The Journey Prize Stories 27 Read Online Free PDF Page B

Pauley’s at me, pinning me to the ground. I tap out but he ignores it and presses me harder against one of the rock walls. I know I could flip him over and pin him in a clutch, but I just let him hold me there until he quits doing noodle-arm swings at my body, lets out a big rough wad of air, and stomps out of the chamber. My teeth are coated in dust. I can hear the skeletal clack of bare aspen branches outside the entrance. I roll toward it and above the purple mountain ridges spot the full moon, its surface bare like a calloused palm. I think about the stories Mom used to tell me. Like the one about Jacob staying up all night to wrestle the angel and how all he wanted was for the angel to tell him that it was okay, that everything was going to be all right.
    Blumenkranz is outrageously glamorous. He dresses like an opera singer and when he makes an exceptional point, he snaps the elastic bands that hold his ruffled shirt cuffs at the wrists.
    “Wrestling has chutzpah,” he says. “It’ll never die.” Snap!
    My father’s eyes sparkle in agreement. For the first time since I met him, he looks almost alert.
    About halfway through the night they start hatching a tagteam father-daughter duo. But first, Blumenkranz says, he needs to see me in the ring. The closest place is in Smeltersite and there’s only one woman on the bill: Paula Pocahontas. My father says they’re a bunch of barn gladiators, and he and Blumenkranz start arguing about it.
    Blumenkranz’s hands in their dirty white gloves flutter around like doves, stopping mid-flight only to snap at his wrist-elastics. They remind me of the songbirds that used to drop dead after running into the fresh scrubbed windowpanes at Old Ursine.
    It seems to me that this is another one of those moments: those sinkhole realities. And even though I can see the noose, the possibility of a noose and the shaky foundation, it doesn’t help. I look over at my father, he’s wildly reminiscing, torturing his chair.
    Ghost-Mom puffs through the pantry wall.
    I decide to wrestle Pocahontas.
    Blumenkranz’s gold bodysuit is too big in the top and it’s hard not to notice the sweat stains under the armpits. He says that I’m supposed to pretend that I’m rich and snooty: a sure way to get the workers at Smeltersite to turn against me. “It’s the heels that are the moneymakers,” he tells me. “People bet far more
against
the people they hate than
for
the people they love.”
    Pauley’s acting strange. He sulks around my father while we practise, pretending to comb the pigs for hock mites. Heeyes me sideways in my golden suit and flushes. He sits on the tracks waiting for hours for the train to come in, with this look that I recognize from my final days at the orphanage. But I can’t help but think he has nowhere to run to.
    It’s a full house at the Smeltersite Pub. A bare light bulb sheds its light on the ring: a thick strand of hairy rope strung between posts stuck into floorboards sprinkled with beer-soaked sawdust. Ghost-Mom’s by the referee and then over by Blumenkranz and then back to my father. She’s a dark shadow except for the red glow of her cigarette, which jitters about the crowd, fidgeting through men’s chests at lightning speed.
    I step through the ropes and Pocahontas starts circling the ring, blowing fat kisses at the crowd. People are whistling and clinking their glasses together. Hooting wildly, they chant her name. Blumenkranz said I should pretend like I don’t care, I should check my nails or something. Maybe roll my eyes. But I feel like I’m deep in the powerhouse-chamber egg. Somehow, its cotton-ball silence has returned like a case of swimmer’s ear, a muffled silence that’s strangely comforting. My feet are wadded up in yoke and I can’t move. Somewhere by the counter, Blumenkranz starts taking bets.
    Pocahontas comes at me. She’s a horror of wild hair, black eyes, and feathers. My heart’s hammering and there’s nothing, nothing in