself imagining the uncovered footage of Peyton and Emily frolicking under the sheets in the master bedroom at Heidi Sneed’s.) The next hour of the tournament proceeded in grand style, the crowd roaring at the sight of hip tosses and last-second escapes. Colin Franzen pinned his first three opponents. I kept waiting for Emily to nod off, like she usually did at some point during all-day tournaments, no matter the noise level. After a long bout of waiting and watching, I let her know I was ready to talk with a snide remark about the Catholic school from Mar shalltown whose team name was the Maroons, despite their school colors of navy and gold.
“A maroon is a slave warrior fighting for his freedom,” she said. “They still exist today. Whenever regular people come around, they just keep moving deeper into the jungle.”