Free Stotan! by Chris Crutcher

arcade, then fishtailing off to our lanes to complete the warmup. Peckerhead Lion wasn’t going to get ahead of us on pain.
    Again the whirlwind of non-stop land and water drills; sets of 400s, bearwalk, steamrollers, deck drills, four long trips to the Torture Lane, situps on raw tailbones, sets of no-breathe springs, Max hollering all the way, “You have to let go! Give it up! You can’t beat it! You’re in it! You’re part of it! Give it up!”
    Lion was the first to slip in. Suddenly he was swimming faster than all of us, getting half again as many repetitions on any given drill, his chest bouncing off the deck in accelerating cadence as he racked off an infinity of pushups. Then Jeff, in less maniacal fashion, started picking up until he was in perfect rhythm with Lion. I looked at Nortie struggling to get himself out of the water and said, “Let’s get it, young feller.”
    Somewhere in the next couple of repeats I noticed things going soft at the edges; and we were a machine. Max put the bullhorn down and just called the starts. He didn’t call out times or shout encouragement, or in any way risk jolting us out of the spell.
    And then it was noon; a letdown to stop.
    In the shower no one spoke. That kind of high makes “normal” seem abysmal, and we tried to hang on to it as long as we could. I felt almost hung over as the exhaustion and the deep, deep muscle fatigue crept back into my consciousness. The soreness was gone, but it would return—physical pain that comes from the soul rather than from outside.
    We picked up our Coke and more eggs at Safeway—which is fast becoming our only connection to the outside world—and went straight back to Lion’s. The heater was still on the blink, so we crawled into our bags fully dressed, thinking we could fix it later.
    Still no one mentioned what had happened—how the workout had just taken over—define it and it goes away—but I’m sure we all hoped we could re-create it tomorrow; we dreaded the idea of going through half that in a conscious state.
    We passed up the gourmet sandwiches for sleep—drifting off into that totally relaxed, dreamless sleep your body goes to, looking for the state nearest death.
    I woke up in the late-afternoon dimness—maybe around four—to scuffling coming from Lion’s bed. Jeff was on top of him, pinning Lion’s arms to his mattress with his knees. Jeff hollered for Nortie, who came flying up out of his sleep to the bed before he evenknew why he was there.
    â€œBeat on his chest!” Jeff said.
    â€œBeat on my chest and die!” was Lion’s reply.
    â€œ Don’t beat on his chest and die!” Jeff said.
    Nortie looked to me. “Flip a coin,” I said. “You’re going to die.”
    â€œWhy am I beating on his chest?” Nortie asked.
    â€œJust do it!”
    Nortie started pounding on Lion’s chest with his middle knuckle, like Jeff does to Nortie all the time.
    â€œWhy is he pounding on my chest?” Lion asked.
    â€œBecause my back hurts,” Jeff said. “Because, for a reason I would be far too embarrassed to explain, I fell backward off the diving board today and almost laid my back open so I could keep up some kind of ‘Stotan status’ with my brain-damaged teammate.”
    â€œYeah,” Nortie said, and pounded harder.
    Lion let loose with a maniacal laugh, and Nortie quickened the cadence. “Stotan!” Lion screamed. “Stotan! Stotan! All the way! Beat me!” He laughed again.
    Jeff pushed Nortie away and pulled Lion’s bag up around his shoulders, zipping it up in the same motion. Lion didn’t even struggle, just kept up his chant. Jeff stuffed his head down into the bag and closed the topwith his fist, then dragged his prize off the bed, out the door, down the stairs, for Chrissakes, and threw it into the snowbank. All to the muffled chant “Stotan!