Free Champion of the World by Chad Dundas Page B

would win a quarter. A concession was worth a dollar. At the bottom, written in gold script, it said:
Pinfall Victory Worth $10.00!
This had never happened. In his nearly five years working for Markham & Markham, the only money paid out from Pepper’s matches was for time-limit draws, and those were few and far between. Near the side of the ring was a large caged gymnasium clock so the crowd could keep track of the time during each match.
    Just as Markham stepped forward to announce that the great Gun Boat Walters and the unbeatable Pepper Van Dean would be taking on all comers, he saw Moira step through the door at the back of the tent. She smiled at him a little, the look saying she was happy he was alive but maybe wasn’t fully done being mad at him yet.
    It took a few minutes for the first man to get the proper courage to challenge one of them. While they waited, Pepper busied himself doing stretches inside the ring—bending over to touch his toes, then reaching toward the ceiling and side to side. He jogged in place a bit to work out the kinks in his legs and lower back. He didn’t need to do this, but knew the crowd liked to see him warm up. Any man who worried about cramps and muscle pulls couldn’t be as unbeatable as the carnival barker claimed.
    The first contestant to drop a nickel in the pot and climb into the ring got a nice ovation from his friends. He was a big redheaded sawyer with sweat rings on his overalls and nine toes on his bare feet. Pepper could smell the sap and dust in his clothes as they shook hands and the timekeeper tolled the bell. The man looked strong, but from the way he lumbered around the ring, Pepper could see there was no science to it. Soon after they began circling each other the guy tried to grab him for a tie-up and Pepper dropped low into a double leg tackle. The speed of it caught the sawyer by surprise. Locking his hands behind the man’s hips, he turned like the rudder on a boat and drove forward. The sawyer grunted as they hit the rough canvas, his eyes wide. He tried to pull himself back to his feet, but Pepper latched onto his legs and yanked him down. From there it was simple. He hopped forward, caught the sawyer in a cradle and leveraged his shoulders down. The referee slapped the mat once and Pepper jumped back to his feet, jogging in place to keep his blood up.
    The sawyer sat up, red-faced and blinking, unable to believe it. The match had taken less than thirty seconds. Pepper didn’t look at him, acting like the man wasn’t even there as the sawyer shuffled out of the ring and down the steps, past where several others were now lining up with nickels in their fists.
    The second man was slight and wiry, quicker than the sawyer, but just as green. His balance was all over the place. Right off, Pepper clinched with him, slipped his grip under the man’s armpits and sent him flying ass over everything with a lateral drop. It was a good throw, clean and true, and the referee stepped in to wave things off as the man tumbled across the ring. That was that. It had taken five seconds.
    As the night went on he beat more and more men, for a time forgetting about his anger at Boyd Markham and his worries abouthis weight. This was the thing he lived for, the thing that drove him night after night. When done right, there was beauty in it, a clean triumph in each victory. He loved the focus it demanded, the particular single-mindedness, the ability to block out the things that had happened that day and the things that might happen tomorrow. When he was having a match, everything beside himself and the man across from him faded away, as if they were the only two people in the world. The one thing that mattered, the entire point of life, was to win. The moment his opponent’s shoulders touched down and the referee’s hand slapped the rough canvas, it was as if he’d emerged from a tunnel on a speeding train. The world would burst wide-open