One Shot Away Read online

  “You’ve got no warning flag on the back of that lumber. It’s sticking ten feet off the truck.”

  “Jesus, my son forgot the flag. Didn’t I tell you about the flag?”

  Jimmy wants to yell You’re blaming me? Jimmy looks across his father, trying to locate the policeman’s face. All he sees is his flashlight’s beam shining into the truck.

  “You haven’t been drinking tonight?” asks the officer. “Have you?”

  “Of course not. We’re on our way to a job.”

  “Why don’t you step out of the truck?”

  Pops opens the door. “I haven’t had a drink since last Sunday’s Jets game.”

  What a liar! He was drinking at dinner and after dinner.

  Pops laughs, coughs. “Right, Jimmy? That’s my son in there.” The flashlight shines on Jimmy’s face. “We’re heading to a job site in Bergen County. I’m real sorry about the flag. I can tie on something.”

  The policeman holds his flashlight on Pops’s driver’s license. “Your son, is he the wrestler Jim O’Shea?”

  “He sure is.”

  “I’ve seen him wrestle,” says the policeman. “We get to work those events.” He hands Pops his license. “How’s the team going to do this year?” calls the policeman into the truck, his voice easy, like a regular guy.

  “We have a meeting tomorrow.” Jimmy’s voice is choked and dry. “I just want to get home.”

  “He means Monday,” says Pops.

  “Well, hang something on that load and good luck.” The officer walks back to his car.

  After tying a handkerchief on the longest board protruding from the truck, Pops gets back into the cab. “What the heck, a meeting tomorrow? I just told him we were going to a job. You could have blown it.”

  Jimmy stares daggers at him. “Don’t ever ask me to help you again. You just put my season on the line. Do you realize that?”

  Diggy

  DIGGY MASTERS FINISHED DINNER AN HOUR AGO AND IS STILL starving. He rises from the couch and peeks out the window. Randy Masters stands on the deck with a cigar between his fingers watching the dark golf course that extends from their backyard. His tan-colored drink in a fat glass drips on the rail.

  Diggy scans the kitchen. Apple pie on top of the refrigerator at twelve o’clock. He retrieves it, opens the box, and plows his fingers into the cut side, into the gooey apples, and scoops the filling into his mouth. He shovels another handful and swallows it, then checks on Randy, who is still gazing at the golf course as if something besides someone whacking a golf ball is going to happen.

  Diggy and his brother, Nick, call their father Randy. When he put them in wrestling, he told them to call him “Coach Randy” instead of “Dad.” Their mother thought it was ridiculous. “I’m the coach of Team Masters,” he said. After they moved to the Hills, he built a wrestling room in their basement. He put together a library of wrestling and coaching books. Diggy was in the sixth grade. Nick was two grades ahead. So they called him Coach Randy. They forgot that it was a goof. He became their coach. Now his brother doesn’t wrestle anymore and they call him just plain Randy.

  Everything that means anything in the Masters’ family is somehow linked to wrestling. Example: Diggy’s real name is Devon. Nick’s first year on varsity, the team picked a Kid Rock song as their team’s anthem. A dumb song, which was sacked by the team the next season, but that year, Nick and every wrestler chanted the lyrics like shorted-out robots: “Bawitdaba da bang a dang diggy diggy diggy said the boogy said up jump the boogy.” Diggy was in seventh grade, already wrestling on the high school freshmen team. Not because he showed great talent, but because Randy convinced Coach Greco it would be better to keep his sons together. So Nick and Diggy wrestled in the same gym. Diggy on freshmen. Nick on varsity. Devon morphed to Diggy and it stuck like a wet paper towel on a locker room ceiling.

  Diggy slips into the bathroom to wash his hands and figures he might as well puke. A lot of wrestlers do this during season. He turns on the sink water for background noise, then kneels in front of the toilet and shoves two fingers into his throat. He gags, waits, then sticks them in farther. His eyes water. Nothing. He washes his face and gives the toilet another look. Maybe he can sneak up on it. He tries again, this time more quickly. He gags. Bingo. The pie and some of his dinner blow into the water.

  “Diggy!”

  It’s Randy.

  “Diggy!”

  He returns to the kitchen. The pie is on the island.

  “What’s this?” asks Randy.

  “That?”

  “Yeah, this.”

  “Pie.” He’s stalling, trying to figure a way out.

  “I know it’s a pie. Why does it look like someone just stuck their fingers in it?”

  Diggy shakes his head and does his best “beats the hell out of me” look.

  “Come on, let’s go,” says Randy.

  “Now?”

  “Yes, right now.”

  Diggy follows him down the basement stairs. Randy turns on the light. The floor is wall-to-wall wrestling mats, with a separate room for weights. A balance scale is at the foot of the stairs. Not a twenty-five-dollar department store scale, a real black-and-white doctor’s office scale with sliding weights. Randy sets the larger weight at 150, then slides the other weight to two pounds. One-fifty-two, that’s Diggy’s wrestling weight. He wrestled 152 last season, his junior year, and had a winning varsity record. Last winter, it felt good to be Diggy Masters.

  He slips off his sneakers and steps on the scale.

  “Take off your shirt.”

  Diggy pulls it over his head. He’s standing in basketball shorts and socks. His body is smooth, not ripped, but not fat. His belly is almost flat, but there’s no six-pack or any signs of muscle. Randy moves the weight along the balance bar: 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161.

  “What the …?” Randy’s mouth hangs open. At 162, the scale balances. “You’re ten over.”

  “I got time.” Diggy is supposed to be weighing himself every day. One-sixty-two is actually a surprise. Not a good surprise, but not a nightmare either. “I can cut.”

  “You can cut? That’s it? That’s all you’re going to say?”

  What is he supposed to say? Randy, I just puked. Randy, I have a fat ass just like you. “I won’t eat for a few days. I’ve done it before.”

  “You just ate half an apple pie.”

  “Not half.”

  “Go do some sit-ups!”

  “I just ate, you said so yourself.”

  “Now. Greco is going to be weighing you. What’s he going to think?”

  “Randy, I’ll cut, don’t worry.”

  Randy grabs the back of Diggy’s neck and digs his fingers into his flesh. “Get going.” He tries to lead him toward the weight room.

  “Get off me.”

  Randy releases him. “Diggy, you should want this more than me. Your entire high school career is going to be summed up in the next twelve weeks. You made a name for yourself last season. You proved to everyone you were a Masters. If you don’t make weight, what’s going to happen?”

  This season is Randy’s wet dream. He wants Diggy to win the districts. Diggy wants to win as much as Randy, but he’s hungry all the time. And worse, he knows all about starvation and hunger pains that keep you awake, that rip his gut like a banzai sword. He once sat in a sauna until he was so dehydrated he couldn’t blink, couldn’t spit, couldn’t speak. Then he went two days on sliced carrots, which may not sound impressive, but a carrot is ninety percent water. It was terrible. He had orange diarrhea for days.

  “Let’s get serious,” says Randy. “You want your name on the Wall?” The Wall is the Wall of Champions in their high school. Diggy’s brother was the District Champ and the State Champ from his freshman year to his senior year. The single State Champ in the history of Molly Pitcher High School. In fact, the only four-time state winner ever in the state of New Jersey. Get the picture. His name is plastered all over the Wall.


  Randy smiles at Diggy. Randy used to sell cars and he’s got this unmistakable salesman’s smile, with one side of his mouth raised and a blink at the same time. Now he owns the dealership.

  “Of course I do.” Diggy wants his name next to his brother’s. He’s thought about it ever since Nick’s name was put on the Wall.

  They go into the weight room, lined with mirrors. Diggy’s black hair, cut in a fade, is clean and tight. He smiles at himself. He may not be ripped, but he has the look that half the high school guys would crush their left nut for. Randy sets the sit-up board on an angle. “Gimmie sets of twenty, until you reach one hundred.”

  Diggy hooks his feet under the cushioned bar. “It’s called five sets of twenty,” he cracks.

  Randy smacks the back of his head with his open hand. “Get serious.”

  “Keep your damn hands to yourself.”

  “That didn’t hurt you,” he says.

  “How would you like it if I slapped you upside your head?”

  “Just do them.”

  “I can count for myself.”

  “You got it, buddy. Do it your way.” Randy leaves and Diggy hears his footfalls on the stairs.

  Diggy bangs through a set of twenty. Randy’s right. He is the 152 varsity starter. He should move up a weight class to 160, but Jimmy O’Shea has it locked. Diggy’s not saying Jimmy is better than him, but at the moment he’s not challenging him to a wrestle-off for a few reasons: Diggy will win more matches at 152; Jimmy will win more matches at 160 than 170; and the truth is, he could lose to Jimmy.

  He rests, then cranks out another set. There’s a part of Diggy that knows Randy is doing this for his own good, and then there’s Nick’s theory: Randy is pushing him because he’s a fat-assed prick who rode the bench on his high school football team, then got cut in the first round at college. Randy never got any respect. He wasn’t the big man in the gym until Nick tore through wrestlers like a tree shredder.

  Diggy grabs a handful of fat around his navel. He knows where the weight came from. Taco Bell Grande Platters at the mall, definitely.

  He climbs to the top of the stairs. The door is locked. “Hey, Randy!”

  “That’s where you’re spending the night,” Randy says through the door. “Because I know you. You’re going to get hungry and start eating. Then when you can’t make weight, whose fault will it be?”

  “Mom!” screams Diggy.

  “Devon, I’m here, honey,” she says.

  “Open the damn door.”

  “Your father says you need to focus.”

  “Now!” yells Diggy.

  “Randy, I’ll make sure he doesn’t—” starts his mother.

  “Beverly, shut up. Diggy, this is called fasting, something you’re going to have to learn.”

  Diggy lies on a wrestling mat, angry, with tears of frustration in his eyes. Randy’s right, and he has to admit it—if he weren’t in the basement, if he weren’t locked up, he would eat something, because he’s starving.

  Diggy

  DIGGY ELBOWS HIS WAY PAST THE OTHER WRESTLERS AND claims his locker from last year. He throws his sneakers at the bottom, then unloads his bag: Speed Stick deodorant, anti-fungal spray powder, shampoo, triple antibiotic cream for cuts, and a crushed tube of medicine for ringworm, which developed under his arm last season. It was disgusting, oozing and itchy.

  Guys shuffle in, tossing gym bags on the floor, banging fists.

  “Man, I hope you guys are ready for this,” Pancakes yells from a toilet stall. He likes to yell when he’s in the can. Once he gets going, no one can shut him up. “Hey, Diggy,” he calls, “we got some new freshmen to break in!”

  “Why don’t you finish dumping that deuce,” Diggy calls back, cracking everyone up.

  “This is our year, our senior year, while we walk the valley and feel no fear,” raps Pancakes.

  “Cut the rap and finish your crap,” someone yells.

  It continues like this. Everyone yelling. Guys holding their noses race into the bathroom, bombing Pancakes with wet paper towels.

  Diggy pulls a notebook from his bag. He’s written the lineup with the new weight classes:

  106 Little Gino

  113 Turkburger

  120 Jordan

  126 Garrett

  132 Mario

  138 Cleaver

  145 Salaam

  152 Me

  160 Jimmy

  170 Trevor Crow?

  182 Bones

  195 Boyle

  220 Paul

  285 Pancakes

  Diggy writes, “Win Districts, Win Regions, Win States, Get a scholarship, Get a one-way ticket from my house.”

  Fifty or so wrestlers in baggy gym clothes lean on the red foam mats that go halfway up the gym wall; incoming freshmen in the back of the gym, junior-varsity in the middle, varsity up front. Diggy heads to the varsity guys.

  “Let’s start the merry-go-round,” yells Coach Greco. “Get the monkeys off your back. You come in with twelve monkeys on your back, you go home with no monkeys, that’s a good practice.”

  Wrestlers circle the gym. Diggy feels the mats tilting under his feet like the deck of a cruise ship. He should have eaten breakfast today, but yesterday was Thanksgiving and his grandmother’s dining-room table was a free-for-all. Randy told him to “watch it,” and “no dessert,” but his mother and uncles all laughed. So he ate, picked, then ate more, then packed his stomach with custard pie. And, was it really his fault? Did Greco have to schedule the first practice on a school holiday?

  “Warm it up,” yells Greco. “Dust off the cobwebs.”

  Diggy falls into a rhythm with Bones on his right and Little Gino on his left.

  “Look at Crow, he’s got to be first,” says Bones with his beaded dreadlocks bouncing around his tan face. “I hear he’s going one-fifty-two.”

  “He can suck my ass,” says Diggy.

  “He can suck my cock.” Little Gino’s laugh sounds more like a seventh-grade girl’s than a senior’s.

  “If only you could find it,” says Bones.

  “Give him some tweezers!” Diggy slaps Bones’s five.

  They go around the gym about twenty-five times. Sweat runs on Diggy’s forehead. He’s “double shirting” the practice to cut some water weight. A pain in his side knifes through him. “Bones,” blurts Diggy between breaths, “let’s take a dive.”

  They cut from the line and zip into the locker room. The wrestlers pass, with Diggy catching his breath and Bones laughing silently, knowing no one on the team has the balls to turn them in.

  Twenty laps later, they rejoin the runners. Some are grinning, some are peeved, but it’s all part of the game. Diggy: One. Greco: Nothing.

  Killer sprints are Diggy’s nightmare. He lines up with the wrestlers, already dreading finishing with the heavyweight wrestlers. It’s like showcasing the fact that he’s out of shape. Total humiliation.

  On Greco’s whistle, the wrestlers charge in jagged rows across the gym. The first wrestler to reach the wall sits out. Jimmy streaks from the pack and tags the wall first. Greco points to him. Smiling, Jimmy goes to the bleachers and takes a seat.

  The torture continues, back and forth. Sprint after sprint. Sweaty waves of wrestlers racing from one side to the other, with the fastest guy going to the bleachers. Diggy, huffing and puffing, loses count. He just can’t break from the back of the pack. He’s stuck next to Pancakes’s whale ass. One by one, wrestlers are eliminated. Diggy’s legs are lead. He’s hot, red faced, embarrassed, and the ache in his side has spread to his temples. He’s still dragging butt when there are only two other wrestlers remaining.

  Pancakes, Diggy, and a freshman built as wide and tall as an ATM machine, line up. Everyone is cheering and laughing at them. Laughing at their lard asses. The freshman takes off at the whistle, with Pancakes on his tail like an angry rhinoceros, followed by Diggy. How could he be behind Pancakes? Diggy can’t let this happen. He comes alongside the two hundred and eighty-fi
ve pounds of Pancakes, ca-booming the mats on his cannon-ball calves, sweat flying from him like rain, passes him, and grabs the freshman’s shirt, who crashes to the mat. Diggy reaches the wall first.

  Greco’s whistle sounds. “Diggy, you owe me for that.”

  Diggy falls dead on the mat and spreads his arms.

  “Sit-ups, let’s hustle!” yells Greco. “Ladies, today is the last easy practice of the season. At five o’clock, I want the practice in our bank and the monkeys in the zoo. No monkeys on your back, that’s a good practice.”

  They form lines. The juniors and seniors know the routine; everyone else follows. Diggy can’t bear to do sit-ups. Not only are they pointless and boring, but does anyone really think doing them is going to matter in a match? Diggy has seen plenty of guys bust their asses week after week and disgrace themselves under the light when it matters.

  Instead of doing the sit-ups, he patrols the rows, wondering how long Greco will let him screw around. “Come on,” yells Diggy. “Use your abs, not your elbows!”

  Greco seems to be absently nodding approval; usually he’s already barking, “Stop slacking or get packing!” And then it hits Diggy: Could he have given up on me? The sweat on his back goes cold. He looks around the room at the straining faces, then at Greco. Could someone have told Greco his weight?

  Diggy jogs over to the coach. “I’m trying to get us all on the same page,” says Diggy lightly, as if they were Facebook friends.

  Bundles of muscles on each side of Greco’s neck rise and harden. “Oh, yeah,” he says suspiciously. “What’s your weight?”

  “Maybe one-fifty-eight, one-fifty-nine, but I—”

  Greco cuts him off. “You been watching your carbs?”

  “Like all the time. I’m practically anorexic.”

  “And I’m practically handsome.” Greco bends his cauliflower ears forward, which look like wads of chewed bubble gum, and crosses his eyes. Not in a funny way, but as if to say, I’m on to you, Diggy Masters. He releases his ears and his eyes return to the mat.

  Diggy wants to tell him You’re all bony, all muscle, angles, and sinew. You never had to cut any serious weight! “Don’t I always have to cut?” He smiles nervously, but he’s dying inside because this could be the year he can’t make weight. “Didn’t I always make it?” he asks.