Ironman (9 page)

“That's a lot of newspapers.”

“It is a
lot
of newspapers, but I made the money
and they started the process. It only took them two weeks to tell me she'd been a college student right here at CFU on a partial track scholarship. They couldn't give me her name until they tracked her down and got her permission, but they said she gave me up because she wasn't ready to start a family yet. They also told me that even though my mother never actually met her, she had that information.”

I said, “So how pissed were you?”

Shelly leaned forward on her elbows, Lar, clenching her teeth so hard I thought her jaw muscle would pop out the side of her face. “I got home from that meeting and went to my room and got my baseball bat and stormed into the kitchen and leveled it.”

“What do you mean, leveled it?”

“I broke out the windows, ripped three cupboard doors off their hinges, stacked all the dishes I could find on the floor and dropped the microwave on them.”

“Oh,” I said. “You mean you
leveled
it.”

She ignored me. “Mom tried to call Dad, but I tore the telephone cord out of the wall. Then I ran into the living room and fired a vase through the picture tube of our twenty-seven-inch TV, all the time screaming that my mother was a bitch and a drug addict and a goddamn liar!”

She was sweating as she told me, Lar, like
dripping
.

I asked what they did to her.

She said, “Foster care. Mom made it across the street and called my dad and the cops. I was lucky the cops got there first, because Dad would have beaten me bloody. I went to the Crisis Residential Center for a few days, and since I wouldn't quit threatening to light my parents' house on fire, they found me a placement.”

“God, what was that like?”

She shrugged. “Actually, it could have been okay. They were probably nice people, but I was so angry I just hid out in my room. They were kind of afraid of me, I think, and I started getting in trouble at school, skipping classes, smoking dope, doing all the things my mother had said were in my genes.”

I wanted to ask if she did the other part, Lar, but I tell you, I'm getting smart. This girl could take me
out
.

“I was kicked out of three junior high schools and five foster homes before the school year was over. By that time there was no drug I wouldn't try and nobody's ass I wouldn't kick.” She sighed and her shoulders slumped, and I figured now was the time.

I said, “So how does Redmond fit into this?”

Her eyes flared. “I spent the rest of junior high in residential treatment at Good Shepherd. I was so much trouble at first, they stuck me in isolation for days on end to break me, but I'd be out a day or two and some girl
would look cross-eyed at me and I'd take her out, and back I'd go to this locked room with nothing but a bed. They'd make me wait to go to the bathroom until I thought I'd explode.”

I flinched, and she said, “I know, you want to know about Redmond.”

I said, “I can wait. This is a good story.”

“It's a shitty story,” she said back, “but it's true. I was still at Good Shep when I got out of junior high, and I was thrown out of two high schools in Spokane and one in the valley. I guess I finally started wearing down because I finally got tired of being in trouble all the time and having everyone hate me or be scared of me or both, and I was sick of being
alone
. I had also let my body go completely to hell. I weighed as much as a hundred-sixty pounds and as little as one-oh-three.

“So I made a plan. For the next six months I was a model citizen. My room was immaculate, I ran errands for the other girls, cleaned the premises without being asked. I worked out every day, even though I was being schooled on the grounds and couldn't play on any more teams because they didn't want me trashing any more schools. Six months. Bring me an ass and I'd kiss it.

“Then in September of what should have been my sophomore year, I got myself sprung from Good Shep and
placed with a family here in Clark Fork. Good people, and far enough away from anyone who knew my history that I might have a chance.”

I guessed. “This is where Redmond comes in.”

“This is where Redmond comes in. He was coaching girls' basketball and I turned out. I'd been playing basketball since I was six years old—mostly with boys in my neighborhood. I was most valuable player two years in a row in age group, on a team that almost went to
Nationals
, Brew. This was a good team and I was one of the best players on it. I
loved
basketball.”

I leaned back in my seat and slowly shook my head. It could be no other way. “Redmond cut you.”

Shelly looked off to the side as tears welled in her eyes.

“Why?”

She was silent a moment more, gathering herself. Shelly doesn't like to let even me see the hurt side of her. “The night before cut day, I didn't sleep a second. I wasn't worried about being cut, but I wanted to make varsity. I'd given it everything I had: ran every drill full speed, dived for balls, shot jumpers until my arms almost fell off. I wouldn't leave the gym until I'd dropped ten free throws in a row.”

“So how the hell did he cut you?”

Shelly pounded her fist into her palm so hard I thought she broke something, Lar, and then thumped her chest.
“Twice in practice I almost blew up. Once a girl undercut me and I came up with my fists cocked. She walked away, and I followed, yelling ‘Hey!' but she kept walking. I caught myself that time and apologized, but Redmond saw. The other time a girl fell on my knee. I thought I was injured and came up swinging. My rage would just appear like that. Redmond jumped between us and sent me to the lockers. I apologized again, but I was still worried he'd put me on JV for it.”

“Did he?”

Shelly grimaced. “Nope. You played football, so you know about cut day. They posted two sheets—one for varsity and one for JV—at noon in student lunch. The whole team crowded around as they were being posted. I scanned the varsity list and didn't see my name, but I wasn't as disappointed as I thought I'd be, because by then I'd prepared myself by saying if it happened, I'd work so hard and play so well they'd have to move me up in midseason, or at least by tournament time. But then I scanned the JV list, and my name wasn't there, either. I started laughing, because I knew I'd gone over the varsity list so fast I'd missed it. But when I looked again, my name wasn't there. It wasn't anywhere.”

I said, “Oh, God. What—”

“I was the only kid cut. There was a foreign exchange student from Sweden who had never touched a basketball
in her life, Brew, and she made JV.”

“What did you do?”

“All of a sudden I felt naked. I knew everyone was looking at me, and I was completely stripped. Panic was choking me, so I smiled and started to walk away. I just needed to get to the door, get outside. One of the girls grabbed my arm. She said it had to be a mistake and she would go talk to Redmond with me right that minute, but by then I was claustrophobic. I couldn't breathe and I just needed to get out, so I ran.”

“But it wasn't a mistake, was it? Redmond meant to cut you.”

“No mistake,” she said. “But this story gets better. I went home and snagged my foster mother's car and headed for the freeway at about a hundred miles an hour. It sounds suicidal, I know, but I really wanted to hit something, make somebody hurt. Luckily I wasn't much of a driver, and I skidded into the highway divider and flipped a couple of times. Totaled the car, but I didn't have a scratch.”

“Jeez, Shelly, you're lucky to be alive.”

“I guess that depends on your definition of lucky.”

“Okay,” I said. “I'm lucky you're alive. Did you find out why Redmond did it?”

“Sure did. My foster family gave me the boot in about the same amount of time it took the tow truck to get to the
car. They said they were sorry, but they couldn't stand it if a kid got killed in their care. When my child protection caseworker came out to get me, I told him why I did it, and he went with me to confront Redmond.”

“I'll bet that was fun.”

“Actually, it was, kind of. My caseworker, Jim Avery, was this great big guy—bigger than Redmond—and an ex-Golden Gloves boxer. I thought he was going to spar a couple of rounds with Redmond, which would have made it all worth it.”

I dream of the day, Lar. I dream of the day.

“Well, at first Jim was very polite, and he explained my situation to Redmond and asked if there was a way he would reconsider letting me play. Redmond said that after he saw how willing I was to mix it up, he had requested my records and decided he couldn't afford to have someone poisoning the team's morale, that it wasn't fair to the other girls. Jim stayed polite long enough to get Redmond to admit that I had the talent to play, then he threatened to sue the school on behalf of the state of Washington and on behalf of me.”

This is the kind of shit I like, Lar.

“Redmond said go right ahead, that the conversation was off the record. He said certain kids simply weren't right
for high-school athletics, no matter what their talent—particularly those who had used up their chances.”

Redmond's sensitivity and tolerance know no bounds, Lar. I can't believe I'm the only one in Nak's Pack for calling him an asshole. We ought to take out a class-action billboard.

So Shelly kind of smiled and said, “I was just getting ready to use the F-word in reference to Redmond when Jim beat me to it. He told Redmond he had no business within five hundred miles of a kid and that he would register a formal complaint with the Clark Fork school board, and if that didn't work he'd sue him for malpractice. He also said Redmond better never give him the slightest reason to kick his ass out in the real world, because he would do it with gusto and in front of as many people as possible.”

Whooo! Hey, Lar, I wanna meet this Jim guy.

Shelly said, “I think that saved me. I was devastated at losing basketball, but it was the first time an adult ever stood up for me. Jim and I went out for coffee to try to figure out my future. We decided it probably wouldn't be much fun for me to play for Redmond, what with this much sewage under the bridge. The bigger problem was that he was out of foster placements for me, so my choices were to go home or back to Good Shep.

“My dad was tired of paying the state for my room and board all over town, so he agreed to let me move into this little guest house out back and keep his goddamn hands off me and my mother off my back as much as he could. CPS sent me home mostly because everybody was just so worn down. I stayed in school out here because it was the only place I'd ever had any success.”

“I take it the state never tried to bring the house down on Redmond.” I knew the answer, because Redmond is still up to his SOS.

“Naw,” she said. “If Dr. Stevens had been here then, we would have gone for it, but Mr. Cox was just a better-dressed form of Redmond and I didn't need those guys thinking of ways to make me mad enough to get kicked out. Jim signed me up for some martial-arts classes up at CFU and got me the phony ID so I could use the weight room. Actually it was Jim who came up with the idea of me being a Gladiator. That guy walked out to the edge for me. I owe him big.”

I said I'd like to meet him someday.

“He's gone. They kicked him upstairs to Olympia. But I'll never forget him.” She put her hand over mine. “So you see, Brew, Elvis was right. I am one of them, and you aren't.”

I smiled and said I'd work harder.

“Anyway, it's too late to make a long story short, but I told Mr. Nak about the kitchen and the TV, and about Redmond. I told him my feelings about my parents haven't changed that much, so it could probably happen again.”

“What'd he say?”

“He said, ‘Not only can you join my git-together, little lady, you can be our poster girl. I ain't never met anyone your size done in a whole kitchen, then had enough left to do in a giant television. I'm impressed.'” She said it in perfect Nakatanese.

Then she said, “Does that scare you off?” and I said it didn't. That was only partially true, because though it didn't scare me
off
, it sure made me jumpy.

I said, “What happens if I inadvertently tell a little lie?” and she said she would probably inadvertently kick my ass, so I told her I thought the new blouse she was wearing was ugly even though I'd said I liked it earlier.

She laughed and said, “Truth is, Brew, I'm never going to hit anybody I care about. That's the hell of my family—and it stops here.”

I don't know, Lar. I went home after I talked to Shelly and wondered how she could be this neat and have lived through the nightmare she described. And I thought about how guys like Redmond get their power. Where does it come from and how do you fight it? I'll bet Mr. S has some
ideas, and for sure Mr. Nak would. Tell you what, I don't think I'll be leaving Nak's Pack anytime soon.

One thing I'd like to achieve in my quest for Ironmanliness is some wisdom about the nature of justice. Any ideas, Lar?

Ever your loyal fan,
The Brewder

“God, sometimes I just hate my dad,” Bo says. He sits in Gatto's across the booth from Lionel Serbousek, waiting for their pepperoni-and-sausage pizza. They have come to organize training strategies for Yukon Jack's.

“I'd be careful of that if I were you,” Lion says.

“You wouldn't if you knew my dad.”

“I don't know your dad,” Lion says, “but I knew mine.”

Bo is instantly embarrassed. Everyone knows Mr. S was orphaned at fourteen, when his family was killed in a freak boating accident across the state line on Lake Coeur d'Alene. Only Lion survived. “Oh, God, man, I'm sorry. I didn't mean…”

Lion lifts his hand in protest. “Don't worry about it.
I said it because my dad was a lot like yours. He liked control—needed it—and he was hard to deal with when he felt he was losing it.”

“They sound like brothers.”

“They do, don't they?”

“So what did you do about it?”

“Argued a lot,” Lion says. “Tried to piss him off as much as possible.” He hesitates as their pizza number is called over the intercom, and Bo rises to retrieve it.

“We were scrapping a bit that day on the boat,” he says when Bo returns. “Arguing about responsibility and fishing.”

“You were arguing about fishing?”

“Fishing demanded all the attributes my father believed led to an exemplary life,” Lion says. “It required intelligence and patience, and though there were no guarantees, one could certainly stack the deck in his favor by doing it right.” Lion has considered his story a thousand times, told it few. He believes Bo should hear it. “We'd been fishing from the boat near shore, under an overhang of bushes. I was beat from a night of screwing around with my friends and didn't even want to be there. My little brother and Mom were up front, as far as they could get from Dad's relentless
instructions. The bait was up with them and I was too lazy to get it, so I baited my hook with berries from a bush hanging out over the boat.”

“You were fishing with berries?” Bo laughs. “I don't fish and even I know—”

“Yeah, well,” Lion interrupts, “so did Dad. And don't think he didn't let me in on it. You know how your father palms the back of his neck when he's getting close to the edge? Well, my dad would shake his head in this certain way. He'd grimace and look at the ground and then shake his head real slow.” Lion imitates memory. “Whenever I got on a self-improvement kick, I'd promise myself to reduce the number of times per day Dad did that.”

Bo thinks of his own dad. “It didn't work, did it? You didn't reduce that number one bit.”

“Not one bit,” Lion says with a smile. He sips his beer and places a slice of pizza on his plate. “His head shook in classic fashion while he watched me reel in those berries; fishing was just too important to my dad to be trivialized. He had to give me the long version of his responsibility speech before he'd even start the engine to head for deeper water. I called it his You Got to
Think
speech.”

Bo nods. “The Someday When You're My Age speech.”

“I'm sure that's it.”

Bo feels oddly relieved that someone else knows this.

“But you know something?” Lion says. “That speech isn't completely wrong; it's just badly delivered—and the timing's off. The truth is, I did have to think; I did have to consider my actions more carefully. Not about fishing, necessarily, but about other things. And the world does look different when that someday comes and you're older. It doesn't necessarily look the way your dad thinks it will, but it's certainly different. I think that speech could have helped if it had been given more gently—hadn't had such weight attached.”

Bo takes a long drink of ice water, having given up on sugary pops in the name of training, and half a slice of pizza disappears into his mouth. “I don't know, Mr. S. You should hear my old man.”

“I know, Bo, believe me I know. I'm just saying it doesn't help to discard the good news with the bad.” He scoots his chair back and intertwines his fingers behind his thick neck, staring at the ceiling. “I thought I had time. I thought I had all of time. Now not a day goes by that I don't want to talk with my dad, learn more of where I come from. I know we'd still fight, and there are
issues we'd never agree on, but I just wasn't ready for it to be over.”

Lion leans forward on his elbows. “It was killer hot out there that day on the lake, easily over a hundred degrees. Neal Anderson, this kid I swam with in age group, was over at his parents' summer cabin drinking beer with some of his buddies. He was fourteen, just like me. His mom and dad didn't even know he was there—thought he'd gone to a matinee back in Spokane to get out of the heat. After a couple of six-packs they got to yukkin' it up and decided to take a quick spin on the skis.

“I saw 'em coming, even thought I recognized the boat, a sleek yellow Sunrunner, one of the fastest ski boats on the lake. When I dream about it now, I see it as a thing of awful beauty, skipping like a bullet over the sun stars dancing on the glassy surface.”

Bo sits fascinated, afraid to hear the rest.

“I jumped,” Lion says, and shakes his head, teary-eyed. “I yelled and when they didn't hear me, I jumped.” He sits back. “You know, Bo, there is a feeling, in that instant following some life-changing tragedy, that you can actually step back over that sliver of time and stop the horror from coming. But that feeling is a lie, because in the tiniest microminisecond after
any event occurs, it is as safe in history as Julius Caesar. Data in the universal computer is backed up
as it happens
. That's probably a good thing for me, too, because given a chance to think, I'd have stayed in the boat.”

Bo stares at the edge of the table, speechless.

“
In the water
I was already sorry for the bad things I'd done, all I hadn't said, and most of what I had. After all our disagreements—no, fights—after all our fights, I just wanted my dad to approve of me.”

“God, Mr. S…”

“I'm not saying you should torment yourself about people you love dying tomorrow, but I think it's smart to keep up to speed with those you consider important.”

Bo munches pizza, considering. “You're right, Mr. S. I know you are, and there are times when I ache to please my dad, but you should hear him sometimes. I mean, he'll make up stories about people just to make his point. Hell, you should hear what he said about you.”

“Everyone has their ugliness,” Lion says. “That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about relationship. I'm talking about looking past the current war to find out what you are to each other.” He pauses and shakes his head. “It isn't simple, Bo. It should be, but it isn't. It's not about good guys and bad guys, or right and wrong. It's something way more basic than those
things. It's about connection. I sit back and watch you now, and know that part of your struggle is developmental—that as an adolescent, you need to separate from your dad to establish who you are. I'm frustrated because I want
you
to learn from
my
experience, and I know that's not going to happen. But it is developmental, Bo. It's a time of life, a time of life that will change. I can only hope that you and your dad stay intact long enough to see it for what it is. I guess I'm just saying don't burn all your bridges.” He pauses, lost in the flurry of his words. Then, “What did he say about me?”

“Never mind, it—”

“You don't have to say it if you don't want to, Bo, but I'm a big boy. I can take it.”

Bo shifts nervously. “Well, we were fighting about Redmond, you know, about good guys and bad guys, and he said…” He pauses. “It was nothing.”

“Say it.”

“Well, he said you were…like…homo; you know,
gay
.”

A faint smile crosses Lion's lips, and he glances at the pizza.

“I mean, I didn't believe him. Shit, I mean, I don't know why…”

Lion remains silent as Bo is swept with a wave of
realization. “Oh, God. Oh, no. Shit, Mr. S.”

“What?”

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

JANUARY 24

Dear Larry,

Had a great workout last night, Lar. Got home from pizza with Mr. S about seven-thirty, hitched up the dogs one at a time, and ran 'em five miles apiece. Then I went over to CFU and swam the last forty-five minutes of open lap swim and worked out on the StairMaster for thirty minutes. Then I lifted weights.

I know I'm talking to the wrong talk-show dude if I've got a beef about this, Lar, but I don't even know how to spell Lim-baa. My life is getting flat weird. This shit is strictly Geraldo.

Mr. S is a homo. I mean, he's gay. And that's not just some name a guy calls somebody to get his goat. He sleeps with a
man
. I mean, he doesn't sleep with him, necessarily; he has sex with him.

I'm sitting there in the pizza place with him last night trying to tell him what a peckerhead my dad can be, how he makes up stories about people he doesn't like, and I tell Mr. S Dad said he had a limp wrist. To which I expect Mr. S
to laugh and say “sticks and stones” or something, but he just looks at me and I get all tongue-tied, just like I'm pen-tied writing this to you, and he tells me it's no lie.

Well, I stuff down half a pizza about as fast as a guy can eat without a couple of Heimlich adjustments, and tell him I got a load of homework and I'll see him later. He says, “Instead of running off and turning your imagination into a three-ring circus, why don't you stay and talk about this?”

Like the dumb shit I truly am, I say, “Talk about what?”

Mr. S laughs and says, “Oh, I don't know, whatever pops into your head.” Then he says, “About me being gay.”

So after I try about fifteen false starts, he says, “Why don't you just ask me what you want to know?” and I come up with, “So are you coming out of the closet or what? How come you told me?”

He says, “There's no closet, Bo. I told you because you asked. I'm not an activist—my sexual preference is only a part of who I am. It's just that after my family was killed, I swore I would never again lie about anything important to
anyone
important.”

“You mean everyone knows? Does your swimming team know?”

“They've never asked,” he said. “You're the first in quite a while, actually. It doesn't come up much.”

This felt so crazy I had to push, Lar. I said, “So what if they knew? I mean, what do you think they'd do?”

“Whatever they had to,” he said. “Bo, I didn't choose to be attracted to men, that's just the way it is. I chose to deal with it. Anyone who has a problem with that will have to do the same.”

I knew he meant me, Lar, and I've heard you say something pretty close to that on your show, but I ignored it. “So how do you think my dad knew?”

“Your dad wouldn't know me if he walked through that door right now. I would guess Redmond said something.”

“Jesus, Redmond knows?”

“He doesn't know, but he's guessed. He knows I have a male roommate, and he met Jack at a faculty Christmas party a couple of years ago. Keith doesn't like me any better than he likes you, so I would guess he has a gala time with it in my absence.”

Now I hate to say it, Lar, because it sounds just like the guys who call you, and I know your bigot-basher nose must be twitching like a geiger counter at Los Alamos, waiting for me to write the comment that lets you know what kind of narrow-minded, hateful scum I am, but I don't think I'm a bigot. Hey, I've been in Mr. Nak's group awhile now, hearing people tell the most bizarre stories as if
they're giving the weather report, and I'm even starting to like that style. I mean, Elvis tells us his dad got the bullet his mom committed suicide with for a Christmas present and that his sister is going to charge his dad with child molestation; Shelly talks about being beaten by her dad and double-crossed by Redmond; Hudgie doesn't really tell us anything, but he plays out the horrors of his life like they were a cereal commercial. But Mr. S dropped a
bomb
and there's just no other way to say it, and I don't think anyone—bigoted or not—should be expected to receive it over a pizza and go on as if the world hadn't just tilted on its axis.

What am I going to tell my dad? He'll say if I could be tricked about
that
, what else am I being tricked about? Then he'll tell me again how careful I should be. I mean, I don't
think
there's any danger, because I certainly have never felt anything like, you know, sexual, coming from Mr. S, but I can't help wondering if it means anything about me that he likes me. I stood up for Mr. S against my dad, and now I'll eat shit. And I'll tell you what, I don't know how I'm going to face Mr. S the next time I see him. I can't tell anybody because I don't want to get a bunch of rumors started, so I guess I'll have to figure it out for myself. This whole thing pisses me off. Why can't Mr. S just be normal?
I need a normal guy to go up against guys like Redmond and my dad. Some Stotan, huh?

Gotta go, Lar. None of this is helping me focus on my training.

Sincerely drowning,
Bo Blub-Blub