One Shot Away Read online

  “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.

  Diggy

  DIGGY SPEEDS DOWN THE BLOCK, THEN SLOWS HIS MUSTANG 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.”

  “Why don’t you do it, yo?” asks Bones.

  “Oh, yeah, right, and rip my stitches open,” says Diggy.

  “Open the door,” says Gino.

  Bones opens his door. Little Gino bolts from the back seat and races across the lawn. He bends over the deer and yanks it forward. It’s strange to see him half in the garden, twisting and pulling. The deer’s head drops, then rolls onto the lawn. Gino races back to the car. Diggy pushes the door open.

  “It must’a had a cracked neck.” Gino holds a twisted piece of cement with a metal rod sticking from the end. “Antlers!”

  Diggy throws the car into drive and leaves rubber up the block. “Bones, you’re a wuss.” Diggy smacks hands with Gino.

  Trevor

  THE “LATE” BUS BOUNCES OVER THE HILL. IN THE SECOND TO last bench, Jimmy has his long legs across the aisle, his size twelves on the empty seat. Trevor, in the rear seat next to the emergency door, leans forward over Jimmy’s seat.

  “What I’m saying is watch your back.” Jimmy tugs apart a protein bar and gives Trevor half. “I’m not saying he’s really going to do something. Maybe he’s running his mouth.”

  “You make it sound like he put a hit out on me.” A chill passes up his spine and radiates along his shoulders.

  “If he does anything, it’s not going to be obvious,” says Jimmy. “He’s not going to jeopardize his season. It’ll be when you least expect it.”

  “I told you about the cement deer in my front yard. Someone cracked the head off.”

  “It couldn’t have been Diggy. He was getting stitched at the hospital. He wouldn’t have gone driving around afterward.”

  Trevor relaxes. Jimmy’s right.

  “Isn’t Diggy’s old man a wack job?” asks Jimmy. “Did you see him getting in the coach’s face?”

  The team was warming up. Mr. Masters crossed the mat from his usual post in the corner where he kept an eye on practices. He said something to Greco and there was a quick exchange of words. Then Mr. Masters made his point by stabbing his finger six inches from the coach’s face. Diggy was stretched on the bleachers with his Yankees cap tipped over his eyes as if he were snoozing. His lip was the size of a cocktail frank.

  “I’m surprised the coach didn’t take his legs out and tie him in a pretzel,” says Jimmy. They laugh.

  “You really think Diggy’s going to do something to me?” asks Trevor.

  “I know he’s not letting you take his weight class without a fight.”

  Trevor considers the possibilities: Diggy could throw a rock through his window, give his mother’s car flats, set his house on fire, push him down the stairs at school. Endless scenarios, but none of them fit. Nothing except a face-to-face confrontation with Diggy on the wrestling mat seems probable.

  Wrestle-off. Varsity spot. 152. Trevor doesn’t have many alternatives. He can’t wrestle at 170, he’d be slaughtered, and he can’t beat Jimmy at 160. Dropping weight isn’t an option. He has to beat Diggy.

  “Diggy can be scary,” says Jimmy. “Nick taught him moves we’ve never seen before. And he’s dirty. Everyone kn
ows it.”

  “That makes me feel a lot better,” says Trevor.

  “But I think if you wrestle him off smart for one-fifty-two,” says Jimmy, “you could beat him.”

  “What if he came after you, at one-sixty?”

  “He won’t.”

  “But what if he did.”

  “I wouldn’t be looking forward to it, but I’d have to beat him.” Jimmy turns to the window. “This is my year. You know that.”

  Trevor does know it. He’s read about it in the newspapers. He’s talked about it at the lunch table. Jimmy was undefeated last year in the regular season. His only loss was in Atlantic City at the New Jersey State Tournament. He placed third.

  “Maybe this has been coming for a long time,” says Trevor. “I remember watching Diggy on the mat, and my father saying, ‘he’s all show and no go.’”

  Jimmy smiles. “My pops says Diggy spends more time running his mouth than running the track.”

  “But he still wins,” says Trevor.

  “Yeah, that’s the part that sucks,” says Jimmy.

  Over the past three seasons, Trevor studied Diggy’s wrestling techniques, and his limitations. Diggy uses his lower body to topple his opponents, then he scrambles for points. Most of Diggy’s matches are decided by a one- or two-point margin in the third period with Diggy watching the seconds on the clock tick down, trying to hold his lead. The bus approaches Trevor’s stop.

  “Later, bro,” says Jimmy.

  They pound fists.

  Harry London and Trevor’s mother are waiting for him in the car with the engine running. “Hop in,” says London, like it’s a happy occasion.

  Trevor shuts his eyes, remembering he agreed to see the motel. “I’m dead,” he says. “Go ahead without me.”

  “Honey, this is important to me and it should be to you,” his mother calls, lowering her window.

  The deer’s head is still sideways on the lawn with a black eye gazing into the sky. Trevor drops his bag on the cement walk and lifts the head onto the body. His father liked this deer, frozen as if it spotted a hunter. Trevor would have to find a way to fix it. There has to be some kind of epoxy for cement animals. He rolls the head behind the azalea bushes.