Athletic Shorts (6 page)

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s pretty small. Good town, though. You ever been there? It’s a good town. I guess I said that. Only has a few thousand people. Oh, I guess
you
said that….”

“My friend’s mother dropped him on his head when he was born,” Johnny says. “Anyway, like I was saying, we’re wrestlers. Got a good chance to win regionals this year. Maybe even state.”

“That right?” says the dark-haired girl, seemingly taking Petey’s measure. “You guys both varsity?”

Petey, hoping to head off any talk of his upcoming match with Chris Byers, breaks in. “Johnny is. He’s undefeated since about halfway through our freshman year. Placed at state last year. Probably’ll win it this year.”

The girls look Johnny over with scarcely more interest than before. “What about you?” the blond asks. “You varsity?”

“Naw….”

“Yeah,” Johnny says. “He’s varsity. At least some of the time. He’s wrestling varsity at one-nineteen in two weeks.”

Petey grits his teeth, closing his eyes.

“Really?” the blond says.

“Yeah.” Johnny misses Petey’s telegraphic pleas,
continuing. “A tough one. Wrestling Chris Byers.”

The blond flashes a look of recognition to her friend. “
Really?
I hear she’s pretty good.”

“She hasn’t met up with the likes of Peter Shropshrire,” Johnny says. “My friend here gives no quarter on account of sex. Mark my words, he is going to tear her a new one.”

Petey’s head is about to sink below table level as the blond gazes at him with some concern. “I’ll bet that’s tough,” she says with what seems like genuine regard. “Do the rest of the guys give you as hard a time as your friend?”

Petey grimaces and rolls his eyes.

“But I’m also giving him pointers,” Johnny says. “Working him on a double-breasted twisting takedown. If he does it right, he’ll end up on the bottom.”

Blood floods into Petey’s head as the dark-haired girl nearly spits her Coke across the table, choking, then laughing out loud.

Johnny knows his wit has struck pay dirt. As he has always believed, the really classy girls revel in off-color humor. He presses on. “Yeah. I already told him, if she’s good, relax and enjoy it. If not, carry her all three rounds. Get the win
and
the goodies.”

The girls look at each other and laugh again, shaking
their heads, and Petey begins inching back to an upright position. Maybe Johnny was right….

“Could get his varsity letter on the same night he loses his virginity,” Johnny says.

“Yeah,” Petey says, getting in the swing, “I—”

The roundhouse right knocks Johnny cleanly onto the cold tile floor, and in a second the dark-haired girl’s knee indents his chest. She grips both his cheeks between her fingers and pinches so hard he thinks she’s leaving fingerprints. “I think we forgot to introduce ourselves,” she says between clenched teeth. “This is my younger sister, Cindy. Cindy Byers. My name is Chris. Very pleased to meet you…Johnny, wasn’t it?”

Johnny can only nod.

Chris Byers bounces up nearly as quickly as she took him down and turns to Petey. “And you, you little geek. In two weeks I’m going to kick your ass.”

“Did you talk about this with your coach?” Granddad asks, pouring himself another cup of hot coffee and dropping to the wooden chair across the table from Petey. He is a large, thick man with a snow white beard and matching hair as thick as the day he turned twenty: Petey’s mother’s father. He is pushing seventy, which is, as he likes to remind folks, the same
age as that actor fella when he started two terms as president of the U.S.A.

“It wouldn’t make any difference,” Petey says. “He’d just say, ‘You volunteered, young buckaroo. Don’t wanna go back on your word, do ya?’ Then he’d spit a big ol’ glob of brown stuff into that cup and proceed to tell me about all the times he volunteered for dangerous missions in Korea. Then all the guys would be pissed at me because it’d be my fault we had to listen to war stories. Most of ’em would rather run stairs than listen to those stupid stories.”

“Too bad,” Granddad says. “I was in Korea. It deserves better than that.” He scratches his thick whiskers and gazes out the kitchen window into the backyard and to the forest beyond. Granddad is the problem solver of the family. Mom and Dad are good for support and for backing you when you step over the line, which seems a common occurrence for Petey, but you just can’t beat Granddad for good old common sense. “What kind of friend is this Johnny Rivers anyway?” he says finally. “Way you tell this story, it don’t seem like he’s helped you out much.” He unfastens the bib on his overalls and reaches down inside to scratch.

Petey looks out through the window to those same
woods, where he shot his first and only squirrel when he was fourteen. Granddad taught him to shoot the .22 and even sprang for the license and his first box of ammo. What Petey didn’t count on was running over to gather the furry trophy only to discover the triumphant moment turn hideous as he stared into the dead animal’s eyes. “Shootin’ things ain’t for everybody,” Granddad said when Petey returned in tears, and helped with a proper burial.

“Johnny’s okay,” Petey says finally. “He just doesn’t know about humiliation. Probably because it’s never happened to him.” He smiles. “Or he didn’t recognize it when it did.”

Granddad offers Petey more coffee, which he accepts. It is black and bitter and tastes like a boiled stick; but his stomach has begun to consume its own lining, and it is the nearest thing to food that won’t add weight. He needs to drop one more pound before this week’s JV match. “You know,” Granddad says, pushing his wire-rimmed glasses back up on his nose, “you’re the one puts the value on your friendship.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just that sometimes a guy like Johnny Rivers needs to know he can’t do any old damn thing at your expense.”

“Johnny’s got lots of friends,” Petey says. “He doesn’t need me.”

“Does he
like
you?”

“I think so. I mean…”

“Well, if he likes you, what I said is true. If he don’t like you, you’re wastin’ your time hangin’ out with him. But that’s for future reference. Seems like right now the problem you got is with this Chris Byers girl.”

Petey winces, remembering. “Yeah.”

“I got a rule,” Granddad says. “When there’s a problem, don’t do me much good takin’ it to anybody but who it’s with.”

“What do you mean?”

“You got a problem with Chris Byers, take it to Chris Byers.”

Granddad easily dodges the spray of coffee Petey chokes on. “What do you think it’s like for her?” he continues. “Bein’ a wrestler and all, if she’s pretty as you say?”

Petey stares again out at the forest. He can’t imagine. “I don’t know, Granddad.”

“That’s right. You don’t know. An’ when you don’t know, it’s ’cause information’s missin’. You think she don’t take hard a time bein’ a girl wrestler as you do wrestlin’ a girl?”

“Yeah, but it’s her choice.”

“But you don’t know why she made it. You want to maybe give yourself a chance to miss out on two weeks of pure anxiety hell, you drive over to Silver Creek and talk to her. And leave Johnny Rivers at home.”

In his wildest imaginings Petey Shropshrire can’t see himself pulling up in front of Chris Byers’s house, placing his finger on the doorbell, and finding the strength to push it.

“Hi,” Petey chokes, then grimaces. “Remember me?”

“Not like you’re going to remember me,” Chris Byers says, standing in cutoff jeans and a loose white sleeveless blouse, one hand on her front door. Her look says she’s ready to give it a hard shove and jam Petey Shropshrire’s nose an inch or so into his face. “What do you want?”

Petey’s mouth opens, but only air escapes, followed by a high-pitched eep.

“Who is it, dear?” A woman’s voice from deep inside the house.

“Just a boy,” Chris calls back, emphasizing
boy
. She turns again to Petey. “Did you come here just to chirp at me?”

Petey opens his mouth again to speak; but his
tongue and cheeks burn like the driest of hot desert sands, and his throat closes over his larynx like a noose. The door slams, and he’s staring into fresh white paint. He breathes deep. It was a fifty-mile drive over broken snow floor conditions.

Well, he tried.

What will he tell Granddad?

He walks to the edge of the porch, ready to retreat down the freshly shoveled steps to his waiting Dodge Dart, then stutter-steps back toward the door. Granddad was right, if he leaves now, he may well die within the next two weeks simply by using up a lifetime of heartbeats. He
has
to try….

He approaches the door; forcing out of his mind how
pretty
she is, he raises his hand to knock. What if her dad is home? What if he comes out?
This guy botherin’ you, sweetie? Boy, you better git on down them stairs the way you came….

Halfway down the walk he remembers it’s only four in the afternoon and edges back to the top of the porch. Her dad will be at work. It’s now or never. Three times more he stutter-steps toward the door; three times he turns back. Anyone watching surely believes he didn’t get his money’s worth from his dance lessons. The boogeymen of indecision have blockaded
his synapse paths, and finally, in hopeless frustration, he plops helplessly onto the top step, drops his chin in his hands, and waits for his head to clear.

Behind him the door creaks, then from inches behind him: “Jeezus. You are a
mess
. I hope you brought a tent.”

Petey doesn’t turn. His frustration always brings tears, and if she sees his face, his humiliation will triple. “My granddad told me when I have a problem, I need to face it.”

“So turn around and face it.”

“I didn’t know it would be so hard.”

“I guess your granddad never had to carry his cauliflower ear home in a wrestling bag.”

“Guess not.”

A salty droplet melts a bullet-sized hole in the light skiff of snow on the step below Petey’s face. Chris’s voice immediately softens. “Jeez, c’mon, what’s the matter?”

Petey hates it when the tears come. He can’t
talk
. What a wus.

“What are you doing here?” Chris says. “You must have come here for a reason.”

“I came to say I was sorry,” Petey says, “for the other day. You know, with my bigmouth friend. I was
stupid. I thought you guys were laughing, I mean, because you thought he was funny. You’d be surprised how many girls like him. I was just trying to go along with everything. I didn’t know you were Chris Byers. I’m not usually like that; I mean, I don’t go talkin’ dirty to girls or anything like that. Anyway, I was talking to my granddad and—”

Chris places a hand on his knee. “Breathe,” she says. “Take it easy. I believe you. I got a little out of hand myself. Everybody’s got some smartass thing to say to a girl wrestler.”

“Yeah,” Petey says, thinking what a genius Granddad is, “I bet. They’ve got some pretty smartass things to say to anyone who wrestles a girl wrestler, too.”

“Guess there are just a lot of smartass folks around, huh?” Chris says.

“Yeah.” Petey hesitates then, but decides what the hell, he’s on a roll. Who knows how long it’ll be before he’s talking to a girl this pretty anywhere but in his dreams? “What
did
make you decide to be a wrestler?” he asks. “Not very many girls even watch wrestling. I mean there’s mud wrestling and Jell-O wrestling and—”

“Watch yourself.”

He bites down on his tongue like it’s a hot dog.
“That’s not what I meant. I didn’t mean you should do that kind of wrestling. I just meant that’s the kind you usually see girls doing, I mean if you have cable or go to really bad movies. I didn’t mean—”

“Will you stop?” she says. “Boy, you do get cranked up, don’t you?”

Petey blushes. Chris Byers isn’t the first person who’s said that. “Yeah, but why did you get into it? I mean, why wrestling? They have other girls’ sports.”

“I liked it.”

“Yeah, but how would you know that in the first place? I mean, something had to get you to wrestle the first time. You know, like cliff divers. I always wonder how they get themselves to do that the first time.” He imagines her discovering headgear in an old Dumpster behind Silver Creek High School when she was six, or looking into the mirror in junior high and thinking earrings would look better in cauliflower ears. Hard to figure.

“Jeez. Does your mind run like that all the time?”

Petey smiles and shrugs. “You mean, like my mouth?” The answer is yes, but he doesn’t say it.

“Actually,” Chris says, “that’s a good question. I have three older brothers. Way older. I was an afterthought, though someone must have told my parents to
think again, because there’s Cindy, too…. Anyway, two of my brothers were state wrestling champs before I was even in grade school, and wrestling was the way they played with me. I learned takedowns before I was in kindergarten. Then in junior high I got into a fight on the playground with this kid named Max Ingalls, who was supposed to be some kind of hotshot wrestler. Took me about fifteen seconds to kick his butt good, just using stuff my brothers taught me, and the coach recruited me to come out for the team. They let me wrestle in junior high, but then they tried to stop me in high school because”—she looks down at her chest and blushes—“because of obvious reasons. At first I agreed with them, but my principal was such a butthead about it—he said if I stayed with it, I could make my parents proud and grow up to be a lesbian, crap like that—and I got stubborn. Next thing I knew, I got my parents to take it to court and there was no backing out.”

“Did you want to? Back out, I mean?”

Chris looks back toward the house. “Sometimes. I haven’t told anyone that; but I get teased a lot, and it gets real old. All kinds of smartass comments like your friend made the other day, and I got pretty tired of it. If the truth were known, if I wasn’t so stubborn and if I hadn’t gone all through the court stuff, I’d pack it in.
Sometimes you get yourself so far in there’s no way out. That’s why I get like I got when you came to the door. But then you cried….”