Pins: A Novel (15 page)

17

Bennie started calling their Saturday nights “Bible Study.” Joey thought it was a little odd, although he did like Dink’s joke about him and Joey being “Laps Catholics.” Dink and Joey would jump into fake Swedish accents and yak about the Laps Lands, where Frozen Catholics come from. Bennie didn’t get it. Neither did Dink or Joey.

But the day of the Jehovah’s Witnesses clinched their pact. The four boys had been walking out of practice, laughing loudly about that day’s drills in “penetration,” “the high crotch,” and the high single takedown, also referred to as “the snatch.”

 
They came upon a pair of men in suits and ties, standing on the corner across the street from the school, doling out tiny books as if they were candy or crack.

Bennie did it first. He approached the tie guys calmly, then slowly started shaking, feigning an electric shock, the Lord jolting through his body. The other three looked confused a moment, then Hunter started too, then of course Dink and Joey followed along. They wiggled around on the sidewalk, the two born-again/Jehovah Witnesses looking confused, when suddenly Bennie jumped up, grabbed one of the mini-Bibles out of their hands and roared into their faces.

The boys had kept the bible after the guys ran off, twisting passages into revised versions:

“Is any pingie too hard for the Lord?”

“And she danced for him, and he was risen.”

“And Obed begat Jesse, and Jesse begat David, and David befucked Queeny and they begot a duplex in Whippany, Amen.”

“So Hunter an’ Bennie, they gonna go out on Saturday. Ya wanna come?”
 
Dink asked Joey just after practice on a Friday; two glorious days without the coaches on their backs. Dink dressed the way he always did, putting his hooded sweatshirt on first. It bothered Joey. He got too long a moment to steal a look at Dink’s body as he stretched up into the arms of the cozy sweats, his lower torso bare. Dink didn’t seem to mind Joey’s glances, or he wouldn’t have asked him to come along, would he?

After four times, the spray-painting got boring. Bennie said it was time to move on to other amusements.

When he had a date with a girl whose name was “Nona Yabizness,” that left the three others to scrounge a bus ride for a movie or some aimless music store shopping. One such night, Joey invited Dink and Hunter over for pizza. Joey’s parents were extra friendly, gave them space in the living room to channel surf. After they left, his mom noted how nice his new friends were. Joey noticed how Hunter and Dink behaved like Stepford kids, since his parents were in their faces almost the whole time.

Since Bennie and Hunter politely introduced themselves to Joey’s dad at the matches, Joey merely had to say he was going out with his teammates, and his dad would slip him a ten-dollar bill.
 
Before they headed out that night, a week before Christmas, with one more match before break, Joey trod the blocks to Dink’s house and caught him still getting dressed.

He lay on Dink’s bed, watching him walk around his room in his shorts as he picked out T-shirts, four at a time, before deciding on one.

“So, how come Bennie’s always makin’ bible wisecracks? I don’t get that.”

“That’s ‘cause we didn’t do that. He was a born-again. We got our own version, much more aesthetic.”

“Athletic.”

“No, dummy, aesthetic. You should know that.”

“Whaddayou mean?”

“Bennie’s father, or like his first foster father, jeez, this preacher who adopted him, nearly sent him off with the born-again shit. You shoulda seen him in junior high, man. Like, pen pockets, stern as a board, total geek. Only played football.”

“So what happened?”

“I dunno. His dad kept beatin’ him. Then he went back to foster program or somethin’. He’s livin’ with these other people now. Big guy and his wife. You met ‘em at the matches. Works in a linoleum place on the One and Nine. Then he got into wrestling. That’s when he started talking,” Dink shrugged, then leapt onto Joey in a surprise move, shouting as he fell on him in the bed, cinching him in a not-at-all-legal nelson in two seconds, “…and he used the power of Gawd ta rassle thu Angel!!”

Joey’s kept giggling even after Dink conquered, then abandoned him.

Rassle the Angel.

Joey wondered how hard it must have been for a guy like Bennie to grow up, having his family fall apart. Maybe that was why he was so driven, so crazed to lift weights, slaughter guys on the mat. Dink didn’t seem to have such a hard time, though, even though his parents were divorced. Dink seemed to groove on it.

That night, they did not drive aimlessly. Bennie had a plan.

The Mustang zoomed south on the Garden State Parkway, a Stone Temple Pilots tune blasting away. At one point, everybody sang along. Bennie rolled down his window, shouting the lyrics, “We are aaaall God’s children! We will survive!”

They came down from the high of speeding when they turned off the freeway into East Orange.

Hunter changed the cassette. “We get the Whiner off the team, then we’ll do okay.”

“Whaddaya mean, get him off the team?” Joey asked. Dink gave him a glare.

Bennie turned back while driving, which made Joey nervous. “Because, dipshit, he is a loser, a total fish, and me and Hunter–” Bennie faced front, but his glare continued through the rearview mirror. “–and your sorry asses are never gonna get recruited to no colleges with scholarships if you’re on a loser team, no matter how hard you try.”

“That’s bullshit,” Joey blurted. “It’s not a team sport. You’re gonna be judged on your record, not–”

“Or how well you suck up to coaches,” Dink blurted.

But Bennie had already slowed the Mustang down, cut the tunes and opened his door, as if waiting for them to get out of his car for disagreeing.

Joey looked down at the triangle of asphalt. Leave now, a voice said. He made a move, but Dink grabbed him.

 
Bennie waited a half a minute. Everyone sat silent, listening to the glug of the Mustang’s guts beneath them. The cold air brushed their faces.

Bennie gave Joey a rear-view mirror glare, waited, carefully closed the door. “As I was saying, they read our record, no scouts come by, and it’s community college. That is not in my plan.”

“Jeez, awright.” Joey wanted to say how Bennie was full of shit, how he just liked to pick on guys, just lord it over.

Instead, he just kept quiet. It did sort of make sense.

The windshield didn’t shatter. It crumpled.

Joey remembered that most after they zoomed away.

Bennie had driven by a porno shop near the overpass, while Hunter made jokes about the store selling videos of women “with tits out to here, I swear.”

Then Bennie drove by a bar a few times where he said fags went. “Prepare yourselves for some wrath.”

“I don’t feel good about this,” Joey muttered to Dink. He wanted to ask what they knew about gay bars, like the time they’d quizzed him about his drag queen hooker joke, but he didn’t feel too snappy after the three beers he’d drunk, so he didn’t want to start anything.

“C’mon. It’s just a joke,” Dink said as they tooled around the block the last time.

But it wasn’t a joke when Bennie drove into the parking lot. Hunter spotted two guys standing close together by a car. Bennie lurched the car to a halt. He and Hunter, who had the bat, jumped out, running toward the men, who ran off.

Dink had hopped out of the car too. Joey followed.

“Come on, faggots, come on!” Hunter yelled. But they had run back into the bar. Then Hunter swung his bat around a few times, considering his options. He slammed it along the front windshield of the car they’d been leaning on, not even caring whose it was.

The windshield broke into a thousand pieces, but held together, like candy or as if it were glued together.
 
It just clung there. Joey found that odd. He also found it odd that the music from Bennie’s car still blasted away.

Part of him that wanted to just tear off, run into the bar, but then they were all running back to Bennie’s car, with Hunter sitting shotgun, holding his seat forward for him. He and Dink piled inside. Bennie took off before Hunter even had the door shut.

“I’m gettin’ out.”

“You don’t even know where we are. Just let them drive us home.”

The glare of the gas station lights where Bennie finally parked the Mustang almost burned. Bennie left Hunter to fill the tank while he went into the little booth of a store.

In the car, Dink hummed a song, drumming his fingers on the back of Bennie’s bucket seat. Joey looked out the window, looking for any excuse to leave or say something, but he didn’t know where he was. He pointed to the sign on the wall of the cashier hut. A flat disc of neon five feet high glowed a dull white. Inside the circle, a red winged horse took flight.

“Pegasus,” he said.

“Huh?”

Joey pointed until Dink saw it.

“Corporate logo,” Dink sarcastically responded.

“So?”

“So, nothin.’”

“Are you stoned?”

“Just drunk, tonight.”

Joey had to think about that.

Dink started drumming to Joey’s silence, but stopped. “Look, I didn’t wanna do that, okay? Don’t worry about it.”

Joey kept his eyes on anything outside the car, anything not Dink. He had to let it out, but he still found himself pointing at Dink, repointing for emphasis, just like his dad when he was beyond pissed. “Man, I spent my whole muthah-fuckin’ life in Newark–”

“Dude. Don’t snap at me.”

“My whole life, an’ I been clean the whole time.”

“Neech.”

“I did nothin’. I kept my nose clean. Mistah Khors, I am not up for this shit.”

The back seat thunked beneath them as Hunter pulled the hose from the tank.

Dink glared back. “We won’t get caught.”

Hunter got in, then Bennie tossed them each a bag of nachos. Joey was starving, so kept quiet, ate with them while Bennie mucked up some break bread brother quote from Ephezius or whoever. Joey put aside what he wanted to say, that getting caught was not the point.

18

“It was the oldest school they’d ever been to. It was so old, the walls had wrinkles.”

Dink narrated their tour with a serious tone which he only maintained at intervals between giggles.

Washington High was an inner city school that Bennie and Hunter had a dozen names for, even though they had a good wrestling record. Despite all their boasting, Joey knew they were all nervous. Being the visitor didn’t make it any better. For Joey, he hadn’t made morning weigh-ins. He was over by three pounds. At lunch, he’d wolfed down two peanut butter sandwiches, thinking eating faster would maybe help him digest it bettter.

He’d tried to cut back the days before the match, skipping dinner, but with his stomach gnawing, aching, he couldn’t sleep, had snuck down to the kitchen for a late snack which became a very large snack, which ended up almost cleaning out the fridge.

Ducking into the bathroom, he spit between classes to get the water weight out. If Joey was still too far overweight, he might have to just run a few laps.

At Washington High, there were no bulletin boards with colorful posters under glass like at Little Falls, no painted murals, no modern lockers neatly clunking open and closed. It reminded him of the opera house that became a theater Joey had been to when his parents took him to see
Dumbo
.
 
He couldn’t remember where, or if it had happened. There was no Mike or Sophia then. Maybe he’d dreamt it.

He felt sad for the kids who had to go the dilapidated school. There were so many worn edges. The lockers were beaten, the walls marked, the floors sunken under cracked floors. He didn’t say that, though, but continued with his whispered jokes, darting them into Dink’s ear at close range, which felt a lot better after a few days of hungover headaches. Joey had felt great while being drunk, but all his old injuries moved up to his head and parked. He’d been drinking a lot of water to get the alcohol out, advice he read in a magazine Dink let him take home.

Since the Paterson boy’s basketball team played on the same day of the wrestling matches, the teams competed in the girl’s gym, a smaller, cavernous place with dark walls, cloudy high-arched windows. “It’s like…the Palace of Gloom.”

Dink furthered it. “The Monkey Tower in the Palace of Gloom.”

The ref was late, but Joey could have waited forever. Three pounds over.

Wearing extra sweats on the bus ride to Paterson hadn’t cut it. He stood in line with all the others in the large locker room. On one side were all the Little Falls guys, all white except for Buddha Martinez, Lamar Stevens, and Raul Klein (Jewish-Latino, he called himself “a person of not-that-much color”). They watched Fiasole and the ref check off everybody’s weight on a chart.

Across from them, in an opposite line, the Washington team was all black guys, except one white kid. Some guys made jokes about it, the Washington guys blurting out “cracker,” and “White boy, you gonna be flattened,” little insults, boastful threats, but Joey didn’t make jokes. He kept telling himself he wasn’t uncomfortable standing in line in just his underpants with two dozen other guys, while the ref, who’d finally showed up, checked them in on the scales.

“You’re still overweight, young man.”

But Bennie cut ahead in line. “Give him a minute.” Then he took Joey by the arm, signaled to Hunter, who followed them back to the lockers.

“What, you got some Ex-Lax or something?” Joey asked, crossing his arms, nervous, chilly in the clammy locker room.

“Better.” Bennie sat on a bench and removed a small box from his gym bag.
 
“Come on.” He steered Joey back to the toilet stalls.

“Did Coach tell you to–”

“Coach’s got nothing to do with this.”

Hunter stood by the doorway in his shorts, keeping guard. Bennie stood before the sink, poured out the contents of a box. Inside the box a plastic bottle with an attachment wrapped in clear plastic fell on the counter. Bennie poured a bluish liquid out, filled the tube with tap water. “If it’s warm, it feels better.”

Joey read the box label for a woman’s douche kit.

“You want me to…oh no. Aw, Jesus.”

“He’s got nothin’ to do with it, either.”

“I can’t…I can’t.”

“You gonna forfeit to that punk ‘cause a two pounds a shit?” Bennie growled, his face so close Joey smelled his anger.

Joey held his stomach to his belly.

“Go do this in the stall. You shove it up. Wait. Shit it out. It’ll work.”

“But–”

“Just do it. And if that don’t work, I’m stickin’ my fingers down yer throat.”

Joey obeyed. He parked his butt on the cold toilet seat. Joey took the hose, slowly aimed it near, then at his butt. The rush of water flooded his insides. There was no stall door.

With Bennie standing nearby, hearing every squish, it made him wonder if fucking would be anything like this. He hoped not. He pulled the tip from his ass. Immediately, water splatted out.
 
Hunter snorted a stifled laugh.

Joey flushed the toilet. He felt further humiliated, but at least Bennie and Hunter turned their heads, even though they were both giggling as Joey crouched. Another blast plopped into the toilet. Joey felt like his insides had fallen out. He felt like the guys had pulled the worst stunt on him, but then realized a sick truth; he felt lighter already.

Hunter mumbled, “His water broke,” giggling until Bennie hushed him, approached the stall. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” He grimaced, leaned forward on the toilet to hide his dick.

“Okay. We’ll see you out there.” Bennie and Hunter left.

He felt queasy, more than just the usual.

Another chunk slid out. Joey’s body relaxed. He felt dizzy, didn’t know if he could stand up. He looked at the stall walls coated in scribbles of graffiti.
 
‘Got AIDS Yet?’ and
 
‘Die Fags.’

The ref called out,
 
“Nickey, one-twenty-six. Last call!”

A few kids gabbed away in the balcony above the gym. Having them up and far away made Joey feel like the teams were in a pen.

Joey looked around at the gym, wondering how many years of kids had played in the space. Washington was a huge school but the girl’s gym didn’t even have a scoreboard. He just felt sorry for them, how the mat was connected with used tape, uneven, curling up at the ends. They probably had no money in their program. They didn’t even have sweat pants, just hooded sweatshirts that read WASHINGTON WRESTLING.

Visiting teams always had the mat first for warm-ups, so the Colts didn’t have the luxury of their well-rehearsed dramatic entrance like the home team, who jogged out in formation as they ran from the locker room to trot down around the mat in a circle.

Joey and the rest of the Colts had retreated to their side of the mat. Joey didn’t feel like warming up more, afraid he would leak. He’d had to run to the bathroom again, even though he’d already made weight.

He lay down a moment, just trying to get himself back in order, get ready. He tried to meditate, imagine himself winning, what moves he would use, envisioning a swift single leg takedown. He looked up at the gym ceiling. The only light was a diffused white through three looming arced windows like St. Augustine’s, except there were no saints in colored glass. Metal webbing made the gym resemble a prison.

Joey returned to the team, ignoring their gassy sound effects, foraged in his bag for his water bottle. Fiasole and Cleshun headed off to the tables to go over the line-up, chat with the other coaches.

Anthony sat by the wall, pouting. Joey gave him a glance that might have turned into some sort of show of support, but then Bennie strolled up to him, kicking Anthony’s gym bag away from his own.

“Hey, who touched my clothes?” Bennie looked around. “Whiner?”

Anthony shrugged.

Joey stood, shrugged his shoulders. Other guys just ignored Bennie, something Joey wished he could do. How could Bennie make helping out feel so cruel?

“Hey, I’m talkin’ to you, pee wee.”

Joey turned away.

“Don’t call me pee wee,” he heard Anthony say.

“That’s what you are. You got a dick the size of a noodle.”

“Oh, you lookin’ at my dick?”

“Fuck you.” Sounds, grunting.

“Go ahead.”

“You better win this time.” Bennie loomed over Anthony, almost ready to kick. Anthony’s head aimed down, four inches from the floor. From five feet away anyone would think Bennie was merely showing a move to another pal.

“Hey, go easy on him, Bennie. He’s gotta make it through his match.”

Bennie relented, let Anthony up. His face flushed, he blinked, wiped off his neck, then said, “Why don’t you just worry about your own match?”

“I don’t have to worry,” Bennie said. “I worry about you.”

“Well, I worry about you guys.
 
I know you go out drinkin’. I know somebody’s been doing a little extracurricular art project.” Anthony glared at Joey.

Joey’s jaw dropped. How could he know?

“What are you, playin’ snoop?” Bennie was on Anthony again, feigning arm grabs that kept hitting closer and closer to Anthony’s head. Anthony couldn’t get out from either side, so Joey said, “Duck.”

Anthony did. Bennie halted himself from chasing after the boy.

Joey looked for Coach Fiasole.

Fiasole’s eyes across the gym caught Joey’s, then beyond him, where he could see Bennie shoving Anthony.

Fiasole barked out a “Hey!” then was upon him, argued quietly, intensely. Bennie received a telling off. Joey moved in to see Anthony, whom Fiasole had pulled away. Bennie blurted something that enraged Fiasole.

“Oh yeah?” Fiasole seethed. “The meek shall inherit the earth. Love of your brother. Love of your fellow man. What happened to that, Mister Skaal? Are you in there, Mister Skaal?”

Joey kept his distance, watching Bennie stand silently, nodding occasionally. Fiasole twice thudded a pointed finger into Bennie’s chest. Joey turned around, pretended not to be listening, but other kids paced, staring, until Cleshun got into it, separated Bennie from Fiasole. Walt ambled by with two oranges. He offered one to Joey. “Thanks.”

“You see what Bennie did?”

“Sort of.”

“Why’s Coach screamin’ at him?”

“He was pickin’ on Lambros.”

“Well,” Walt said. “That’s why we’re all starin.’ Everybody likes seein’ the big guy get dressed down. We all been there, but seein’ the big guys fall is just more fun.”
 

Walt wandered off to hang with the other guys and eat. Joey dug down into his bag. His water bottle had spilled all over his street clothes.

The ref finally arrived. Anthony, obviously still upset, waited for the signal to take the mat. He kept tapping his foot in a way that annoyed Joey. “Why’d you bait Bennie like that?” he asked.

“I was not baiting him. I was telling the truth.”

“So? Same difference.”

“Coach said he could smell beer on your sweat every Monday. You’re gonna get caught.”

“You’re a liar.”

The ref walked out onto the mat.

Anthony stood. “Joseph.” He struggled with his headgear, nearly tripped on his sweat pants, but finally got out on the mat, after saying, “I am not the liar here.”