Escape Points Read Online Free PDF

parents did; and their kids usually won the tournaments, the state titles, the scholarships to Big Ten colleges.
    As the day matured, the air grew dense and humid with the feral odor of pizza, hot dogs, and sweet, ripening sweat, the intensity thickening and festering by midafternoon. Families arrived with Igloo coolers of food like Cheetos, pork rinds, and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches; separate bags of knitting and crossword puzzle books; and smaller children in car seats and strollers. Some parents left intermittently to smoke in the parking lot.
    No matter how much food was brought in, it seemed so much more was purchased and so much else thrown away. Sometimes a few high-protein, low-calorie offerings were available from a concession stand, like oranges and bananas, but most of the food was deep-fried and cheesed. There were mountains of candy choices. Long, colored sugar ropes hung from many boys’ mouths to their waists as they gobbled their way to the end, like a long wick of a cartoon bomb fuse.
    At some concession stands you could find the walking taco—an opened bag of Fritos with a scoop of hot chili poured on top and a teaspoon of shredded cheddar cheese, with a plastic spoon plunged into the chunky mess. I made hundreds of them working the food line at Little Huskies tournaments. You needed a Crock-Pot to heat the chili and ice to cool the bags of shredded cheese. And lots of paper towels.
    The announcer gave the predictable procedural details and then played a recording of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” sometimes the recording by Whitney Houston, most of the time just a recorded instrumental version with a church organ. Refs blew whistles, and the wrestling matches erupted on four rubber mats with each mat divided into two. Two wrestlers were on each mat. Red and green strips of Velcro were fastened onto the boys’ ankles just before their match—the same Velcro strips used over and over again on different wrestlers—to differentiate the wrestlers for scoring. I used to wonder what the bacterial count on those strips would be at the end of the day—and then I wouldn’t let myself think about it. The ref wore one red and one green wristband and held the corresponding colored wrist in the air to quickly note the points scored for each wrestler.
    In the matches, the boys looked like dancing spider monkeys on fast-forward, rolling over each other, grappling, shooting for a takedown, pinning, standing up, crying, winning, arms shot in the air. The thuds of an official pin—a referee’s slam of his open hand onto the mat signaling a boy was pinned and the match was over—occasionally pierced the air like an exclamation point. The smallest and youngest wrestlers were first. Some were so cute they looked like Power Rangers dolls, some cried inconsolably when they lost, and others were cocky and determined, like small pit bulls. The matches worked up from the youngest Midget through Novice to the Cadets, some of whom at fifteen had been wrestling ten years and looked mature enough to father children. Some even sported facial hair and tattoos.
    “Now you won’t take first,” a father reprimanded his son, as if he had just committed a felony. The boy’s shoulders were shaking from crying, his neck and arms red from the recent loss. The wrestler made his way to a corner of the gym to cry.
    Each mat had a nearby long, folding table where up to four scorekeepers sat, controlling the clock and the score. One mat was connected to the overhead scoreboard; the other matches were scored on foot-high cardboard cards of numbers that scorekeepers—usually high school volunteers—flipped forward on double rings toshow points earned. Every match had its own digital running clock. Occasionally a parent shouted at the ref to contest a point.
    “Parents off the mats, only wrestlers and coaches on the floor,” the announcer pleaded often each hour. But it was as futile as trying to stop passing drivers from watching