Vision Quest (19 page)

“Sounds great, Konig,” says Otto. “I'll letcha know.”

Mike struts back down the aisle and I turn back to the Lolo National Forest of eastern Montana.

About two seconds later Mike's little brother, Jerry, pops up beside us in an identical outfit. Jerry's, however, is all wrinkled and covered in RyKrisp crumbs. “Was Mike telling you guys how he's gonna give Keiko the big one after the dance?” Jerry asks.

“Didn't say a word about it to us, Jer,” I reply.

“Don't see how he could give her the big one,” Otto says, and turns. “I never promised to lend him my dick.”

Jerry laughs and scurries back down the aisle. We hear
him laughing and repeating Otto's line until Mike bops him with a sleeping bag. We stay with families from the other schools, so we have to bring sleeping bags.

We cross the Bitterroot River, which means it's about time to get dressed. Coach is knotting his tie.

We have a rule that says David Thompson athletes have to dress presentably on road trips. That used to mean a tie and a sport coat. But last year we got it changed to include turtlenecks and letter sweaters. Still, we can't wear jeans. Otto's got a clip-on tie and a gold shirt he got for a dollar at the Safeway store. He's got the shirt on now. He scoots by me and steps into the aisle to put on his good pants. He'll wear his letter sweater, too. It's a green cardigan with a gold DT. People always give us shit about our DTs. When we walk into a match some creepo always yells out, “Oh, here come the DTs!” Then he pretends to be drunk and wobbles around yelling about seeing snakes and spiders.

In my bag I've got a gray cotton turtleneck Mom bought me for road trips when we got the rule changed and an old-fashioned sleeveless pullover letter sweater and a big floppy thug hat Carla got me for my birthday. With my baggy bell-bottomed cords I look like an escapee from
The Little Rascals
show. Mom and I used to watch them on TV together. She'd get up early for work so she'd have plenty of time to put on her makeup. I'd sit with her and we'd watch
The Little Rascals
in her room. She loved it because she used to go to their movies when she was a kid. She said they were
called
Our Gang Comedy
then. I was always late for school.

I suppose it would be smarter for us to just wear our good stuff right from home instead of getting dressed on the bus. But real comfort, like old jeans and flannel shirts, is something you don't like to be without unless you absolutely have to. Not even for a six-hour bus ride.

We pull into the Custer parking lot and a few Custer and Battleground guys pelt the bus with snowballs in a friendly way. The Lewis and Clark bus isn't here yet. The door opens and the sharp cold air rushes in. On a hill behind the school, snowmobiles swarm. Either the ring of their two-cycle engines or the shot of cold air arouses Kuch from the nap he began around Coeur d'Alene. I sit and wait for him while he knots his tie and pulls his hair back into a ponytail and fixes it with a rubber band. If he can sleep through a road trip he has truly achieved tranquility.

*  *  *

Schmoozler is off in a corner of the bleachers reading
Semi-Tough
to some Custer guys. They're all chortling and guffawing. We beat them in a real close match this afternoon. I felt good all through my match. It went into the third round. We stuffed my nose before I went out and it only bled a little. I got really dizzy after it was over, though. When the ref raised my arm I had to grab on to him to keep from falling down. I lay behind the bench and didn't get up until Otto went out to wrestle. Still, the gym seemed to spin when I stood up. We were down
24–20 going into Otto's match. If he hadn't pinned his man we'd have lost. The pressure was really on, but pressure doesn't bother Otto. He'd led us out for our exercises yelling, “Corega! Coreeega!” He's been fascinated with the word ever since he discovered I use that stuff instead of regular toothpaste. Coach made him captain for both the Custer and Battleground matches. Both teams have big tough heavyweights. The worst is over for us now, though. Custer is the tougher of the two, so tomorrow night should be easier.

Coach is going to have Doug Bowden wrestle in my place tomorrow night. That will give Doug some tournament experience and it will give me a little rest. Coach and I talked about it and decided missing one match wouldn't make me lose my edge. Shute is only four days away.

Otto's down behind the Lewis and Clark bench talking to Romaine. They've just finished their exercises and Battleground is out on the mat. The gym's been full all day. Most people come and go, but the really interested ones bring something to eat so they can see all the matches. I met the folks I'll be staying with. Their kid, Chris Carpenter, drew with Schmooz in a tremendous match this afternoon. Otto stops to say hello to Romaine's folks on his way back up to where we're sitting. They go to all of Romaine's matches, even road trips. Rayette smiles up at Otto and I'll bet half the gym bristles with hard-ons.

*  *  *

I'm curled up in my sleeping bag in the Carpenter's basement under the pool table. Rance Prokoff from L.C. is asleep on the davenport. He lost pretty bad to a state champ from Battleground tonight. We shot a game of eight-ball to see who got the davenport and Rance won. Actually, it's pretty cozy under here. I've got a little desk lamp hooked up and I'm reading a book Cindy got me for Christmas. It's called
Another Roadside Attraction
and it's by a guy named Tom Robbins who lives over around Seattle. It's funny and sexy, but the thing that blows me away the furthest about it is how it fits into the stuff I'm talking about in my senior thesis. I don't know if I'm becoming monomaniacal or what, but everywhere I look I keep seeing things that fit. Robbins's characters don't believe the purpose of life is to die and be resurrected in a Christian heaven, so they aren't terribly surprised when one of them finds the mummified body of Christ where it's been stashed in the Vatican basement all these years. For a lot of people that knowledge would knock all the meaning or purpose out of living. But these Robbins people create their own meaning in the way they live. They live as though certain things were important, so those things become important. Right here Amanda says, “If our style is masterful, if it is fluid and at the same time complete, then we can recreate ourselves.” A resurrection a day if you work at it. That's something I can believe in.

It's the same thing Castaneda means when he says that
by the power of our will we can stop the world and remake it. And the same thing Fitzgerald shows in
The Great Gatsby
with the schedule Gatsby followed as a kid—exercising and studying needed inventions and practicing elocution and poise and reading an improving book each week and taking a bath every day. The problem with old Gatsby, though, was that he just wasn't tough enough. With all his discipline, he wasn't willing to face alone the world he'd made. He wanted Daisy along, and there was no way that stain would do anything that took independence.

I guess a lot of people are concerned about how to take charge of their lives and make them better. And not just writers, either. My own dad is trying to change. I can see him doing it. And Kuch. Kuch has put it all into his vision quest.

I think a lot about this stuff when I can't sleep. It's lonely without Carla beside me and Dad upstairs. I'm just not real comfortable in somebody else's house.

*  *  *

I wake to a crash of pool balls overhead. Rance is up and at it already.

“Prokoff,” I growl. “If you want to live to lose a wrestling match this afternoon, you'll lighten up on that pool stick.”

CRASH! Rance drills one into the corner pocket above my head. “Stay down there, Swain, or I'll clout ya on the nose.”  The news is really out on my tragic flaw.

“What time is it?”

“It's nine thirty and Mrs. Carpenter says breakfast in ten minutes.”

“Suppose they've got any spinach?” I ask on my way to the bathroom.

When I come out Chris Carpenter is shooting a game with Rance. Chris looks sharp in his cowboy clothes. His eye is all puffy. “Looks like Schmoozler got a piece of your eye yesterday,” I greet him.

“It's an infection,” Chris replies. “I get it every season. The doctor says it's like athlete's foot.”

“Typical cowboy disease,” I say, smiling. “Athlete's foot of the eye.” Rance laughs and Carpenter brings his stick back extra far and jabs him a firm one in the gonies. Rance shrieks in surprise and doubles over, more in reflex than in pain. Wrestlers are a playful bunch.

“Breakfast, you boys!” yells Chris's mom from upstairs.

Chris and Rance are both a couple pounds light, so they're looking forward to something substantial for breakfast. I weighed 147 on the nose after my morning dump. But since I won't wrestle tonight, I can't count on that weight loss, so I'd better go easy.

Mrs. Carpenter brings the small, thin broiled steaks on a platter. The smell elicits a growl of yearning from my stomach. I smile over my Nutrament.

Mr. and Mrs. Carpenter and Chris's younger brother and sister have a leisurely go at their pancakes and eggs. Chris's little brother, Craig, wrestled at 103 yesterday for the Custer JVs.

“Look like you'll be able to hold that weight, Louden?” Mr. Carpenter asks.

“Looks like it, sir,” I reply. My stomach growls again. “May not sound like it, though,” I add. We all laugh.

“We read that article about you and Gary Shute in
Sports Illustrated
,” Mrs. Carpenter says. It wasn't really an “article.” It was just a couple lines and pictures of Shute and me in that “Faces in the Crowd” section they have.

“Half our team's driving over to Spokane to see you guys wrestle,” Chris says.

“You better get there early,” says Rance through a mouthful of steak.

We change the subject to snowmobiles. The Carpenters have two on a trailer at the side of the house. Some family strife erupts when Chris's sister, Andie, says she'd rather go snowmobiling than see Chris wrestle. Argument on the subject is short. The Carpenters are a wrestling family.

I don't feel uncomfortable this morning. It feels good to be here in the Carpenters' house. They make you feel at home.

I feel the same way about the Baldosiers, although they're a very different kind of people. They invited me for dinner about a month before they left for Brazil. Jean-Pierre and I got to know each other in physics class last year. He's the best-educated kid I know. His dad is an engineer who designs nuclear power plants. Jean-Pierre was born in France, went to grade school in Brazil, junior high is Pasco, Washington, where he got into wrestling while his dad was doing something at the Hanford Atomic Works, then high school in Spokane because his dad
got a teaching job at Gonzagua U. The family left this fall to go back to Brazil so Mr. Baldosier could work on a nuclear power plant somewhere down there. Jean-Pierre is staying with the Raskas so he can finish up at David Thompson. Then he's going to college in France, where his real mother lives. That's why he isn't doing his senior thesis, the lucky bastard. He says a French college won't care whether he graduates with honors from an American high school. In fact, I think he has to take one whole year of prep courses before he can even start at college there.

It was a cultural experience to have dinner with the Baldosiers. They eat like Brazilians and speak French and English and Portuguese all at once. I never get to hear many foreign languages, so it was a treat for me. I learned to say “beans” and “rice” in Portuguese and “please” and “thank you” in French. I've studied German for the past three years and never once met a person who spoke it. And that includes my German teacher. I also learned how to use my knife to push food onto my fork.

Jean-Pierre's stepmother is dark and beautiful and gracious as I imagine wives of ambassadors are gracious. She also has a maid, which probably makes being gracious a little easier. His stepsister was born in Brazil. She'd give both Belle and Rayette a run in terms of beauty, but in terms of composure and grace she seemed a world away from the girls I know. Even Carla. Jean-Pierre's little brother was born in Pasco, but you'd never know it. He wears a Brazilian World
Cup Soccer uniform all the time and won't speak anything but Portuguese.

We all talked about politics and atomic energy and “
futebol
,” which is what Carlos Henrique, the little brother, calls soccer. And the neat thing was that everybody got to talk and everybody got listened to. Mr. and Mrs. Baldosier and Jean-Pierre stopped and waited to hear Lucia out on her condemnation of torture in Brazil and they deferred to Carlos Henrique on the sad state of French futebol. Lucia shared some false information about heavy water and Jean-Pierre set her straight patiently. Then his dad set him straighter, and just as patiently. I guess I'd just never seen a family pay that much attention to each other. But then, most of the families I know don't even take the time to sit down together. Sometimes I sure wish I had some brothers and sisters.

*  *  *

We're headed out of Missoula after munching up a whole bunch of Battleground Bluecoats. Doug Bowden stole the show at fifty-four by beating Battleground's undefeated Ray Rillke, whom I am glad I didn't have to wrestle. It was an especially big victory for Doug and the whole team because if Doug can beat guys like Rilke, losing me isn't going to make any difference.

When Otto found out Doug was wrestling in my place he went to Coach and asked if Doug could be captain. Coach thanked Otto and said sure. Coach would never have said a thing if Otto hadn't suggested it.

Doug went right after Rilke, which is something Rilke wasn't used to. Most guys, if they think you're tough, will hang back and wrestle defensively. As a team we reject that philosophy, but we do have a couple guys who occasionally experience failures of faith. But that's okay, because wrestling isn't really a team sport. It could be that Rilke is so fucking strong and tough-looking nobody has tried to push him around before, because when Doug took it to him at the whistle, Rilke acted like he'd wandered into the girls' bathroom. Balldozer says Rilke “wants to fart higher than his hole,” which I guess means he's arrogant. After Doug took him down, Rilke regained his composure and reversed him in a flash. Doug didn't seem real impressed, however, because he boomed right to his feet and rolled Rilke to his back. Unfortunately, he rolled him off the mat. There were some heavy sighs in the Battleground bleachers at that move.