Free Signs of Struggle by John Carenen Page A

truck.
     
    Twenty yards south of The Grain o’ Truth, my curiosity was tweaked by Mulehoff’s Earthen Vessel Barbell Club and Video Rental across the street. Having a lifelong interest in places where people pay good money to publicly hurt themselves, it was worth a look. An old yellow Pinto wagon with a gray-primer driver’s door drove past. Its tailpipe hung from a bent coat hanger, and made metallic farting sounds as it went by. I crossed the street.
     
    The combination of gym and video rental reminded me of businesses back in Georgia, sprouting up like fresh stinkweed everywhere. Laser eye surgery and funnel cakes in one place, fertility clinics combined with hot air balloon excursions in another. My favorite example of capitalism’s spirit in the Deep South combined a barbeque joint and dog grooming emporium, raising questions about the menu and the Department of Health. But I’d learned that loose licensing and a bit of grits graft can work wonders.
     
    The storefront of Mulehoff’s looked like the aftermath of two architectural approaches running headlong into each other. Old brick and cheap, warped exterior paneling butted heads against blocks of opaque glass and a single Doric column by the front door. In a previous life, the enterprise might have been a neighborhood grocery, or maybe a tanning salon before that. I thumped the Doric column as I went by, confirming my guess that it was plastic and hollow (a little like me), and pushed through the glass door. Once inside, the air conditioning whispered up against me. Refreshing, soothing, like a kiss from a best friend’s girl. Not too cold.
     
    The inside walls were concrete block painted green and gold. Scattered across the open floor space were benches and barbells, racks of solid dumbbells, and exercise machines. The abundance of good, familiar equipment was impressive. I meandered to the far end.
     
    The video store was situated in the right rear corner. Movie posters of current films were taped to the back wall. Vampires feasting on busty ingénues , scenes of explosions, and top stars in heated liplocks returned my gaze.
     
    A cash register sat on a display case that featured muscle-building food supplements, Earthen Vessel t-shirts, and bodybuilding magazines. A cooler the size of a tipped-up coffin and filled with water bottles and multi-hued sports drinks hummed softly against the back wall next to the posters. Powerlifting trophies, adorned with little silver statuettes of bulging men in frozen flexings, posed on a shelf next to the cooler. Probably the proprietor’s. Instant credibility.
     
    I looked back at the workout area that comprised ninety percent of the room. Five men and two women in their twenties and thirties pumped iron, accompanied by good-natured chatter and encouragement. The men wore tank tops and Umbros; the women, brightly-colored thongs over iridescent tights, and tees over sports bras. The men tossed brief, insouciant glances in my direction. The women ignored my entrance after a quick size-up. I was old enough to be, given opportunity and lack of self-control in high school, their father.
     
    A man sporting a short, salt-and-pepper beard muscled bench presses on a wooden lifting platform in the middle of the gym. He finished a set of five slow, smooth repetitions with an Olympic bar loaded with four forty-five pound plates on each end, 405 pounds counting the bar, which bent slightly under the weight, then bounced and clanged when the lifter racked the barbell.
     
    I have never even attempted to do one rep with that much, and this man, in his fifty’s somewhere, had done five easily. He sat up, rubbed his gloved hands together, and looked around. When he saw me, he got up, stepped down from the platform, and ambled my way.
     
    He wore a green t-shirt, black sweatpants, and gray New Balance cross-trainer shoes. He oozed power. Like a friar’s tonsure, curly gray and silver hair circled his balding pate. He bobbed along