Split Decision (3 page)
C
ody studied Pork Chop as he settled himself underneath the 230 pounds he had loaded on the bench press. Since grade school, Chop had always been the biggest guy in their class. The previous sports year, at 190-plus pounds, he was one intimidating eighth grader. Sure, there had been a few 200-plus pounders among Grant Middle School’s opponents, but they were all the same—baby-faced and pear-shaped, with loose bellies that spilled over the waistbands of their football pants or basketball shorts. Sloping shoulders and arms that lacked muscle mass and definition. In wrestling, when Chop squared off with one of the doughboys, as he called them, the match rarely lasted past the first period. He would stalk his opponent, snap him to the mat with a head-and-arm throw, then squeeze tightly and wait for the referee to slap the mat, signaling a pin.
Occasionally, Chop would use the more risky fireman’s carry as his takedown, just to show he could execute the difficult maneuver—shooting in low on an opponent, then bearing all that soft weight before depositing it on the mat with a resounding thud.
Chop had always carried a bit of extra gut himself. He called it his “table muscle,” often while patting or stroking it like a pet. But, underneath the extra weight, he was solid. He had to be pushing 220 pounds now, Cody surmised, and there wasn’t much baby fat to him at all. That table muscle was the
only
shrinking part of Deke “Pork Chop” Porter.
His biceps were so massive and defined that it looked like he was smuggling grapefruits under his caramel skin. And the triceps muscles, on the back of his upper arms, were beginning to take on the coveted horseshoe shape.
On this particular Monday, Chop was sporting one of the tight T-shirts he now favored—the kind that fit so snugly that it seemed one good sneeze would rupture the fabric, in Incredible Hulk-like fashion.
Cody bit his lower lip as his friend strained against the weight on his fourth rep. “You got it, big man,” he said, hoping Chop wouldn’t hear the doubt in his voice. Cody sighed audibly when Chop locked his elbows, then let the weight-laden barbell clang onto the rack that stood at a 90-degree angle above the bench.
I’m so glad that’s over
, Cody thought.
I can’t believe Chop asked me to spot him on this kinda weight! I couldn’t lift all that poundage off his chest if he got stuck. All I could do would be to run for help and hope I could find it before Chop’s ribs got crushed!
“Thanks for the spot, dawg,” Chop said with a gasp, as he rose to a sitting position. “I was a little shaky on that last rep. Did you see my left arm quivering, like one of those Chihuahua dogs?”
Cody stared admiringly at his friend’s back, which was morphing into the classic V shape promised by the various exercise machines on TV and in magazines. Chop had worked hard for the muscles. Few athletes spent as much time in the weight room as he did, but Cody couldn’t help wondering if something in addition to hard work was at play. He recalled the times he had seen his friend nearly tuck himself completely into his gym locker while he applied a cream from an unmarked tube to his arms, shoulders, and chest.
Further, ever since football season, Cody had been wondering if the homemade “protein shakes” Chop gulped from a black plastic bottle before and after practices contained something more than protein.
“I’m worried about Chop,” Cody had told Blake Randall, his youth pastor, just days ago, after watching Chop and the Eagles’ varsity basketball team lose their second-to-last regular season game. “I mean, he’s only a high school freshman and already he looks like Schwarzenegger.”
“Maybe his body is just maturing early,” Blake had offered. “I mean, Chop takes his sports seriously. And he is Doug Porter’s half-brother—and Doug Porter is a beast. Besides, Chop is smart; he wouldn’t put his body at risk like that, would he?”
Cody exhaled slowly through his teeth. “I don’t know, B. I don’t think he’s worrying about the risks. I think he’d do just about anything to get bigger and stronger. He’s always slapping his biceps, saying, ‘Look at these guns, dawg. Am I all swole, or what?’ The less soft he gets, the more proud he gets.”
“Well, you’re his best friend; doesn’t that give you the right to ask him what’s up?”
Cody had let his head tilt backward. He stared at the stained white acoustic ceiling tiles of Blake’s office. “I’m afraid how he’ll react. I don’t want him to get mad at me.”
Blake responded with a frown.
“What’s with the constipated face?” Cody had asked. “You don’t think Chop would get mad at me? Then you don’t know Chop. Especially how he is this year. His fuse is so short that it’s like he has no fuse at all!”
“I think,” Blake replied curtly, “that you’re thinking about yourself and what you want. How about thinking about your best friend—and what he
needs
?”
Cody had a protest all locked and loaded, but Blake’s cell phone went off, and he gave Cody that look—the one that meant, “I gotta take this call. It’s my girlfriend.”
“Where you at, dawg?” Chop asked with a laugh, pulling Cody from his recollection.
“What do you mean? I’m right here. Ready to spot you again.”
“I mean where are you at in your
head
? What’s going on under that sorry ten-dollar haircut?”
Cody crossed his arms. “First of all, I didn’t pay anything for this haircut. Beth gave it to me.”
Chop smiled, as if someone had just handed him a one hundred dollar bill. “Your new momma did that to ya—what did you do to her to deserve
that
?”
“Chop, I told you—it bugs me when you call Beth my new momma. Same thing with ‘backup momma.’ Most everything you say is funny, but that stuff’s not funny.”
Chop chuckled as he settled himself under the weight again. “Okay, dawg,” he said, “time to stop critiquing my humor and start spotting again. Gotta get big and strong so I can have a monster spring!”
Cody positioned himself at the head of the bench again, watching in awe as Chop methodically pumped out five repetitions. His left arm quivered again, on the sixth rep, and Cody felt another rush of panic.
Don’t falter, big man. Please don’t falter!
He tried to will the words into Chop’s muscles.
Chop didn’t falter. With a gorilla-like grunt, he powered the weight up, locking both elbows before clanging the barbell back to the rack.
“All right then,” Chop said. “Now I’m good and warmed up to go do some conditioning with ATV—if and when he shows up. Thanks again for the spot, Code.”
“No problem,” Cody said, trying to sound casual.
Spotting,
he chuckled to himself
. If you call “looking on in terror” spotting, then I guess that’s what I was doing
.
“Hey, Co,” Chop said, glancing at his watch, “we still got a few minutes before conditioning’s supposed to start. Let’s go chill on the wrestling mats for a while. Have some calm before the storm—you feelin’ what I’m sayin’?”
“Good idea,” Cody answered. “Watching you lift about a thousand pounds worth of weights really tired me out.”
Cody and Pork Chop exited the Grant High weight room and entered the adjacent wrestling practice room, which was carpeted wall-to-wall with thick, deep blue mats.
Alston was still stretched out in the center of the room, where they had left him twenty minutes ago. Cody and Chop plopped down on either side of him, stretching themselves out on the cool, soft surface.
Several minutes of silence passed before someone finally spoke.
“It’s a shame you’re moving away this summer, Chop,” Alston said lazily, as if it were almost too much effort to breathe. “I was hoping that someday we’d go—we’d find out who’s really the baddest man in our grade.”
Chop stifled a yawn. “Yeah,” he said, “a cryin’ shame.”
Cody tried to think of something to say, something to fill the uneasy silence. He could feel the tension, which had cooled since the previous summer and the near-rumble in the city park, starting to reheat.
Chop sat up and worked his thick neck in a slow circle. “Of course,” he said, “there’s never really been any doubt, has there, TA? I mean, whatever chance you might have had against me ended about twenty pounds of muscle ago.” For emphasis, Chop finished his sentence by gazing affectionately at his right bicep.
Alston popped to his feet, his eyes no longer sleepy and half-closed. “You’re forgettin’ about my speed, big man. You know the saying, don’t you—speed kills.” He began to shadowbox for demonstration, finishing with a De La Hoya-style flurry of rapid-fire uppercuts.
Chop smiled and stood, arms extended at his sides, as if inviting Alston to hug him. “Well, come on with it,
Speedy
.”
Cody rose and grabbed his friend’s lamppost of a right arm. “Come on, Chop,” he said disgustedly. “It’s time to head to the track. We don’t need to wait for ATV. And, besides, you guys, how about some peace between classmates, between teammates, huh?”
“I didn’t start this,” Chop said, giving token resistance to Cody’s efforts to pull him out of the wrestling room.
“Hey, I was just making conversation,” Alston countered. “I didn’t mean to get under the big man’s skin. Didn’t realize he was so insecure.”
Chop shook off Cody like he was shedding a jacket—a light jacket. “I got your ‘insecure’ right here, Blondie!” he snapped. “And don’t you mean ‘the big man’s
black
skin?’”
Cody regained his balance and circled in front of Chop, planting himself like a tree in his path.
“What are you smiling about, Code?” Chop asked sarcastically. “It’s on,
finally
. And there’s nothing anybody’s gonna do to stop it. It’s too late for you to do anything, even pray.”
Cody returned his friend’s sad smile. “I already prayed, Chop. And I don’t have to do anything, because I just saw ATV walk by outside, heading this way. Coming to fetch us, no doubt. So unless you want to try to go through
him
—”
Cody saw his friend’s face fall like a soufflé. Chop probably outweighed Gordon “ATV” Daniels by now, but the fullback/first baseman had recently bench-pressed 355 pounds, a new school record. And the previous weekend, in a pickup baseball game, he had hit a screamer of a line drive right back at the pitcher, striking him high on the forehead and knocking him cold.
There wasn’t a sane person at Grant High School who would tangle with ATV—and even the
insane
people would probably know better. Cody surmised that Brendan Clark, the football team’s all-state linebacker, wouldn’t back down from ATV, but Clark wasn’t likely to fight anyone unless that “anyone” was trying to attack his mom or something.
ATV was in the wrestling room doorway now, squinting his eyes. “Martin, Alston, Porter—you guys want to put in some work today or what?” he said, his voice gravelly with morning rasp. “Practices start in about a week. Martin, you and Alston should run with Ward and Clark; I think they’re gonna do about three miles, circling the park. And, Chop, you can run some wind-sprints with me and some of the other hosses. We’re gonna run the bleachers too. Build that power.”
“We’re right behind you,” Cody chirped, gesturing to Alston to precede him out of the room. “Have a good one, Chop,” he said. “Get your speed on.”
“Yeah, tear it up out there,” Alston echoed. His voice almost sounded sincere.
But, just before Cody exited the room, he heard Alston mutter to Chop, “To be continued.”
C
ody watched the scene in the science hall after school—and marveled at how such a petite person like Jessica Adams could destroy a brute like Pork Chop. He watched Jessica, her face contorted, her broomstick arms occasionally flying out from her body, palms upturned. Chop faced her as she talked to him, his arms folded defiantly across his chest, his head shaking slightly from side to side.
Presently, Jessica stopped talking and reached out, touching Pork Chop tentatively on his elbow. He pulled away, as if Jessica had shocked him.
In a way
, Cody thought,
Jessica probably
has
shocked him
.
Cody recalled how, just a week previously, Robyn Hart had told him that Jessica was thinking of severing her month-long relationship with Pork Chop. At the time, he figured Jessica was just blowing smoke, just trying to create a little drama. After all, who would break up with the most popular student, and the most imposing athlete, in the freshman class?