Free Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher Page B

“Men…are…scum!” She repeats it like a mantra until the female sector of the audience screams it back, stomping the bleachers with each word.
    She remains facing her adoring followers as Petey, silently and with great stealth, creeps up behind her with the club.
    “Men…are—” Whack! and Chris Byers stands glassy-eyed a full three seconds before dropping to the mat like a rock.
    Petey slings the club over his shoulder, reaches down, and clutches a handful of her hair, dragging her a few feet across the mat. Now the male voices in the crowd erupt.
    “Far enough!” Chris says through clenched teeth. “You’re pulling it out!”
    “It’s for the cause,” he whispers back, ventriloquist style.
    “Far enough,” Chris says again, “or the cause will be new teeth for Petey Shropshrire.”
    Petey stops and drops her head to the mat, standing with one wrestling shoe lightly just below her chest. “Woman…kneel!” He starts the chant and is joined by the male population. As their collective voice rises, he steps forward to lead the cheer, and Chris slowly rises behind him. Though his crowd screams their warning, Petey is obviously too wrapped up in their adulation to care. Suddenly he stares into the eyes of Chris Byers, formidable female opponent who was, only two weeks ago, going to make his entire wrestling season a humiliation. She smiles, takes his cheeks in her palms, and executes a World Wrestling Federation textbook head butt. Both wrestlers silently count to three, then fall backward to the mat. Brent Edwards slaps his hand down for the double pin.
     
    Petey Shropshrire is running the bleachers. Bottom to top, down, bottom to top. He started as practice began, and he will finish long after practice ends. His legs will be molten mush. His shenanigans last weekend cost his team the match since Silver Creek led going intoit, and no points were awarded for their memorable double pin. Chris and he had agreed before the match that no matter what the score, they would go through with it.
    None of that matters. It’s Friday. He has run bleachers every night this week, and his punishment will probably end sometime after his thirty-fifth birthday if Coach has his way, which he usually does. He’s permanent JV now and won’t wrestle another match until Coach thinks he’s learned his lesson about letting down teammates, though to his teammates he’s a bona fide hero. Chris Byers is no longer a wrestler and therefore has more leisure time. In about an hour or so, even if he needs a wheelchair to reach his Dodge Dart, he’s headed to Silver Creek to see a movie with Leopard Lady, the female wrestler of his dreams.

PREFACE
GOIN’ FISHIN’
    There is a case to be made that from the time of birth, when we lose a warm, enclosed safe place to be, our lives are made up of a series of losses and that our grace can be measured by how we face those losses and how we replace what is lost. Lionel Serbousek lost his parents in a boating accident when he was fourteen years old. Though he continues to explore his passions—athletics and art—with the fervor of the brash Stotan he is, he remains haunted by his memories of that day on the lake and “what could have been….” Like most of us, when his pain is the greatest, he covers it with anger, anger approaching rage. That rage has the power to consume .

GOIN’ FISHIN’
    My name is Lionel Serbousek. I’m a high school senior, an artist and a swimmer, and I like to think, finally, a good friend. I’m also an orphan; I live by myself. I can tell no story about my life without telling this one first because it colors everything I do and everything I think.
    I woke up on a bright Sunday morning almost three years ago to go fishing over in Lake Coeur d’Alene with my family, and everything was about as great as it could be. I was just short of fifteen—at the top of my age-group—and kicking ass in the hundred fly all over the Northwest. That summer I also sold