One Shot Away (4 page)

“In seven days you've got to be one-fifty-two,” says Greco. “If you want me to run you from here to Lake Lakookie, then I'll run you from here to Lake Lakookie.”

“Where's Lake Lakookie?”

“It's where you'll be running to.” Greco hits his fingers against Diggy's chest.

“That's assault on a student.” Diggy continues smiling. “Gino,” he calls, “be my witness. I need a witness.”

“You're going to need an ambulance if you keep it up.” Greco sounds his whistle. “And Diggy, I'll get the team on the same page. You get yourself into your weight class.” Greco blows his whistle again. “Braces!”

The wrestlers flip to their backs and arch their torsos into the air, supported by their heads and feet. Diggy has to show Greco that he's going to be the 152 starter. Hands folded across his stomach, he rocks forward and back, side to side, stretching his neck. He tries to tell himself that getting back to wrestling isn't so bad.
At least I'm not listening to Randy freak about me playing video games, but God, when is the warm-up going to be over?

Next Greco calls, “Spin review!” Bones gets on all fours. Diggy lays facedown across Bones's back. Greco's whistle sounds and Diggy spins on Bone's back like a helicopter blade. Diggy goes around, pushing off his toes, spinning his body like a human gyroscope. He tries to do the drill especially quick and hopes that Greco is watching.

“Reverse!” Greco blasts his whistle.

Diggy spins the other way. Around and around he goes, until the gym is a blur and the wrestlers are blots of color. “Switch positions!” Now Bones gets top. Diggy concentrates, trying to imagine his back flat and hard as a diving board. He feels Bones's hands, his 182 pounds pressing. Diggy remains rigid. Wrestlers are collapsing around him.

“Come on, you slugs, this is the first day. Impress me,” calls Greco.

Diggy's soaked to his socks. Bones's braids are plastered to his forehead. The gym is a steam room. Mats are spotted and smeared with sweat.

“Partners!” shouts Greco. “Find a partner. Come on slackers, let's move. Remember, you guys are always one shot away from a pin, one shot away. I WANT TO HEAR IT!”

“One shot away,” they yell.

Diggy pairs off with Bones. The practice continues with hand-fighting, then duck-unders and sweeps. “You check out the size of Trevor's arms?” asks Bones.

Diggy doesn't have to look. His arms are ridiculous.

When the drills are done, everyone drops to one knee around Greco. Diggy checks the clock. Only an hour in with at least an hour to go.

“Guys, in case you haven't heard, you can forget the weight classes you had last season. This season starts the new classifications. Where's Gino?”

Little Gino raises his hand.

“You were one-o-three last year, this year you're in the one-o-six weight class. So tonight you can go home and have an extra chicken breast.” Everyone laughs. “The only weight classes that weren't changed were the three middle ones, one-forty-five, one-fifty-two, and one-sixty, and the heavyweight at two-eighty-five. So, Salaam, Diggy, and Jimmy, you guys can keep doing what you've been doing. The rest of you, learn your new weight class. I posted them in the locker room. You got it?”

A few guys say, “We got it.”

“What? I didn't hear you!”

“We got it!” they roar.

“And another thing—this year, on the line is in-bounds. So you guys have more room to wrestle. Got it?”

“Got it!”

“Good. Now today, we're going to work on penetration,” says Greco.

“Worked on it last night,” says Bones with a grin.

Everyone laughs.

Greco ignores him. “Let's get a definition of penetration.”

The gym is quiet.

“You mean the kind at wrestling?” cracks Bones.

More chuckles. Even Greco's smiling.

“That's easy,” says Jimmy. “It's when you get in close enough to a wrestler to take a guy down.”

Greco pats Jimmy's crew cut. “Right, forward motion through your opponent, directed at his hips, will result in penetration. Good penetration will put you completely past your opponent before he can react.” Greco looks into the faces of the wrestlers. “I need a victim.”

Trevor Crow raises his hand.

“Trevor,” says Greco. “Up here for a demo.”

Diggy mouths the words “Kiss-ass.”

Trevor takes a ready position and pushes his hair from his eyes. The only wrestler with hair past his shoulders. The only Indian not from India in the school. In an instant, Greco, in his chinos and Minute Men shirt, shoots in and is holding one of Trevor's legs in the air. “The trick is to anticipate where your opponent is going to be and then shoot in that direction,” says Greco.

They pair off for live wrestling. Greco sticks Diggy with Trevor Crow. Diggy knows that Trevor would rather be wrestling anyone else. Not that Diggy could give a fat fart. Last year, Trevor was cut from the varsity squad. So Trevor has no right to pick and choose anyone or anything. Trevor was an eleventh grader on the JV team, which equals total humiliation, no varsity letter, no jacket, and no girls.

Diggy shoots in and slams his shoulder against Trevor's knee.

“Hey, watch it,” says Trevor. “I wasn't ready.”

“Why don't you cut your hair or wear a hair net?” Diggy doesn't wait for a response. He shoots for Trevor's legs and wonders how Trevor got so big over the summer.

Trevor holds him off. Diggy falls forward on his hands and knees.

“Hey Tonto, how much do you weigh?” Diggy wants to tick him off. Guys make mistakes when they get angry.

“One-fifty-one.” Trevor wipes his forehead with his palm.

Diggy stares across the wrestling room at the Wall of Champions. “You realize I'm wrestling one-fifty-two,” he says. “You got that, Chief?”

Trevor holds his ground and swallows. “I told you about that. You call me that again, I'll report you.”

“To who?”

“To Coach Greco.”

Diggy sighs. “Look, Trevor, the team can't have two guys at one-fifty-two. Only one can start. I'm not splitting the weight class with you.”

“I know how it works.” Trevor winces and glances toward the clock. “Let's wrestle.”

“Why don't you start eating and go all the way to one-seventy?” Greco sounds the whistle. The wrestlers begin to grapple. “Answer me, or are you too stupid to understand?” Diggy gets right into Trevor's ugly mug. “I own one-fifty-two,” he says. “So you might as well go home and eat a frickin' buffalo, because you're not taking my spot.” Trevor takes a step back. Without warning, Diggy springs forward and into Trevor's knees, knocking him over. Trevor's head thumps the padded wall.

Trevor rubs his head. “What's with you?” he asks. “You keep it up and I'll—”

“You'll what?” asks Diggy. “Shoot me with a bow and arrow?”

“Diggy, cut the crap, okay?”

Diggy is not stepping aside for Trevor. He will do what he has to do. Last year he finished with 18 wins, 6 losses. His wins weren't masterpieces like Nick's, but they were wins. He smacked his opponents' faces, ears, throats. In a clutch, he used a choke hold, which was virtually undetectable. He dug his chin into back muscles, until his opponents squirmed with pain. And more than once, in desperation, he popped his knee into a guy's balls. He received cautions from referees. Greco constantly warned him to cool it. But, when Diggy put up a “W,” all seemed to be forgotten and forgiven. “Any way you win is the right way to wrestle,” said Randy. “A win is a win.”

Diggy slaps his hands against his thighs and shoots forward with his arms extended. Trevor pushes Diggy's head down. Diggy feels an impact, a solid collision. His head springs back as his face absorbs the full force of Trevor's knee coming forward. Blood erupts from Diggy's mouth like someone turned on a faucet. He drops to his knees and covers his mouth with his hand. The blood seeps between his fingers.

Someone throws him a towel. A large blot of bright red seeps through.

“Bend your head back.” Coach Greco tips Diggy's chin up. “Let me take a look at it.” Greco pulls his bottom lip down. “Going to need stitches,” he says.

His mother's black Land Rover speeds into the parking lot and brakes in front of the gym steps. Diggy's Mustang is parked nearby, but Greco won't let Diggy drive to the hospital. The Land Rover's tinted passenger window opens.

“I'm afraid we've had a little accident,” says Greco.

“We?” Diggy speaks through an icepack. “You mean me.”

“Stop with the wise mouth,” says Greco, “or you'll be bleeding out the other side.”

Beverly leans to the passenger window. “Stitches?”

“I'm afraid so,” says Greco.

Diggy slips into the large front bucket seat. “Trevor Crow,” he says to his mother. “He's dead.”

“Don't say things like that,” says Beverly.

“Trevor wouldn't hurt anyone on purpose,” says Greco. “He's a good kid. This was definitely an accident.”

Diggy rests his head against the cool leather. The car smells of hairspray from Beverly's beauty salon.

“Thank you, Coach.” Beverly leans across Diggy toward the window. “I'll go get him patched up.” She pulls off.

His mother drives with her palms on the steering wheel. Her painted fingernails shine like miniature shells. She taps out a cigarette with one hand. “Was this a fight?”

“You heard the coach; it was practice, an
accident
.”

“Well, I'm sure, knowing you and your track record—”

“I was going in for a shot and Crow clobbered me with his knee.”

“Purposely?”

Diggy removes the ice pack. Maybe he shouldn't have called him Tonto. Everyone called him that in the sixth grade, especially after Trevor approached the guys one day and told them that “Tonto” isn't a Native American word. “In Spanish it means stupid,” he said. “So there's no reason to call me that.” Everyone just laughed harder.

“He's in my weight class,” says Diggy to his mother.

“One-fifty-two?”

“Yes, what other weight class am I in?”

“You will beat him?”

“Of course I'll beat him. He never even wrestled varsity.” Diggy works his tongue into the gash on his bottom lip. It's the freakin' Grand Canyon. “Last year, he was a scrub. He must have taken steroids or something.”

“Honey, you have to remember who you are. You're Diggy Masters and—”

“Don't start quoting Randy,” he says, cutting her off.

D
IGGY SPEEDS DOWN THE BLOCK, THEN SLOWS HIS
M
USTANG IN
front of Trevor Crow's house. A single electric candle glows in the front window. Bones is riding shotgun. Little Gino's in the back, hanging his head between the front bucket seats.

“What're we doing here, yo?” asks Bones.

Even with the car's heat blowing, Diggy feels cold. His lip throbs. “Get this,” he says. “I'm getting stitches, my lip is yanked to my dick, and my mom hands me her phone. You know what my father wants to know? If I'll be ready for the first match.” Diggy tries to laugh, but it hurts. “Believe that?”

Gino and Bones laugh. “At least your father is into it,” says Gino. “My father thinks I wrestle like the guys in the WWF.”

“The WWF?” says Bones. “They have a midget league?”

“Oh, yeah, like you could be in the WWF?” says Gino.

Diggy rubs his tongue over the stitches. They feel like a zipper. “Crow did this on purpose.” Diggy likes the way the words seem to reverberate. Full of menace.

“No way
that
was an accident,” says Bones.

“What are you going to do?” asks Gino.

Diggy flips through the radio stations. He shivers and remembers Trevor's stiff, unmovable sprawl. “What do you think Crow is taking?” he asks.

“Taking?” asks Bones.

“Like steroids, GHB, what?” Diggy wants his suggestion to become a fact.

They are quiet. A rap song thumps in the car. The heater whirrs. Diggy moves his sneaker next to the warmth blowing near the floor. The porch light remains on. The wind rolls a sheet of newspaper past the car.

“Trevor is screwing everything up.” Diggy thumps the steering wheel. He wants to be as angry as he sounds, but he's already looking forward to the time off from practice, nursing his lip. “See that deer in the front of Crow's house?” he asks. “I dare you to snap the head off.” He's sure one of them will do it.

“What deer?” asks Gino.

“Not a real deer,” he says. “The cement deer in the bushes. Neither of you has a hair on your balls.”