Logan manages to get me in a half nelson cradle. He rolls me over and plants my shoulders on the mat, and I hear two slaps of the mat before a burst of adrenaline fuels my kick-out. Using our sweat for lubrication, I slither out and slip both arms around Logan’s massive trunk. He howls in pain as I apply pressure to his already broken ribs. I struggle to close my hands around his back. “Do you give up, Dream?” Billy Harren demands.
“No!” The word lands forcefully on my ear alongside a spray of saliva and sweat. His arms wriggle inside of mine. My hands are thrust apart. He staggers back to the corner, holding his ribs, and I move in and unleash two hard forearm shots to his temple. His head snaps back, and I stare into the two dazed milky balls of gray that regard me helplessly. A victorious chill makes my neck tingle. I’m going to beat him. This realization comes free of any terror or loathing. I snap him out of the corner, drop an elbow onto his chest, and hook his leg. He squirms a shoulder up at the count of two and a half.
“C’mon, you fucker!” Thomas Rockart Jr. is screaming. I glance over and see him standing at ringside, hammering the edge of the ring with his palm. “Count faster!” he cries.
I don’t want to risk rolling Logan over for a Boston Crab, so I give him another elbow-drop and pull him over another foot and then climb the corner turnbuckle with sweat glazing my eyes and blurring my sight. I am too exhausted to raise my hand in a symbolic gesture of victory and to do so would seem unnecessary and even a bit silly as I stand on the top turnbuckle and regard my prey below. Down on the mat, Logan lays twitching like an unconscious dog in the clutches of a nightmare. I launch off the turnbuckle. Aim for his chest and ribs. Knock every last bit of fucking wind out of the champion.
For a moment I am suspended in air. Flash bulbs split my vision like lightning. I blink. Logan is gone. Nothing for me to do but absorb the blow of landing on the bare canvas with no body there to break my fall. My right knee explodes. Roll over on the canvas just in time to see Logan’s massive leg drop down on my face. Blackness. Then I hear the slap of a hand against the canvas and I kick out hurriedly. A uniform gasp is given by 80,000 throats in response to my escaping Sonny Logan’s trademarked finisher. Thomas Rockart Jr.’s joyful cries drift into my left ear; the owner of the company is adrift on an excitement comparable to that of any random mark among the millions watching.
Logan stands above me, his own face mute with wonder. I begin to crawl away when he grabs my right leg and twists his left knee around the thigh. I know what he is doing but am too tired and stunned from the leg-drop to stop it. After cinching my legs into a figure four, he falls back onto the canvas. Instantly, the inside of my right knee splits apart as though sliced with a drunken surgeon’s blade.
I grit my teeth. Logan twists his legs further, sending new waves of pain that tear through tendons and travel up my spine, lighting up every pain signal there is. I scream, hoping somebody hears me.
“Give it up?” Billy’s face is inches from mine. The words come as a statement.
“No!” I shout. “No, I don’t!”
Logan presses down harder. Suddenly the pain leaks from my knee like final drops from a worn sponge. It swarms the rest of my body and seeks out hidden spots with a familiarity that indicates it is no longer a stranger. I am the pain. “No, I won’t quit!” I say clearly.
“C’mon, kid!” Logan implores, his voice strangely pleading, “Give it up!”
“No!”
“I’m gonna break your leg if this keeps up!”
“Then break it!” I snarl. I look at his face that reflects a battle between his concern for my welfare and his desire to keep the belt and defeat me fairly. His eyes meet mine and in that moment we are joined in a raw connection deeper than when we first met, deeper than any choreographed moment before this. His frightened eyes reveal that even dreams complete an inevitable cycle, finding death in victory as well as defeat. Lose respect for this death and you lose respect for life. Relieved tears kiss the sweat on my tongue. I feel I belong in this ring right here, right now; every moment I refuse to submit is its own accomplished dream. “No way!” I scream louder, “Never—”
Then the bell is pounding. Logan immediately releases the hold and crawls over to me. He drapes an arm over my chest and hugs me. “You are one crazy sonofabitch, brother,” he mumbles in my ear. I smile, bathed in a euphoric haze as the spotlights above draw both my body and the surrounding night into their incandescent womb.
When I come to, my body is lying flat on an unmoving stretcher. Thomas Rockart Jr.’s voice echoes through the backstage area. I sit up and see him in a hallway, gesticulating wildly at Sonny Logan and Billy Harren. “How in the hell could you ring the bell?” he is screaming at Billy. “He never submitted!”
“For Christ’s sakes, Thomas. The kid’s leg was ready to snap,” Billy spits. “’Sides, you wanted to pull a false finish with the Dream. So don’t give me this ‘moral routine’ shit.”
“You’re fired!” Thomas Rockart Jr. roars. “Fired, fired, fired! And you,” he turns to Logan, “you get out of my face, you big balding gorilla—”
Logan cracks Thomas Rockart Jr. square on the jaw, sending his former boss to the ground with what looks like a pretty painful bump. The legit ones usually are. Logan regards the unconscious Rockart and cracks his knuckles. “I’ve always wanted to do that.” He smiles.
A trio of paramedics hustle into the tunnel. They rush past Rockart’s prone form and surround the stretcher. “I’m all right, guys,” I tell them. But as soon as I put my foot on the floor, my knee ignites with angry pain. I cry out and tumble back onto the stretcher.
“We’d better take you to the hospital, Michael.” The tallest paramedic, who seems to be in charge, nods his slender head with enthusiasm. “You’ve got a bad one there.”
“All right,” I admit sheepishly.
“Great match, by the way,” the paramedic says and smiles.
Sonny Logan ambles over to me. “I’m headin’ out, Michael.” He extends his hand and says, “You gave me one hell of a run in there.”
“You didn’t beat me, Dream,” I say, holding on to his hand.
“You’re right,” he acknowledges.
We both give an extra squeeze, then laugh and release one another. “Maybe we’ll see each other again one of these days.”
I merely shrug, thinking of my grandfather and his piece of seasoned advice. My former idol is almost halfway through the tunnel when I call out: “Hey, Edward.”
He turns carefully. “Thanks for the fight,” I say.
“If you think I’m gonna say ‘any time,’ you’re nuts,” he remarks.
I’m still laughing as the World’s Gym insignia on his leather jacket disappears into the night lapping at the end of the tunnel.
17
MICHAEL AT LAST
One knee surgery and two weeks later I am in the living room of the house my mom and Irling have bought in Nebraska. The three of us are all assembled on the couch, watching a press conference on WWO superstars, a new weekly show appearing on a twenty-four-hour sports cable channel that’s in competition with Brad Burner’s twenty-four-hour sports cable channel. In the conference, Thomas Rockart Jr. claims that “The American Dream” sucker punched him, then publicly challenges Sonny Logan to a face-to-face match. Footage of the SlamFest match is then run, and while the television belts out my screams of defiance, my mom squeezes my hand and regards the wraps on my leg with a noticeable amount of pride. Thomas Rockart Jr. reappears onscreen and mentions Billy Harren’s defection to ICW, thus insinuating that Logan and Burner were in cahoots with Harren to throw the match in Logan’s favor. Thomas Rockart Jr., unique genius that he is, is turning his failed plan into a boost for his company.
He still has no knowledge that I tried to inform Logan of the plot, so I am his current golden boy. As mock flash bulbs click before him, Thomas Rockart Jr. calls Michael Harding “one of the greatest professional wrestlers I have ever had the pleasure of working with.?
?? He then declares that I am undergoing physical therapy with a specialist in the Rocky Mountains (this elicits a laugh from my mom, a look of puzzlement from Irling, and a knowing shrug from me) and will be declared the number one contender to the heavyweight championship upon my return to the World Wrestling Organization. Thomas Rockart Jr. has, in fact, promised me a long title reign upon my return, which the doctors are speculating could be anywhere from six to twelve months away.
“Are you going back, Michael?” Mom asks later that night as the two of us rock slowly on the porch swing. Their house is at the end of a gravel road dotted with two other houses spaced a mile apart from each other. Apple trees swarm their front lawn. Silvery leaves shift like bright fleeting smiles in the moonlit breeze.
“If I do,” I say slowly, “I won’t be going back to what it was. That make any sense?”
She nods with satisfaction. “It feels so good to finally be able to call you Michael and get a response,” she says. I shrug and keep rocking. “So, how’s Shawna?” she asks.
I raise my eyebrows in response to a sudden eruption of crickets. “They do that every night,” Mom explains, laughing. “Some kind of timer. They’ll die down in a few seconds.” Within ten seconds, silence’s only spoiler is the gentle breeze whispering through the apple trees.
“I haven’t talked to Shawna for a couple months,” I confess.
“Why not?”
“I just . . . ,” I stammer, then finally come up with, “She’s a complex person.”
“I liked her,” Mom insists.
“I like her too,” I say quietly. For a second I am almost tempted to reveal Shawna’s former identity, but I quickly dismiss this as the kind of secret that, like my grandfather’s $7,000 for “care of the glove,” would be better kept to myself. For a while, anyway.
The two days I stay with my mom and Irling pass swiftly. The only tense moment comes the first night at dinner. After informing me with considerable pride that his sink dispensers were enjoying successful trial runs in the cities of Sacramento, Milwaukee, and Lincoln, Irling peered at my knee with intense interest. “Mind if I ask you something?” he asked, “How do you get an injury that bad if pro wrestling is all fake?”
“It’s not fake!”
My head snapped to the source of these words: my mother. “It’s known as a work,” she informed Irling.
“Go, Mom.” I laughed.
After leaving Nebraska, I continue west. It is only when I am sixty or so miles outside of Denver that I realize what was missing about the visit. Broken Dock, the portrait of a planet’s final moments, was nowhere to be seen.
I pull into the parking lot of a general store bathed in red from the sun dangling just above the horizon. The walk to the phone booth takes a while. Even though I no longer need crutches, the doctor warned me to walk with care. “Little steps,” he said.
Once I pick up the receiver, I realize I did not pull in to call my mom.
Shawna answers on the third ring. “Hello.”
I reply, “It’s me, Michael.”
“Well, hello.” Her voice is soft. “Congratulations. You wrestled quite a match.”
“Yeah, I . . .” I pause. “I was thinking about stopping by, telling you about it. Think it’s a story you might get a kick out of.”
“Really? You still a pro wrestler?” she asks.
“No,” I answer, touching my fingers to the surrounding glass. Outside the red sky wraps Earth in a hushed splendor. I tap the clear barrier in time with seconds that move the sun, a collection of energy patiently approaching this planet. Millions of years from now an unseen cycle will find completion, and the same force that has brought life for so long will bring death. Outside red turns to black, but I am not afraid. I feel a part of this transition of light somewhere deep inside, ready to challenge the potential of dreams and make life a wonderfully ungraspable portrait. “I’m just me,” I say at last.
Ben Peller, Living the Gimmick
(Series: # )
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