Champion of the World (19 page)

“Fine,” he said. “I've already got my gear on.”

“What?” Fritz said. “Now?”

“You sure about that?” Van Dean said. A muscle in his face quivering as it had the moment Taft had shoved him against the garage. It pleased him each time he could do something to knock him off track a bit, and he reminded himself to try it more often.

“Sooner we get this foolishness over with, the sooner we can get back to real business,” he said.

Van Dean stood. Eddy smiled like a man attending a play that turned out to be much funnier than he'd expected.

“All right,” Van Dean said. “Let's get to it, though please allow me to assure you, Mr. Taft, the day you beat me will not be today.”

“I had a dog like you once,” Taft said. “You remind me a lot of him.”

Fritz pulled the bell again, and when the hired girl showed up apologizing for being late with the coffee, he snapped at her to forget about it. Instead, he asked her to lay him out some proper clothes.

T
he race began with Eddy standing at the hunting camp's main gate, shouting, “Mark . . . set . . . go!” and waving a handkerchief. Taft started out at a normal speed, plodding down the dirt road into the trees. He looked back once to see Van Dean clipping at his heels and, behind that, Fritz hurrying down the front steps of the lodge, pulling on a jacket.

During the first hundred yards, Taft was surprised to find that Van Dean kept pace with him, not lagging behind like Fitch and Prichard and not racing ahead like he imagined he might try to do. Van Dean just ran alongside him, talking. This was maybe the biggest shock, since Taft had begun to think of Van Dean as the kind of guy who kept quiet until he had something snide to say. Now he wouldn't shut up, lecturing Taft about the land around them, about the trees and the animals they saw as they ran. Taft realized he knew nothing about Van Dean aside from the fact he'd won the world's lightweight title while Taft was working his way to contender status among the heavies. He glanced over at the little man, running, smiling at nothing.

“Shut up,” Taft said to him, his voice already sounding a little strained. “Shut up.”

Van Dean didn't acknowledge him in any way, just kept prattling on about crops that might grow up there. Sugar beets, Van Dean said, would thrive. Taft tucked his chin into his chest and willed himself to go faster.

It was shaping into one of those tricky fall days when mornings went from chilly to uncomfortably hot as soon as the sun had a chance to warm the ground. They were barely out of sight of the hunting camp when sweat popped out on Taft's arms and forehead and a burning sensation spread through his lungs. Maybe Van Dean was pushing the pace after all, tricking him into running a little bit faster than normal. As an experiment, he slowed a bit and noticed that Van Dean deliberately stayed alongside him, saying something else about beets, sounding like a grammar school lesson book.

Soon Taft started to feel woozy and heavy, a kind of drunken dizziness spinning behind his eyes. He tried not to think about sounds that were not there or about fainting spells or the cold, dark hallways of Foxwood Prison, where the night after his arrival the guards hauled him down to a small exercise room and locked him in with five other prisoners. He knocked two of them down before their numbers overwhelmed him, with the guards watching from a catwalk above the room. He struggled to keep his mind in the moment, concentrating on the ground in front of him, making sure to step over the chunky, jagged rocks that scattered across the road.

He planned to lose Van Dean at the hill. If it was wind he wanted to see, Taft would show him he had it pretty good for a big guy. When the grade of the road began to increase, he lengthened his stride and dug in, pumping his arms, feeling the pressure in his ankles and shins as he picked up the pace. A funny, metallic taste rose in the back of his throat, and whereas before his legs had felt leaden and stiff, they now turned rubbery and unresponsive. Van Dean
acted like he hadn't noticed. He just ran and talked, not sounding the slightest bit out of breath. These bushes might sprout edible berries come spring, he said. Those trees would smell like vanilla if you pressed your nose close to the bark.

When he started in about snow—about different kinds of snow—Taft felt like shouting at him to leave him alone. But he could not shout: He was out of breath from the charge up the hill, nearing the top now with Van Dean asking him if he'd ever been skiing or snowshoeing.

“I highly doubt that you have,” he was saying, voice pleasant. “I know your people aren't much for cold weather, but the winter sports are some of the best for strengthening the lungs. Good for the blood, too. Why, after we get a couple months training at this altitude in some good, cold weather, Strangler Lesko won't be able to keep pace with you for more than five or ten minutes.”

That's when Taft stopped running. He doubled over, hands on hips. “Enough,” he said, wiping away a string of spit. “Goddamn it. Enough.”

He felt like he could barely keep his feet. Bracing the fingertips of one hand on the ground, he steadied himself and tried to breathe. Van Dean turned around and walked over, squatting in the dirt next to him, putting a hand on his shoulder. Taft wanted to shake him off—he wanted to slug him again—but he didn't have the energy.

“You want to know why we're really doing this?” Van Dean said. “Why we're going to keep doing this until you're ready to start real training? Because what I saw in that wrestling room yesterday was offensive to me. I don't care if you want to walk around like some kind of nightclub star with your white wife and your fancy outfits, thinking the world has a blank check waiting for you because you used to be somebody, because at one time in your life sharpies and the after-hours crowd found you amusing. If that's how you want to play this, I couldn't care less. But let me tell you something. There's
a million guys who would kill their own mothers to be in your position right now. For you to get out of prison, Johnny-come-lately, and luck your way into a shot at the world's heavyweight title? You took somebody's spot, Mr. Taft. There's a guy in Iowa or Pennsylvania or Ohio right now murdering himself in some wrestling gym, trying to get where you are, and you spend your time lollygagging? Like you don't give a shit? That's sickening to me. You're standing on somebody's dream. You stole it and you don't even care enough to try hard. That makes you about the lowest son of a bitch I've ever met. I won't stand for it.”

Taft blinked at the ground. When Van Dean finally stopped talking, all he could hear was his own breathing. “A million guys,” he said. “You mean guys like you?”

Van Dean didn't answer him, and now it was Taft's turn to smile. Lifting his hands out of the dirt, putting them on his hips. “News flash, asshole,” he said. “Those million guys? They aren't here, and they'll never be. Just one. Just me. Just me, because I deserve it. You hear me?”

Again Van Dean didn't answer, and when he turned around, the little man wasn't there. He was fifty yards down the trail, still running, facing straight ahead, his arms and legs driving away.

F
or the next two weeks Taft didn't show up for their runs. In fact, Pepper didn't see him at all. Part of him was glad for it, since the break gave the swelling in his face a chance to go down and his ribs the opportunity to rest to the point where he didn't have to think about them every time he took a deep breath. The first couple of mornings that Taft didn't meet him at the gate, he'd gone up to the lodge and pounded on the door until Taft's wife—the big-bosomed redhead whose name he couldn't remember—came to the door and said the mister wasn't feeling well. Used those words, like Taft was the lord of the manor. Both days the woman ended the conversations by reminding him to say hello to Moira for her, a hopeful tone in her voice that put him off his guard. It offset his annoyance with a pang of sympathy for her, so he just nodded and said yes, ma'am, he'd be sure to do that.

The tenth night he sat up by the cabin window, watching lights go on and off in the lodge. The unfinished part of the house was spooky in the moonlight, the open rooms and bare studs sticking out in a way that made it look like a decaying corpse. A couple of times he saw a shadow too big to be anybody but Taft moving behind the shades. Moira eventually dragged him away from his perch and they played cards by candlelight at the enamel-topped table. The mangy
old cat she was intent on adopting resting on the windowsill, pressing its nose against the glass, looking for ghouls in the dark. They played two-handed poker and she won every time. Then they played go fish and she won every time. When she suggested they start in on rummy, he went to find his tobacco pouch.

“Are we a threesome now?” he said, leaning against the sink, jutting his chin at the cat.

“It's just a cat,” she said. “He comes and goes as he pleases. Wouldn't that be nice?”

“I need you to go up to the lodge tomorrow and find out what he's doing over there,” he said.

She dealt another hand to his empty chair. “Who do I look like?” she said. “The Scarlet Pimpernel?”

He had no idea what that meant. “If I could just put my brain in that body, we might have the greatest scientific wrestler the world has ever known,” he said.

“Isn't that the idea?”

“The woman likes you,” he said. “She'll talk to you.”

They played, and Moira made gin while Pepper was trying to decide between hearts and spades. He grinned at her and said she must be just about the smartest woman alive. She didn't fall for that. She told him what was going on up at the lodge was none of their business, and besides, she felt too sorry for that woman to use her like that.

“If I'm being honest, she reminds me a little of myself.”

“Look who's sprouted a conscience all the sudden,” he said. “I'll have you know it
is
my business so long as I'm in charge around here.”

“You know exactly what's going on,” she said. “Taft gets out of jail and he and Carol Jean need money, just like another man-and-wife team I could mention. They find Fritz Mundt and James Eddy, and for a while the setup probably seems pretty sweet. Then along
comes you, Mr. Hard-Charger, and in the very first two days you run him damn near to death. I might stay in the house, too, if that's what happened to me when I went to work.”

“Work,” he said. “That's what it's supposed to be. I'm getting paid to do a job, and it's not to traipse around picking wildflowers.”

“As far as I've heard, the getting paid part is still theoretical,” she said. “As is the match you're supposed to be training for.”

“You taking his side on this?”

“I'm just saying, try to see it from their shoes. It must be quite a shock,” she said, reaching across the table to squeeze his hand. “Now, tell me what else is bothering you.”

He sighed, tossing his cards in, and told her about Taft collapsing in the garage that first day. Pepper had been in a million wrestling gyms. He'd seen a million bad things happen. He'd seen guys grind off the bottoms of their feet on horsehair mats. He saw a guy lose an eye after taking a thumb during tie-up drills. Once he even saw a guy break his own neck on a takedown gone wrong. He'd seen guys pass out from exhaustion, and what happened to Taft in the garage didn't look anything like that. It looked like something else. He just didn't know what.

“I tried to ask her about the trouble in Chicago,” Moira said. “She acted like she didn't know what I meant. You think there's something else going on with them?”

“I don't know,” he said. “All I know is, if I keep letting Taft do the old soft-shoe around the gym with his yes-men, he'll get himself murdered by Strangler Lesko. Then we'll all look like laughingstocks.”

“As opposed to what?” she said. “Our current sterling reputations?”

“This could be our chance, Moira,” he said. “I don't even need Taft to beat Lesko to come out of this thing smelling like a rose as a trainer. I just need him to look good. Decent, passable, anything to
have a chance that some other promoter will want to take me on full-time.”

“You sound like Mrs. Taft,” she said.

“Isn't this what you want?” he said. “Isn't this all you talked about while Boyd Markham was dragging us all over hell and back?”

“That's just it,” she said. “We sat around for five years waiting for someone to scoop us off the bottom of the sea. What's changed now to make them interested in us again?”

“You heard them,” he said. “They're desperate. Gate receipts are down across the board. Stettler, Lesko, Fritz—all of them must be in a panic. That's why they'd even consider Taft as an opponent for Lesko in the first place. But it's going to come back, Moira, the people will come back. The money will come back. It always does. When it happens, it'd be nice to be along for the ride.”

She looked at him in a way he didn't like. “Did I ever tell you about the first thing Abe Blomfeld ever said to me?”

“No,” he said. “What?”

“It was right after you won the title,” she said. “That party we had for Roughhouse Rawlins.”

“Good old Roughhouse,” he said.

Roughhouse Rawlins was a hardworking heavyweight who retired when he was twenty-nine years old to marry a local girl and take over his father's plumbing business in Naperville. Pepper and Moira, eager to show off their new house, hosted a combination retirement and engagement party for them. Everybody turned out because everybody liked and respected Roughhouse Rawlins. He was a solid man and a handful on the mat for anyone alive. He was just never going to be champion. He was a step too slow, a shade too predictable. The sort of guy who would always have a little gut on him no matter how hard he tried to lose it.

In the early evening, the party spilled out onto the back lawn,
some of the boys throwing a baseball around while the rest stood sipping drinks and arguing about wrestling. Roughhouse Rawlins floated from conversation to conversation, shaking hands and slapping backs, promising everyone they wouldn't lose touch. He would come to all their matches. He was still a student of the sport, he said; it was in his blood. He would never quite shake it.

Moira was in the kitchen, standing at the back window, when Blomfeld came in to use the restroom. Even then he was ancient, a tall beanpole of a man who sometimes wore dark lenses in his glasses to protect his eyes from the sun. He saw her there and came over to see what she was watching. It was Rawlins, of course, hovering around the fringes of the men, never staying in one place too long, moving around like he wasn't sure where to stand. The others were nervous around him, not knowing how to deal with the idea that he was trading it all in for a set of pipe wrenches and a rubber plunger.

“They've already forgotten him,” Moira had said. “It's like he's vanishing bit by bit in front of our very eyes.”

Blomfeld only smiled and pressed his face close to the glass. “He's the luckiest one of the bunch,” he said.

Moira leaned a shoulder against the wall. “Why do you say that?”

“Because he knows it's time to go,” Blomfeld replied. “Rawlins could never be more than a curtain jerker, wrestling for peanuts in preliminary matches that end while fans are still finding their seats. The lucky ones figure that out early. Some of them never do.”

“I thought the lucky ones become champions,” she said.

Blomfeld chuckled. “That's got nothing to do with luck,” he said. “Even the best of them will be done before they're forty. This sport isn't much of a career, Mrs. Van Dean, more like a bridge to the next thing. Get in, make as much money as you can and get the hell out. That's the only way to win this game.”

When she finished telling the story, she sat looking at him in a way that made Pepper feel like she could see straight through to the back of his head. “Hell,” he said, “if I thought like that, I don't know how I'd get out of bed in the morning.”

“It's worth considering, though,” she said, “whether we're running to catch a train that's already left.”

Just then the cat jumped down from the window and scurried, mewling, to the front door. It scratched at the wood and they heard the sounds of someone coming up the walk. Pepper stood and peered out in time to see Fritz step onto the porch in a pressed suit, his head scrubbed pink and shining like glass in the porch light. Pepper pulled the door open just before he knocked and Fritz showed him the delighted grin of a lottery winner. “You'd be wise to pack some things,” he said, passing him a thin, cheap piece of yellow paper.

It was a telegram. Pepper read the few words printed there. “That's about as vague as it gets,” he said.

“If they're sending for us, it means we're in,” Fritz said. “If we weren't, they'd just let us twist.”

Pepper glanced at Moira, then back out the window toward the lodge. “You seeing much of Taft these days?”

Fritz snatched the telegram back and stuck it in his pocket. “You're not jumping for joy the way I thought you might,” he said.

“He needs time,” Pepper said. “That's why you brought me here, right? To train him? Too soon and he won't be ready.”

A scowl broke across Fritz's face. “Once we bring him the match, he'll make the effort just like he told us,” he said. “Besides, that's sort of your area, isn't it?”

Moira pushed her chair back from the table and followed the cat out into the night. She left the front door open, so they could see her out there lighting a cigarette as she shrugged into the men's hunting jacket she'd taken to wearing around the grounds. Pepper watched
her and thought about what she'd said. If Fritz was right, then maybe that changed things.

“So Stettler and Lesko want to meet,” Pepper said. “You really think this is it?”

“I've already bought our tickets,” Fritz said, as if that was all the explanation he needed. “We leave tomorrow after lunch.”