Cataract City Read Online Free PDF Page B

apiece, clinking their plastic cups with unambiguous grimness. Dunk was hopping from foot to foot.
    “Bruiser’s up next.”
    His opponent was the Boogeyman, who stalked down the aisle with his lizard-green face, stepped through the ropes and stalked around the ring flicking his bright red tongue.
    “Let’s go up close,” Dunk said, tugging my sleeve. “It’ll be okay. Trust me.”
    We ran down the aisle as Bruiser Mahoney’s music began:
John Henry was a Steel-Drivin’ Man
.
    “Somebody is cruisin’ for a
bruuuuuisin
’!”
    The crowd rose to a thunderous roar as Bruiser Mahoney burst through a rainbow of sizzling fireworks. He ran with a high-kneed and almost clumsy gait, robe billowing off his heels. His face was set in an expression of controlled wrath—of
joy
. You could imagine a Spartan warrior running into battle with that same teeth-gritted, cockeyed look.
    “
Bruiser!
” Dunk cried, stretching one arm over the barrier.
    Bruiser Mahoney slapped Dunk’s palm on the way past. It sent Dunk reeling into me. He just sat there with a blissful expression, staring at his reddening hand.
    Bruiser Mahoney booted the Boogeyman in the breadbasket, stunned him with a shot to the solar plexus, flung him into the ropes and tagged him with a dropkick, then hauled him up and delivered a mat-shaking German suplex. The crowd was mad for blood and Bruiser was happy to oblige.
    Looking back now, I could see why the guys we watched those nights never hit the big time—even Mahoney, who’d wrestled for six months in the WWF as Jimmy Falcone, working as a trail horse: a guy whose sole job is to lose and make his opponent look goodwhile doing so. After that stint the promotion sent him packing to the carnival-tent and county fair circuit.
    It wasn’t that guys like Mahoney were any less muscular than the men who made their livings in the big league; it was more that their bodies lacked the requisite speed and grace. Their limbs seemed slightly disconnected from their brains. They moved at a plodding pace, more like durable tractors than souped-up race cars. And sure, there would always be a place for tractors, but it was not under the bright lights of Maple Leaf Gardens. The Garden City Arena in St. Catharines with its two-thousand-seat capacity was a better fit.
    But we were too young to understand how men might be held back by their physical limitations—we figured these guys were fighting each other because they
hated
each other. We were fortunate that this was the arena they’d chosen to settle their blood feuds.
    It was a see-saw of a match. The Boogeyman sprayed poisonous green mist—in fact, lime Jell-O—into Mahoney’s face, then smashed him with a powerbomb. Normally that would be enough to put away the stoutest challenger, but the crowd rallied Mahoney back. He blocked the Boogeyman’s double axe-handle chop and slung him into the ropes, tagging him with a crippling lariat clothesline on the rebound. He climbed the top turnbuckle. The lights hit every contour of his superhuman physique. Mahoney paused in that silvery fall of light—a showman aware of the moment—before spreading his arms and leaping.
    He was only ten feet off the ground but from my vantage he could have had wings. For a moment he remained motionless—the whole world did—then the gears clicked and everything accelerated and Bruiser Mahoney slammed the Boogeyman, spiking him to the canvas.
    One. Two. Three.
    Bruiser Mahoney grabbed the microphone. “Yeah?” A wild cheer went up. He grinned. “Ohhh
yeeeeah!
”
    The cheer was louder this time. It rose up and up, the sound of three thousand lungs emptying towards the roof beams.
    “And I’ll be here, I’ll … be … right … 
here
,” Bruiser said, stomping his foot on the mat. Three thousand mouths repeated his words—we all knew his mantra by heart. “I’ll be here for
you
, fighting for
you
, always with
you
!”
    Bruiser Mahoney’s head swivelled towards the ceiling