One Shot Away (5 page)

“Why don't you do it, yo?” asks Bones.

“Oh, yeah, right, and rip my stitches open,” says Diggy.

“Open the door,” says Gino.

Bones opens his door. Little Gino bolts from the back seat and races across the lawn. He bends over the deer and yanks it forward. It's strange to see him half in the garden, twisting and pulling. The deer's head drops, then rolls onto the lawn. Gino races back to the car. Diggy pushes the door open.

“It must'a had a cracked neck.” Gino holds a twisted piece of cement with a metal rod sticking from the end. “Antlers!”

Diggy throws the car into drive and leaves rubber up the block. “Bones, you're a wuss.” Diggy smacks hands with Gino.

T
HE “LATE” BUS BOUNCES OVER THE HILL.
I
N THE SECOND TO
last bench, Jimmy has his long legs across the aisle, his size twelves on the empty seat. Trevor, in the rear seat next to the emergency door, leans forward over Jimmy's seat.

“What I'm saying is watch your back.” Jimmy tugs apart a protein bar and gives Trevor half. “I'm not saying he's really going to do something. Maybe he's running his mouth.”

“You make it sound like he put a hit out on me.” A chill passes up his spine and radiates along his shoulders.

“If he does anything, it's not going to be obvious,” says Jimmy. “He's not going to jeopardize his season. It'll be when you least expect it.”

“I told you about the cement deer in my front yard. Someone cracked the head off.”

“It couldn't have been Diggy. He was getting stitched at the hospital. He wouldn't have gone driving around afterward.”

Trevor relaxes. Jimmy's right.

“Isn't Diggy's old man a wack job?” asks Jimmy. “Did you see him getting in the coach's face?”

The team was warming up. Mr. Masters crossed the mat from his usual post in the corner where he kept an eye on practices. He said something to Greco and there was a quick exchange of words. Then Mr. Masters made his point by stabbing his finger six inches from the coach's face. Diggy was stretched on the bleachers with his Yankees cap tipped over his eyes as if he were snoozing. His lip was the size of a cocktail frank.

“I'm surprised the coach didn't take his legs out and tie him in a pretzel,” says Jimmy. They laugh.

“You really think Diggy's going to do something to me?” asks Trevor.

“I know he's not letting you take his weight class without a fight.”

Trevor considers the possibilities: Diggy could throw a rock through his window, give his mother's car flats, set his house on fire, push him down the stairs at school. Endless scenarios, but none of them fit. Nothing except a face-to-face confrontation with Diggy on the wrestling mat seems probable.

Wrestle-off. Varsity spot. 152. Trevor doesn't have many alternatives. He can't wrestle at 170, he'd be slaughtered, and he can't beat Jimmy at 160. Dropping weight isn't an option. He has to beat Diggy.

“Diggy can be scary,” says Jimmy. “Nick taught him moves we've never seen before. And he's dirty. Everyone knows it.”

“That makes me feel a lot better,” says Trevor.

“But I think if you wrestle him off smart for one-fifty-two,” says Jimmy, “you could beat him.”

“What if he came after you, at one-sixty?”

“He won't.”

“But what if he did.”

“I wouldn't be looking forward to it, but I'd have to beat him.” Jimmy turns to the window. “This is my year. You know that.”

Trevor does know it. He's read about it in the newspapers. He's talked about it at the lunch table. Jimmy was undefeated last year in the regular season. His only loss was in Atlantic City at the New Jersey State Tournament. He placed third.

“Maybe this has been coming for a long time,” says Trevor. “I remember watching Diggy on the mat, and my father saying, ‘he's all
show
and no
go
.'”

Jimmy smiles. “My pops says Diggy spends more time running his mouth than running the track.”

“But he still wins,” says Trevor.

“Yeah, that's the part that sucks,” says Jimmy.

Over the past three seasons, Trevor studied Diggy's wrestling techniques, and his limitations. Diggy uses his lower body to topple his opponents, then he scrambles for points. Most of Diggy's matches are decided by a one- or two-point margin in the third period with Diggy watching the seconds on the clock tick down, trying to hold his lead. The bus approaches Trevor's stop.

“Later, bro,” says Jimmy.

They pound fists.

Harry London and Trevor's mother are waiting for him in the car with the engine running. “Hop in,” says London, like it's a happy occasion.

Trevor shuts his eyes, remembering he agreed to see the motel. “I'm dead,” he says. “Go ahead without me.”

“Honey, this is important to me and it should be to you,” his mother calls, lowering her window.

The deer's head is still sideways on the lawn with a black eye gazing into the sky. Trevor drops his bag on the cement walk and lifts the head onto the body. His father liked this deer, frozen as if it spotted a hunter. Trevor would have to find a way to fix it. There has to be some kind of epoxy for cement animals. He rolls the head behind the azalea bushes.

“Come on Trevor, it's getting pitch-black,” calls his mother.

Trevor gets in. Dammit!

Harry London pulls out. He takes his eyes off the road and looks at Trevor in the rearview mirror. “I know what you've been thinking,” he says. “House to a motel. What a comedown. But I've already dumped ten grand into the place and I've got another five to back that up.”

They drive on the truck route to the outskirts of town. They pass under the turnpike and follow a service road.

“No one lives around here,” says Trevor.

“Not yet,” says London, “but this town is growing.” He talks about some zoning change and his mother listens like it's interesting, like he's interesting.

Finally, London swings a left turn over double yellow lines and hits a driveway hard, bouncing into a parking lot. “Don't worry, this thing's a tank,” he says.

The motel is a one-story, open-ended rectangle with pea-green doors and a faded sign that reads
SECRET KEEPERS, AC, POOL, VACANCY
. London rolls in next to an old car with the hood lifted. An orange extension cord snakes from the engine into a motel room door.

“Whose car is that?” asks his mother.

“Oh, the battery is probably dead,” says London. “This isn't the Marriott.”

“It's not even Motel Six,” says Trevor.

London smiles. “And I'm not Donald Trump.”

His mother wears a blue dress and stockings with black shoes. She clutches a pearl-colored purse that Trevor hasn't seen in years. “Camille, that's the office where you'll work.” London looks toward a door marked “Office.”

A drape parts in a window and an old man peers out. “He's one of the permanents,” says London. “He's harmless.”

“I hope,” says Camille.

“That's the pool.” London points to a tarp weighted with bleach bottles and buckets of sand enclosed by a cyclone fence in front of the motel. The middle of the tarp sags under a brown puddle clotted with cans and fast-food containers. Someone swimming could wave to the traffic going by on the road. “Hasn't had much use. I'm not going to kid anyone,” he says.

“I'm sure it would be cute if it were fixed up,” says his mother.

Trevor, standing a foot behind London, makes googly eyes at his mother.
Hasn't had much use?
Are you kidding?

Under a tin awning, which shelters the room doors, London separates a key from dozens of others on a large ring attached to a belt loop on his jeans. He pushes a door in with his shoulder and flicks on a ceiling light. The smell of paint hangs in the air.

His mother enters on the toes of her shoes, as if the floor is swarming with mice. The room has a love seat and a double bed with a tan spread. Opposite the far window is an efficiency kitchen with a speckled Formica counter seared with gold burn marks from forgotten cigarettes. His mother leans over the counter and turns on the sink's faucet. Water trickles and spits. She shuts it off, then lights a burner on the stove. “Electric ignition,” says London.

Trevor wonders when he is going to wake and learn that this is a giant screwup. He can't be moving to this place, off a highway, with old men peeping from the windows.

“Camille, this is the bathroom.” London takes her hand. “It's been cleaned since you last saw it.”

The green enamel is worn off the tub. The toilet is missing a seat. “Don't worry, I'll make it cozy,” his mother whispers to Trevor.

“Beyond those doors is your own room,” says London with a smile.

“Go ahead,” his mother says quietly. She is also smiling.

“Right through that door,” says London.

Trevor opens the door and faces another door.

“Keep going,” says London.

He pushes the inner door open to the exact same room, the same couch, bed, and lamps.

“Go look,” says London urging him on.

Newspapers are scattered around the narrow space in front of the stove. Some are soaked with urine. A tan puppy races between his legs, then runs a circle around the room.

“He's half lab and half terrier,” says London.

“He's yours,” says Camille.

London catches the puppy and picks him up. “Look at this, look at the size of his paws. He's going to be a monster.” He hands him to Trevor.

The puppy is as firm as a punching bag. His coat is like rabbit's fur. “You didn't have to do this,” says Trevor.

London says something about every boy having a dog. Trevor follows them from his room into the courtyard with the puppy licking his cheek. Trevor knows he's just been bought off but feels something come alive inside him, some happiness he didn't know was there.

Late that night, the puppy is whining in the kitchen. Trevor finds his mother in her pajamas at the table with the puppy on her lap. Her eyes are red. She's been crying. He pulls a chair next to her and sits. “We're moving on Saturday,” she says.

Black bags for the Goodwill drop box are piled against the cabinets. Already their essentials—pots and pans, dishes, bedding, photo albums, clothes—are stacked in the living room.

Trevor takes the puppy from her.

“What are you going to name him?” she asks.

“Maybe Whizzer. It's a wrestling move Dad taught me. It's used to counter a single leg takedown.”

“Whizzer,” she smiles. “That's a good name for an untrained puppy.” She takes his hand. “I'm taking a chance on Harry London. He's a businessman, but he's not a bad man.”

“I don't want this messing with wrestling. I've got to make varsity.”

“Last year your father had to talk you into going to practice.”

“Because I was a loser.”

“No you weren't.”

“But I was, I am. Dad would look at me and his chin would wrinkle, and I knew what he was thinking: ‘Why is my son on the JV team? Who's this loser?'”

“Trevor, he never thought that. You have that in your head.”

“Did you know the JV matches are held in the freshmen gym? There aren't any bleachers in that gym, not even a scoreboard. Instead of a time clock, someone throws a rolled towel on the mats when the periods are over. Dad had to stand with the fathers whose sons couldn't make varsity. JV is for scrubs, and we were treated like scrubs.”

“You're father never complained.”

“He didn't have to, he'd just look at me.”

“He was proud of you. You're a good student.”

“But he wanted me to be a good wrestler,” says Trevor, his voice choked with disappointment. “A real wrestler.”

She puts her arms around him. “Then show him and I'll be there for you.” Whizzer licks Trevor's ear. “Who bought him?” he asks.

“I chose him because he looked like he needed love,” she says.

“London paid for him?”

“That doesn't matter.” She squeezes his thigh.

“Don't you see, London is getting into our lives. That's what this is all about. He likes you.”

“He's not as terrible as you make him sound.”

“I don't trust him.”

“I don't have anyone else to trust.”

Her words hurt. He wants to say,
You have me
. “Don't take anything else from him,” says Trevor. “What we get from here on, we earn.”

P
OPS RUMBLES UP IN HIS PICKUP AND BRAKES IN FRONT OF THE
gym steps. Jimmy, still sweaty from practice, opens the door and hops in. The cab reeks of beer and cigarettes. Elvis's “Blue Christmas” plays on the radio. “Made captain,” announces Jimmy.