No Signature (13 page)

“After I left you and your mother and I was on the road, I picked up enough work to pay for food and
gas and I kept on the move. Did a little stealin’, too, when I had to. I knew by then that I wanted to really work on my carvin’ and I started to offer some pieces for sale at tourist shops and places like that. They’d buy them from me and mark up the price. I never stayed around long enough to know what happened to them, but I made sure my mark was carved onto the base of every damn one of them.”

We drove along for a while. My mind was going a million miles a minute, swirling with questions, but I didn’t want to fire a barrage of How-did-you-do-thats at him. Instead I watched the scenery crawl past and let my mind run.

It amazed me that my mother never found out until that night at her office party. I guessed she would have handled all their money—writing the cheques, going to the bank, all that stuff—because, knowing her, she would have wanted to anyway. And when you think of it, how often do parents write each other notes?

But what about the million other things in life that required the ability to read and write? I had never thought about it—who does?—but everything in my life assumed reading and writing. How do you look up the baseball and hockey scores in the newspaper? How do you check out the TV guide to see what’s on when you feel like crashing in front of the tube at night? How do you find your favourite group in the record store, and make sure you don’t buy the same CD you bought last time? For that matter, how do you find the record store? Suppose you meet a great-looking girl and you want to look up her number in the phone book. You’d be out of luck.

I remembered one day in English when Ms. Cake gave us a journal topic, something like “How would your life be different if you were illiterate?” We sat there looking mystified and most of us wrote dumb stuff like “I wouldn’t be able to read Stephen King novels” or smartass things like “I wouldn’t be able to do my English homework.” In the discussion that followed, Cake was very earnest, but we just joked around. Now it didn’t seem so funny. And now the word
illiterate
, which I always thought meant you were stupid, didn’t sound so scientific.

“Hey, Dad,” I burst out, “how did you ever get a driver’s licence?”

“What makes you think I’ve got one? No, relax,” he added, laughing, “I’m legal. A long time ago I found a nice lady—after I tried this trick at a half dozen Ministry of Transport offices—who believed me when I told her I lost my glasses. I convinced her to read the questions for me and I answered orally. Got all the answers right, too. The road test was easy. See, I can tell what all the signs say by the colour and shape and where they are. You know, a sign with kids on it holding books, something like that. It isn’t hard. And I can write my name and all. I draw it. But it looks like a five-year-old wrote it, so most of the time I try to get away without signin’ things.”

Yeah, like postcards, I thought. No signature.

“Sharon’s been after me to take a shot at one of them literacy classes. But, I don’t know.” He geared down as the van struggled up a long hill. “Don’t forget, Steve, humans got along great for thousands of years without bein able to read and write. People like me are like them. We learn to use our ears, and we gotta have a good
memory.” He capped his temple with the stem of his pipe. “We gotta store a lot of information up here.” He paused. “Sure is a pain in the butt sometimes, though.”

I remembered what he had said about being on the wrong side of the fence with no gate. He must have suffered a thousand defeats when he was a kid at school, a million humiliations. He must have lost out on a lot. Including his family.

“She shouldn’t have done it,” I thought, pounding my fist on my thigh.

“What’s that, Steve?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I was just thinking out loud.”

L
ONG BEFORE WE SAW ANY BUILDINGS
the stink from the pulp mills told us we were getting close to Thunder Bay. I had a map on my lap and squinted into the late-afternoon sun that slanted crossways into the van, looking for road signs.

The university wasn’t very big but it was modern, with attractive buildings done in a sand-coloured brick. The campus was mostly open land with wide lawns, carefully tended shrubs and lots of parking. When we got out of the van and looked behind us we could see the Sleeping Giant across the harbour.

My father and I went into the main building, the University Centre, and found the registration desk in a large foyer. There were lots of athletes there already, strutting around in track suits with logos of their schools or clubs on them. I didn’t see anyone I knew I hadn’t been too nervous up to now—so much had gone in the last nine days—but the sight of the other wrestlers, the sound of their banter, and the serious looks behind the jokes really wound me up. I registered, was handed a thick folder full of information and a map of the university, and was pointed toward the residence where my room was.

We skirted Tamblyn Lake, a small pond that the buildings were grouped around, and followed a stone
path to the Prettie Residence. After a few minutes walking up and down the halls we found the room.

It was small, on the second floor, looking over the so-called lake. There were two single beds.

“Well,” I said to my father, “looks like there’s room for both of us.”

He was looking around as if he had landed on Mars. “Finally,” he said with a laugh, “I made it to university! Now I can tell people, ‘Yep, I went to Lakehead U.’ I don’t have to tell them it was only for two days.”

I
GOT UP EARLY
T
UESDAY
and went for an easy run while my father went out for doughnuts and coffee. I came back to the main facility just before eight o’clock for the weigh-in. The place was thronged with wrestlers, some outfitted in the latest threads, some going the other way, wearing worn grey track suits with holes in the knees and cut-off arms. I was hoping they paid less attention to training than their looks.

After the weigh-in I went into the third double gym to stretch and warm up. It was packed with wrestlers of all sizes, and the racket from their talk and laughter bounced off the walls.

Keeping to myself, I got to work stretching on the mat, then went to the wall for back-arches, starting easy and building to full arches, then a crab walk. Usually while I’m warming up I also psych up—get my mind in gear, get aggressive. You have to believe you can win, that you can make your opponent pay every time he pulls a move on you. And you’ve got to go to the mat ready to rock ‘n’ roll. You can’t wander into the gym and shake hands with your opponent thinking, Gee, I sure hope I’ll do okay. The guy’ll kill you.

But I kept thinking about Hawk, and I couldn’t get psyched. I should have called him back, I knew. I
had chickened out. I had been afraid, not knowing what to say to the new Hawk, the one I now knew was gay. Try psyching yourself up, telling yourself you’re a mean strong machine on the mat, powerful, crafty and fast—try it when you really know you’re a coward.

I went to the foyer to check my match time and pool, feeling more like a limp piece of string than a powerhouse. I was on at nine o’clock. Good, I thought, get started early so there’s no time to stand around letting the jitters sap your energy. I went to the change room and put on my red singlet and the new Nikes my mother had bought me to bring good luck. As I double-knotted the stiff white laces I promised myself I’d call Hawk that night and tell him how I did, who I’d face the next day in the medal rounds. If I made it to the second day.

The first match went okay. My opponent wasn’t in as good shape as he should have been, and when he realized I was a lot stronger than him he got dirty. He cross-faced me a couple of times in the second round, and that got me mad. I paid him back with a painful gut-wrench, then, after we tied up again, I threw him. He landed like a bag of wet sand and I pinned him.

The ref took us to centre and held my hand in the air. Someone in the stands was stomping his feet and cheering like a retard.

I’ll bet he never hollered like that at the opera.

M
Y OPPONENT FOR THE SECOND
match was a black kid, strong and fit, and a lot tougher than the first guy. But my concentration began to return and I was able to rack up points using gut-wrenches and ankle locks on him. By the end of the round the score was 8-2. In the middle of the second round the match was stopped because I beat him on technical superiority.

The third match, after lunch, just about killed me. The opponent was a kid I had fought before in Toronto. He was as strong as Hercules—at least it seemed that way on the mat—but, lucky for me, he wasn’t very fast. That’s where I got it over him. But he made me pay. I beat him by one point and by the time I was finished I was exhausted.

The last match of the day found me still tired. I hoped my opponent was more tired than me. He was shorter than me, a white guy, very hairy.

He caught me asleep early on and I was almost pinned. From then on I fought defensively, using the zone a lot, waiting until he moved on me and then trying to score on counter-moves. The score was even when the final round was almost over.

Then I tried something I do once in a while. I had been wrestling pretty defensively, like I said, and the
guy got too used to it. When we had tied up and worked our way near the zone, pushing and shoving, I wound up all the strength I had left and exploded. I locked my hands behind his head, stepped in deep, pivoted and threw him. Talk about airborne. As he smashed to the mat in the out-of-bounds area I caught a glimpse of the ref holding up three fingers.

When we tied up again at centre I just kept away for the remaining seconds. I picked up a caution for passivity, but it didn’t matter by then. I was glad to hear the buzzer and see the big yellow sponge sail into the ring to mark the end of the match.

Four wins! Suddenly I didn’t feel tired any more.

Back in our room, I came out of the shower to hear my father on the phone. He was just saying goodbye.

“Love you too,” he said in a low voice, his back to me.

He cracked open a beer and threw himself into a chair, looking real happy about something. “Man, what a day for the Chandlers! First you win four in a row—that means you’re in the medal rounds tomorrow, right?—and I get an offer on a sculpture that would knock your socks off!”

“Which one?” I asked, towelling my hair.

“The one I did for you, the wrestlers.”

My exhilaration drained away. “Oh, yeah?” I said, trying to hide my disappointment. “A good offer?”

“How’s ten thousand bucks sound? That’s the best offer by far I’ve ever had. Some character who runs a sports equipment outfit in the States wants to buy it. He wants to put it in a case in the lobby of their buildin’.”

“So it’s gone?” I said.

“Are you kiddin’? No way I sell that one. That one’s not for sale.”

Well, I felt pretty good that night. We went out to an Italian restaurant and oinked out on pasta, then caught an early movie, a real dog about some macho types rescuing a beautiful but dumb woman captured by terrorists. I fidgeted all through the flick, knowing what I had to do when we returned to our room.

As soon as we were back in the dorm I forced myself to pick up the phone. Taking a deep breath I punched in Hawk’s number. I figured I’d just play it cool, tell him about the matches, act as if everything was normal.

“Hello?” It was Hawk’s mother.

“Hi, Mrs. Richardson, it’s Wick.”

“Oh, hello, Wick. How are you?” Her voice was lifeless and sad.

“Um, fine. I’m in Thunder Bay at the meet. Is Hawk there?”

“He … isn’t here now, Wick.”

“Oh. When will he be back?”

There was a long pause. “Malcolm is … Malcolm is in the hospital, Wick.”

“Why?” I asked, suddenly afraid, “What’s the matter?”

“He was almost killed last night. He crashed the car.”

Through the telephone line the crying started.

“You
LOOK LIKE YOU’VE SEEN A GHOST.”
My father stood in the middle of the room, his beer in his hand, an anxious look on his face.

“It’s Hawk,” I said, putting the phone down and lowering myself slowly into a chair. My hands shook and my throat had suddenly gone dry.

“It’s what? I don’t get you.”

I tried to assemble the bits of information that Hawk’s mother had given me, bits that ricocheted around inside my skull, resisting any sort of order. “My friend Hawk smashed up the car. He’s in the hospital. She said he almost died, that he’s on the critical list.”

My father sat in the chair opposite me. “What happened?”

“She … she said he hit a bridge on the Gardiner Expressway. She said he was drunk.”

I knew the exact place. Hawk had been going west on the Gardiner and had taken the exit ramp to the Lakeshore. That ramp goes off to the right, then curves in a giant S under the bridge before it joins the Lakeshore. Hawk had missed the first curve of the S and slammed into the massive concrete bridge abutment, head-on, with enough speed to demolish the Richardsons’ little Toyota.

“He did it on purpose,” I said.

“She said that?”

“No, she probably didn’t realize. But I know it. He tried to kill himself.”

My father took a pull on his beer, hesitated, then passed it to me. “Take a drink, Steve, it’ll help to calm you down.”

I did as he said, forcing the cool suds down my throat. The drink seemed to help me get my breath. I handed it back to him.

“Keep it,” he said. “I’ll get another one.” He went to the little fridge. As he popped the new can open he asked, “What … how do you know he did it on purpose?”

“Because Hawk never drinks. One summer after we finished grade nine he and I got drunk. We just wanted to try the stuff. The next day he was so sick he vowed he’d never drink again. And he never did.”

“Maybe he fell off the wagon, like they say.”

“No, not him. Besides, he’s an absolute fanatic about seatbelts. He never drives without it on, never rides in someone else’s car without his seatbelt on. He won’t let you drive with him unless you wear yours.”