They ate at a coffee shop called Huk Finns, then walked in a stream of people toward the Paiute reservation. Over the screech of pick-ups burning rubber they heard occasional gunshots, and the dark streets were illuminated by the glare of skyrockets bursting overhead. Oscar sang loudly: “Oh the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air—”
“Where are we going?” Doris shouted at him.
“Bishop High School gymnasium,” he replied.
Which was filling rapidly, with a rowdy, even crazed audience. Oscar led Kevin and Doris to a row of benches in the front of the upper deck. The basketball court below was filled with a large boxing ring. “Not boxing!” Doris said.
“Of course not,” Oscar said, and walked off. Kevin and Doris stared at each other, nonplussed. They sat for nearly fifteen minutes, and nothing happened. Then into the ring stepped a woman wearing a tuxedo jacket over a black body suit and dark fishnet nylons, with high heels and a top hat. Tumultuous applause. Inexpert spotlights bounced to left and right, finally settling on her. She lifted an absurdly large microphone and said, “ARE YOU READY?”
The crowd was ready. Doris stuck her fingers in her ears. People standing were shouted down, and the aisles filled. There were perhaps ten thousand people jammed into the place. “OKAY THEN! FIRST MATCH: BRIDE OF GERONIMO VERSUS THE RHINOCEROS!”
“I’ll be damned,” Kevin said, his words completely drowned by the uproar. The spots swung around drunkenly as their operators searched for the entering contestants. By the time they found them, they were almost to the dark green mat of the ring: two large figures in long capes, one scarlet, the other incandescent blue. The crowd roared, the two contestants shook their fists over their heads: Oscar and Sally Tallhawk, no doubt about it.
Quickly the two contestants were in the ring and mugging it up, bouncing against each other chest to chest. The Mistress of Ceremonies—also the referee—tried to separate them, at the same time holding her mike where it would catch their dire threats. Tallhawk snarled as she detailed the ravages Oscar would suffer: “I’m using your scalp as a floormop! Your skin will make good window squeegees! And I need some new dingleberries to hang from my rear-view mirror!”
The crowd roared.
Oscar puffed out his cheeks, mumbled “Prediction is always dangerous, but the Rhino is reasonably confident the match will ultimately be decided in his favor.”
The crowd gave him an ovation.
The MC let them at it.
They circled each other, knocking hands aside and snarling. The Bride grabbed the Rhino’s wrist and pulled, and the Rhino flew through space and hit the ring ropes, which were very elastic. The Rhino fell deep into them, rebounded back and was kicked in the chest—he staggered, the Bride took a flying leap across the ring and landed on his shoulders, bearing him to the mat. She got a knee across his throat and pounded her elbow into his face. When she stood and threw her arms overhead the crowd screamed “GERONIMA!” and the MC announced, “THE BIG G SEEMS TO HAVE LEVELED THE RHINO WITH HER FAMOUS BLUBBERHAWK FROM SPACE MOVE.”
But the Rhino, twitching in agony on the mat, reached out a hand and jerked both of Geronima’s feet from under her, felling her like a tree, allowing him to stagger up and away.
It happened several times: Bride of Geronimo used Rhino for a punching bag, but when Rhino was prostrate and the Bride reaping the crowd’s approval, the Rhino would resuscitate, barely, and deliver a stinging riposte. Once he pulled the rope on one side and let it go, which caused the rope on the other side to snap Geronima in the back and bring her down. In revenge she grabbed a lightbulb from the top of one of the rope poles, broke it and ground it into the Rhino’s face, until the MC knocked her away with the mike. The Rhino kept both hands to his face, grunting in agony as Geronima chased him about the ring. Clearly he was blind. It was a prime opportunity; Mrs. G. raced around the ring, revving up for truly impressive leaps off the corner poles, attempting her Blubberhawk from Space kill—but each time as she dropped from the air the Rhino would trip, or stagger, or hear something above, and neatly sidestep away, looking absurdly light-footed for all his bulk—and Geronima would land flat on her face. Time after time this happened, until Geronima was raving with frustration, and the crowd was in a frenzy. Then Rhino reached into his back pocket and smeared something over his face. “AH HA!” said the MC. “LOOKS LIKE HE’S USING SOME OF THAT NEW PLASTIC SKIN TO REPAIR HIS FACE—YES—SEE HOW FAST IT’S HEALED—WHY—LOOK AT THAT!—HE’S OKAY!”
Rhino dodged another leap and muttered into the mike. “MY ALMANAC INDICATES THAT THE TIDE MAY HAVE TURNED, MISSUS GEE.” And then he was all over the ring, sidestepping, looking right and left in grossly exaggerated glances, then leaping forward to box the Bride’s ears or twist her to the mat. Finally he got behind her and began bouncing her off his knee. “UH OH!” the MC cried. “IT’S RHINO’S ATOMIC DROP! NO ONE CAN TAKE THAT FOR LONG!”
And indeed Geronima collapsed to the mat, flat out. Rhino nodded shyly to the roaring crowd. The MC gave him a kiss, which gave him an idea—he tiptoed after her and took a tug at her tux, which came apart at the seams. Now the crowd really loved him.
But the MC was incensed, and turned to stalk him. He stumbled backwards across the ring, tried to wake Geronima, but to no avail. The Bride was out. The Rhino began to fly about the ring, thrown by a voluptuous woman in a fishnet body stocking, who paused only to continue in her role of commentator: “NOW I’M FINISHING THIS NOSEY RHINO OFF WITH A TRIPLE-SPIN KIDNEY HAMMER.” Rhino tried desperately to escape the ring, grasping at spectators through the ropes with eyes bugged out; but he was pulled back in and pounded. The Bride even roused herself to join the final carnage, before collapsing again after a single chop from the MC, who wanted no help. In the end the MC stood alone over the two prone wrestlers, and when she had caught her breath and straightened her hair, and tried on the torn tux and tossed it away as a bad job, she calmly announced the next bout. “UGLY GEORGE VERSUS MISTER CHICKENSHIT, COMING UP AS SOON AS WE GET THE LARD OFF THE CANVAS.”
* * *
There were several more bouts scheduled, but Kevin and Doris left their seats and struggled through the crowd to an exit, then made their way down to the locker room doors on the ground floor. Oscar was just emerging, freshly showered and back in street clothes, blinking in a kind of Clark Kentish way. After signing autographs for a gang of youngsters he joined Kevin and Doris.
“That was great!” Kevin said, grinning at Oscar’s owlish innocence.
Doris said, “Where’s Sally?”
“Thank you,” Oscar said to Kevin. “Sally has another match later in the evening. Would you care to join me for something to drink? I find I am thirsty—I could even use another dinner, to tell the truth. I have to eat lightly before a match.”
“I believe it.”
So they went back to Main Street and Huk Finns. Oscar ordered corned beef and hash, and poured whiskey over the hash, to Doris’s horror. But she joined in as they drank most of a bottle.
Kevin couldn’t stop grinning. “So Oscar, how’d you get into professional wrestling?”
“Just fell into it.”
“No, really!”
“I liked the money. Sally was already doing it, and she thought I had the necessary … talent.”
“Do you ever get hurt?” Doris asked.
“Certainly. We make mistakes all the time. Once I missed on the Atomic Drop and caught Sally on the tailbone, and a couple minutes later she popped me right on the nose. Bled all over. We both got miffed, and it turned into a serious fight for a while. But those look dull compared to the tandem stuff.”
“You really ought to join our softball team,” Kevin said. “Your footwork is great, you’d do fine!”
Oscar shook his head, mouth full.
They left a bit unsteady on their feet, but in high spirits. Main Street was not quite as crowded as before, but there were still hundreds of people wandering about. They were passing a loud group when a tall man stopped
them. “Hey, ain’t you the Rhino? Hey!” he bellowed to his companions. “This here’s the Rhino, the guy who wrestles the Bride of Geronimo!”
“Fame,” Doris said.
“Hey Rhino, let’s try a takedown right here, whaddya say? I used to wrestle in high school, here, try some real wrestling moves.”
He grabbed for Oscar’s wrist, but Oscar’s wrist had moved.
“What’s a matter, Rhino? Chicken?”
“Drunk,” Oscar said.
For answer the man drove his shoulder at Oscar’s chest, and missed; turned with a roar and charged again. Oscar shuffled to one side, avoiding him in the dark. The man cannoned into Kevin.
“Hey, fuck you,” Kevin said, and punched the man in the nose.
Immediately they were in a free-for-all, swinging away amid shrieks and curses. Chaos in the dark. People came running to watch or to join the melee, and it only stopped when a whole gang of police drove up and strode among them, blowing their whistles and poking with nightsticks anyone who continued to fight. Soon the fighters were lined up and wristbanded.
“Anyone with a wristband stopped again will go to jail,” the officer in charge told them. “The bands will come off in a couple days. Now go home and sober up.”
Oscar and Kevin and Doris started toward Tallhawk’s house. “That was stupid,” Doris told Kevin.
“I know.”
She glanced around. “Those guys are following us.”
“Let’s lose them now,” Oscar suggested, and took off running.
Their belligerents followed in noisy but fairly efficient pursuit. It took them several blocks of twisting, turning, and flat-out running to shake them.
When they were free of pursuit they stood on a street corner, gasping. “This sure is fun,” Doris said acidly.
Oscar nodded. “I know. But now I’m lost.” He shrugged. “Oh well.”
It took them another hour to find Tallhawk’s house, and by that time Oscar was dragging. “This is far more exercise than I like,” he said as he opened the door of the darkened house. He entered a study with a long couch, collapsed on it. “It always happens like this when I visit Sally. She’s a maniac, essentially. The guest room is down the hall.”
Kevin went to the bathroom. When he returned to the guest room, he found that it had only one bed, and a rather narrow one at that.
Doris was undressing beside it. “It’s okay,” she said unsteadily. “We can both fit.”
Kevin swayed for a moment. “Um,” he said. “I don’t know—there’s another couch out there, I think—”
Then she pressed against him, hugging him. “Come on,” she said in a muffled voice. “We’ve done this before.”
Which was true. He had looked down onto that head of black hair, in embraces just like this. Although.… And besides, he.… Drunkenly he kissed the part, and the familiar scent of her hair filled him. He hugged back, too drunk to think past the moment. He gave in to it. They fell onto the bed.
* * *
The trip back was long, and hung over. Kevin was tired, bored with the endless Mojave Desert, awkward and tongue-tied with his old friend Doris. Oscar slumped in his seat, a portrait of the sleeping Buddha. Doris sat looking out her window, thinking unreadable thoughts.
Images of Sally Tallhawk jumped Kevin as if out of ambush: striding around their campsite with the evening sun flush on her broad face, arms spread out as she talked in a low chant of water sluicing into the underworld, pooling, drawn inward, making its secret way to the sea. The ragged ridge of Thunderbolt Peak against a sky the color of the ocean, stripes of white rock like marble crisscrossing the dark basalt, hypnagogic visions of her dancing by the lakeshore with its black wavelets, throwing Oscar out onto it where he skated as if on ice—
Jerking back awake. Trying to nod off again. The car’s monotonous hum. Off to their right, the weird illuminated black surface of one of the microwave catchments, receivers like immense stereo speakers flat on their backs, soaking rays, the photon space music, the lased power sent down from the solar panels soaring in their orbits. They were almost done setting out that array of orbiting panels, his parents’ work would be finished. What would they do then? Space junkies, would they ever come down? Visit El Modena? He missed them, needed to talk to them. Couldn’t they give him advice, tell him what to do, make it all as simple as it once had been?
No. But he should give them a call anyway. And his sister Jill as well.
Then, home at the house—having said a very awkward “good night” to Doris, pretending that there was no reason he should not go to his own room just as he always did—the TV was blinking.
It was a message from Jill.
“All right!” he said as he saw her face. That sort of coincidence was always cropping up between them. He would think of her, she would call.
She looked like him, but only in a way; all his hayseed homeliness had been transformed into broad, wild good looks, in that peculiar way that happens in family resemblances, where minute shifts in feature can make all the difference between plainness and beauty: big mobile mouth, upturned nose, freckles, wide blue eyes with light eyelashes and eyebrows, and auburn hair turning burnt gold under the Asian sun.
Now her little image said in the familiar hoarse voice, “Well, I’ve been trying to get you for the last couple of days because I’m moving out of Dakka to learn some tropical disease technique at a hospital in Atgaon, up in the northeast near the Indian border—in fact I’ve already moved out there, I’m just back to pick up the last of my things and slog through the bureaucracy. You wouldn’t believe what a mess that is, it makes California seem like a really regulation-free place. I hate doing these recordings, I wish I could get hold of you. Anyway, Atgaon’s about as far away from Dakka as you can get and still be in Bangladesh, it takes all day to get there, on a new train built on a big causeway to keep it above the floodplain. It must go over a hundred bridges, it’s a really wet country.
“Atgaon is a market town on the Tista River, which comes down from Sikkim. The hospital is the most important thing in town, it’s associated with the Institute for the Study of Tropical Diseases, and getting to be one of the leaders in the area—like, this is the place they developed the once-a-year malaria pill. The whole thing was started by the Rajhasan Landless Cooperative Society, one of the land reform groups, which is pretty neat. They do tons of clinical work, and they have a bunch of good research projects. I’m going to work on one concerning hepatitis-B-two. Meanwhile I’m helping out in the emergency room and in clinic visits, so it’s mostly busy, but I like it—the people are nice and I’m learning a lot.
“I’m living in a little bungalow of my own on the hospital grounds. It’s pretty nice, but there are some surprises. Like my first day there I turned on the light and tossed my bag on the bed, and a gigantic centipede came clattering out at me! I took a broom and smacked the thing with the handle and cut it in half, and both sides started to crawl away in different directions. Can you believe it? I was freaked and put a bed post on one half of the thing in place, while I pulverized the other half with the broom handle. Then I did the same to the half under the post. What a mess. Later they told me to check out bedsheets and clothes before using them—I told them hey, I know!”
She grinned her sister grin, and Kevin laughed. “Oh, Jill—” he said. He wanted to talk, he needed to talk!
He stopped the tape, tried to put a call through to Bangladesh. It wouldn’t go; she wasn’t there in Dakka to answer.
Feeling odd, he started the tape again.
“… Happy to know that there’s a woman’s softball league out here, can you believe it? Apparently there was an exchange program, nurses here went to Guam, and some from Guam came here, and the ones here started softball games, and when the nurses visiting Guam came back they were hooked on it too, so they kept it going. Now it’s grown, they’ve got some fields and a five-village league and everything. I haven’t seen Atgaon’s field yet, but they say it’s a good on
e. They’re proud of having a woman’s league, women in the rural areas are just getting out from under Islamic law, and now they’re doing all kinds of work, and involved in the land reform, and infiltrating the bureaucracy too, which means in a few years they’ll have taken over! And playing sports like this together, it’s new for them and they love it. Team spirit and all that. The big sport around here is cricket, of course, and women are doing that too, but there’s also this little softball league.
“Anyway, they figured since I was American I must play softball, and they got me out to play catch with them, and now I’m not only on a team but have been appointed head umpire for the season, because they were having trouble with their umpires taking sides. It’s the last thing I would have expected when I came. But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, I mean you can go to the El Toro mela every summer, so why not softball over here? Everything everywhere, that’s what it’s coming to.
“Well, I’m going to get off, this is costing me fun times in Dakka. There aren’t any phones like this in Atgaon—the hospital has a recorder but no transmitter, so I’ll try to make some letters there, and send them when I can. Meanwhile you can send letters like this to me in Dakka, and I’ll get to play them eventually. I hope you will, it’s not as good as really talking but it’s better than nothing. Say hi to everyone there, I love you.”
The image flickered out.
Kevin sat in his dark room, staring at static on the screen. He could hear Tomas in the next room, tapping away at his computer’s keyboard. He could go and talk to Tomas, who would take a break for something like that. Or he could go down to the kitchen, Donna and Cindy would be down there soaking it up and talking to people on TV. Or Sylvia and Sam. Friends were the real family, after all. Family were not actually family until they were friends too. And yet, and yet … his sister. Jill Claiborne. He wanted to talk to his sister.
5
May. Hard buds on the branches, vibrant green in the rain. Barely a day’s sun all April. I can’t remember.