Athletic Shorts: Six Short Stories

  “Did he hurt you?” I asked.

  The tears came harder. “No,” he said. “That’s the trouble. I think I won.”

  It’s a tough way to pass the torch.

  THE PIN

  We’re eating breakfast. MacArthur is laboring over his Frosted Flakes with a fork because across the kitchen on the floor lies his spoon, a harmlessly spent projectile that only moments ago had Huntley’s name on it. MacArthur is almost two. Huntley’s one of our cats—and partner to Brinkley. Mac is mangling the cereal; little completes the harrowing ride from bowl to mouth, and as his frustration increases, he stabs viciously at the flakes.

  “Mom,” I say, “I think my worst fears about Mac are coming true.”

  “And what are those fears, dear?” she asks, somewhat amused at MacArthur’s tenacity.

  “That he’ll grow up to be a cereal killer.”

  Mom sighs. “You promised to stop doing that, Johnny,” she reminds me.

  “I know. I’m addicted.”

  “There are places you could go for help….”

  “It’s better than drugs,” I say.

  “Not for me, it isn’t.” She pauses. “You’d better not let your father—”

  “I know,” I say. “Ten push-ups per word, including the setup. What do you suppose that one would have totaled?”

  Mom smiles, dodging the mathematical challenge. Dad would have whipped out his calculator like a six-shooter and spit out my sentence before I could blink.

  “Do you think of those just to irritate your father?” she asks.

  “No, but that’s a great fringe benefit.”

  My father is the Great Cecil B. Rivers. Three-year three-sport letterman at Coho High School in the mid-1950s and number two wrestler at 177 at the University of Oklahoma after that. Number two is mysteriously absent from his version. Dad and I don’t always see eye to eye—to the extent that at times we see eye to black eye. Dad thinks I’m too frivolous to grow up in the world as he knows it, and he’s right. I wouldn’t want to grow up in the world as he knows it. Dad wants to toughen me up.

  Actually things are better now that I’m big enough to make Cecil B. think twice before applying his Mike Tyson disciplinary techniques on me, but I still need to keep an eye on him. I still get even for the old days every once in a while, torment Dad a little when I think he’s out of line. Like the time Petey Shropshrire and I injected mink scent into his underarm deodorant. Whew! I don’t know how a young stud mink breeds, but it must be through terminally watering eyes, wearing swimmers’ nose plugs. We restored meaning to the name Ban that time. Petey sort of likes my dad—almost everyone does—but he told me once if his dad acted like mine acts on a bad day, Petey’d be history. It’s not likely he’ll ever have to prove that. You get the feeling Petey’s dad would shove molten steel slivers beneath his fingernails before he’d lay a hand on that kid.

  Actually, from what I see in the newspapers and on TV lately about hardass dudes, my dad’s probably only a three or four on a scale of ten. It’s just that when he thinks he’s not in control of everything, he gets kind of dangerous. I think nobody told him when he decided to have kids—a decision made in a state of severe deprivation, according to family myth—that they’d want to be in control, too. At least over themselves. (The state of deprivation took this form: Mom said, “Cecil, I want to have children,” and Dad said, “Well, I don’t,” and Mom said, “Fine. Then let’s make sure we don’t do anything that would cause that to happen,” and she sat down and waited. Mom was a real fox then. I was born exactly nine months and two hours later. Dad must have agreed to have MacArthur fifteen years later to prove I was a fluke.)

  Probably there were some really rocky times when I was younger—though I don’t remember them too clearly—because Mom is forever apologizing for letting me go through what she did, and when she’s really mad at Dad, she says if she’d had a lick of sense, she’d have left him while he was changing back into his shitkicker boots and jeans between their wedding and the reception. Mom’s got some mouth on her. He didn’t ever actually beat me or anything like that, but he’s always roughed me up pretty good when I don’t do what he wants. Either with his open hand on the back of my head or with words. But actually I think her life with him has been worse than mine. At least he still fights with me. He’s long since quit communicating with Mom at all—which is a lot worse in my book—and my guess is she’ll be on the first train out of here the day after MacArthur’s high school graduation, in about seventeen long years. He’s just a better father than he is a husband, I guess. That’s a little like saying I’m a better artist than a ballet dancer. I’m not much of either.

  Wrestling’s my sport, which is another reason Dad and I butt heads. From early November, right after football season, until March, three seconds after my last match at state (where Petey is waiting at mat side with a six-pack of corn dogs and a giant peanut butter milk shake), I’m in a constant state of nutritional deprivation, living on a diet of nuts and leaves and pine sodas (a glass of water with a toothpick). I drop from 185 or so at the end of football, to 160, where I was the runner-up state champ last year and where I intend to be the Man this year. It ain’t easy. See, I have to wrestle my mother all the way—who thinks it’s criminal to drop a tenth of my body weight so I can roll around in a sweaty heap for nine minutes with another idiot whose mother doesn’t have the good sense to make him eat right either—and with my father, who constantly reminds me of his heroics at Oklahoma and calls me a wus every time I come home without my opponent’s cauliflower ear in my workout bag. God, Dad can just take the life out of wrestling for me sometimes. Guess I should have known enough to stay away from his sport, though there’s something to be said for the fantasy of going one better than he did—of wrestling number one at Oklahoma.

  I set the Montana state high school record for the quickest pin during my first match this year—a little more than three seconds—with a lightning takedown that left my opponent aghast at the laws of physics that allowed his body to be so swiftly in motion and then just as swiftly at rest on his shoulder blades. But Dad wanted to know why I didn’t string the kid out awhile to give myself some practice. Gimme a break, Cecil B.

  I have only a semester of high school left. Part of me wants to wait Dad out, but another part wants to put him in his place so maybe he’ll go a little easier on MacArthur. You know, give Dad the experience of humility the Bible says is such a big deal. If I know myself, that second part will win out.

  “I think I’ve found my career,” I say at the dinner table. Family Rule 605 says all table conversation will be solemn: talk of world events, school issues, anything informative that the entire family can participate in. Dad’s look tells me so far this qualifies. “We had a television screenwriter visit English class today,” I continue. “He showed us how to set up a teleplay and told us a little about the kind of money you can make. Then he had us break up into small groups and brainstorm ideas for different kinds of series or newsmagazine programs or whatever.”

  “That’s interesting, dear, but do you think it’s something you could seriously get involved in? I mean, television screenwriting—”

  Dad waves his hand over the table. “Don’t discourage him, Maggie. I think he should explore all possibilities. He’s young.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “This was really interesting. In fact, Jenny Blackburn and I came up with an idea he thought might make it.”

  “Which was?” Dad says.

  “We’re going to do a situation comedy about a talking horse with an IQ of about forty-three.”

  Dad’s face twitches. He knows…

  “Yeah,” I say. “Gonna call it ‘Special Ed.’”

  Dad’s head bobs like a toy beagle in the back window of a ’57 Chevy, calculations whizzing through his computer brain at laser speeds. “That’s very funny, John,” he says, but he’s not laughing. “That’s worth exactly one thousand thirty push-ups.” Dad has total recall. I’ve got to lear
n to cut down on the setup. “I think you’re finished with your dinner. Why don’t you wait in the living room?”

  I stare at my plate, hiding my glee. “Yes, sir.”

  There is madness to my method. Wrestling is in full swing. I can’t eat anyway, and it drives me seriously loony to sit and watch my family packing away steak and potatoes when all I can hope for is that the dishwasher didn’t get all the egg off the back of my fork after breakfast. I mean, I’m ready to sit below MacArthur’s chair with my tongue hanging out to catch the overflow of strained peas, and Dad simply will not allow me to be absent for our one sit-down family meal of the day unless I foul up on protocol. Fortunately my father will tolerate no shenanigans at the dinner table. None. “Boys,” he says at every opportunity, “eating is not a pretty thing. It is our job as civilized men to learn proper etiquette to make it tolerable.” Mom only nods, having long since given up on convincing Dad of anything.

  And the push-ups? I’m going to need miraculous strength to win state this year. The cream of the crop at a hundred sixty is a transfer named Butch Lednecky from a little logging town called Trout down in central Idaho. Word has it this guy hires out in the summer as logging machinery. His old man was this legendary eight-man football coach down there before he got the defensive coordinator’s job at Montana State.

  More often than not, when a guy shows up out of the blue from Podunk High with good numbers and a big rep, he turns out to be a one-move minotaur with a single-digit IQ who self-destructs when he discovers it’s a penalty to rip off an opponent’s body parts. But it looks like old Butch is for real. He’s a natural at a hundred seventy, so he doesn’t have as far to drop as I do, and he’s tearing up his league. I won’t know how I’m doing against opponents he’s pureed because it won’t be until the end of the season that I’m that light, so the whole thing’s a shot in the dark. I feel kind of like Louden Swain from Vision Quest, and that makes me proud.

  My arms are noodles. I can knock out 100 push-ups every ten minutes while I’m doing homework, then finish up with 100 every five minutes. That’s 600 an hour while I’m stuffing my brain; 1,200 when I’m not. I had about forty-five minutes’ worth of homework tonight, so you can figure for yourself how long it took to rack off 1,030. Dad critiqued every one. My father considers it a personal sin to fail to follow through with an exacted punishment. If he tells you you’re grounded for one week (his shortest grounding on record), you’re grounded for a week. If you begin your grounding at high noon on, say, Saturday, and your watch runs a minute faster than his and you let yourself off at eleven fifty-nine on the following Saturday, your grounding starts anew. My dad is a hardass.

  One thousand thirty push-ups. My father can count push-ups while he’s reading, or watching television, or, for that matter, making love, which I assume is why he and Mom don’t do that anymore. (I overheard her talking to my aunt last summer. I guess Dad’s never been a real hero in the sack. Once during a fight Mom screamed at him that pushing me around was the only way he’d ever prove he was a man. That cost me big.) If you try to cheat, you start over. If you lose count, he automatically assumes you’re trying to cheat.

  A thousand thirty push-ups. My arm bones feel like thousand-watt heating tubes.

  I wonder if it’s really possible to love and hate somebody at the same time. That’s what it feels like with Dad. I hate him because no matter what I do it’s never good enough. I hate him because he treats my mother like this robot whose only jobs are to cook his meals and listen to his complaints and his Oklahoma wrestling stories. I hate him when he threatens me. The funny thing is, I don’t hate him when he tries to push me around physically, maybe because that’s how I think we’re finally going to get things settled between us. But I love him, too. I must. I want to show him I am good enough. I want to do every one of those 1,030 push-ups to his specs. I want to hand him this year’s state wrestling trophy for his den and shake his hand with a grip that will bring him to his knees.

  I must be out of my mind.

  “Coming to the big game?” Marilyn Waters asks me during first-period English.

  “Big game?”

  “We’re playing volleyball against the parents in two weeks. Wednesday. It’s a fund-raiser to send the volleyball team to Southern California for a tournament next July. We thought you could do the play by play over the intercom.”

  “You want me to do the play by play?” I’m excited. Any chance to stand in the spotlight…And you should see Marilyn Waters. I’d crawl across three acres of burning hot plates on my hands and knees in nothing but gym shorts to watch her hawk a lugie into a salad bar on videotape. Marilyn Waters is a serious fox. “Yeah,” I say, as nonchalantly as possible for a man who wants immediately to mate, “I’ll do the play by play. Why me?”

  “Because you always tell those awful jokes,” she says. “We’re getting used to them. While the parents are throwing up, we’ll mash ’em into the hardwood.”

  If Marilyn only realized what a compliment that is. Those jokes are supposed to make people sick.

  I’m in the center of the circle during workout, taking all comers, when it hits me—and Aaron Phelps lights a friction fire on the mat with my nose as a reward for my distraction. If the volleyball players can play their parents, why can’t the wrestlers wrestle theirs? More specifically, why can’t I wrestle the Great Cecil B.?

  “Rivers! What the hell are you doing?” Coach yells at me from across the mat. I know better than to answer. What the hell I’m doing is messing up.

  “Sorry, Coach.”

  “Tell it to Butch Lednecky,” he says.

  Coach is right, and I get serious.

  “Dad,” I say over my main course, a glass of club soda spiced with lime, “how would you like a chance to really teach me a lesson?” Dad has just finished announcing to Mom and Mac and me that from this point on, when we want food passed to us at the dinner table, we must first say the name of the person we want to pass it. That way, he explained, not everyone will have to look around. Though that is not much of a problem among the three of us (it doesn’t really include Mac. When he passes food, he passes it), I will later thank him when I am eating among large numbers of civilized Americans.

  “When will that be, dear?” Mom asks, her eyes rolled back in disbelief.

  He leans forward. “That will be at business luncheons, or banquets, or country clubs. Who knows? Don’t undermine me, dear.”

  I resist the urge to say I’ll never eat among large numbers of civilized Americans because I’d starve trying to remember all the Miss Manners tidbits he’s tried to implant in my brain over the years; I want to stay at the table long enough to issue the challenge. I sip my water, and my seriously deprived tongue cramps around the lime like a fist.

  “I welcome any and all opportunities to teach you a lesson, John,” he says with some exaggeration.

  “Wanna wrestle me?”

  He smiles. “What lesson could you learn in a coma?”

  He has a point. But I push on. “You’re looking a little soft, Dad. You’re pushing fifty. The years might be the perfect equalizer.”

  “I wrestled at Oklahoma—”

  “Number two at Oklahoma,” I correct, hoping to set the bait without losing an appendage before the real match.

  “The man who wrestled ahead of me went to the Olympics in his weight division,” he reminds me.

  “He lost,” I remind him back.

  Dad puts down his fork. I’m pretty sure my sense of humor came from Mom’s side of the family. “You’re walking on thin ice, young man,” he says. Usually he calls me “young man” immediately before I feel wrenching physical pain.

  “There’s a way to settle this,” I say.

  “Name your place.”

  “High school gym. Two weeks from Wednesday. As a prelim to the parent-student volleyball game.”

  “You want to be embarrassed in front of your friends?” he asks.

  “Better than in front of my enemie
s.”

  His steely blue eyes penetrate my skull. “No mercy,” he says finally.

  “No mercy,” I answer.

  MacArthur fashions a snowball of mashed potatoes and fires it across the room at Brinkley. I put down my fork and lay a hand on his shoulder. “Mac. Eating is not a pretty thing. It’s our job as civilized—”

  “That’s enough, Johnny,” Mom warns.

  So I’m wrestling Dad. The instant I know it is the instant I have second and third thoughts. What I haven’t said about Dad is that he doesn’t weigh two pounds more than he did before his last wrestling match at Oklahoma. He runs seven miles a day, swims three times a week, and lifts weights regularly at his club. The veins on Dad’s biceps and forearms look like a detailed street map of Billings.

  But he’s old. What he hasn’t been doing is wrestling, and anyone who wrestles will tell you there’s a certain lunatic edge you have to walk, and the only way to stay there is by eating celery sticks and raw spinach and Nutriment and running ten miles a day mummified in Saran Wrap and cranking out daily sit-ups and push-ups well into four digits—preferably in a sauna. Your nose and cheeks should sport permanent mat burns, and if your ears fold inward rather than outward, you’re bogus.

  Dad ain’t been wrestling.

  But he wrestled at Oklahoma.

  But he wrestled number two.

  This may be my chance.

  I stand toe to toe with the Great Cecil B. Rivers, one hand lightly in the crotch of his elbow, the other loosely at the back of his neck. We are mirror images. Our foreheads touch. Coach Everett stands in his starched referee’s shirt, arm raised and whistle ready, facing us. Dad wears his Oklahoma wrestling togs, which fit like the day he wore them last. For the past two weeks I have heard him in the wee hours of morning, grunting out push-ups and sit-ups, and three nights ago I awoke after midnight to the rapid whap-whap-whap of his jump rope slapping against his study floor. He hasn’t mentioned increasing his workouts. In fact, he told me he was taking a couple of weeks off at the club to even things out for me. He did nearly match me push-up for push-up the other night after dinner after I told him I was writing a novel about our two cats—Huntley and Brinkley. Huntley is a Manx, a cat with no tail, and Brinkley is a fast, sleek little gold alley cat. I told Dad I saw this novel as a classic tale of love and war between the two protagonists, in which Huntley covets Brinkley’s beautiful tail and is willing to fight to the death for it. (Dad was already counting words.) In the final scene the two would meet in a dark alley to settle their fate, the prize being Brinkley’s beautiful golden tail. Then I told him I meant to call it “A Tail and Two Kitties.”