Champion of the World (17 page)

His voice was a sweet baritone, a hint of book learning and good manners making it sound friendlier than it should have. He showed an easy grin, and when he finally looked Pepper in the eye, it was plain and unchallenging. The look you give a steward when you ask if he could bring your bags up from the lobby. Fritz turned to Pepper like he should say something.

Pepper chewed on his bottom lip, weighing different ways to play it. Finally he said: “What day is it today?”

Fritz patted the pockets of his pants like he might pull out his watch and then said it was Tuesday.

“Very good,” Pepper said. He clapped his hands and swept an arm out to the side like a theater usher, inviting Taft out onto the mat with Fitch. Prichard was still getting his breath back from his fall, towel hanging around his shoulders, watching.

As Taft shook out his arms and strolled onto the mat, he gave Pepper a look out the corner of his eyes, as if to let him know he understood he was being tested. Fitch came at him in a crouch and they'd barely touched hands before Taft went under him with a tackle so fast, it made Pepper smile to himself. Sprawling his legs backward, Taft walked a full circle around Fitch's prone body before shoving him away and letting him get back to his feet. It was a pure show-off move, and Fitch had barely gotten up before Taft swooped in and took him down again. This time he leveraged him onto his side, snared his arm in a hammerlock, and used it to roll him to his back. Fitch was helpless, kicking his feet in the air like a dog in its owner's arms. Taft pinned him and slapped his own hand on the mat.

“Fall,” he announced, voice booming in the rafters.

They stood once more and Taft called out for the Cumberland style. The two men began again with chests pressed together, chins resting on each other's shoulders. It seemed for a moment that Fitch might be able to overpower Taft, but Taft was just playing possum, letting the smaller man back him up before he suddenly twisted his hips for an easy throw. Fitch bounced completely off the mat and into the dirt, coming to rest near the same spot where Prichard had fallen off the rope. He was bleeding from one elbow but smiled and punched Taft lightly on the arm to tell him good job as they passed. Taft patted Fitch on the belly.

They went once more in the Irish style, starting from a collar and elbow. It lasted barely ten seconds before Taft simply whipped him off his feet. Both guys had a light sweat going, and as Fitch collected himself Taft put up a hand to call for a five-minute break. Fitch went back to the side of the garage where Prichard was up and stretching and Taft walked back to the bleachers, where he rested his elbows on his knees and sat dripping sweat into the dirt.

“What do you think?” Fritz said, a sly smile creeping across his wide face.

Pepper thought it was a joy to watch Taft move. There was a smoothness to everything he did, a glide in his step, a thoughtless grace in how he floated around the mat with the speed of a much smaller man. He was like an enormous greyhound, sleek and quick, albeit a few years past his prime. The spectator in him wanted nothing more than to sit and enjoy the show, yet in the same instant the wrestler in him was already cataloging Taft's weaknesses. He saw at once that his greatest strength was also his biggest fault: Things were too easy for him. In his effortlessness, Pepper saw holes. Taft misplaced his feet on certain throws, leaving himself open for easy counters, his moves unguarded, as if he was so sure of his own success that he didn't see the point in being cautious.

“I think Lesko will wipe the floor with him,” Pepper said, and watched Fritz's smile falter a bit. “Let's see how he does here.”

This time Taft worked against Prichard, who was bigger, younger and more mobile than Fitch. They ran a few drills first, moving through tackles and defensive positions at half speed, going light. Then Taft called out for the catch-as-catch-can style and the intensity picked up. Prichard came out of his corner aggressively during their first go, backing Taft up against the edge of the mat. The bigger man went with it, letting the momentum build until he suddenly dropped into a fireman's carry, tossing Prichard over his shoulders like a farm boy bucking bales. As soon as he hit the ground, Prichard tried to scramble to his feet, but Taft threw himself with surprising elegance across his opponent's back.

Prichard's hands went to his throat as Taft roped a massive arm around it in search of a stranglehold, a sly smile creeping across his face. They started hand fighting, huffing and puffing, and at first it looked like it would be only a matter of time before Prichard conceded. He was a veteran, though, and didn't panic, finally making some space for himself to breathe. All at once he sat out and hit a switch, kicking his hips out of Taft's grasp and stepping around to
reverse the position. The move elicited a whoop of excitement from Fitch, who was sitting cross-legged just off the edge of the mat.

Pepper could see from the pained looked in Taft's eyes and the grunting sounds coming from both men that, maybe for the first time all morning, he was in trouble. Though he now found himself in a defensive position, Taft was still too strong to allow Prichard to get his arm around his neck.

All at once, Prichard seemed to give up on the idea of a choke, ducking low to seize one of Taft's ankles. Taft grunted in surprise but couldn't pull his leg free as Prichard tried to use the hold to turn him over to his back. Prichard went for a toehold, the kind of move that could easily tear a knee or coil up an ankle if done in real competition. Usually the man stuck in it had no choice but to save himself by conceding, or offering up an easy pin. Prichard almost had the lock closed and Pepper could see Taft grimacing in pain as he fought against it. Fritz had opened his mouth as though he might say something, when suddenly Taft flipped himself into a kind of belly-down somersault and wrenched his foot free.

It was a beautiful escape and before they knew it, Taft had completely swallowed one of Prichard's legs, wrapping his arms around the calf and folding his legs around a thigh. For a moment Taft was upside down, but the force of the move sent Prichard toppling to the mat. He was done and knew it, unable to free the leg against the force of Taft's body. Putting Prichard's ankle under his armpit, Taft barred his knee in a way that would hyperextend it if Prichard didn't quit. He cried out and then slapped the mat to concede, his face showing the pain and frustration.

Taft turned him loose and they both rolled to their knees, facing opposite directions, their chests heaving and eyes blinking. Fitch clapped once in appreciation. It was a good round. Pepper sat back, pressing his back against the side of the garage, realizing he was sweating.

“That's it,” Taft said, waving one hand dismissively. “I'm done for today.”

They hadn't been at it much longer than an hour. Pepper looked up but couldn't catch Fritz's eye as he crossed the room to where Fitch and Prichard were toweling off, collecting their belongings as if this were the normal state of things. Fritz clapped both men on the back, chattering to them as he began peeling bills off a roll of cash he'd pulled from his pocket. Taft stayed on his knees for a bit longer, then slowly hoisted himself upright. He tipped his head back, eyes closed, and paced a circle around the mat before turning toward the bleachers. From the look of him, you'd think he'd just returned from the war. Pepper snorted and was about to say something about what a meager practice it had been when Taft stumbled and his legs gave out. He put out a hand as if to catch himself, but his knees buckled and he crashed down onto the floor of the garage.

“Christ,” said Fritz, dropping his bankroll on the ground as he raced over.

Pepper got there at the same moment and together they rolled Taft onto his back, like turning a great log. He flopped over, his eyes shut, one half of his face sticky with blood and dirt. Fritz brushed at it with a handkerchief and tried to bring Taft around with a few light slaps on the cheek.

“It must be exhaustion,” Fritz said, pressing the cloth to a cut under Taft's chin.

“It goddamn well better not be,” Pepper said, pulling the man's impossibly long legs out from his body and hoisting them up to try to force the blood back toward his head.

Pepper asked if there were any smelling salts and Fritz just shrugged helplessly. Prichard and Fitch loomed over them, murmuring to each other until Pepper yelled at them to give him air. As they stepped back Taft stirred, his eyes fluttering open as if waking from a nightmare, one hand coming up to his face, smearing the blood.

“What happened?” he asked, voice thick.

“You swooned, beautiful,” Pepper said. “Fainted dead away.”

Taft yanked his feet free and stood, shaking his head from side to side to clear the cobwebs.

“Easy,” Fritz said. “Easy. Not too fast.”

Taft ignored him, patting his face with a towel before draping it across his shoulders. He turned, realizing they were all still staring at him, and a menacing look flickered across his face.

“I didn't eat breakfast,” he said. “That's all.”

He folded his heavy coat over one arm in a way that reminded Pepper of a man returning from the opera. It was slow going, still a little unsteady on his feet, but he spun on a heel and walked out of the garage, his head high and his shoulders back, disappearing into the shaft of bright sunlight that filled the doorway.

T
he big orange tomcat sat on the porch while Moira split wood. The axe she found buried in a stump behind the cabin was rusted but sharp, so she went along slow and careful as she chopped a few logs into kindling, trying not to imagine the sorts of infections she might get if she cut herself. When she had enough to fill the little box beside the stove, she walked up to pump water from the well, filled a glass for herself, and put a little saucer down for the cat.

“Here's to pioneer days,” she said as they both drank. It had been hard work and the water tasted icy and sweet.

She left the front door open while she lit a fire and filled a cast-iron teakettle with the rest of the water. When it boiled, the shriek from the kettle sent the cat racing off across the road and back into the woods. Moira brewed a batch of tea from a jar of loose leaf she found above the sink and carried it across the lawn on a wooden tray with two cups and a sugar dish, a spoon but no sugar.

Fritz's hired girl answered the door to the lodge in a yellowing dress, telling her to wait while she fetched Mrs. Taft. Moira set the tray on the porch's small sun table. From the amount of time she had to stand there, she knew Mrs. Taft was still asleep.

When the woman of the house finally appeared, it was with the special flare common among show people, sweeping onto the porch
with a slight curtsy while holding a pinch of her dress away from her legs. In the light of day and free of makeup, Carol Jean Taft was pale and freckled and wore her wild tangle of hair pulled back from her face with a simple gold ribbon.

“I was afraid we all got off on the wrong foot at dinner last night,” Moira said as they sat. She pointed to the tea, saying she'd have to borrow some sugar.

Carol Jean took the top off the teapot and looked inside before telling the hired girl to bring out a pot of coffee and a plate of cookies. “Sugar, too,” she said, giving Moira a quick wink. “Or something stiffer, if that's more your speed.”

“A bit early for me yet,” Moira said, putting a mental checkmark in Carol Jean's column for the ease with which she'd parried her meager peace offering. It told her this woman was a more capable and observant player than she'd seemed at the dinner table.

“It's the one upside of this god-awful place,” Carol Jean said, crossing her legs with an extravagant little kick. “We're too far away from anywhere for anyone to care what we do or what we drink.”

“The police were here, though,” Moira said. “Yesterday when we arrived they had a look around.”

“The two buffoons in the car?” Carol Jean said. “I'm certain Mr. Mundt and Mr. Eddy can keep a lid on them.”

The hired girl, whom Carol Jean introduced as Eleanor, brought a tray with coffee, cookies, and a smaller version of the glass whiskey snifter Fritz had in his office. Moira guessed the girl and Carol Jean were friends, and made a point of smiling at her and touching her lightly on the elbow as she thanked her.

“Yes, Mr. Eddy,” Moira said as Carol Jean poured coffee and then added slugs of whiskey and spoonfuls of sugar. “What sort of character is he, do you suppose?”

“A peculiar little fellow,” Carol Jean said. “But I don't pay him any mind.”

“What do you think?” Moira asked the hired girl as she cleared the tea things off the table.

The hired girl blushed, looking like she was embarrassed to say, but was emboldened when Carol Jean gave her a small, encouraging nod. “I think he's a troublesome man,” she said, the bitterness surprising Moira a bit. “Always looking over my shoulder, telling me I haven't scrubbed the dishes well enough or I missed a spot on the dining room floor. I've never seen a man as interested in cooking and cleaning as that one.”

Moira smiled at her again, and as the hired girl drifted back into the house, Carol Jean offered a toast.

“Aren't we a couple of hot toddies?” she said. “If there were any gentlemen to pass by, I'm sure we'd turn their heads.”

They touched mugs, and Moira studied her as they took their first sips of coffee—strong and hot and really a lot better than anything she might've lugged up from the cabin. From the practiced way she sat with an elbow resting on one knee, holding her mug in the air in front of her, Moira guessed Carol Jean had either been a singer or an actress once. She was beautiful, and there was something desperate in her eyes that made it hard not to look at her.

“You were saying?” Carol Jean said. “About dinner?”

“That my husband and I have only just arrived,” Moira said. “I wanted to assure you we don't mean to cause any trouble.”

Carol Jean smiled at that. “Sure you do, honey,” she said. “Every person Garfield and I ever met meant us some kind of trouble.”

“What I meant to say is, we're still getting the lay of things and I hope Pepper's enthusiasm about training with Mr. Taft didn't put you off.”

“It was nothing,” Carol Jean said. “At this point it takes more than one little man with poor table manners to get past our defenses.”

Moira didn't let the insult register on her face. Walking up from the cabin, she'd gambled that if anyone knew what was really going
on in this place and would talk about it, it was this woman. Now she made Carol Jean for what her father would've called a runner: a person who had a story to tell and came to the gaming table with the express interest of telling it. Maybe they'd had too much to drink, or the game put them on edge. Maybe they were just lonely. It didn't matter. The only thing to know about a runner, Moira's father said, was to let them run.

“I was hoping you could help me find my depth,” Moira said. “You know, woman to woman.”

“Oh, honey,” Carol Jean said. “I think you'll find that out here even the deep end of the pool isn't terribly deep.”

“Meaning what?”

Carol Jean sighed as if already growing tired of her. “When I met Garfield Taft,” she said, “I was working as a taxi dancer at the Olympia Ballroom in Cincinnati. My first day on the job I showed up and discovered there wasn't a single dress in the storeroom that would fit me. All the other girls were just these flea-bitten little things, you see. One of the girls brought me up to see the owner, Mr. Herman Cohn, this Jew who'd been in the business heaven knows how long, and he looks at me, kind of squinting, you see, and tells me: ‘Come back when you lose fifteen pounds.'”

She refilled her coffee and Moira gave her an encouraging nod. “Well,” Carol Jean said. “Me, I'm all of twenty-one, twenty-two years old at the time. I guess I had a pretty high opinion of myself, the way young girls have, and going home and losing fifteen pounds wasn't on my to-do list. I needed money right away, you see. So instead I just walked out of that office, straight down the stairs, and out onto the dance floor and started working. Started working in whatever old thing I had on at the time. At first it was slow and I was nervous, of course, but soon I learned a very strange thing. Those men out there on that dance floor? They loved me. I was the only
redhead working in the place, for starters, and the only girl with any meat on her bones. That first night they danced me until I thought my feet would wear down to the ankles. Five hours, no breaks, and when it was over, why, I marched back up to Mr. Cohn's office and dropped a purse full of dance tickets on his desk and said, ‘Should I take all these with me when I go home to lose that fifteen pounds? Or should I take them up the street to the Barbary Coast and try my luck there?' I tell you, that little bastard's eyes just about popped through the panes of his spectacles. Right then and there he gave me all the hours I could ever want. More hours than one girl could ever dance in her lifetime. And the moral of the story is, four months later? They were tailoring dresses for
me
, not the other way around.”

“I see,” Moira said, though she didn't at all. “And the Olympia was where you met Mr. Taft?”

“Mr. Taft?” Carol Jean said. “Six months later Garfield Taft pulled up to the Olympia with his Rolls-Royce and his fur coat and his pocket full of hundred-dollar bills and I never danced another night in my life. Meeting Mr. Taft's not the point of the story, honey. The point of the story is this place. Fritz Mundt's little business venture? This training camp? You, me, your husband and all the others? We're just window dressing. This place is all about my Garfield. He's the big-titty redhead everybody wants a piece of, and that, in terms of finding your depth, is all you really need to know.”

They sat for a moment watching the grass ripple in the breeze. On the opposite side of the clearing, a deer picked its way through the trees on dainty hooves. Halfway across it stopped and looked at them, big ears standing out like gramophone horns. Then, without them moving or saying a word, it turned and bounded into the woods.

“Now,” Carol Jean said, “why don't you ask what you really came to ask?”

“I wasn't aware I had ulterior motives.”

“You want to know what it's like,” she said.

Moira said she didn't follow, and Carol Jean rolled her eyes. “Being married to a Negro?” she said. “Being, what would they call it? In his thrall? Please, honey. I've been around the block enough times to understand the first things other girls want to hear from me.”

“Is that so?” Thinking:
Let her run.

“In a lot of ways I expect it's no different than being married to any of them,” Carol Jean said. She waved a hand to indicate the men in the garage. “They're all still children, really, but I don't have to tell you that. The boys, they all call each other, which is just the funniest thing when you think about it.”

“They have their moments,” Moira said.

She blushed a bit when she said it, thinking of Pepper, but Carol Jean cut her a glance that said she'd taken it a different way. “Believe me, honey, you wouldn't want the trouble,” she said. “People say the most awful things. Everyone assumes I must be some kind of sex fiend, but it's not like that at all. Maybe at first. But to stick it out through the things we've endured, him and I? It's more than just the way we are in the bedroom. No, I love Garfield Taft because he's a wonderful man. A wonderful, sweet man who's already shouldered more than any one person should be expected to bear. At this point, I can't imagine anything that could pull us apart.”

“I heard you had trouble in Chicago.”

“Oh?” Carol Jean said. “I quite enjoy the big city, myself. I'm sort of a metropolitan girl, I suppose. But then one day Fritz Mundt calls up and says, ‘Go west, young man.' Not exactly my idea of a fun vacation, but I'd live in an igloo in Antarctica if that's what it took to be with my husband.”

“You seem very happy,” Moira said, even though it wasn't true.

“I'd better be,” Carol Jean said. “I gave up everything I had for that man.”

“Do you think they'll let him win?” Moira said. “If Fritz lands a
match with Strangler Lesko, do you believe they'll really give Mr. Taft a fair shake?”

“Mr. Mundt says so,” Carol Jean said, “and Garfield believes him.”

“Do you?” Moira said.

“I'll tell you a secret,” Carol Jean said, though she made no effort to lower her voice. “Despite what your husband might think, my Garfield will tear this man Lesko limb from limb if they let them in the same wrestling ring. Once he's heavyweight champion, well, we'll just sit back and let the world come to us.”

There was something hollow about her words, and Moira realized they sounded very much like what she'd been telling herself the past five years while they were trouping around the country with Boyd Markham's carnival. Now hearing them from the opposite side of the conversation, she realized how foolish they sounded.

“I admire your confidence,” she said, before her mind could wander too far down that path. “If there's one thing Pepper knows, though, it's wrestling. As nothing more than an interested observer, my advice would be that Mr. Taft heeds what he has to say. There could be no harm in it.”

Carol Jean gave her another icy glance. “We're lucky, then,” she said, “that nobody asked for your advice.”

Moira set her coffee cup down and was about to say her good-byes when Garfield Taft emerged from the darkness of the garage a couple hundred yards up the hill. He walked unsteadily, wearing wrestling trunks and carrying a jacket under his arm, making his way down the hill and across the grass toward them. He was stoop-shouldered and stiff-legged, his head bowed as if he'd just suffered a great hardship. When he got close enough, they saw that someone had done a poor job wiping a mess of blood and dirt off his face. Carol Jean dropped her cup on the table and ran out to meet him. Moira stood up, watching as Carol Jean fit herself underneath Taft's
arm and brought him up the steps. His eyes were bloodshot and his teeth clenched against the effort, but when they got to the top, he turned his head and nodded to Moira.